Here's a potential major headache. The Shi'a majorities in the Gulf states see that their cousins in Iraq are gaining control and that their Persian cousins are increasingly emboldened. Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait are ripe for major unrest.
Update at 00:26 EST: Ryuge posted a very similar article two minutes before I did from a different source. |
SITRA, Bahrain (AP) - Like most Shiite Muslim villages in this wealthy Gulf kingdom, Sitra is hidden away from the glitzy shopping malls, the steel-and-glass skyscrapers, the six-lane highways and luxury seaside hotels.
Less than three miles outside Manama, the booming capital, Sitra is dusty and poor. Many of its homes are shoddily built. The streets are dimly lit at night and some are unpaved. Young men in cheap tracksuits idly gather on street corners. Hardly a wall in the village is without anti-government graffiti or images of Shiites killed in years of anti-government protests.
The disparity between the country's affluent areas and Shiite villages such as Sitra lies at the heart of a potentially bloody conflict in this tiny island nation where a Shiite majority is ruled by a Sunni Muslim establishment.
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