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                 Foreword






                 By Sir Geoffrey Arthur, K.C.M.G., formerly Political Resident

                 When the United Arab Emirates was established as a state at the end
                 of 1971 it had few admirers in the West: it was incomplete, it looked
                 loose and ramshackle, and it was born—so said the facile commen­
                 tators of the day—under the ill star of British patronage. It has since
                 acquired a host of fair-weather friends, but I do not recollect that a
                 single special correspondent of a major Western newspaper—let
                 alone a politician or a statesman—took the trouble to attend the
                 ceremony of its formation.
                   Those who were present on that December day were perhaps more
                 optimistic than their distant critics, who could not forget the
                 collapse, a few years earlier, of the South Arabian Federation, and
                 who noticed the superficial similarities, but not the deeper dif­
                 ferences, between the Aden Protectorates and the Shaikhdoms of the
                 Trucial Coast. It was not the British who created the United Arab
                 Emirates: it was the Rulers themselves, and in particular the Rulers
                 of Abu Dhabi and Dubai, supported by a few trusted advisers of
                 unusual ability. The new state thus attracted the support, and not the
                 hostility, of the other Arab countries. It had no important internal
                 enemies.
                   As Dr Heard-Bey points out, it had two further advantages: it was
                 blessed with well-established natural leaders and endowed with
                 great wealth. It is perhaps fortunate that at the time of the formation
                 of the Federation, that wealth was not spread evenly among the
                 Emirates. It was concentrated, but the hands that held it were
                exceptionally generous. The attractions of the Federation were
                manifest to all.
                xxiv




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