Saudi Arabia sent 1,000 soldiers into neighboring Bahrain on Monday to help quell increasingly violent anti-government protests. While Bahrain's King Hamad bin Issa al-Khalifah, a Sunni Muslim, has offered to start a dialogue with the mostly Shiite protesters, opposition leaders have refused, demanding that the government step down, and calling the arrival of foreign troops an invasion. Saudi Arabia has problems with its own Shiite minority, and fears the unrest in Bahrain could spill over into its own oil-rich kingdom. Will the Saudis be able to quash the unrest in Bahrain? (Watch an Al Jazeera report about the Saudi intervention)
Yes, and with a novel spin: Bahrain's royal family may be calling for dialogue, says Tahiyya Lulu at The Guardian, but it also called in the "big guns" to crush the protesters. Bahrain's opposition merely wants basic rights, but the regime has falsely labeled the demonstrators as "terrorists" and is trying to make it seem as if forces from neighboring Gulf states, led by the Saudis, are protecting Bahrain.
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