Word: bahrain
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Ostensibly, the road is being built to facilitate trade between the two countries, but the consequences may be more far-reaching. Saudi Arabia, like most other gulf states, bans alcohol as well as such Western pleasures as dancing and nightclubbing. Reflecting the tolerant views of Sheik Isa, Bahrain is more relaxed: liquor flows freely in its hotels, and supper clubs offer the best in gulf entertainment. Already, many Saudis fly to the island looking for fun; some members of the austere Saudi royal family fear that Bahrain will turn into a gigantic weekend resort once the road is open...
Until the country began redeveloping its economy in the late '60s, skilled and unskilled Bahrainis alike went abroad for jobs. Now most stay home. Bahrain still uses foreign labor, but the proportion of immigrants in the national work force is much lower than in other gulf states. (Less than 60% of the island's 140,000 workers are from other countries.) Bahrain, moreover, carefully screens out potential troublemakers. Unlike many other Arab states, it has granted work permits to only a few hundred Palestinians. The vast majority of foreign laborers are docile Filipinos, Indians and Pakistanis hired...
...main worry centers on a religious schism within his people. The royal family, along with most of the nation's decision makers, are Sunni Muslims, but some 60% of the country, including most of the poor, belong to the Shi'ite branch of Islam. Bahrain thus is an inviting target for an Islamic revolution imported from Iran, where the Shi'ites are dominant. The island in fact was part of Persia until Sheik Isa's ancestors, who came from Qatar, drove out the Persians in 1783. Since the revolution that brought Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini to power...
...spill endangers marine life as well as industrial installations along the shoreline. The gravest threat is to the huge desalination plants that Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and the other arid nations depend on for their drinking water. From Saudi Arabia to the Straits of Hormuz last week, armies of workmen were ringing the shore with floating plastic booms designed to protect the plants' intake valves. Meanwhile, panicky shoppers in Qatar went on a hoarding spree, pushing the price of bottled mineral water to almost $1 a liter-more than five times the OPEC price for crude oil. Officials from Iran...
...would be treated as military targets. Iranian officials say they had offered Texan Red Adair, the world's best-known oil troubleshooter, $1 million to supervise a repair effort, but that he refused to work under war-time conditions. The immense slick developed, says a Western diplomat in Bahrain, because "no one will go out there and cap a well unless he's sure he is not going to be shot...