On 20-22 March, Paul Rogers went to Dubai at the invitation of the US State Department to lecture on current Middle East conflicts. The conference was jointly organised by the State Department's Overseas Security Advisory Council and the International Security Managers Association. It was attended by 20 US diplomats from across the region and over 160 senior executives from many of the main transnational corporations working across the region. The conference coincided with the outbreak of coalition operations in Libya and just after the repression of protests in Manama by the Bahraini authorities.