City of Gold: Dubai and the Dream of Capitalism (44 page)

Not so fast. Kuwait’s foibles with free speech may not be lathering the country in concrete, but democracy itself also counts as advancement. “Democratizing leads to a decrease in government efficiency and performance,” responded Amr Hamzawy, a political analyst with Washington’s Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “It can even lead to a severe economic crisis. But democracy creates more vibrant institutions.”

By sidelining citizens’ voices, Emirati sheikhs are deepening the chasm between the UAE’s economy and social fabric on one hand, and the immature political sphere on the other. The country can’t sustain the imbalance indefinitely.

For instance, at the Harvard-affiliated Dubai School of Government, one can discuss economics and social topics as openly as students in Boston. But start talking about the legitimacy of Sheikh Mohammed’s rule, and the discussion, as Hamzawy puts it, “falls off a cliff.” Dubai may feel like it’s racing ahead of competitors like Kuwait, but by locking its citizens out of the decision-making process, it is falling behind.

The UAE may not have much in the way of elections, but vestiges of the old “tribal democracy” remain. Citizens can meet ruling sheikhs and get a hearing on their issues. Sheikh Mohammed’s decisions aren’t his alone but stem from discussion with advisers, consultants, and important
families. The Dubai leader mingles with the public more than the average head of state. His mobile phone number is said to be programmed into about half the locals’ phones. When someone has an urgent problem, he sends a text message to the boss.

“If you’re the head of an important local family, you can probably get to a sheikh quite quickly. Why would you want elections? Only three to four percent of the total population could vote. It’s kind of crazy, don’t you think?” asked Anthony Harris, the former British ambassador to the UAE. “I think tribalism is here to stay.”

The majority population, expatriates, won’t be allowed to vote under any circumstances. In my conversations, I haven’t found a single expat who thinks democracy is a good idea. No one thinks Emiratis would vote in their best interests.

In 2005 I asked my friend Mike, a longtime resident of Dubai, whether he planned to buy a home. The housing market was as hot as a gas flare and everyone was weighing the same decision. Mike wasn’t having any of it. “If you buy a house here, you’re betting that bin Laden is a nice guy. I’m not going to make that bet,” he drawled in his Australian accent.

Mike’s logic was that Dubai’s housing values hinged on the fact that terrorists had not bombed the city. Once the bombs started popping, prices would do the same. Since that conversation, Dubai house prices have quadrupled. The only thing nudging them down in late 2008 was the financial meltdown. Bin Laden, it turns out, is a nice guy—so far.

In matters of terrorism, Dubai finds itself in a strange position. On one hand, American pundits regularly blame Dubai as an enabler of terrorism. They point to the September 11 attackers’ use of Dubai’s banks and airport as evidence that the city is a logistics center for al-Qaida. It doesn’t help that two of the attackers held Emirati citizenship. But Dubai also sits on the other side of the terrorism equation. It is a potential target. People point to its social freedoms, its boozy brothels, and its welcome for U.S. warships as red flags that could trigger an attack.

As of this writing, neither of these characterizations is fully accurate. Al-Qaida certainly used Dubai as a logistics center—and doubtless still does—for no reason beyond the fact that it’s where the banks, flights,
and business opportunities lie, where visas are issued on arrival, and where, until recently, there was little scrutiny of financial transactions.

But, as one UAE government official told me, Al-Qaida also wires money through Western Union in the United States and flies on American Airlines. That, he said, also makes America a logistics center for terrorism.

Dubai’s hedonistic excess has offended Muslims for years. It has yet to attract a major al-Qaida suicide campaign. The idea that terrorists “hate us because of our freedoms,” the preferred explanation offered in America, has never been correct. Al-Qaida says it attacked the United States because of the presence of U.S. troops in Arabia and America’s lopsided support for Israel.
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In short, Muslim terrorists base their attacks on specific U.S. policies. America hasn’t taken the lesson to heart. But the UAE has. Its pro-Arab foreign policy pays careful heed to Muslim causes. That’s why Dubai can offer broad social freedoms without, thus far, stoking a backlash.

Nabil al-Yousuf of The Executive Office goes a step further. He believes Dubai’s policy of openness and tolerance acts as a protective measure, rather than a risk factor. Give people freedom to do what they please and they’re more likely to start businesses or jazz combos, not take up radical philosophies that call for attacking the state. “I very much doubt that there would be a sustained series of terrorist attacks. That usually happens when a country has a political stance and it is being attacked for its stance,” al-Yousuf says. “The UAE doesn’t have that. We’re neutral. What might happen is that someone goes for a specific target.”

Dubai, like anywhere else, could find itself victimized by a one-off assault. This happened in Qatar in 2005. An Egyptian man drove a car bomb into a theater full of Westerners, killing himself and a British man and wounding twelve others. Investigators concluded the attacker wasn’t part of any organized plot. He was said to be a pissed-off guy of the same ilk that open fire in American post offices. Dubai’s nightclubs and restaurants are just as vulnerable.
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But a protracted campaign of terror, such as those seen in Saudi Arabia and Israel, is unlikely.

That leaves the issue of about 1,300 U.S. troops on UAE soil, which goes against al-Qaida’s stated demands. The UAE hosts the Americans as quietly as it can. There is almost no local coverage of the U.S. Air Force operations in Abu Dhabi, nor of the navy port visits in Dubai, although sunburned U.S. sailors, in their crew cuts and polo shirts, are
easy to spot in Dubai’s malls and bars. The U.S. military presence in the UAE and three other Gulf states triggered a 2006 videotape warning from al-Qaida number two Ayman al-Zawahiri to get them out—or else. “You should worry about your presence in the Gulf,” al-Zawahiri said, wagging his finger at Americans watching him on CNN.

A 2005 warning posted on the Internet by a previously unknown group, “Al-Qaida in the Emirates and Oman,” demanded the dismantling of U.S. bases within ten days, failing which “the ruling families would endure the fist of the
mujahedeen
in their faces.”
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Al-Qaida has demonstrated an ability to shut U.S. bases. Its bomb-punctuated offensive in Saudi Arabia forced the kingdom to end the U.S. military presence in 2003. U.S. troops shifted across the border to two huge bases in Qatar. Neighboring Kuwait and Bahrain also host big American bases. The U.S. presence in the UAE is far smaller. But it remains grounds for an al-Qaida attack.

In a region where political violence is a fact of life, Dubai hasn’t been immune. Its worst assault came in 1961, as mentioned, when Omani rebels detonated bombs in the passenger steamship
Dara
, killing 236. In 1983, a bomb blew Gulf Air flight 771 out of the sky just after it took off from Abu Dhabi en route to Karachi. All 117 people aboard died when the plane crashed in Jebel Ali. The Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal was said to have authored the attack to convince Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states to pay protection money, which Kuwait and the UAE did, according to some.
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In 1981, Dubai’s Hyatt Regency was bombed after the hotel’s bar broke an unwritten local code by serving alcohol to Emiratis wearing their white
kandoura
cloaks. And, in 1999, Dubai authorities discovered explosives in the Deira City Center shopping mall.
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Most alarmingly, in October 2002, UAE authorities arrested a man considered one of the most dangerous in the region: Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi described as the head of al-Qaida’s Gulf wing and mastermind of the 2000 bombing of the USS
Cole
in Yemen. In 2002, Dubai airport authorities spotted the young Saudi arriving on a flight from Yemen and grabbed him.

Press reports said al-Nashiri was planning an attack on a UAE oil installation, perhaps by turning an oil tanker into an enormous suicide bomb.
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Dubai handed the Saudi to the CIA, which flew him to its interrogation camp in Jordan and tortured a confession from him.
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CIA Director Michael Hayden said al-Nashiri was one of three people his
organization had waterboarded, which simulates drowning. In 2009, the Obama administration dropped the terror charges against the young Saudi, who remained locked away in Guantánamo Bay. Al-Nashiri denied the charges, saying he made a false confession to get the CIA to stop torturing him.
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In early 2001, Dubai authorities detained Lebanese al-Qaida member Ziad Jarrah and offered him to the CIA, a UAE government official said. Tragically, Dubai released Jarrah after the CIA said it didn’t want him. The CIA disputes this version of events. Either way, Jarrah continued to the United States, where he died on September 11, 2001, at the controls of United Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania.
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Authorities have also handed traveling terrorists to Egypt and Pakistan.
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Thus far, warnings like al-Zawahiri’s have come to nothing. “They look credible initially but these attacks never materialize,” says Mustafa Alani, a security expert at the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center. “We never discover a cell, never find a plot. These warnings are losing credibility.”

Still, it is legitimate to ask: Why has Dubai escaped major terror blows since the 1961 bombing of the
Dara?

One reason, as al-Yousuf pointed out, is that the UAE lacks the marginalized population that normally carries out these attacks. Another is that security is tight and out of sight. Dubai, with only seven policemen in 1955, now employs tens of thousands of them, many undercover. A U.S. diplomat once told me that street sweepers and roadside gardeners would greet him by name in English as he went for his morning jog. The diplomat assumed his admirers were Sheikh Mohammed’s undercover security men.

Radicals are drummed out. Islamists, even those with mild views who would be allowed on the air in Qatar and Kuwait, are frozen out of public debate. The Ministry of Education fired eighty-three teachers in 2007 for mild Islamist beliefs, transferring them to menial government jobs. In October 2008, heavily armed security forces raided several homes in and around the east coast city of Khor Fakkan, arresting dozens of young men and boys, presumed Islamists. At the time of writing, the government hadn’t acknowledged the arrests.
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The government is on the lookout for any form of radical expression, whether it’s Saudi Wahhabism, Salafism, or radical Shiite theology
from Iraq and Iran. The UAE chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood cannot operate openly. Most imams are paid directly by the government, which gives them guidance on sermons and monitors their speech for political content.
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“We don’t have radicalism,” al-Yousuf says. “It has been contained.”

Dubai is one of the world’s safest big cities, despite being one of its most cosmopolitan. There is no electronic privacy law and authorities are widely believed to monitor e-mail and phone calls.
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Visas are tied to employment. Lose your job and you’re out. Commit a crime and you’re out—after you’ve served time. Everyone who gets deported has his irises scanned. The scans are stored in the UAE’s Iris Expellee Tracking System, described as the world’s largest such database. When deportees try to return—as thousands do every year—they’re caught and sent out on the next plane. In 2008, the UAE was on target to expel nine thousand returnees.
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U.S. Homeland Security official Bob Mocny said after viewing the iris database that he wished he could build a similar system in America, but couldn’t because people balk at allowing their eyeballs to be scanned.

UAE authorities see their biggest security threat in the groups of Indians, Iranians, and Pakistanis who outnumber Emirati citizens. Most won’t risk their jobs by organizing political parties or unions.
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But a more sinister specter is the presence of foreign agents and activists thought to be prepared to act against UAE interests. Top worries in this category are Islamic terror groups and Iranian cells that could retaliate against U.S. interests in the event of an American or Israeli attack on Iran. The UAE’s periodic arrests and roundups of illegal immigrants—a 2007 amnesty deported around 185,000—have these threats in mind.

Another theory of Dubai’s resistance to terror is more spurious: Rulers pay off al-Qaida to prevent attacks. This is a frequent allegation, even made by diplomats. The rumor seems to stem from an apparent willingness to submit to terrorist demands. The UAE may have paid off the Abu Nidal organization in the 1980s, as alleged. The country seems to have given in to kidnappers’ demands in 2006 when an official in its Baghdad embassy, Naji Rashid al-Nuaimi, was held in Iraq. Al-Nuaimi was released after the UAE sent its staff home and shuttered its embassy.
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In 1999, several Abu Dhabi royals apparently spent time with bin Laden in Afghanistan. The CIA monitored a C-130 planeload of Emirati sheikhs who went on a hunting trip to Afghanistan, where they built a
luxurious tent city. Lawrence Wright describes the scene vividly in his book
The Looming Tower
. Each time bin Laden visited the camp, a CIA mole in the UAE secret service reported the terrorist kingpin’s arrival. The Pentagon readied a cruise missile strike. The CIA’s top terrorism man, Michael Scheuer, saw it as his best chance to assassinate bin Laden. But the Clinton administration terrorism czar, Dick Clarke, rejected the strike. As many as three hundred people might have died, with dozens of UAE royals among them. And the CIA couldn’t guarantee that bin Laden was actually in the camp.
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But that happened before September 11. These days the UAE has special forces in Afghanistan. It is doubtful that al-Qaida would want them to get in touch. Ironically, Clarke’s security firm, Good Harbor Consulting, has landed several contracts from the Abu Dhabi government and operates an office in the UAE capital. It’s possible that the same royals he saved are now his clients.
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