In Bahrain, Sympathy for Iran Takes On Sectarian Significance

Beneath missile interceptions and skyscraper drone strikes, the ongoing U.S.-Israel and Iran conflict has ripped the Band-Aid off old sectarian wounds in Bahrain. The Gulf kingdom, which has hosted the U.S. Fifth Fleet since 1995, has emerged as a key battleground in the war and a prime target for Iran. It has had its oil refinery, airport, air base and the U.S. base targeted and hit in the last several weeks, and the conflict has underlined how the country’s Sunni and Shiite populations are experiencing the fallout from the war in different ways.

While both populations have come under fire from Iran’s bombardment, Bahrain’s Shiite population is reckoning with the loss of a religious leader in the Islamic Republic’s Ali Khamenei, and expressions of mourning have been punished with a campaign of arrests targeting even pro-government Shiite figures. The impetus to clamp down has highlighted rifts within the populace that trace their roots to the 2011 protests against the country’s Sunni monarchy.

Two casualties and just over 50 injuries have been reported by the kingdom’s Ministry of Interior. In parallel, however, arrests of civilians have ramped up, under the charge of “posting videos related to the effects of the Iranian aggression, expressing sympathy with it and glorifying its hostile acts, spreading false news and inciting the targeting of sites in Bahrain.” The Prison Affairs Authority (PAA) in Bahrain, a nongovernmental organization, reported on March 18 that at least 164 individuals have been arrested since the start of the war, of whom 157 remain in detention. The PAA noted that “field data and testimonies from villages and cities indicate that the actual number of arrests is much higher, as raids and detentions continue.” 

Similar arrests have taken place in other Gulf states, including of prominent journalists and activists in Qatar, where locals and residents were accused of showing sympathy to Iran against Israel even as their countries get attacked by Tehran. The divide isn’t necessarily sectarian in nature, but in Bahrain these arrests and sentiments take on a sectarian significance.

Beyond a handful of expatriate arrests, most of those arrested hail from Shiite-majority villages and neighborhoods in the kingdom. While many of them are detained quietly, Bahrain’s Ministry of Interior has also begun to publicly name some detainees on its social media channel, arguably to make public examples of them. Two of those who have been publicly denounced, in particular, illustrate how the ongoing war has reopened Shiite-Sunni rifts in Bahrain.  

Award-winning artists Mahdi Al Jallawi and Mansoor Darwish were arrested for expressing support for Iran, despite the fact that both have been publicly pro-government in recent years. Darwish participated in the Gulf Art Symposium in February of this year. Meanwhile, Jallawi’s artwork has featured since 2023 on the current iteration of the Bahraini passport. 

Yet once the attacks began, the government that lauded their art ordered their arrests. According to sources on the ground, Darwish was arrested at his home in the predominantly Shiite village of Sanabis for an art piece allegedly in support of Iran, and Jallawi was picked up from the Shiite village of Bilad Al Qadeem for social media posts mourning the death of Khamenei. 

While there has been opposition to the war expressed on social media by both Sunni and Shiite Muslims as well as a diverse group of expatriates, the majority of arrests have taken place during late-night raids in Shiite-dominated areas like Diraz, Sitra, Karbabad and Karzakan, with videos circulating on X showing protests and the subsequent detentions in these neighborhoods. 

As one of the more diverse countries in the Gulf, Bahrain can be described as a collection of villages and neighborhoods donning the trenchcoat of a country. Shiite Muslims make up between 55% and 60% of the citizen population. In 2011, inspired by the Arab Spring, Bahrain’s Shiite population, along with some of its Sunni Muslims, took part in protests calling for political freedom and equality, before the demands escalated to a call for the end of the Sunni monarchy of King Hamad and the Al Khalifa royal family. 

The protests were suppressed during a brutal crackdown supported by the Gulf Cooperation Council’s Peninsula Shield Force, a key tactic of which was nighttime house raids in Shiite neighborhoods and arrests of dissenters, including bloggers, doctors and artists. 

Although he was Iran’s political leader, Khamenei was also considered a Shiite religious leader equivalent to the pope for Shiite adherents. After he was assassinated at the outset of the war, there was an outpouring of grief at his death. Many of the arrests in Bahrain since then have included those who, like Darwish and Jallawi, expressed solidarity at the loss of their religious leader.  

And this is the quandary in which many Shiite Muslims find themselves — torn in grief between patriotism for the country where they grew up and religious loyalty to childhood villages and neighborhoods still healing from the scars of sectarianism. 

These expressions of sympathy at the passing of their religious leader are perceived as a slippery slope leading to protests and questioning the legitimacy of the ruling family.

With restrictions around free speech, ostensibly for national security, both Shiite and Sunni Muslims are turning on each other in social media comments sections and, in the physical world, by reporting anyone from the “other” side to authorities. And while debris can be cleared and skyscrapers rebuilt, these sectarian scars are going to be festering wounds that are not easily healed, even after geopolitical conflicts end.