Q&A with Frederic Wehrey

Bahrain’s ruling family seems to have weathered the storm brought on by the Arab Spring and is looking to show the world that business is back to normal. In anew Q&A, Frederic Wehrey, who recently traveled to Bahrain, assesses the situation in the country and whether there is hope for political transition. 

Wehrey says reform is at an impasse with internal divisions within both the ruling family and opposition. And the resumption of U.S. weapons sales to Bahrain did not help Washington’s capacity to push change in the right direction.

Are political reforms moving forward in Bahrain? 

The major reform milestone was the issuance of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry’s report in November. Commissioned by King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, the report charges that security personnel relied on excessive force to quell the uprising and specifies very clear steps that the Bahraini government has to take. 

Right now, however, the general consensus is that the government has not made concrete progress on reform. 

In May, the king announced some amendments to the constitution that were framed as reforms, but the main Shia opposition party, al-Wifaq, quickly rejected them as cosmetic offers that left the real power in the hands of the ruling family. 

A major stumbling block is the 2002 constitution, created unilaterally by the king, that subordinated the elected parliament to an unelected “upper house,” the Shura Council, which holds ultimate veto authority. In the eyes of many activists, this was a staggering blow to the country’s democratic progress. Parliament thus has no real authority—it can’t legislate real laws, it can’t hold ministers accountable, and it can’t monitor corruption. The parliament is now referred to by some opposition critics as a “debating society.” 

Reform is clearly at an impasse. But the real story behind the stalemate is factionalism on both sides. Within the royal family, there is a division between the pro-reform side led by the crown prince and the hardliners, among whom a trio—the prime minister, the royal court minister, and the commander of the defense forces—holds a great deal of sway. They are well entrenched and trying to undercut the authority of the crown prince. 

On the opposition side, there was an institutionalized opposition, al-Wifaq, that participated in elections, sought dialogue, and remains pragmatic. That party, however, is now under pressure from the more radical youth who led the protests that erupted in 2011 and are much bolder in their demands. 

The presence of these more radical and fractured currents makes it very difficult to reach a compromise or for the United States to find an interlocutor in Bahrain.