After Formula One scrutiny, Bahrain hires a fan of Saddam Hussein to improve its image

In May 2007, then US Ambassador to Bahrain William Monroe, wrote in a confidential cable released by Wikileaks that Rajab was the "driving force" behind a three-day conference in the Bahraini capital that had ended up focusing on the grievances of Sunni Arab and Baathist Iraqis.

What was meant to be a pan-Arab nationalist conference ended up focusing on figures then resisting the rise of the Shiite-dominated government in Iraq, and the sectarian overtones of the talk created a minor local controversy.
 
Among the speakers at the conference was Harith al-Dari, a Sunni Iraqi preacher who called for greater coordination between that country's then raging insurgency and Al Qaeda. A film was played that portrayed Iraqi Sunnis as the principal victims of violence in the country (the raging sectarian civil war at the time in fact claimed tens of thousands of both Sunni and Shiite lives).

"These incidents led to a great deal of criticism, including inside the conference itself, and local columnists condemned those using the event to incite sectarianism," the ambassador wrote. "Conference participants told the [deputy chief of the US mission] that Shura [Consultative] Council member and pro-Saddam Baathist columnist Samira Rajab was the driving force behind the event, saying she had put together the list of attendees opposed to the new Iraq - 'mostly rejectionists and pro-Baathists, not Arab nationalists.' Local activists complained about the extremism voiced at the conference and attempts to 'widen our differences.'"

Ambassador Monroe wrote that he raised concerns about "Rajab's role in pushing a sectarian agenda" at the conference with Foreign Minister Shaikh Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, a member of the royal family. "Shaikh Khalid said the event was a 'gathering of relics' and he would not meet with any of the delegates. They should not have allowed a sectarian film to be shown. He noted that the conference opened on Saddam Hussein's birthday, April 28, which he did not think was a coincidence."

Mr. Monroe concluded that "through her speech and decisions about delegates, speakers, and activities, [Rajab] was able to spread her virulent views in favor of the armed insurgency and against the United States, Iraqi government, and those supporting it."

In an interview in 2010, she said the 9/11 attacks on the US were a "fabricated operation" designed to advance political interests inside the US to "create a new ghost to replace the ghost of communism." And in 2005, she attacked Iraq's Shiite Grand Ayatollah Sistani, that country's most revered religious figure, as an American stooge. That column infuriated Bahrain's Shiite community, which complained she was feeding sectarian conflict. Sistani, who wields enormous influence in Iraq, largely stayed aloof of the US occupation.

Rajab, a former journalist and member of Bahrain's consultative council, is a reminder of the strange-bedfellows being made by increasingly fractured regional politics, with countries like Bahrain and Saudi Arabia calling for the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syrian (an Iranian ally, after all) while jealously protecting their own positions at home, with the acquiescence of the US.

Previous

1 | 2