Shias retake Pearl Square as forces withdraw after two days of bloodshed, but there is fury as US munitions are found
(Bahrain) — Chanting, singing and waving roses, Bahrain’s Shia Muslims ran in their tens of thousands back into Pearl Square in the centre of Manama yesterday after two days of bloodshed as police and soldiers battled to keep them from the streets of the capital. The army’s tanks withdrew from the area – Bahrain’s version of Cairo’s Tahrir Square – in the morning, and then more than a thousand riot police, standing in ranks before the democracy protesters, suddenly retreated. Several of them ran away in front of us, pursued by women in chadors waving flowers.
Just why the Bahraini military, after firing live bullets into the crowds 24 hours earlier, allowed the protesters to take back the square yesterday was a mystery to many of them. Perhaps Crown Prince Salman ben Hamad al-Khalifa, who appealed to both the protesters and his own soldiers and police to show restraint on Friday night, believed that a return to the mini-insurrection in the square earlier this week would persuade the Shia opposition to open negotiations with the royal family. Indeed, Prince Salman appeared on television last night to say that talks with the opposition had begun and that “a new era” had started in the history of Bahrain.
Perhaps the Crown Prince was forced to end the brutality of the security forces after more calls from the White House. “This nation is not for only one section – it is not for Sunnis or Shias,” he said in a state television broadcast. “It is for Bahrain and for Bahrainis.” Opposition MPs had demanded a withdrawal of army tanks from the square, along with police units, as a condition of opening talks with the royal family. But yesterday afternoon, many of those who stormed joyously towards the giant concrete pearl monument had gone much further in their aspirations, wanting the abolition of the monarchy itself.
Peace and Justice Post 
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