MANAMA: Chanting “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!” protesters here on Friday night angrily called for Bahrain’s government to oust the US Navy from the base that serves as its regional headquarters in the Persian Gulf.

Organized by the local Islamic political group, the protest was the latest in a series of anti-US demonstrations in recent months, including a rock-throwing march by several thousand people outside the US Embassy in April that left a teenage protester dead after a skirmish with Bahraini police. Two sailors were beaten by a crowd a month later.

More than 500 protesters rallied outside the UN complex along Embassy Row to urge the United Nations not to support any US effort to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. With several television stations broadcasting the protest across the Arab world, speakers called for the government of this Persian Gulf island to withdraw permission for the United States to continue its military presence, which began shortly after World War II. ”No to American Bases in Islamic Bahrain,” read one banner.

The US Navy’s 5th Fleet is headquartered here, and US and British Royal Air Force planes use the international airport as a regional hub. Without the facilities here, the US ability to project military power in the region would be severely undercut.

In exchange for use of the base, the United States provides security for Bahrain against Iraq. The United States also is helping Bahrain upgrade its military force with training and equipment.

During the Persian Gulf War, Iraq launched Scud missiles at Bahrain. Still, the protesters said the US military presence here politically is unacceptable and endangers Bahrain’s sovereignty.

“This is the new colonialism,” said one protester, Suhyla Safqr, a dentist. “Americans are the new savages. We have so much anger at them. We will stop at nothing to stop them if they attack an Arab country.”

Arab intellectuals disagree on how a US attempt to topple Saddam would play in the Persian Gulf.

Mohammed Saleh Musfir, a former newspaper editor and now a political science lecturer, predicted an exponential growth in anti-US sentiment and protests that could lead to governments asking the US military to leave the bases it has used for decades.

“You will see demonstrations like never before in the Arab world,” said Musfir. “The anger has built up because of US support for Israel against the Palestinians. A war with Iraq will make the anger ignite.”

But Hassan M. Saleh Ansari, director of the Gulf Studies Center at the University of Qatar, the region’s leading think tank, said such predictions are exaggerated. He noted that the same sort of rhetoric was heard before a US-led coalition attacked Iraq to force it to abandon Kuwait in 1991.

“We have heard this before,” Ansari said. “If the war is quick, I do not think the reaction will be severe.”

In Bahrain, King Hamed ibn Isa Khalifa has opted to allow street demonstrations as part of his drive toward opening up the Bahraini political process. Under his late father, such demonstrations were banned and political opponents sometimes were jailed.

Hamed endorsed the US war against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and ordered the flagship of Bahrain’s tiny navy to assist the United States in looking for Osama bin Laden and other terrorist leaders who might attempt to flee on the high seas.

Although the extent is difficult to gauge, there is sympathy for the Lebanon-based Hezbollah militants in Bahrain. And there are Bahrainis among Al Qaida and Taliban soldiers incarcerated by the US military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after being captured in Afghanistan.

Iraqi officials have sought to convince regional leaders that any US attack on Iraq should be seen as an attack on all Islamic countries. Although the leadership in those countries, including the Bahraini king, publicly has distanced itself from that idea, the concept seems to have caught hold among at least a portion of the population.

“First it was Afghanistan, now Iraq, soon Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. America will not be happy until it destroys all of Islam,” said one protester, Sallah Salih, who works at a Chili’s restaurant. —Dawn/LAT-WP News Service (c) Los Angeles Times