Bahrain's naturalisation policy
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Bahrain's naturalisation policy is John Kiriakou's explanation, given during the 2026 war, of why revolution talk in Bahrain is perennial and why it has so far not produced a full-scale uprising. He called the question "a very important question" and answered it demographically.

The starting arithmetic

Kiriakou's baseline is a sectarian imbalance between the population and the ruling house. "So, historically, Bahrain had been between 2/3 and 3/4 Shia Muslim. The royal family is Sunni Muslim."

He grounds the answer in his own residence, and corrects the terminology as he goes: "When I was there, I was there during what is now called... I I was living there during what was then called the Intifada. It became now known as the first Intifada." His summary of the period is unsentimental: "it was freaking hideous, let me tell you."

What was done about it

The policy Kiriakou describes ran over the three decades since. "So, what the what the Bahraini royal family did in the intervening 30 years, I was living there 30 years ago, is they imported Syrians, gave them Syrians are mostly Sunni Muslims, gave them Bahraini citizenship, and then started naturalizing Indian and Pakistani Muslims, Sunni Muslims."

The outcome he reports is a near-parity that did not exist before: "So, now it's closer to 50/50."

Why it did not settle the question

Kiriakou's point is that changing the headcount did not change the grievance. "But even though it's closer to 50/50, the Shia the Sunnis still have money, the Shia are still poor, so there is always a threat of an uprising in Bahrain."

The naturalisation programme, on this reading, altered the ratio without touching the distribution of wealth that made the ratio politically dangerous in the first place.

In the 2026 war

Bahrain recurs in Kiriakou's wartime commentary as one of the governments most exposed by the fighting. Asked which Arab states might face a schism between their populations and their policies, he answered: "If I were, you know, the leader of Bahrain, I would be genuinely worried today."

The 2015 telling

Kiriakou's earliest recorded description of the policy names Syria and Pakistan as the principal sources. Bahrain, he said, is a majority-Shia country ruled by a Sunni royal family, and instead of spreading the wealth and trying to raise the economic status of their own Shia Muslims the rulers began importing people from Syria and Pakistan primarily and giving them Bahraini citizenship, so that Sunnis would become the majority.

He presented it then as one instance of a regional pattern rather than a Bahraini peculiarity, "you see that all over the place in the region", while singling out the Saudis as the most heavy-handed practitioners of it, "the ones that use the iron fist." The purpose he assigned to the whole pattern was economic rather than doctrinal: control of the oil and control of the money.

See also

- Bahrain Intifada (1994)
- Bahrain Posting (1994,1996)
- The Fifth Fleet in Bahrain
- Bahrain Prime Minister "Mr. 10 Percent
