Predictably, the Western media has started warning about Saudi hegemony over Bahrain. The Washington Post talks about Bahrain as a Saudi colony and describes this as a “counterrevolutionary” measure. Do any of them care what Bahrainis think?

On 14 March 2011 as Peninsular Shield forces crossed the Saudi causeway into Bahrain, law and order in our country was in a state of near collapse; armed groups were prowling the city, there were frequent attacks against expatriates; neighbourhoods were setting up ad-hoc checkpoints and citizens of other sects were subject to attack. Many feared civil war.

Thus, there was nothing strange in many of us feeling a huge sense of relief at seeing these troops entering Bahrain. Although Gulf troops weren’t involved in countering the violence, they provided the much needed capacity and within a couple of days levels of sectarian violence had significantly decreased.

On the 14 February anniversary, many of us breathed a sigh of relief; the protests hadn’t been particularly well attended, they hadn’t achieved their aims of reaching the Pearl Roundabout, and the police performed impressively well in managing these events, without giving the opposition any excuse to talk about repression, injustice and martyrs.

The poster boy for the 14 February demos was very much Nabeel Rajab. It was him who was photographed and quoted my most of the international newspapers and he who had spectacularly declared that he’d drag his young daughter and wife off to the Pearl – apparently in the hope of them all getting assaulted and locked up and thus providing the opposition with further material to grease their propaganda machine with. We can be grateful that our security forces showed restraint in refraining from granting Rajab’s wish.