Letter From Bahrain

“God is an imaginary friend for adults.”
- Elmore Leonard
American novelist


It’s nearly time to leave Bahrain for the requisite summer vacation. Later this week we head for Europe, on the red-eye to London. I’ll cross my fingers we won’t be shot down over Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, where a corrupt autocracy is teetering on the brink of collapse.

The news is out, so we are sadly aware that al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the Saudi-based terrorist cell, just killed American hostage Paul M. Johnson, Jr., and posted photographs of his beheaded body on an Islamist website. Johnson was a goner the moment he was abducted earlier this week.

For Westerners, especially Americans, living in-or-near Saudi Arabia, it now feels like a demented game of roulette. Is it time to worry every time we pass a white and red checkered Wahhabi at Seef Mall on the weekends, when those pious Muslims race to Bahrain for a taste of forbidden freedom – like American films at the cinema? Are the Saudis going to start shooting us down in Bahrain, like they do in Riyadh and al-Kohbar?

I’m not an advocate of Operation Iraqi Freedom doublespeak and the phony introduction of democracy. A transfer of power in Iraq cannot be resolved by democratic elections because the very people who most hate America will be elected. The American occupation is a horribly transparent attempt to destabilize the Middle East and colonize the world’s number two oil producer.

Yet why settle for Number Two? George Patton always reminded us that Americans love to win. We should have invaded Saudi Arabia, instead. The country that has played the greatest role in advancing global Islamist militancy has never been listed in Bush's "axis of evil."

The ultimate irony is that Saudi money comes from the West as oil revenues and investment. In the end, it is Americans who are funding both Wahhabi intolerance and al-Qaida terrorism. In the end, it is Americans who are funding Saudi Arabia’s ability to buy and pay for all the White House and Congressional influence it needs.

How much longer can Bahrain hold firm against the fallout from Saudi Arabia? Already the three top private secondary schools here are inundated with desperate requests for student applications for 2004-05. Naturally, the local property owners are already putting the screws to the real estate market, demanding even higher prices from Westerners for wildly overpriced flats and villas.

But the real impact from the growing chaos in Saudi Arabia is how this will affect the disenfranchised Shia community in Bahrain.

After just a brief taste of Western Civilization, it will be hell to return to this part of the world – a place where the children of Abraham continually prove Elmore Leonard is right.