1980
Government Crisis – Abu Dhabi-Dubai Rivalry – Questioning the Sheikhly System – Currency Board – Ruwais – GASCO – Das Island Disappointment – Industry – Economic Slowdown
It is hard to judge the seven-Sheikhdom federation of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in conventional Arab or Western terms. The union, (ittihad) has never implied unity, which in Arabic is a different word. But few countries could go through the sort of prolonged government crisis which gripped the UAE in 1979 with so little outward sign of disturbance or tension. The government formed by the Ruler of Dubai Sheikh Rashid on I July 1979 in his new office of federal prime minister made only four changes from the Council of Ministers (cabinet) which had resigned on 25 April. The new faces were technocrats replacing technocrats rather than any fundamental realignment in the balance of power between the emirates. The most significant change was the replacement of ed- ucation minister, Abdullah Omran Taryam, an advocate of political reform, by Said Salman, a former housing minister who since January 1977 had been UAE ambassador to Paris. The other new faces were Humaid Nasser al-Owais as electricity minister, Hamad Abdel Rahman al-Madfa as health minister and Saif al-Jarwan as labour and social affairs minister. Abdullah’s brother, Omran Taryam, speaker of the Federal National Council (advisory assembly), had been as outspoken as Taryam himself in criticising di- visions between the emirates and his departure had been widely predicted. Sheikh Rashid’s cabinet brought in the outgoing prime minister, Sheikh Maktoum bin Rashid, Sheikh Rashid’s son, as deputy prime minister. This port- folio is also held by Sheikh Hamdan Bin-Mohammed, the president’s cousin. The 66 days during which Sheikh Rashid haggled with the other rulers over the choice of his government would have worried most other governments in the region but the reality in the UAE is rather different. Its destiny is still firmly controlled by its seven ruling families: by sheikhs wearing dishdashas rather than by cabinet ministers in bespoke tailored suits.
Families Behind the Federation Of the ruling families, the largest, richest and most powerful is the al-Nahyan family, whose overseas interests include a stake in the world’s fastest growing bank, the Luxembourg-based Bank of Credit and Commerce International
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(BCCI), as well as property on both sides of the Atlantic, racehorses, and invest- ments in third world countries such as Pakistan. It is oil, of course, which has brought the wealth. The UAE’s biggest oil re- serves lie under the desert west of the capital Abu Dhabi and in the shallow wa- ters of the Gulf, offshore from the capital. But the al-Nahyan were prominent in the region more than a hundred years before the oil wells and Sheikh Zayed (head of the family, president of the UAE and ruler of Abu Dhabi) has a belief in federalism which is something to do with his wish to continue the ‘reconcilia- tion work’ of his ancestor Zayed the Great who died in 1909. When the succes- sion to Sheikh Zayed, a healthy virile man in his sixties, is eventually decided, it is certain that other voices outside his immediate family circle will have a say, particularly in the family’s power base at Al-Ain, 160 kilometres inland from the capital. The moving force of the federation, for better and occasionally for worse, has long been the rivalry between Abu Dhabi and Dubai, where Sheikh Rashid, lean and sparkling in his seventies, has built his emirate on ‘trade, luck and a little oil’, to use the words of former British ambassador, Dan McCarthy. The Dubai-Abu Dhabi polarity has something of the good humoured one-upman- ship of two towns with rival football teams, but the divide has its serious side. Dubai stands for free trade, an open house for foreigners and a parochial ap- proach to foreign affairs. Abu Dhabi stands for a tough line on foreign invest- ment in the local economy, jobs for nationals and a closer identity with pan-Arab policies in general and Saudi policy in particular. It came as a surprise to most observers when Sheikh Rashid appeared to accept the gauntlet from Abu Dhabi in April 1978 by agreeing to form a new government to succeed that of his son Sheikh Maktoum bin-Rashid. Sheikh Rashid, known for his financial acumen, had always been more interested in talking business than talking poli- tics. The UAE’s population, estimated at 877,340 at the end of 1978, lives in a coun- try the size of Scotland or Maine almost totally dependent on oil. Since the Brit- ish pulled out of the Gulf in 1971, the UAE has established the framework of a modern state with a Council of Ministers (cabinet), Supreme Court, Currency Board (central bank) and unified Chamber of Commerce and Industry. For all this, however, power rests largely with the Supreme Council of Rulers, the seven rulers meeting as an executive body, who have powers of veto over cabi- net decisions. Many progressive proposals aimed at strengthening the political and eco- nomic framework have been quashed by the Supreme Council. Since less than 30 per cent of the population is native-born there are few technocrats in the government. Those who hold high office, such as petroleum minister, Mana