Spending flows show how domestic security remains Bahrain’s top priority

Security comes at a high cost in Bahrain, but exactly how high is difficult to ascertain. “Significant areas of government activity, including the security services and the Bahrain Defense Force, lacked transparency”, the US Department of State’s new Report on Human Rights Practices in 2015 observed in its section on Bahrain. Unsurprisingly, the 2015/16 budget approved last July (like budgets before it) provides only the broadest of outlines on government spending. As the State Department comments: “The government generally did not provide citizens access to government-held information.