# The Gulf Daily News

> **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou.
>
> Cite as: "The Gulf Daily News," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/gulf-daily-news/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*Bahrain's English-language newspaper, and the source John Kiriakou turned to when a bomb went off at the Ministry of Labour two months into his posting, its Indian reporter, whose telephone was bugged like his own, told him a civil uprising was about to explode.*

- **Country:** Bahrain
- **Language:** English
- **Kiriakou's contact:** Indira Chand, later a World Bank spokesperson
- **The tip:** That a civil uprising was about to explode

**The Gulf Daily News** is Bahrain's English-language newspaper, and in [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou)'s account of his [1994–96 posting](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/bahrain-1994-1996-posting) it supplied the contact who explained the country's politics to him.

Two months after his arrival a bomb went off at the Ministry of Labour. Kiriakou telephoned Indira Chand, an Indian journalist at the paper whom he had met at a party and liked, she now lives in Washington and is a spokesperson at the World Bank. She would not discuss it on the telephone, because both her line and his were bugged, and asked to meet.[1]

What she told him was that a civil uprising was bubbling just beneath the surface and ready to explode: the Shia would not take the situation any longer. Her explanation of the target was economic. *"When you and literally everybody in your family is unemployed and then they bring in Indians to take the jobs, you're going to move on the Ministry of Labour."*[1][2]

That was the beginning of what was called the first [Intifada](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/bahrain-intifada-1994), *intifada* meaning uprising in Arabic, which, Kiriakou says, got bad quickly and worse over the two years of his tour.[2][3]

The grievance she described was the demographic policy behind it: Bahrain had a Sunni royal family ruling a country that was then about seventy-five per cent Shia, and the royal family was granting citizenship to Sunni Muslims from Syria, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. The Shia objected that they were being deliberately diluted.[4] Kiriakou's assessment decades later is that the policy worked: the official Sunni–Shia split is now about even.[5]

## See also

- [Bahrain Intifada (1994)](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/bahrain-intifada-1994)
- [Bahrain Posting (1994–1996)](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/bahrain-1994-1996-posting)
- [Abdul Amir al-Jamri](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/abdul-amir-al-jamri)

## Sources

1. S1E5 Singin' In Bahrain (2025-11-24), at 08:33. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/69224fd4e842b164ee8d9071/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-11-24-dead-drop-s1e5-singin-in-bahrain/
2. S1E5 Singin' In Bahrain (2025-11-24), at 09:05. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/69224fd4e842b164ee8d9071/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-11-24-dead-drop-s1e5-singin-in-bahrain/
3. S1E5 Singin' In Bahrain (2025-11-24), at 13:20. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/69224fd4e842b164ee8d9071/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-11-24-dead-drop-s1e5-singin-in-bahrain/
4. S1E5 Singin' In Bahrain (2025-11-24), at 08:02. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/69224fd4e842b164ee8d9071/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-11-24-dead-drop-s1e5-singin-in-bahrain/
5. S1E5 Singin' In Bahrain (2025-11-24), at 35:04. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/69224fd4e842b164ee8d9071/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-11-24-dead-drop-s1e5-singin-in-bahrain/

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From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/gulf-daily-news/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt