Page 67 - Begrave Thesis_Neat

through increased contact with the rest of the Middle East and
through the influence of irresponsible and inflammatory publicity of
the sort that keeps the idle crowds of the great Arab towns in a state
of excitement, are losing the languor and placidity that seem to have
characterized them since the pacification of the Gulf in the last
century. 143

Burrows shared a similar view to that of Wall’s second theory which he

expressed in a message posted to His Majesty’s (HM) Principal Secretary of State for

Foreign Affairs, Sir Anthony Eden, that although he was glad that the disturbance

was of an internal nature and did not single out Britain as a target, he feared

that the existence of this tension must be in some ways related to the
general heightening of nationalistic and religious fervour spread
throughout the Middle East by the Arabic press and radio. 144

Al-Bakir shared a different and rather a controversial point-of-view and he

blamed the sectarian riots on the British. He reflected in his memoir that the British

feared the rise of youth in Bahrain. Therefore, he claimed, they used Belgrave

whose orders and plans were executed through agents provocateurs to instigate

sectarian hatred between the Sunnis and Shi’ites. The conflict, he argued, would

keep the two sects occupied with their own personal affairs and thereby divert them

from interfering in other, greater, issues. 145 Al-Bakir went on further to claim in

1956 in a speech to the Kuwaiti Studentship Union in Cairo that sectarianism in

Bahrain was the Adviser’s own creation and that ‘it [sectarianism] was unknown

until that time period’. However Sunni-Shi’ite tensions existed prior to Belgrave’s

arrival as was presented in thesis introduction (cf the clash of 1923 between Nejdis

and Persians that transpired into a sectarian conflict). Moreover, Al-Bakir failed to

143 TNA, FO 371/104263, Wall to Burrows, 6 October 1953.
144 TNA, FO 371/104263, Burrows to Eden, 13 October 1953.
145 Al-Bakir, From Bahrain to Exile, 39-40.

© Hamad E. Abdulla 46