Word: bahrain
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...made no mention of Cairo's ongoing crackdown on opponents and critics - and the continuing imprisonment of Mubarak's main opponent in the 2005 presidential election. "He is saying he supports the presidents and the governments in the Arab countries," says Ghada Jamsheer, a women's rights activist in Bahrain. "This is why people are angry. Why is he not putting pressure on these governments to push for human rights?" The fact that Bush rarely ventured beyond the walls of heavily guarded royal palaces, embassies and hotels, though completely understandable given concerns for his security, nonetheless further prevented him from...
...Bahrain, whose oil ran out a few years ago, all Bush got was a sword dance. Which was charming. It's not as if Bahrain doesn't have money - it just doesn't have obscene amounts of money from oil exports. Not coincidentally democratic reform has moved forward consistently over the last ten years, producing a new constitution and a bicameral parliament. A U.S. ambassador in the region says the relationship between oil wealth and democratic development explains the difference. "Bahrain has a large population that's unemployed and there are debates about resource allocation," he says. "If people...
...simple as oil wealth equaling authoritarianism, let alone democracy fluctuating with the price of oil. The baby steps in Bahrain aren't in league with democratic development elsewhere in the world, and the trends there can hardly be considered permanent. More important, how do you account for oil-rich countries as diverse as Norway, Britain, Malaysia, Indonesia, Mexico and Venezuela? And would the theory apply to oil-rich states in the U.S.? Prof. Karl says oil and democracy don't mix when the black gold dominates a country's exports. "Countries that are most dependent on oil are the least...
...theory is holding up in the Gulf - almost. On the one hand, Saudi Arabia and Iran are not liberalizing, while Bahrain is. The outlier is Dubai. It is diversifying economically as its oil runs out, but has taken almost no steps to democratize. When Bush brought up the "Freedom Agenda" in private talks with Sheikh Mohammad, says National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley...
Thanks to all these precautions, Bush's foray into the West Bank passed without a hitch. But the real challenge for the presidential phalanx of bodyguards will come when his tour moves on to possibly more dangerous territory - Bahrain, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt - where Bush is even less popular. With reporting by Jamil Hamad/Bethlehem and Aaron J. Klein/Jerusalem