Chan'ad Bahraini 2.0

I've written before about the army of Western PR firms hired by the Bahraini regime, and its other PR efforts to whitewash its image. But those lists are far from exhaustive and constantly need to be updated as new firms on the Al Khalifa payroll are discovered. Do read Marc Owen Jones recent blog posts about the regime's continuous PR efforts.

In this post I'm going to continue in to the murky world of Bahrain's PR efforts. I will question the possibility that two prominent Western apologists for the Bahrain regime may have ties to firms on the Al Khalifa payroll. The first is former British military commander Lieutenant General Sir Graeme Lamb. The other is US Congressman Eni Faleomavaega.

Again, the evidence is far from conclusive, but raises enough questions to warrant further investigation.

Lt Gen Graeme Lamb

(Photo stolen from Steve Parsons/PA)

Lieutenant General Sir Graeme Lamb has had a distinguished career in the British Army, having served as the commander of the SAS and Commander Field Army, and held senior military positions in the Western military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

His name is all over the pages of the Gulf Daily News today, a pro-regime English language newspaper in Bahrain, as well as in the state-run news agency. This is because he expressed views in support of the position of the Al Khalifa regime at a conference taking place in Bahrain. He also expressed similar views in an opinion piece in the Times of London last August.

Of course, he has the right to hold this opinion if he wants. But this is where the questions come in.

Among his current occupations is serving as an adviser to a British investment company named C5 Capital. C5's website says it is "closely associated" with another British company named G3, which describes itself as an "independent strategic advisory firm". They are so closely associated that they share the same London address. In fact, some profiles of Lt Gen Lamb list him as an advisor to G3 itself. (Hat tip to @pilly_lilly)

Is some of this sounding familiar? Well that may be because G3 was one of the companies involved in the scandal that led to the resignation of former UK Secretary of State for Defence Liam Fox last year. G3 had funded Fox's trips to Sri Lanka among other things.

According to the government of Bahrain's tender board website, in July 2011, the Information Affairs Authority (i.e. Ministry of Information) awarded a GBP 1.5 million (US$ 2.36M) contract to a British firm listed as "3G", for the purposes of a "media campaign to support Bahrain's position in the international community":

The only British PR firm named 3G that I can find online is one called "3G Communications", but it seems that this company specializes in working with infrastructure and development projects within the UK. And after making a phone call to their London office, they denied having any contracts with the IAA or Bahrain.

Could it be that the tender award listing is actually meant to refer to G3 Ltd that Lt Gen Lamb advises? This could be a totally misguided hunch, but certainly something that should be clarified.

As a side note, Lt Gen Lamb also serves as a non-executive director for a private security company named Aegis. The company has one of its five global offices located in Bahrain, and in March 2011 evacuated the staff of a multi-national energy company from Bahrain due to the political unrest for a contract worth "c £100,000k".

Congressman Eni Faleomavaega

Eni Faleomavaega is a non-voting member of the U.S. House of Representatives representing American Samoa and a member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. He has been an apologist for the Bahrain regime and its crackdown on democracy protests since early last year, and has been feted by the pro-regime media in the country:

• In March 2011, he submitted a long testimony in the House of Reperesentatives extolling the Al Khalifa regime and condemning Iran for stirring up trouble among Bahrain's Shia population.
• In May, he was defending the regime in a testimony submitted to the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission into the Bahrain unrest and crackdown.
• In September he met with the King's advisor on diplomatic affairs, Mohammed Abdul Ghaffar
• In October, he visited Bahrain and praised the royal family at dinner banquets and lectures, and was once again fearmongering about Iran. In his lecture he described how protesting youths who burn tyres are actually part of an elaborate Iranian scheme to destroy the GCC:

The youth involved claim they were only trying to protest against their political marginalisation. The government recognised they were near communication towers and suspected their real aim was not only to weaken the structure, but to test the response times of security and emergency personnel. This is roughly equivalent to sending fake bombs through air cargo to see how security forces would react.

Here is where it gets interesting...

It seems that a recently formed group called the "Bahrain American Council" (BAC) played a central role in arranging Faleomavaega's October trip to Bahrain, as it sponsored his lecture and hosted the dinner banquet (as openly stated in the news articles about the events). And most of the photos of events on the BAC website feature Faleomavaega also.

The BAC is based in Washington DC and was registered on March 17, 2011. It describes itself on its website as "a nonprofit organization focused on promoting trade and business relations between Bahrain and the United States, and in educating the public about the strategic importance of Bahrain."

The address of the BAC is 1401 K. Street, NW, Suite 600, which incidentally happens to be the same as that of a PR and lobbying firm by the name of Policy Impact Communications. Indeed, according to its online registration filing, Policy Impact is listed as the BAC's registered agent.

Add to this that the vice-chairman of the BAC, as listed on its website, Ambassador Richard Carlson, is the director of Policy Impact Communications. And the BAC's treasurer, Benjamin May, is Policy Impact's COO. Policy Impact also happens to have been Rep. Faleomavaega's second highest financial contributor during the 2010 election cycle.

Two other board members of the BAC are also partners of separate political consulting and PR firms. So there's little doubt that the BAC is a PR front entity. 

The chairman and president of the BAC, Dr. Al Khalafalla, is a Canadian of Sudanese origin, whose father serves as a judge in Bahrain's High Civil Court of Appeal.

The BAC website also had, at some point, a listing of the members of its advisory council, but those names have been removed for some reason. Luckily, I saved a screenshot of a google-cached version of the page that you can view here. Among the names it lists are:

• Jamal Fakhro, Deputy Chairman of Bahrain's royally-appointed upper house of parliament
• Mohammed Al Shroogi, a businessman and member of the board of directors of the Bahrain government's Economic Development Board.
• Ahdeya Ahmed, a TV personality on Bahrain's state-run television stations, and a former official government spokesperson

Again, all of this evidence is circumstantial, but it does all point in the same direction. To recap: A non-profit organization created by a PR/lobby firm and with pro-regime individuals on its board, sponsored at least two events in Bahrain for Rep. Faleomavaega in which he sang the praises of the Al Khalifa regime. And Faleomavaega has received campaign contributions from that PR/lobby firm in the past.

One more tidbit: Policy Impact Communications and Rep. Faleomavaega may also have partnered in the service of the Republic of Kazakhstan. According to an investigation by the Project on Government Oversight last year:

One Member of Congress, Delegate Eni Faleomavaega from American Samoa, a co-chair and driving force behind the creation of the Central Asia caucus, particularly stands out. In the 2010 election cycle, two of Faleomavaega’s top organizational contributors had been under contract with the Republic of Kazakhstan: Employees and family members from Policy Impact Communications, the lobbying firm hired to create the Central Asia caucus, contributed $4,800, making the firm Faleomavaega’s second largest organizational contributor.

Many questions that need answers.

(Thanks to Bill Marczak for help with some of the info on Faleomavaega).

In early 2005, I got the phone number of Bahraini human rights activist Abdulhadi Alkhawaja and called him to ask if he would be willing to be interviewed for my blog. He had recently been released from his first detention. He had been arrested for publicly criticising Bahrain's unelected prime minister Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa.

I dug up some of that interview from my archive yesterday and uploaded it to youtube, for those of you who are interested in knowing more about him as he continues his prison hunger strike today:

(The above interview is just a few excerpts from an almost hour long interview -- I'll try to get the whole thing online at some point. This was the first interview I had ever done, and as you can tell it is flawed in every technical aspect, so apologies for that).

When I was going for the interview, I was expecting meet an irrational self-centered firebrand -- that was the impression one was given by the local pro-regime media. To my surprise I found an intelligent and passionate man who had very clearly thought out ideas about his actions and their consequences, and the ethical implications of each. And while I didn't agree with everything he said, he was also obviously someone who cared very dearly about Bahrain and its people.

Abdulhadi is now a prisoner of conscience yet again, serving out a life sentence given to him by a military court for his role in the Feb 2011 uprising -- not to mention the torture and abuse he received in custody, as documented on page 426 of the BICI report. He is today in to Day 15 of a hunger strike to protest his incarceration.

It might not be incorrect to say that the Feb 14 uprising and the current unrest is, to a considerable extent, a continuation of the protest movement that was sparked by Abdulhadi's first arrest in 2004. Back then, he broke down the barrier of fear that people had in speaking openly against the all-powerful prime minister:

After he was released he continued trying to mobilize marginalized people to stand up and claim their rights, rather than beg the regime for crumbs. It is this message of his more than anything else that the regime fears so much.

(Above: Demonstration calling for redress for torture victims, in Manama, 2004)

You, the palm tree of my land,
Tomorrow heralds victory,
Then, they will be cursed by all the sparrows of my homeland,
By the seagulls, the fish, the shade and the past memories.
Tomorrow we will curse them,
So will the craftsmen of this world.

These are the words of Saeed Al Owainati (pictured above), a poet, journalist, and activist for the leftist National Liberation Front of Bahrain. He was also one of the first in a long line of political activists to be tortured to death in Bahrain. He died on December 12, 1976, in the custody of what was then known as the “General Directorate for State Security Investigation”, now renamed the “National Security Agency”. His death followed that of a doctor and activist, Mohammed Ghuloom (also pictured above), in very similar circumstances just ten days prior.

The Bassiouni report released this week shines a light on just a sliver of the systematic torture and abuse in the country that goes back decades. Despite its extremely limited temporal mandate, and that it shies away from holding anyone directly responsible, the report is still very significant. This is the closest thing that exists to an admission by the regime of what, for many Bahrainis, has been an open secret.

Regardless of whether the government takes any action on it or not, the report is a breakthrough for the fact that its contents have at least been acknowledged. Before this, the government denied all allegations, and accused anyone who made such claims of either ignorance or malice.

After the release of the report, the regime now feigns ignorance, claiming that all of these human rights violations were taking place without the knowledge of the leadership. But this is hard to buy. Year after year, international human rights groups and journalists have confronted the government with detailed allegations and evidence of abuse. Here is a brief sampling:

• 1986: MERIP - "Torture in Bahrain"
• 1991: Amnesty - "Bahrain: Violations of Human Rights"
• 1995: Amnesty - "Bahrain: A Human Rights Crisis"
• 1996: The Independent - "Briton at the heart of Bahrain's brutality rule"
• 1997: Human Rights Watch - "Routine Abuse, Routine Denial: Civil Rights and the Political Crisis in Bahrain"
• 1999: Sunday Observer - "Victims identify Scots colonel as Bahrain torturer"
• 2002: Human Rights Watch - "Bahrain: Investigate Torture Claims Against Ex-Officer"
• 2010: Human Rights Watch - "Torture Redux: The Revival of Physical Coercion during Interrogations in Bahrain"

Despite all of this evidence, the government response has been to deny it all without taking any significant action. Watch for example, this 1999 interview on Channel 4 by Jon Snow of Bahrain's then ambassador to the UK, Abdulaziz bin Mubarak Al Khalifa. Skip forward twelve years to March 2011, and the same official is still making the same denials without changing the story much.

Even when Bahrainis repeatedly urged the government to set up a truth and reconciliation commission, the response was to simply ignore the requests. (I took the photo below at a protest in Bahrain in 2004):

That the regime would, for so many years until now, deny the overwhelming evidence of abuse is no longer a surprise. But what disturbs me more is the not insignificant number of people in Bahrain who have taken these very serious allegations so lightly for all of these years. Is it that difficult to believe that your government might be lying to you to so that it can hold on to power? Is it that easy to turn a blind eye towards the pain and suffering of neighbours who underwent torture, or whose loved ones died from it?

This tacit support or silence towards the regime's actions has after all contributed greatly in allowing the abuse to go on for so long.

The Bassiouni report covers just a few months out of the decades of allegations of state abuse that need to be addressed, starting with the deaths of Ghuloom and Al Owainati. Maybe, the regime will now change its ways and immediately implement all of the recommendations of the Bassiouni report... or maybe it won't. But is there any way to make sure that so many people aren't so mislead again?