Bahrain’s poor and overcrowded Shiite majority learned what a raw deal they were getting in 2006, when they saw satellite images of lavish palaces and empty land owned by the Sunni monarchy.
The images, which circulated in PDF form after the government blocked Google Earth, spurred growing unrest about the lack of affordable housing. In 2011 this unrest broke out into large nonviolent protests as part of the Arab Spring.
Following a brutal and largely ignored crackdown on protests, however, the housing crisis has only gotten worse.
Around 54,000 requests for government housing were still pending action as of March 2013, up from 46,000 in March 2011. That’s a lot of angry people waiting to rise up again against the U.S.-friendly regime.
As for those satellite images, new surveillance confirms that things are as bad as ever. We have included new satellite images along with slides from the anonymous PDF that set off protests in the first place.
Bahrain is a tiny island in the Gulf — approximately one fifth the size of Rhode Island — with a population of 1.3 million. It gets crowded.
Satellite image from 2013.
What makes things really bad is that most of that population (primarily Shias) is packed into one corner of the island, while huge tracts of land owned by the (Sunni) monarchy are empty but for a few palaces.
Satellite image from 2013.
Social unrest started building in 2006, when satellite images along with comments from anonymous activists started getting passed around.
Slide from viral 2006 presentation on inequality in Bahrain.
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