If Mr. Zogby wants to address the “roots of Bahrain’s crisis” he would do well to note that the 70% Shia population fill none of the senior posts in the Ministry of Defense, National Guard, Ministry of Interior Affairs, the Supreme Defense Council, Ministry of Cabinet Affairs, the General Organization for Youth and Sports, the Royal Court, the Crown Prince Court, the Central Informatics Organization, and the Survey and Land Registration Bureau.
Likewise, they form a only five percent of the judiciary corps, 16 percent of the diplomatic corps, seven percent of the Ministry of Transportation, 18 percent of the Constitutional Court, 10 percent of the Ministry of Finance and six percent of the Ministry of Information (Source: Bahrain Center for Human Rights). Their representation in the public sector is equally dismal.
Of the 1,000 employees in the National Security Apparatus (NSA), more than two-thirds are non-Bahraini (largely Jordanian, Egyptian, Yemeni and Pakistani nationals) and overwhelmingly Sunni. Bahraini Shia citizens constitute less than five percent of the NSA and occupy only low-level positions or act as paid informants. The paramilitary Special Security Forces (SSF) operates under NSA supervision and numbers 20,000—90 percent of whom are non-Bahraini. A single Bahraini Shia member is not counted among them.
These imported mercenaries are the ones who rampaged through Manama’s Pearl Roundabout on two separate occasions over the past six weeks, beating peaceful, unarmed and defenseless protestors encamped there. Before their violent eviction, Pearl Roundabout was the epicenter of calls for free elections, release of political prisoners, fairness in distribution in jobs and housing, freedom of the press and religion, an end to the regime’s routine use of torture, and ultimately a transition to a constitutional monarchy. It was the SSF who pulled patients out of rooms in Salmaniya Hospital to continue the beatings, as they did to ambulance drivers, treating paramedics and doctors.