City of Gold: Dubai and the Dream of Capitalism

City of Gold: Dubai and the Dream of Capitalism by Jim Krane Page B

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Authors: Jim Krane
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the calculus is easy because the number of citizens is tiny, around one million, and the budget surplus is huge. The UAE earned $71 billion in oil revenue in 2007, enough to dole out $55,000 a year in subsidies to the average male Emirati. 30
    Subsidizing away the political opposition isn’t so easy in other Gulf states. Bahrain discovered oil in 1932, when prices were low. It has since pumped out most of its reserves and has little left to pamper its people. 31 The tiny country is now embroiled in a slow-burn rebellion led by its underprivileged Shiite majority.
    Neighboring Saudi Arabia may sit atop the world’s largest oil reserves, but it must share the proceeds among 25 million citizens. Saudi per capita income is $23,000 per year, a third less than the UAE average of $37,000, and far lower than Abu Dhabi’s towering $74,000. 32 Not surprisingly, there is far more political opposition in Saudi Arabia.
    Emirati sheikhs also survived because there was no one to unseat them: no army, trade union, or party that could start a conspiracy or grassroots movement. Dubai didn’t even have a police force until 1956. 33 The only people in arms were desert Bedouin, who, by their nature, wanted to remain free and nomadic; and the tiny British-led Trucial Oman Scouts, created to prop up British-backed rulers. The sheikhs were safe because no one, save the British or their own families, could topple them. When Sheikh Zayed formed a national army in the 1970s, he staffed the officer corps with tribal leaders loyal to his family. 34
    There is another reason the sheikhs confounded those predicting their downfall. People are happy with them. There may not be much political freedom, but that doesn’t mean the country is oppressive. The UAE enjoys broad social freedoms which substitute for its lack of political ones. People raised under democracy feel at home in Dubai. Women are encouragedto work and there is little of the separation of the sexes seen in Saudi Arabia, even in Bahrain. Alcohol is freely available. Speech is relatively free, in comparison with censored media in Saudi Arabia and Egypt (but less free than in Kuwait). UAE leaders are seen as progressive. Sheikh Mohammed encourages—even subsidizes—entrepreneurship and scholarship. These social liberties compensate those who might grumble about a lack of a political voice.
    “People don’t want to replace tribal rule. It is my absolute conviction that they are happy with it,” says Anthony Harris. “The sheikh makes sure he’s a river to his people, through property, jobs, and sponsorships. Certainly there’s no threat to that system, no threat at all.”

II
     

DUBAI EMERGES

     

IT’S SHEIKH RASHID’S WORLD—WE JUST LIVE IN IT

     

Death at Dawn
     
    IT WAS A silver dawn that broke on September 10, 1958. A suffocating mist enveloped the town and the sun appeared to be working in concert with it, cranking up the heat and basting everyone in sweat.
    British political agent Donald Hawley, an Oxford-educated Arabist in his mid-thirties, was eating breakfast when a knock came at the door. The caller was Dr. Desmond McCaully, the local physician. McCaully looked a state. His pressed tropical outfit of white linen trousers and jacket were rumpled, and his face glistened with the oily sheen of a sleepless night. McCaully said that he’d spent the night tending to the ill Sheikh Saeed and that, despite his best efforts, the eighty-year-old ruler of Dubai had died. The old sheikh’s attendants were, at that moment, preparing his body for burial. 1 Muslims, especially in the Gulf, waste little time burying their dead. In the days before refrigeration, the reasons were practical as well as religious.
    Hawley donned a somber suit and tie and walked with McCaully to Sheikh Saeed’s sprawling home on the creek. Arriving, he found a silent crowd of white-clothed mourners sitting on the ground, clustered in patches of shade. The dhows in the creek swayed silently in the

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