Page 210 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

Sorcerers' Apprentices 207

twenty-five years. Whether they will have an opportunity to pursue these
ambitions, alone or in company, depends upon a number of circumstances
which do not lend themselves to ready evaluation.
The greatest danger of internal subversion probably exists in Dubai and
Abu Dhabi, where the social and economic upheavals of the past decade have

seriously disturbed the traditional political order, more noticeably in the
latter shaikhdom than in the former. Although the shaikhly system of
government still obtains, and the rulers are, in theory at least, the ultimate
source of authority, the very complexities caused by the transformation of the
two shaikhdoms into replicas of modern states are eroding the foundations of
their rule. The chief agents of this process of erosion, more wittingly than
unwittingly, are the ‘northern’ Arabs who staff the growing bureaucracies,

the schools, the medical services and other establishments. They, like their
counterparts in Kuwait and Qatar, know little about the country or the
people they currently serve, and are in the main uninterested in the welfare of
either. Their attention is fixed instead upon the countries from which they
themselves come, upon the domestic politics of those countries, and upon the
labyrinthine twists and turns of the perennial Palestinian question.

The commercial acumen of Shaikh Rashid of Dubai has stood him in good
stead in dealing with these interlopers. He has kept their entrepreneurial
activities within bounds, and maintained an effective control over those of
them who have entered his service as clerks or teachers, or in a professional or
technical capacity. There is not a great deal of delegation in Rashid’s
government, nor does anything of consequence happen in Dubai without its

coming to his notice. He is also fortunate in having few dissensions within his
own family, and, at the age of sixty-seven or so, no serious problems of
succession. His three sons are all men of ability, and of forceful, if not
entirely attractive, disposition. Maktum, the eldest and the heir apparent, is
nearly forty years of age and has been prime minister of the UAE since its
inception. Hamdan, some three years younger, is the deputy federal prime

minister, while the third son, Muhammad, in his early thirties, is the federal
minister of defence. If none, perhaps, is the measure of his father, any one of
them would make a capable ruler of Dubai.
Things are rather different in Abu Dhabi. Whereas Rashid is the quintessen­
tial merchant, the haggler over prices, neither renowned for his liberality nor
greatly interested in politics - at least not beyond his immediate purview or

where his purse is not affected - Zayid’s interests and ambitions run in a
different direction. He is at heart a Bedouin chieftain, scornful of the ways of
merchants, of men with soft hands and a ready abacus. To his mind a ruler is
measured by his skills in the arts of politics and war and by his hospitality and
generosity to his subjects and suppliants. Zayid’s attention and energies are
largely engaged by the politics of the UAE and of the Gulf at large, and by the

uilding up of his armed forces. He also aspires to a more prominent role on the