Former Iolan Mitch Crane has witnessed the recent violence in Bahrain up close.
Crane and his family live in the Middle Eastern country of Bahrain. Crane is vice president of manufacturing for Alkhorayef Petroleum Co. at its plant in Saudi Arabia where submersible pumps for the oil industry are made.
The job requires a 20-mile commute across a lengthy causeway that spans the Persian Gulf.
Last week Shiite protesters in Bahrain’s Pearl Square, in its capital, Manama, blocked Crane’s route.
“That was about the only problem we’ve had,” Crane told the Register in a telephone interview Monday.
He and wife Alga, along with daughters Samantha, nearly 4, and Sofia, 10 months, live fairly close to where protesters gathered. The unrest started on Feb. 14 and has carried into this week, though the previous furor has somewhat abated.
“Mainly, the protesters want a greater role in Bahrain’s government,” Crane said of the Shiites. “The ruling royal family is Sunni,” and represent about 30 percent of Bahrain’s population. “The protesters, at least at the start, didn’t want to overthrow the royal family.”
Monday the Associated Press reported that young Shiites camped in the central square of Manama said they wanted the entire ruling monarchy ousted. Crane surmises that’s a small faction, at least for now.
“We drove by and it looks like a big party going on now,” he said, noting that late Monday afternoon protesters had put up tents and vendors were selling food.
Today’s Associated Press reported that more than 100,000 opposition supporters marched through the central square of Manama.
The initial protest, supposedly backed by Iranians, was exacerbated when police officers fired tear gas and rubber bullets to break it up, Crane said. One of the tear gas canisters apparently struck a protester in the head and killed him.
“During the funeral for the guy who was killed all hell broke loose and several more were killed,” he said.
As unrest mounted, schools were closed and dock workers struck in sympathy to the protesters, which slowed port activity to a near standstill and stopped the flow of food to the tiny island nation.
“The only fear I had was driving to Saudi Arabia and then not being able to get back to my family,” Crane said, recalling a day when he didn’t get home until 3 a.m. because of closed roads.
“We got e-mails from the U.S. Embassy all last week that kept us informed about what was going on,” including an assessment of threat levels, Crane said. “By Sunday, the e-mails said everything was fine and all was pretty well back to normal.”
CRANE, a 1991 Iola High School graduate, earned a degree in chemical engineering from Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colo., and has spent much of his working life overseas. He completed a master’s degree in business administration through an off-campus program from Rutgers University arranged by his company while he was working out of the country.
Prior to his assignment to Saudi Arabia, he spent four years in China and four years before that in Russia.
Bahrain is an island country of about 1.2 million inhabitants on the western shore of the Persian Gulf and is ruled by the Al Khalifa royal family. It is an archipelago of 33 islands. The largest, Bahrain Island, is 34 by 11 miles and has surface area of about 375 square miles, making it three-fourths the size of Allen County.
Bahrain’s Shiite majority has complained of discrimination and political persecution in the kingdom. They have staged protests in the past, but the current unrest — inspired by the toppling of regimes in Tunisia and Egypt — is the most serious against the Sunni rulers.
