Two days after the Sunni monarchy of Bahrain welcomed Saudi troops into the country, saying they were just showing up to protect valuable oil sites, troops routed protesters from Pearl Square.
Enormous plumes of black smoke choked the central city landscape as troops repeatedly fired tear gas canisters, rubber bullets and what sounded like live ammunition, igniting fires in tents, trees and brush. The flames were so extensive that the security forces used water cannons normally used to break up crowds to extinguish the fires.
And:
“Right now, no one is allowed to leave their houses and the hospital is under siege,” a private doctor who volunteers at Salmaniya Hospital said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he feared arrest.
“They are not allowing ambulances in,” he said.
“Doctors are being attacked and asked to leave” at gunpoint, he said. “The army has control of the roads and questions any movement.” He said makeshift first-aid areas were being set up in mosques and private homes but few had medical supplies.
One doctor told Al Jazeera that protesters were arriving with “lethal wounds” of the “chest, abdomen and brain,” and said it was “like a genocide.”
Some are arguing that Bahrain will once again become the ground of a proxy war, this time between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Others are arguing that that analysis buys into Saudi excuses for putting down a pro-democratization uprising in Bahrain that might spill over into Saudi Arabia.
I'm still wondering whether the Saudi government has made a major tactical/p.r. error by participating so openly in cutting down the rebellion—Saudi citizens are breaking the country's outright ban on protest by protesting the Saudi presence in Bahrain, protests that could build into more generalized anger about the state of the country.
Meanwhile, the Libyan opposition is in danger of being pulverized and reporters (including four from the NYT) have gone missing.
