Bahrain Urgently Needs Real Negotiations | Brian Dooley
▻http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-dooley/bahrain-urgently-needs-re_b_4683011.html
In his new book, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War, former U.S Defense Secretary Bob Gates recounts how he tried to push the Bahrain ruling family towards reform in mid-March 2011: “I suggested to both the crown prince and the king that they find a new and different role for the prime minister, who was disliked by nearly everyone but especially the Shia; lift constraints on the media as well as on civil society and human rights groups;...move forward in integrating the Shia into the security services and the Bahrain defense force; and promote basic civil rights in the social, media and political arenas”. Gates concludes that his diplomacy was ’ineffective," and that although the crown prince was “the voice of reason...he was powerless”.