Bahrain Feature: Dar Kulaib --- The Regime's "Sectarian" Tactics and A Village Under Assault
Sunday, January 8, 2012 at 7:59See also Bahrain Interview: Nabeel Rajab - How Police Attacked the Manama March and Beat Me
In the last month, I have seen several reports and images of violence in Bahrain that I dismissed as "minor", in relation to other news and pictures. These reports included smashed windows of cars, graffiti daubed on neighbourhood walls, and vandalism to the outside of homes.
I was wrong to set aside these items. I was blind to the significance that they all came from a single, somewhat isolated, village in the south of the country: Dar Kulaib.
I failed to recognise the signs of a continued campaign of harassment. I missed indications that the attacks on Dar Kulaib mya be a strategic attempt by the regime to provoke retaliatory violence, re-framing the opposition movement for democratic reform as a faction advocating sectarian conflict --- a re-framing the regime has repeatedly sought, and failed, to achieve since February.