W A R N I N G : The lack of caloric energy going to my brain may be responsible for an absence of clarity, organization, and/or grammatical correctness in this post.
When I first met Fatima and another Bahraini woman about six weeks ago, during a few points in their narration of the events in Bahrain, I remember thinking: one could trade out Bahrain for DR Congo (DRC) and be telling the same story.
This is not to say there is a Congolese Spring going on, nor is it to deny the innumerable and important differences between the two countries, and the conflicts within them. But seeing the parallel issues in the two stories made me feel hopeful that potentially understanding political afflictions in one location may shed light on another. Then perhaps levers of change might be similar, even recyclable.
So here are some thoughts:
In both Bahrain and the DR Congo, identity (ethnic or religious) has been mobilized by government figures for the sake of dividing the populace. A non-unified populace is far less likely to organize to in opposition against their government. The time that could be doing that will instead be spent thinking about their hatred of the other group.
The few Bahrainis I have spoken with about this issue said that the distinction between Shia and Sunni has not always been important to the average Bahraini. They expressed the opinion that this religious difference has been mobilized at politically opportune times by their government, for the purpose of keeping the populace divided.
The same argument has been made about ethnicity in the DR Congo. Some say that ethnicity was used as a tool of divisiveness as early as the colonial era, and that many subsequent leaders of the country followed in this tradition. Many people have expressed this view to me in the country, saying that politicians are very purposeful in choosing when and why to talk about ethnic differences.
Issues of nationality and citizenship of course get tied into this. In Bahrain, a woman who marries a man from Saudi Arabia cannot pass on her national identity to her kin. In the DRC, if you are from the Tutsi ethnic group, your nationality might depend on your ability to produce documents that your grandparents were born in the DRC. But that might change in the next political season, whereas you might only have to show that you were born in the DRC.
So the argument could be made that these differences only matter to certain people when they can benefit from them.
I've heard people in Africa say that language policy in post-colonial African states were used to unify (in the case of Tanzania, where Nyerere, the first president, united everyone by making Kiswahili the national language, which is still the language of government today) or to divide (in the case of the DRC, where a divided population was necessary for Mobutu to reign for 32 years, and there are several national languages, from several ethnic groups).
Lastly--and this one is so basic--when you can get so rich as a president, prime minister or king, you will not be quick to pass power to someone else. Furthermore, you might be willing to use any means necessary to hold onto power. Absolute power sure does corrupt absolutely and the well-being of citizens doesn't seem to matter to those trying at all costs to hold onto power.
So on a practical level, the fact that the Prime Minister of Bahrain bought the financial harbor area for $1, or the fact that Mobutu could decide whenever he wanted that the government could appropriate land for free, could be seen as valuable pieces of information to those making US foreign policy in these nations.
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