Martyrs’ Day is a new addition to the United Arab Emirates calendar this November, wedged between the Islamic holy days and the Dubai Shopping Festival.
Many nations commemorate their fallen soldiers, but the U.A.E. has always been different. The glittering towers of Dubai and Abu Dhabi are monuments to an alternative Middle East, standing above the fray, where investors can forget the region’s conflicts and make money. If that’s now changing, it’s largely the work of one man.
Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the crown prince of the U.A.E.’s capital Abu Dhabi and the de-facto national leader, controls 6 percent of the world’s oil and its second-richest wealth fund. At 54, young for an Arab leader, he’s trusted by Washington and feted in Moscow. And he’s spent three decades beefing up his small nation’s military, making him one of Lockheed Martin Corp.’s best customers.
Sheikh Mohamed has always been security conscious. As a young prince in the air force in 1990, when U.S. troops were massing in the Persian Gulf to fight Saddam Hussein, he drove through the sand dunes to meet an American general for lunch, stashing a rifle under the front seat, just in case he got shot at. Now, to Gulf leaders, the neighborhood looks more dangerous than ever, with Islamic State taking root and Iran rising -- and the crown prince wants his country to have more weapons.
Switzerland to Sparta
From the Switzerland of the Persian Gulf to its Sparta, is how one Western official describes the transformation. It’s one full of risks, because the U.A.E.’s business model has largely worked -- turning it from a $50 billion economy in 1990 to the Arab world’s second-largest after Saudi Arabia, with output of $400 billion last year.
From Dubai skyscrapers, Citigroup and Uber run regional hubs. Abu Dhabi, where Sheikh Mohamed holds court, has Ferrari World and branches of New York University and Paris’s Sorbonne; Guggenheim and Louvre museums are under construction.
On Oct. 4, the prince was far from those glitzy landmarks, in the small northern emirate of Umm al-Quwain. There, the family of Ahmed Hebaitan al-Baloushi was in mourning. He was one of more than 50 Emirati soldiers killed by a missile attack in Yemen, while fighting Shiite rebels with ties to Iran.
Sheikh Mohamed has engaged the U.A.E. in that war alongside Saudi Arabia, part of a wider effort to roll back Iranian influence. He’s also joined the bombing of Islamic State in Syria and struck at jihadists in Libya. Concerned about a U.S. retreat from a turbulent Middle East, he’s on the offensive across the region.
Sheikh Mohamed’s supporters say he had no choice.
“The U.A.E. couldn’t afford to just sit there and pretend to be Switzerland and have the whole region burn down,” said Mishaal Al Gergawi, managing director of the Delma Institute research center in Abu Dhabi. “You need to either put out the fire or leave the neighborhood. But countries don’t have wheels.”
“The situation is quite fragile because they’re becoming more and more a target,” said the Western official who made the Sparta comparison. “They’re perfectly aware of it.”
Read more:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-24/a-new-military-power-rises-in-the-mideast-courtesy-of-one-man
