Foreign Policy In Focus

Bahrain finds an off-label use for tear gas as chemical warfare.

Cross-posted from Scramble for Africa.

Physicians for Human Rights just released a report on the Bahraini government’s pervasive use of tear gas to repress its restive civilian population. Bahrain has raised the global bar on the usage of tear gas to unprecedented heights. It has become the Tear Gas Regime.
 
Consider this excerpt from the PHR report:

“PHR investigators visited one home in which residents provided “guest gas masks” to visitors exposed to toxic chemical agents in and around the home. “We’ve been exposed to tear gases almost every day,” said one resident of a Shi’a neighborhood. “We’ve had canisters shot in the house, on the doorstep, and on the roof. We’ve had so many attacks, I can’t count the number of times. You don’t need to go outside to smell the ‘tear gas.’”

 The report continues:

“Preliminary analysis of data suggests that the majority of Shi’a neighborhoods (comprising 80% of all neighborhoods in Bahrain) have been exposed to toxic chemical agent attacks at least once per week since February 2011.”

That is a remarkable record of sustained gassing. What does this mean for the neighborhoods and villages affected? As PHR details:

“Symptoms of CS [the most commonly used chemical agent in contemporary ‘tear gas’ worldwide] exposure include severe tearing, burning in the nose and throat, eye spasms, chest tightness, coughing, and wheezing among other signs of oral and respiratory distress.”

Imagine encountering that on a daily or weekly basis as many Shia neighborhoods in Bahrain now are.

There is plenty of reason to question the legitimacy of tear gas usage in virtually any context. PHR medical investigators noted in a report published the AMA’s journal in 1989 that:

“[T]he evidence already assembled regarding the pattern of use of tear gas, as well as its toxicology, raises the question of whether its further use can be condoned under any circumstances… [T]here is an important role for the independent [health] professional: to study, document, analyze, and report on such hazards and to advise government on what does and does not carry an acceptable risk. If a weapon is found to present too serious a risk, it is then the responsibility of those in charge of public safety to decide on alternatives.”

Note the ‘pattern of use’ analysis from even the late ‘80s. When is ‘tear gas’ used in an appropriate and proportionate manner? Can a protestor or bystander among us think of an instance? International law permits its use under the category of ‘riot control’. Thus, it is properly deployed to disperse ‘riots’, not nonviolent gatherings, and not some scattered projectile throwing and minor property destruction.

The very label ‘tear gas’ is a euphemism which obscures that its use on humans: “poses serious health risks and even causes death.” The proper term for ‘tear gas’ is ‘toxic chemical agent’ as PHR employs. As PHR notes, ““Tear gas,” implying that these chemical agents merely cause tearing, is a misnomer.“

Perhaps the roots of the crowd control method should give us pause. The origin of tear gas derives from chemical weapons that became so infamous in WW1.

Lest anyone continue to regard ‘tear gas’ as a mere inconvenience, it has also been implicated as a carcinogen, and may even damage DNA, thus impacting one’s future children and family lineage.

PHR describes the effects of the toxic gas:

“In addition to wounds due to the impact of toxic chemical agent canisters, PHR investigators also documented severe tearing, burning eyes, throat irritation, chest tightness, shortness of breath, and vomiting in individuals exposed to toxic chemical agents. Because chemicals in toxic lachrymatory agents can destroy membranes of the throat, esophagus, and mouth, such vomiting can become dangerous. Even if an exposed person quickly leaves the chemical-saturated area, symptoms of exposure can last hours. …. Sustained exposure to toxic chemical agents can also burn skin and the cornea of the eye. A physiotherapist reported that she developed shortness of breath, wheezing and severe coughing, turned red, and felt hot after being exposed to tear gas that was yellow in color. A doctor at private hospital treated her with Atrovent and Symbicort, but she reported having continued difficulty breathing at night and difficulty speaking for approximately two weeks.”

In the U.S. water hosing crowds fell out of favor due to the illegitimacy it acquired after becoming indelibly associated with the repression of the black Civil Rights movement. By almost any measure, tear gas is far worse. Note that outside the U.S. high pressure water is still utilized. Israel retains the water cannons technique in their crowd control repertoire but has added an extra fillip -- lacing the water with sewage-scented malodorous elements.

Historically, tear gas usage has been associated with less than reputable purposes. The South Korean dictatorship (Washington backed by the way) employed it against the democracy movement. PHR:

“Twenty-five years ago, PHR documented the deleterious and long-term health effects of tear gas used indiscriminately in South Korea against civilian protesters, including toxic pulmonary damage and death, as well as possible miscarriages. As physicians we were then compelled to question whether the further use of these toxic chemical agents could be condoned under any circumstances.

The extensive and persistent use of this so-called nonlethal chemical agent now in Bahrain—unprecedented in the 100-year history of tear gas use against civilians throughout the world—compels PHR once again to call the world’s attention to the known and still unknown serious health consequences of tear gas, including death.”

Bahrain is also joined in its distinguished company by the Khartoum regime which along with more lethal means, has employed tear gas in Darfur to quell a recent upsurge in nationwide protests seeking to join their international brethren in the Arab Spring.

Israel has also made a habit of using tear gas, not uncommonly in particularly dangerous or lethal manners by directly firing the canisters at people and vulnerable points, virtually ensuring serious injury or death.

In the U.S., victims of police ‘riot control’ include Scott Olsen, who was hit by a ‘bean bag round’, though the consequences of a tear gas canister no doubt would have been similar.

The PHR report clearly establishes that Bahrain is violating international law in its usage of toxic chemical agents:

“While current international law allows governments to use some chemical agents for crowd control purposes, Bahraini law enforcement officials routinely violate every U.N. principle of their use. Specifically, PHR documents in this report that Bahraini authorities:

(1) Fail to exercise restraint before resorting to force;
(2) Use disproportionate force when responding to protesters; and
(3) Fail to minimize damage and injury to demonstrators.”

We might ask why international law permits chemical weapons in civilian use but not military. PHR ventures that internal use against civilian populations was not a primary concern of conference that drafted the international law guiding the use of chemical weapons and that a lack of consensus (surprise, surprise) among the delegates may have been a factor. While few governments can be properly said to abide by international law on crowd control procedures listed, Bahrain has gone well beyond the normal abuses.

The U.S. of course is deeply complicit in the repression in Bahrain. Though it is not currently supplying the regime with tear gas, the PHR report identifies two of the four main toxic chemical manufacturers that produced the weapons that have been deployed against Bahrain’s citizens are U.S.-based: Nonlethal Technologies, Inc. (based outside of Pittsburgh, PA in Homer City; Nicholas Kristof (to his credit) reported late last year that Nonlethal Technologies tear gas shells were “being swept off the street each morning” in Bahrain.) and Federal Laboratories/Defense Technology in Casper, WY.

Beyond Bahrain, “US-based company Combined Systems Inc., which exports riot-control equipment to armies around the world. The company has yet to address allegations that it has been a primary riot control agent (RCA) supplier to MENA governments embroiled in the Arab Spring.” CSI is located not far from Nonlethal Technologies, in Jamestown, PA. Western Pennsylvania seems on its way to cornering the global market on the production of toxic chemical agents designed for use against civilian demonstrators.

On August 1st the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission on Capitol Hill held a hearing on Bahrain’s record. To his credit Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) testified to oppose Washington’s alliance.

By contrast, Michael H. Posner, Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (ha!) testified:

“King Hamad deserves great credit for initiating this commission and for allowing an independent body to take a critical look at Bahrain’s human rights record and to report so extensively on its findings. We also commend the King for accepting and committing to implement the recommendations of the BICI report. And after a worrying period of rising violence in the streets by both demonstrators and police, violence has subsided this summer.”

He of course also added some anodyne criticism to ensure a modicum of credibility for his words.

The U.S. Fifth Fleet gives Bahrain no small strategic significance to the U.S. Democracy would endanger the Fleet -- the people might want to evict the Fleet, but we can surely count on the ruling regime. Tellingly, the Fifth Fleet’s home base was take over from the British in 1971 as they relinquished their colonial possessions. You can learn a lot about nations as well as people from observing who its friends are.

Though the U.S. has frozen sales of tear gas to Bahrain (which it appears the regime is having no trouble obtaining elsewhere), Washington nonetheless proceeded in May with an arms deal to the country following a week-long visit to the U.S. by crown prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa. A Bahraini dissident noted that by doing so the U.S. sending “a direct message that we support the authorities and we don't support democracy in Bahrain, we don't support protesters in Bahrain.”

Along with Kevin Funk, Steven Fake is the author of "Scramble for Africa: Darfur – Intervention and the USA" (Black Rose Books). They maintain a website with their commentary at scrambleforafrica.org.

Pizza Hut’s Crown Crust Pizza is a good metaphor for up the US’s Bahrain policy: stuff ’em full of meats and cheeses in the hopes that such largesse predisposes them to better hear us out on human rights. This month the US lifted restrictions on a host of sales to the Bahraini military, going well beyond previous exemptions made since the 2011 freeze on a US$53 million arms deal, reportedly in the hopes of raising the profile of Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa at home following his visit to the US:

“The administration didn’t want the crown prince to go home empty-handed because they wanted to empower him,” said Tom Malinowski, the Washington director of Human Rights Watch, who was arrested in Bahrain while documenting protests there last month. “They placed a lot of hope in him, but he can’t deliver unless the king lets him and right now the hard-liners in the ruling family seem to have the upper hand.”

The crown prince has been stripped of many of his official duties recently, but is still seen as the ruling family member who is most amenable to working constructively with the opposition and with the United States.

Problem is, several commentators have noted, is that often times after a big meal the last thing you want to do is talk. The Crown Prince is thought to be facing down a hardline clique helmed by the Defense Minister Khalifa bin Ahmad and his brother, Royal Court Minister Khalid bin Ahmad who have conspired to force the prince out of his perch in the Defense Ministry to buttress the Sunni factions that reject dialogue with the opposition.

Since the weapons in this sale are, as usual, clearly aimed across the Gulf at Iran¹, the US also risks (or, perhaps, even intends?) to signal the royal family that it hears and takes to heart their dubious Iranian fifth columnist concerns. Which, of course, actually undermines the opposition, specifically, the Al Wefaq party, which Washington says it wants the Bahrain government to — and I’m sorry for the word choice — engage. Much of the protestor “black bloc” actions that regime supporters are criticizing seems to have started appearing more and more as Al Wefaq failed to secure significant concessions from the government. As blogger Mohammad Hasan ruefully opined, “the opposition has lost the initiative.”

And lest we forget, the Ahmad brothers have been blaming both the US and Iran for encouraging the protestors for some time. Our signal to them, Justin Gengler notes, is that the demonstrators are indeed a security issue to be resolved by force, rather than a political issue to be addressed by implementing the reforms promised in the post–2001 constitutional changes. And by not making it clearer that we do not see Iran’s Gulf aspirations and Bahrain’s reformists as being in bed with each other, we are almost certainly making thethe state media’s propagandizing easier -- though if we were clearer, then they’d simply take the extra effort to demonize the US.

I know it’s a gross oversimplification, comparing US foreign policy in the Gulf to a pizza, but then, I’d wager that to many harassed, assaulted, tortured, disappeared and jailed activists (both Shia and Sunni) in Bahrain, our largesse might seem rather “gross” to them. And whatever influence the US has allegedly given the Crown Prince back home, the situation on the streets has not changed much in the past week, judging from reports of “mass arrests” and France 24’s Nazeeha Saeed’s latest rundown of police-protestor clashes in several predominantly Shia villages in the Northern Governorate of Bahrain.

Incidentally, the Crown Crust Pizza is marketed by Pizza Hut exclusively in the Middle East.

Subtle.

¹Josh Rogin at FP: “six more harbor patrol boats, communications equipment for Bahrain’s air defense system, ground-based radars, AMRAAM air-to-air missile systems, Seahawk helicopters, Avenger air-defense systems, parts for F–16 fighter engines, refurbishment items for Cobra helicopters, and night-vision equipment. The United States also agreed to work on legislation to allow the transfer of a U.S. frigate …”. With the exception of the night-vision goggles, the U.S. refused to send over anything that could be put to use by the regime’s riot police, though an extra US$10 million in military aid payments for 2013 was promised as part of the deal.

Cross-posted from Other Words.

The popular uprising in Bahrain shows no signs of going away.

The royal family tried crushing the revolt, importing shock troops from Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. It tried jailing important figures in the opposition, such as human rights activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, who as of early May had been on hunger strike for 90 days. The island's rulers tried quieting the opposition by promising to investigate the abuses and making minor cessions of power from the king to the parliament.

None of these strategies has worked. The opposition rejects them as cosmetic changes. The Bahraini majority is angry. It wants authoritarian rule to end, and many Bahrainis would like to see the monarchy disappear. The regime's answers to this public outrage are birdshot and tear gas. They haven't produced the terrible death tolls of Libya or Syria, but at least 32 people have died since February 2011.

The United States, which anchors its Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, is right in the middle of this simmering crisis. For the most part, Washington is content to look the other way.

*Apologies to Elvis Costello.

To read this piece in its entirety, visit Other Words.

If it looks like an arms deal, walks like an arms deal and quacks like an arms deals, is it an arms deal? The State Department says no:

Today, officials from the State Department's Bureau of Political-Military Affairs and State's Legislative Affairs office briefed select congressional offices about their decision to transfer seven rigid-hull inflatable boats and 12 32-foot Boston Whaler boats from the U.S. Navy in Bahrain to the Bahrain government. Offices briefed ahead of the Friday formal notification included aides to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the offices of Sen. Ron Wyden (D-WY) and Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), two lawmakers who have been leading the congressional opposition to continued U.S. arms sales to Bahrain.

…"This isn't a new package or policy decision. This is part of what was briefed to Congress in January. We are still maintaining a pause on most security cooperation for Bahrain pending further progress on reform," a State Department official told The Cable today. "The transfer of these boats are necessary to protect U.S. naval personnel and assets based in Bahrain. None of these items can be used against protestors. The transfer does not include any arms and the boats are intended for patrol missions, which is critical for ensuring a robust and layered defense of Bahrain's coast and for enhancing Bahrain's ability to counter maritime threats to U.S. and coalition vessels." 

The real story out of Bahrain these days, though, is not the gift of some old PT boats, but with the vagaries of the dialogue going on between the pro-government camp and the predominantly Shia opposition groups, increasingly splitting between the leading pro-dialogue al-Wifaq group and younger demonstrators opposed to al-Wifaq's stance. According to Justin Gengler, the pro-government camp is starting to list some "reformist" demands of its own:

Once again, then, we hear two separate arguments from members of Bahrain's Sunni political movements: (1) the state should not negotiate with terrorists; and (2) the state needs to take better care of those who are loyal to it, specifically by clamping down on corruption and other wastes of state resources. As I've written previously, whereas the first argument is sure to further complicate the search for a solution to Bahrain's present political impasse, the second is much more worrisome to the country's rulers. It implies that Sunnis are beginning to connect the state's percieved leniency with the opposition with its larger (perceived) neglect of the pro-government faction generally.

In other words, they're asking the Al Khalifas where are their welfare checks?

Gengler continues:

It is one thing, in other words, for Sunnis to disagree with the government's approach in dealing with the opposition; it is another if they begin to suspect that this approach is not simply short-sighted but actually belies a coherent government strategy of checking Sunni ambitions through its dealings with the opposition. Put more bluntly, some Sunnis are beginning to feel duped.

Notably, one increasingly-prominent feature of this Sunni movement toward greater political participation and influence is the notion that behind the Bahraini government's manipulation of citizens is a second, even more sinister puppet-master: the United States.

Given the prominence of the U.S. Fifth Fleet in Bahrain and the tepid response of the State Department to the Bahraini protests, this suspicion is already well-founded among the demonstrators, but apparently, it is taking a very nasty turn among Sunni critics of the government thanks to the arrival of some very questionable, anti-American firebrands from Kuwait in their forums. 

So there is, according to anonymous Congressional staff, another rationale for this PT boat deal: "'state is trying to show appreciation for them changing but every time there is a step forward there is also one step backward,' said a senior Senate aide close to the issue."

And considering that this aide then snarked that the State Department was essentially saying "Have a nice day, thank you for your interest in Bahrain. It's just boats so it's no big deal," I think it's likely that said aide hails from an office in the Congressional bloc led by Wyden and McGovern that is holding up a much larger US$53 million arms deal. As for the one step forward, one step backward situation, the aide could be referring to the announcement that the controversial U.S. and UK ex-police chiefs the royal family has brought in are setting up an accountability office for Bahrain police force as questionable trials and protestor-police clashes continue.

P.S. Gulf watchers Sultan al-Qassemi and Justin Gengler have both reported on rumors about the KSA and Bahrain forming some sort of political union (the United Arab Autocracy?). Outlandish, yes, but it's not like there wouldn't be a precedent: after a popular uprising in Poland in 1848, the "Year of Revolutions," was put down by the Prussian Army, Berlin formally annexed the region where the revolt took place. Perhaps the deployment of the Peninsula Shield Force has given Riyadh similar ideas. As professor Toby Jones told the AP, "Bahrain can be looked at as something of a Saudi colony now in the sense that policies are merged." Might as well make it official.