By Reed Stevenson
Reuters 

MANAMA: Bahrain is eager to get back to business after widespread upheaval over the past five months, but the country remains deeply divided.
Facing international calls to engage with opposition groups dominated by majority Shiites, King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa opened a national dialogue Tuesday with “all options” on the table to discuss political, economic and social reform.

“The Bahrainis are responsive to international opinion … It’s what Arab regimes are good at, embarking on reform and doing the right gesture. The fundamental power structure doesn’t change in any way,” said Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings Doha Center. “The situation is very tense and there is a divide and it’s not going to be healed overnight.”

Mostly Shiite pro-democracy protests erupted in February in Bahrain, a financial hub and modest oil producer and host to the Fifth Fleet, the U.S. Navy’s main regional outpost.
By mid-March the protests demanding political reform were stamped out by Bahrain’s Sunni rulers with the aid of some 1,500 troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. An estimated 30 people died.

Bahrain introduced over two months of martial law during which thousands of people who took part in the protests lost their jobs, but Shiites say it was a witch hunt that targeted them for being Shiite.
Bahrain’s Sunni royal family and Saudi Arabia, with its own Shiite population in the oil-producing Eastern Province near the causeway linking the two countries, are determined to keep Bahrain’s status quo, and have accused Shiite power Iran across Gulf waters of stirring up unrest.

After two and a half months of imposed calm, the king lifted martial law, announced the dialogue and unveiled an investigative committee to probe widespread reports of abuse in detention. He said most Saudi troops would leave.
Yet when the dialogue formally opened Saturday, about 500 protesters marched from nearby Shiite villages toward Manama’s main roundabout, the heart of the February protests. The mostly Shiite youth clashed with police and were eventually turned back by a volley of tear gas and rubber bullets.

Many are upset that the opposition decided to join the talks, where they hold just 35 out of 300 seats. They are also angry over the sentencing of eight opposition figures and activists to life in prison in June.
“No dialogue without the downfall of the regime,” they shouted.
The opposition was split until the last minute over whether to join the dialogue. A rally organized by the main Shiite opposition group Al-Wefaq drew over 20,000 people.

Opposition figures suspect the dialogue, in which the youth movement is not taking part, is a PR exercise that aims to appease international criticism about the crackdown on the democracy movement. U.S. President Barack Obama has called on Manama to release opposition figures and start talks.
“Everything will be up to the participants,” he said.
Yet the opposition complains that this is precisely the problem, that there are too many handpicked participants to reach a meaningful consensus.
“We don’t feel we are getting on the right track of consensus,” said Al-Wefaq member and dialogue representative Khalil al-Marzouq.

The wounds are still raw in Bahrain after the protests and crackdown, and tension remains high.
Although there are also poor Sunni towns, Shiite villages are crowded with poorly built, crumbling concrete houses, filled with families supported by just a few with jobs.

Nearby, Sunnis homes are easily identifiable. They are the only homes where Shiites dare not park in front.
Fissures run so deep in Bahrain that they dictate preferences over coffee shops. Sunnis go to Starbucks, and Shiites go to Costa Coffee for lattes.
Trouble will come from the streets. Shiite leaders say they will have to stay out in front of popular sentiment.