Page 208 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

Sorcerers’ Apprentices 205

ascendancy over them. Rashid and Saqr have striven, therefore, as much for
reasons of practical politics as from a historical compulsion to offset Zayid’s
influence in the federal supreme council, though Saqr’s opposition has been
tempered by his need for the financial benefits that membership of the federa­
tion affords him. Zayid’s only real ally in the supreme council has been Shaikh
Sultan of Sharjah. He, like his brother, the late Shaikh Khalid, before him, has
profited from Zayid’s bounty, and in turn he has frequently been used by Zayid

as a stalking-horse for pushing through new measures to strengthen the
federation.
If the federation survives, it will be despite the indifference and contumacy
of the rulers of Ras al-Khaimah and Dubai. Shaikh Saqr would dearly like to
cut loose from the federation and to recapture for Ras al-Khaimah its past glory

as the leading power on the coast. But his resources, economic or otherwise,
forbid this course of action, leaving him little option but to continue to look to
Zayid as his financial patron. Shaikh Rashid is contemptuous of Abu Dhabi’s
pretensions as the leader of the federation, and exasperated by the incompe­
tence and financial waste displayed by the federal administration. Yet while he
cynically evades his financial and other responsibilities to the federation,
preferring to devote himself to the single-minded pursuit of his own interests,

he continues to milk the federation for the advantages it affords him. What is
true of Rashid is also true of the other rulers: it is only selfish interest and the
need for mutual security that unites them, and in the last resort holds the
federation together.
Under the constitution of the UAE responsibility for the defence of the
federation is vested in a higher defence council, headed by the president and

consisting of the vice-president, the prime minister, the ministers of defence
and the interior, and the commander of the Union Defence Force. The UDF
has evolved from the former Trucial Oman Scouts, an infantry battalion
organized in mobile squadrons which was first raised by the British in the
early 1950s for internal security duties. Although the UDF has now grown to
brigade strength, with roughly 5,000 men supported by artillery and

armoured vehicles, its development has been partly stultified by the parallel
development of the much larger and better equipped Abu Dhabi Defence
Force. The ADDF has a strength of 18,000 men - mobile infantry units,
artillery, armoured vehicles, helicopters, fighter and transport jet aircraft
and naval patrol boats. Dubai and Ras al-Khaimah have much smaller armed

orces, the former’s numbering perhaps 2,500, the latter’s about 500. Up to
t e time of its transfer to the UAE the Trucial Oman Scouts had British
regular officers seconded from the British army, as well as several dozen
ntish n.c.o.s, and provision was made in the treaty of friendship concluded
etween Britain and the UAE in December 1971 for the continued second-
° • °J^cers and n.c.o.s. In the years since then, however, the proportion
ritish officers and n.c.o.s in the Union Defence Force has steadily