When Donald Trump won the US election last November, Egyptian president Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi boasted of being the first international leader to phone and congratulate him.
Immediately after his inauguration Trump returned the compliment. On his first working day in the Oval Office, Sisi was...
Blog archive: Bahrain
-
6th March 2017
-
2nd February 2017While the arrival of Donald Trump at the White House has been greeted with horror in many parts of the world, his fellow autocrats in the Arab Gulf states have been giving him a much friendlier reception. Trump spent an hour on the phone talking to the Saudi king last Sunday. The views of...
-
8th December 2016A British flag flying shamelessly alongside those of repressive Gulf regimes at the GCC summit in Bahrain yesterday signalled the opening of what prime minister Theresa May hails as "a new chapter" in foreign relations. Mrs May has decided that when Britain extricates itself from Europe the...
-
6th December 2016Britain's prime minister, Theresa May, is in Bahrain today for the annual summit of the rich autocrats' club, the Gulf Cooperation Council. As the official announcement from Downing Street excitedly points out, she is the first British prime minister – and the first woman – ever to attend...
-
12th October 2016What was meant to end in a swift victory for the coalition is rapidly turning into a protracted civil war with grave humanitarian consequences. The Saudi-led intervention has wreaked havoc on Yemen and inflamed sectarian rifts across the Gulf region. Eight months after Saudi Arabia said its...
-
29th September 2016According to Islamic tradition the Prophet Muhammed once said: "Pay the labourer his wages before his sweat dries". But in the devout Gulf states that is one religious instruction employers are often content to ignore. Stories abound of workers being unpaid for months – and sometimes never...
-
21st September 2016Prince Charles, heir to the British throne, and his wife, the Duchess of Cornwall, will pay an official visit to Bahrain, Oman and the United Arab Emirates in November. An official announcement yesterday said their tour will "help to strengthen the United Kingdom’s warm bilateral...
-
4th September 2016The wealthy autocrats of the Gulf have traditionally relied on money to minimise dissent and keep themselves in power. In the initial alarm over the Arab Spring uprisings, the king of Saudi Arabia dipped into his pockets and produced a £133 billion social spending package to include bonuses...
-
3rd September 2016Global soccer and global sports governance have for the past nine years and certainly since a fateful meeting in late 2010 of the executive committee of FIFA, the world soccer body, witnessed crisis after crisis. Invariably the scandals involved corruption: financial corruption, political...
-
29th July 2016One of the funniest comedy sketches shown on British television featured the Ministry of Silly Walks – an imaginary government department whose task was to encourage silly ways of walking and provide funding for their development. I was reminded of this yesterday when Bahrain's information...
-
28th July 2016For several weeks now there has been growing evidence that Twitter is being used for a covert and highly organised propaganda operation which disparages Shia Muslims while supporting the Sunni Muslim governments of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. The tactic is to deluge Twitter with multiple copies of...
-
18th July 2016Bahrain stepped up its suppression of critics yesterday by dissolving the kingdom's main opposition party, al-Wefaq, and confiscating its funds. An announcement by the government news agency said the party, which was founded in 2001, had "provided an environment" that embraced...
