From 8–10 December 2006 the IISS hosted in the Kingdom of Bahrain the Third Regional Security Summit: The Manama Dialogue, bringing together the national security establishments of some 23 states from both inside and outside the Gulf region.
More ministers attended and more countries were represented than in either of the two preceding years. Following the summit, participating states welcomed the fact that the Manama Dialogue, as it has been re-styled, offered a unique opportunity for regional security discussions amongst such a diverse but crucially engaged group of national security leaders, and welcomed its prospective institutionalisation as an annual event. Indeed, the absence of a formal Gulf security framework that included all the relevant powers made the Manama Dialogue an even more essential vehicle for consultations on regional security.
Three themes naturally emerged from the prepared programme and even more from the prevailing trends.
First was the politics of the current sectarian divide in the Middle East. Worryingly, regional political relations and indeed, for many, the geopolitical situation as a whole were being viewed through the prism of Sunni–Shia rivalry. The specific conflict for power and control between Sunni and Shia groups in Iraq, and the Shia specificity that had been expressed years before by the Iranian revolution, and was now in further renaissance, had clearly found potential export markets in the region. The result was that political actors at all levels were either consciously playing the politics of sectarianism, or were inadvertently trapped by the sectarian machinations of others.
The frankness with which speakers addressed this topic suggested that there was an awareness that state leaders had to find ways to make more effective national appeals for loyalty if they were to avoid the tremors of the transnational sectarian politics that were becoming prevalent. At the same time, it was clear that channelling national politics through a battle of ideas rather than of sect would remain a long-term challenge, and in the interim there would be a need to limit the
