# Nice Article: Dubai's two faces



## dubaiflo (Jan 3, 2005)

International
Dubai's Two Faces
David A. Andelman, 02.24.06, 10:30 AM ET



DUBAI, United Arab Emirates--Some 80 new apartment towers--each from 30 to 60 stories--are rising right now in the new Dubai. It's as though all of downtown Manhattan were being built in a single year.

They are just across a six-lane highway from Knowledge Village, Internet City and Media City, where the likes of CNN, The Associated Press, Reuters and Middle East Broadcasting (and the Leo Burnett Group advertising each) have their own stainless-steel and glass regional headquarters buildings.

The miles-long waterfront on the Persian Gulf is shared by the sprawling colossus of Jebel Ali, a port facility where huge container ships from throughout the world dock, and Port Rashid--both heavily guarded fortresses surrounded by electrified barbed wire and patrolled around the clock.

This is the new Dubai, presided over as a centerpiece by Dubai Ports World, among the largest and most prosperous of the emirate's new, homegrown corporations. DP World, at the centerpiece of the latest Washington imbroglio over terrorism and global security, rose to its global power and wealth on the growth of Dubai as the principal transit point for goods and services the length of the Persian Gulf and across the Middle East. 

Now embarked on a worldwide expansion effort, DP World is a symbol of the global reach and power to which this one-time mud-walled village near the strategic Straits of Hormuz now aspires. 

But the old Dubai is also not far off. Here, along Dubai Creek, not far from the Gold Soukh shopping area and the narrow teeming streets where Indians and Pakistanis from the subcontinent peddle textiles and piece goods, huge, old wooden dhows that also ply both sides of the Persian Gulf tie up. They discharge their cargo directly onto the quays--thousands of bulging cardboard boxes that have never seen the inside of an RFID-monitored shipping container.

These are the remnants of the old Middle East. And Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, who became ruler of Dubai just last month after the sudden death of his elder brother, is determined that the old Dubai will not in any fashion impinge on the development of the new Dubai--where businessmen from the Netherlands and New York arrive to plunk down hard cash for 14,000-square-foot apartments or sprawling villas that overlook the sea.

"This sheikh understands the value of progress and of a can-do attitude," says the manager of one of Dubai's leading hotels, smiling. He has lived here for years and watched this miracle sprout from the desert sands of the United Arab Emirates.

And clearly the sheikh is also not afraid. The miles of palaces belonging to the ruling family that mark long stretches of Dubai's glistening sand beaches are all but unpatrolled, the gates standing nonchalantly open on a leisurely Friday afternoon, the final day of the two-day Arabian weekend. 

"There is no need for security," says one longtime resident who came to Dubai 20 years ago and, like 90% of the principality's residents, is a foreigner--in this case from southern India. "He has no need for security because he has no enemies."

Indeed, with the prosperity over which the royal family has presided, it's hard to see how the sheikh could have many enemies. In part this is due to the adept fashion in which the ruling family of Dubai has managed to walk the very fine line between friend, ally and financial partner with regard to the West, especially the United States, while recognizing that at the same time it is still very much an Arab nation in a volatile Middle East region.

This delicate diplomatic dance that enables Dubai to remain a cross between Wall Street and the Riviera has had no clearer resonance than during the events in Washington during the past week. These were the backdrop for the visit by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that ended before dawn Friday in the United Arab Emirates' capital of Abu Dhabi, where, as prime minister, Sheikh Maktoum spends much of his time these days.

Rice met with foreign ministers from the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, which includes the United Arab Emirates. On the agenda were issues ranging from Hamas and the Palestinians to nuclear proliferation and Iran. Underlying the talks, however, were the tough words--seen in many quarters here as virulently anti-Arab--from many quarters, including Rice's own Republican Party in Washington.

So the Emirates News Agency reported, not surprisingly, that the GCC foreign ministers continued to insist on a comprehensive agreement for peace between the Israelis and Palestinians and the establishment of a democratic Palestinian state. Rice did win a statement from the GCC ministers that "stressed their fears and serious concerns with regards to the dangers of [nuclear] proliferation in the region, reaffirming the necessity of keeping the Gulf area free from weapons of mass destruction."

Understanding the sensitivity of her hosts in the United Arab Emirates to some of the statements in Washington, and the need for the U.S. portion of the ports deal to be tabled for the moment, Rice stressed in a statement even before her plane touched down that the Emirates remain "a very strong ally" of the United States. 

Of course, there's even more at stake here than the regular port visits from U.S. aircraft carriers. The U.S. is also negotiating a free-trade agreement with the United Arab Emirates, which happens to be its third-largest trading partner in the region after Israel and Saudi Arabia.



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## DarkBlueBoss (Mar 3, 2005)

alright i guess, nothing new up there ^^


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## Face81 (Aug 24, 2004)

interesting read. Danke, Flo


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