Page 202 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

Sorcerers' Apprentices 199

Zayid has decided upon a similar scheme of industrial development for Abu
Dhabi. The site he has chosen as the potential Ruhr of the lower Gulf is Ruwais,
a makeshift village on the coast 150 miles west of Abu Dhabi town. Here,
according to the local augurs, will rise a giant methane-ethane gas plant
(dwarfing that in Qatar), while nearby there will be an oil refinery, a petro­

chemical complex and a fertilizer plant, all on an impressive scale. Eventually
these enterprises will support a city of noble and imposing proportions. As
might be surmised, the projected cost of the undertaking is staggering, which
is one reason why the oil companies operating in the shaikhdom have in the
main resisted pressure upon them to participate in it.
Though the rulers of the other shaikhdoms of the UAE are constrained by
limited financial resources, they also cherish ideas and ambitions above their

station. Not so long ago there was not a single anchorage up the coast from
Dubai that was usable. The anchorages, situated at the mouths of creeks, had
all silted up as a result of the steady if imperceptible rising of the land over the
preceding century and a half or longer. Now Sharjah, Ajman and Ras al-
Khaimah are all constructing harbours in imitation of Dubai and Abu Dhabi;

while Sharjah, which receives revenues from the 50,000 barrels of oil produced
daily from its off-shore field, plans to build a second harbour on the other side
of the mountains at Khaur Fakkan, facing the Gulf of Oman, which was taken
from Oman and used as a pirate lair by the Qawasim in the early nineteenth
century. Shaikh Sultan ibn Muhammad Al Qasimi, the ruler of Sharjah since
the assassination of his brother, Khalid, in January 1972, has, like his pre­
decessor, rather exaggerated notions about the shaikhdom’s destiny as another

Dubai. On what, in relation to his ambitions, are rather meagre economic
revenues, he has tried to push Sharjah forward as a dynamic centre of com­
merce and finance, a tax haven and a leisure resort - Zurich and the Bahamas in
one. To this end he has had an international airport built at a cost of several
million dollars, even though the international airport at Dubai is only half-a-

dozen miles down the road. All that Shaikh Sultan’s activities have so far
achieved, it would seem, is to run him into considerable debt. His distant
cousin, the ruler of Ras al-Khaimah, Shaikh Saqr ibn Muhammad Al Qasimi,
is afflicted by a similar passion for self-exaltation, tinged in his case with
Bonapartist aspirations. He, too, has had an international airport constructed,
costing $10.5 million, which seems destined to be little used. He opened a
casino some time ago in the hope of attracting revenue, only to be forced to

close it down in 1977 under pressure from Saudi Arabia, the self-constituted
guardian of the Gulf’s morals. However, Shaikh Saqr may be able to allow
freer rein to his fancies in the near future, as oil in commercial quantities has
lately been discovered in Ras al-Khaimah waters.
The economic boom that followed the quadrupling of oil prices in the closing

months of 1973 produced a frenzied speculation in land and building in Abu
Dhabi, Dubai and, to a lesser degree, Sharjah. (Much the same phenomenon