Friday, March 25, 2011

Pak Mercs Reap Backlash in Bahrain

Pakistanis who join Bahrain's security forces to protect its minority Sunni rulers from the wrath of an oppressed Shia majority are increasingly the targets of that wrath.

Let's note the whole sectarian character of this situation. The rulers are a Sunni minority lording it over a Shia majority. The Sunni minority are then recruiting fellow Sunnis from Pakistan to keep the majority under their heel.

Pakistanis don't like it when Raymond Davis shows up in their country, but they have no hesitation at all to show up in another country to beat and shoot people who have never picked a fight with Pakistanis in the first place. Furthermore, Pakistan's own military is involved in sending these mercenary recruits to serve in Bahrain - their own lucrative version of Blackwater.

Are Pakistanis hypocrites? Of course they are.

1 comment:

smriti said...

The presence of Pakistanis in Bahrain is perhaps an extension of it's own policy of Sunni domination in the country. Other gulf states- chiefly Saudi Arabia has a vested interest in protecting Bahrain' monarchy as it has to watch it's back against a Shia uprising (emboldened by Iran and Iraq) in its oil rich eastern region.

Sunni/Shia fight for supremacy - in theocracy and governance has now played on for about a millenia. Every now and again it manifests itself in different regions - now thrown into the mix is the west in all its infamous oil guzzling avatar.