Page 257 - The Arabian Gulf States_Neat

IRAN’S CLAIM TO BAHRAIN 195
this period, the Persian Government made no attempt whatever to
regain control of Bahrain.1
Moreover, on the basis of the principle of nationality the Iranian
ease in Bahrain ceases to have any valid grounds. Bahrain was and
has always been inhabited by Arabs who originally came to the
island, according to some authorities, in 1900 B.c. The fourth census
held in Bahrain in 1965 gives the Bahraini population as 143,814
and the number of Iranian subjects as 7,223, or about 4 per cent of
the total population of 182,203.2
In his book in support of his country’s claim, Dr Adamiyat makes
a misleading statement about the population of Bahrain. He gives the
number of the population of the island as 100,000. He then adds that
‘approximately 50,000 of the total population belong to the Shia sect
of Persia with the remainder belonging to the Sunni sect of Islam’,3
thus intending to give his reader the impression that those who belong
to the Shia sect are Persians, and, therefore, sympathise with the union
with Persia. But the writer seems to have failed to notice that those
50,000, according to his estimation, which is wrong, are, none the less,
Arabs in the sense of race, language and national aspirations. The
differences in Islam between the Shiis and the Sunnis are not so grave
as to warrant a break in the unity of the Arabs of Bahrain who are
determined to preserve their independence and to resist the Iranian
claim to their country.
Arguments based on the religious beliefs of the population of a
disputed territory can hardly be accepted as a decisive factor for
settling that dispute. In the Mosul dispute, when the Turkish repre­
sentative to the League of Nations referred to the religion of the
Mosul’s population (who belong to the Sunni sect of Islam) as one of
the reasons for exercising Turkish sovereignty over Mosul, Mr
Amery, the British representative, made a good point by replying:
There is no difference between Shias [Shiis] and Sunnis as would give any
foundation whatever for the idea that this should be a factor in drawing
the boundaries between Iraq and Turkey.4
1 It has been explained above, at p. 168, that before the conclusion of the
unauthorised Bruce Agreement, 1822, the British authorities adopted a strictly
neutral attitude to the Persian claim, and therefore, had the Persian Government
been able to re-establish its authority in Bahrain during any time before 1822, the
British authorities would not have interfered to stop them from doing sd.
2 In 1959 there were 118,734 Bahraini nationals and 4,203 Iranian subjects
(about 2-9 per cent of the total population of 143,135. Neither the 1959 nor 1965
censuses gives the total number of naturalised Persians in Bahrain. These may be
estimated as not exceeding 10,000, or nearly 7 per cent of the total Arab population
of the island. This shows that Iran has no ethnical or national case in Bahrain.
Sec Govt, of Bahrain, The 3rd Population Census, 1959, and The 4th Population
Census, 1965. 8 Adamiyat, op. cit., p. 208.
4L.N.O.y., vol. 11 (1925), p. 1333. (See debate on the question of frontier
between Turkey and Iraq.)