Judging by the popular press, the United Arab Emirates do not exist as a collective. Instead, there is a buzz about the Dubai real estate crisis, the Louvre affiliate springing up in Abu Dhabi, and nothing at all about the other emirates, of which they are actually five more. But, who has ever head of Sharjah? Don't worry, I am not about to bore you with details on Sharjah, if not for any other reason, than because my knowledge of Sharjah is rather approximative.
Back to Dubai and Abu Dhabi - the powerhouse duo of the Emirates - both are in the midst of an economic boom, despite the ambitions of the respective Sheikhs being cut short by the financial crisis. Of course, there has been quite a bit of a debate about the Dubai World crisis and the creative maneuvering by Dubai's ruler Sheikh Mohamed to extricate the emirate of its dire situation, finally resorting - and not without swallowing its pride - to the generous help of the "federal government" (otherwise known as Sheikh Al Nahyan, the ruler of Abu Dhabi).
Not many have asked why one emirate decided to bail out the other, like a central bank would a too-big-to-fail bank, shaking a finger and and making it swear the mistakes would never be repeated. The oft-heard argument goes that the Dubai bail-out was for the broader stability of the country and even the region where defaulting on debt has some anti-Islamic connotations.
But why did Abu Dhabi have to bail out Dubai? Surely, not for the famous Burj Al Arab tower (which has possibly become the international image of the UAE) to be renamed as Burj Al Khalifa? More fundemtally, how did they manage to be so different that one spent through its credit card limit while the other put its pennies away in the piggy bank?
At first sight, Dubai seems like a developing microcosm of Abu Dhabi, with a equally glittering airport, swanky hotel chains where locals shuffle around with the air of inborn superiority among armies of Indian or Philipino staff, enormous malls meant to distract the local population of their boredom and from the fact that they cannot walk anywhere else 8 months out of the year. Dubai seems a replica of an established model, an architectural prototype of Abu Dhabi, with constructions cranes frozen in mid-air as if undecided what to do next.
Scrape beyond the spotless, glittery surface of their hotels, look beyond the personality cult of their respective rules, see though the hyperactively planted high-rise towers, and it becomes quickly obvious that though the two emirates, while only an hour away, are much further apart in their development agenda and even in their cultural approach. If asked who they want to be when they grow up, I would bet their answers would diverge quite a bit, and not only because they are in constant competition between their business and political elites, but because of the fundamentally different visions for their future.
Sure enough, the competition between Dubai and Abu Dhabi is obvious when one reads between the lines of local press, in discussion with business elites and the discourse of the local sheikhs who never actually mention the UAE in their speeches. Sometimes, it's even more obvious. Etihad - a state-owned airline which is owned by the Abu Dhabi royal family - openly claims to be the "the national airline of the UAE". If Etihad is the national airline, what does that make Dubai's Emirates? A foreign competitor?
Unlike its intimidating neighbour, Dubai is experimenting with a specific type of socio-economic liberalism uncommon in the UAE, and possibly more broadly in the Gulf. This is despite appearances given by events like Abu Dhabi film festival, which brings usually skimpily clad (basically naked by Gulf standards) stars from all over the western world. This year's film festival for example is bringing in town Adrian Brody, who is of jewish descent and who played brilliantly a Jewish pianist during the Holocaust in "The Pianist". In a magazine I picked up in Abu Dhabi, Brody says he cannot wait to water slide in the Emirates Palace.
That may be true, but for his sake, i hope he has no cravings for a bagel, for example, because bagels are banned in Abu Dhabi since they are considered as emblematic of Jews. Not so in the neighbouring Dubai. But if Brody really wants a bagel, Dubai is not too far, and besides, one can always make use of a helicopter since all the major hotels are already equipped with helipads.
But Dubai's liberal tendencies go beyond bagels. Walking around its souks, malls, restaurants, are tourists from all corners of the world: British, Russian, German, Egyptian, Lebanese. This is not to say that Abu Dhabi is not overflowing with expats (80% of UAE's residents are expats, the highest ratio in the Gulf), but it is mostly expats of the service trades, those that have to be there, not those who fly and in and out as they please.
The tourism has clearly offended some local sensibilities even in the more liberal Dubai where a British couple was sentenced for having sex on the beach. With all due respect they should have just stuck to sex and the beach cocktails while in Dubai! In the neighbouring Gulf countries, even sex and the city drinks are not so obvious to procure. And while no one has dared to have sex on the beach in Abu Dhabi, I have spotted a new phenomenon whereby some local woman wear an integral viel in hotels (not just niqab). Apparently, these are often prostitutes hiding under the integral veil for the risk of not being recognised in the niqab. I don't really see how a woman can be recognised in a niqab, but then I cannot speak from experience.
Beyond tourism Abu Dhabi is clearly also attempting to diversify from petrochemicals into other industries, but with its more traditional approach, this may be more challenging, unless the tourists are from Saudi Arabia, compare to which Abu Dhabi seems like Ibiza. And so the two emirates continue to compete, locked into a struggle, like two sumo wrestlers, weighted down by tradition, history, and now - debt.
Perhaps the most ironic thing is that their competition is premised on the same economic model, where only minor factors are variable, most others - lack of water, excess of petrol, need for expatriates, climate constraints - are as constant now as they will be in the next decades, if not millenia. Some of these factors are connected to natural limitations with which the sheikh of every one of the seven emirates will have to reckon with.
On the other hand, the model of heavy labour import for a range of industries from financial services down to washing toilets, is a UAE-specific choice, which in fact makes it stand out in the Gulf, where the Saudisation and Omanisation programmes imposing quota of local staff are common. It is a sort of "colonialism meets colonialism" dynamic, whereby the formerly colonised Emirates are resorting to the same dynamics as the British did in the UAE and but also in India and Pakistan, which were also under British control, and from where ironically most of the UAE workers come from.
It's a new sort of colonialism, or modern slavery, where the coloniser gets labour force advantages without having to colonise, occupy or otherwise impose itself. Its a new brand of modern capitalism, where the state controls all the resources: land (all the land belongs officially and practically to the royal family), capital (oil rents go to some unknown extent to the royal coffers), and now labour (expatriates who do not stand the chance of ever becoming citizens).
For the moment, the sheiks can steer their camels whichever way they want, so long as the overall caravan follows some stable direction and no Dubai World pops in its mist. But one day might come where the 80/20 ratio will no longer be sustainable, when the indian construction workers no longer accept the choice of 300 dollars a month or throwing themselves out of the window. And it will be then that the sheikhs will need to reflect collectively and decide the future of the United Arab Emirates as a collective. Perhaps the Dubai World crisis has already taught the sheikhs the value of "united" in the United Arab Emirates. If not, this will be the time do so.
