For months, the protests have aimed at the ruling monarchy, but recently they have focused on a new target. To their familiar slogans – demanding freedoms, praising Godand cursing the ruling family – the young protesters added a new demand, written on a placard in English, so the Americans might see: "USA Stop arming the killers."
Hundreds of Thousands of Bahrainis rose up 16 months ago, demanding political liberties, social equality and an end to corruption. But the monarchy, seen by the United States and Saudi Arabia as a strategic ally, was never left to face the rage on its own.
More than a thousand Saudi troops helped put down the uprising and remain in Bahrain, making it a virtual protectorate. The United States, an unshakable friend, has strengthened its support for the government. Last month, the Obama administration resumed arms sales there.
Backed by powerful allies, the regime still continues tyrannical rule. Twenty-one of the most prominent dissidents still languish in prison, and no senior officials have been convicted of crimes, including dozens of killings, that occurred during the crackdown last year. Opposition activists are still regularly detained or interrogated for their words.
On Friday, in what activists called a dangerous escalation, riot police officers forcefully dispersed a rally by Bahrain’s largest opposition party, injuring its leader. Every night, protesters march and clashes erupt, in a violent standoff that often seems a breath away from an explosion.
A report, issued six months ago by a commission which was appointed by the ruling system itself, investigated the events of February and March 2011 and found that the security forces had used indiscriminate force and torture in putting down the uprising. King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa promised to heed the report’s findings and punish officials responsible for abuse, but he simply didn’t.
The possibility of a solution seems remote. Opposition groups and human rights activists say that the reforms leave the state’s undemocratic core intact, and that they fail toaddress central grievances like corruption and the institutionalized discrimination against the Shiite majority.
Nabi Saleh, an island suburb of the capital, graphically illustrates their complaints. A Shiite village in the center is surrounded by seafront homes or compounds that residents say belong to government loyalists, members of the royal family or expatriates. Two slivers of beach are available for the public.
During the day, police officers sit at the entrance to town, tear-gas launchers on their laps, waiting for the inevitable nightly skirmishes with young people in the village.
A few months ago, when one of the village’s few Sunni residents put his house up for sale – fed up with the nightly smell of tear gas – his neighbors begged him to reconsider, and he did.
"This government wants us to separate," said the man, a business owner who requested anonymity, fearing retribution by the authorities. He added, speaking of the royal family, "When their chairs shake, they take action."
Men like Ali, 22, a resident of the island, are shaking their chairs. Several months back, during an antigovernment protest, he lost an eye to a concussion grenade fired by the police. After he was fitted with a glass eye, he quickly returned to the streets. He said he had no intention of stopping now.
"Until they fall," he said.
The march on the American naval base, the headquarters of the Fifth Fleet, never reached its destination. When the protesters got to the road leading to the base, riot officers surrounded them and fired tear gas.
It was one of several protests last month that focused on Bahrain’s decades-old alliance with the United States, which includes close military cooperation and a free-trade agreement. Days earlier, the Obama administration announced the resumption of arms sales after a seven-month suspension.
At the start of the uprising last year, a spokeswoman for the United States Navy said that the protests "were not against the United States or the United States military or anything of that nature."
That has changed. In a Shiite village, protesters burned American flags, and in another, a young man held up a sign reading, "The American administration supports the dictatorship in Bahrain."
A senior Obama administration official said last month that the weapons sales would not include arms used for crowd control like tear gas, but everyone knows that sales was meant to support Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, who was visiting Washington at the time.
