Editor’s note: Tim Cullen of Auburn, a graduate of Edward Little High School and Gettysburg College, class of 2010,  is currently a Fulbright Scholar studying and teaching in Bahrain. These are solely his views  and in no way represent those of the Fulbright Commission or the United States State Department.

I was there on that Wednesday night, just a few hours before they attacked. The scene in the Pearl Roundabout at the center of Manama, the capital city of Bahrain, was one of one of jubilation. Following smaller demonstrations in which two people had been killed, anti-government demonstrators had taken the roundabout in an attempt to create a center for their movement. Tens of thousands of people were out with their families sharing food, setting up tents, helping to direct traffic through the masses of people and waving Bahraini flags. The demonstrators were determined to remain peaceful.

Despite the ex post facto claims of the government, there were no weapons to be seen and no flags of Hizbollah flying in the air. There was only a group of people, led by the young, asking to have a greater voice in the fate of their country. Hundreds, including women and children stayed that night to hold the roundabout for another day.

The peaceful and congenial atmosphere was shattered when riot police stormed the roundabout in the dead of night. They fired not just rubber bullets, but also shotguns loaded with bird shot. Four people are confirmed to have died as a result of the attack. One man’s body arrived at the hospital with half of his skull missing. Doctors and paramedics who rushed to the scene were not allowed to reach all of the injured and were beaten as well. Dozens of people remain missing, and rumors are rampant that some protesters were thrown off a nearby bridge and that bodies were hidden inside trucks. It is difficult, in the confusion of the aftermath and in the midst of a determined propaganda campaign by the government, to separate truth from fiction, and solid facts from confused exaggeration. Even so, it is clear that the response of the government was brutal and unjust.

The next day was just as tense. The military occupied the center of the city. Late in the afternoon I heard gun shots ring out across the city. Following the funeral for the first victim, a group of mourners had begun to march towards the center of the city when the security forces again opened fire. Two more people were killed. Three close friends had attended the funeral, but left before the crowd began moving towards the city. They later came to my apartment and we spent several hours glued to the television trying to determine exactly what had happened. It seemed that the country was on the edge, about to fall into an abyss of violence and unresolved conflict.

Within twenty-four hours, as suddenly as it had begun, the situation took a 180 degree turn. The military withdrew from the city. As they were leaving the demonstrators began moving back towards the Pearl Roundabout. There was a brief skirmish with the riot police who had remained after the military withdrew. Soon, however, they too retreated and the opposition once more had control of the focal point for their movement. A few hours later tens of thousands of people had come out to celebrate this victory, to mourn for those who they had lost, and to continue to shout out their demands.

At last I was able to leave the bubble of calm that was my neighborhood, and once I again I went to the Pearl Roundabout. The atmosphere this time was just as energetic but added to the mix was a profound and powerful sense of somber determination. It was a celebration of a victory, but everyone knew that it was a temporary one. There are many battles left to be fought. The demonstrators are still coming out in large numbers, sleeping in the roundabout and striking from their jobs and the government has made some minor concessions, but there is no end in sight.

When I first arrived in Bahrain I never expected that such events would happen. Life in Bahrain was incredibly comfortable and quiet. The island is tiny (only a little more than four times the size of my native Auburn) with less than one million inhabitants. The people are friendly, and there are all the amenities anybody from the West could need from huge shopping malls to the open availability of alcohol. The government is also a staunch ally of the U.S., playing host to the Fifth Fleet, a key cog in America’s military dominance in the region. The royal family, especially King Hamad and the crown prince, were widely considered to be moderate and progressive leaders.

As I got to know some Bahrainis, my picture of the government began to change. Sixty to 70 percent of the native population are members of the Shia sect of Islam, while the ruling family, the Al-Khalifa’s who have controlled Bahrain for 200 years, is Sunni. I soon learned of the many troubles that the Shias have faced under Al-Khalifa rule. These include allegations of discrimination in housing and employment (especially in government jobs), and widespread poverty in the Shia villages. To make matters worse, the Bahraini government has pursued a policy of importing foreign nationals who are Sunni and giving them citizenship and other benefits in an attempt to shift the demographic balance. Many of these new citizens hold positions in the military. Members of the opposition are frequently arrested and reportedly tortured, including dozens last year before parliamentary elections were held. The demonstrators have fought hard to avoid their movement becoming a sectarian one but sectarianism is sometimes forced on them.

The efforts of Bahrainis to make change in their country, and the use of oppressive and violent tactics to stop them, are nothing new. The 1990s was a turbulent decade in Bahrain with a great deal of violence between the Shias and the government. Promises of reform in the early 2000s ended this uprising, but the government has subsequently failed to follow through on changes that would give the opposition any meaningful power. It was not the Tunisian revolution that has suddenly brought people out on to the streets in Bahrain and other countries against their autocratic governments. I am sure that if we looked into the histories of other countries in the region we would find similar stories of unsuccessful opposition. What the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt have done, however, is provide a successful formula and a great boost of confidence to opposition and youth movements here in Bahrain and across the region.

There are important lessons to be learned from Bahrain about the growing wave of upheaval in the Middle East. Following the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt Aljazeera English’s Marwan Bishara declared an end to the term “moderate” when referring to any “corrupt autocratic government” that happened to be an ally with the United States. American conceptions of protests and unrest in the Middle East tend to gravitate towards images of men brandishing guns and yelling death to America. The truth is, as the case of Bahrain and Mr. Bishara point out, the main concerns of the people of the region are for their civil rights, for economic opportunity and the struggle of life under tyrannical regimes, regardless of if that country is ruled by friends of America (Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain) or enemies of America (Libya, Syria, Iran).

Our government failed to roundly condemn the regime of Hosni Mubarak and to support the revolutionary movement in Egypt. A few days later, as government- perpetrated violence broke out in both Iran and Bahrain the Obama administration condemned the violence in one of those countries while repeating a tired refrain of asking for “restraint” in another. Guess which was which. Our government’s main concern has appeared to be that of stability. What this means is that the government is concerned with protecting economic interests particularly access to oil, and avoiding the development of potentially unfriendly “Islamist” regimes in the region.

However, these revolutions, as I have explained, are not about denying the United States access to oil, which is running out anyway. Furthermore, these revolutions are certainly not about bringing some sort of Iran-style revolution to the countries of the Middle East. Many government supporters in Bahrain have tried to claim that the demonstrations are being orchestrated by Iran to bolster its power in the region. Similar tactics are used by many Arab autocrats to convince governments in the West, who don’t seem to get that there is no such thing as a big bad unified “Islamist” boogey man, that their regimes are better than the alternative. But the Bahrainis I know, and those I have talked to, are most certainly not doing what they are doing for Iran or for their religion. They are doing it for themselves and their countrymen. They and others in the region are fighting for the same values that we Americans hold so dear, freedom and democracy.

The unrest in the Middle East is a long way from Maine and the many problems that are being faced there. I don’t expect people to run out and demand that our government support our values with resolve in the Middle East (though, might I point out, we do have a couple of very powerful senators). What we can do is remember that we’re on the same side. It’s high time the American government decides which side of history we want to be on. Oh, and if we could, the Bahrainis would really like our answer by the end of the week…they really want to sleep in their own beds and go back to work.

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