Christopher Davidson - After the Sheikhs - The Coming Collapse of the Gulf Monarchies

In Ra’s al-Khaimah, for example, residents continue to complain about the water supply being cut, sometimes for several days at a time, [553] 92. Reuters, 6 July 2011. and ‘major rodent infestations’. [554] 93. Emirates 24/7 , 10 July 2011. Some national families also complain of small houses that they cannot afford to repair. Interviewed by a state-controlled newspaper, one UAE citizen claimed that she slept on the floor with her three children, and could only afford to treat the damp and mould by selling her marriage dowry gold. She further claimed that she wouldn’t have been able to afford furniture unless her daughter — a policewoman — was able to help. Having waited since 2008 for a new house, she has visited the housing office daily asking why her name is not yet on the list and demanding that ‘All I want is a house from the Government for my babies… I don’t want a lot of money in the bank’. [555] 94. The National , 21 April 2011. A Reuters report from 2011 painted a similarly gloomy picture, describing the ‘…absence of digital billboards, shopping centres, and hotels that typify Dubai. Instead, desert roads are dotted with clusters of small apartment blocks, car repair workshops and discount retailers. Clotheslines are laden with laundry left to dry in the sun, and diesel generators are placed near commercial and residential buildings, to compensate for power shortages’. [556] 95. Reuters, 6 July 2011.

For years various rescue packages have been dispensed to the northern emirates, but these are understood to have either been too little, or have quickly been swallowed up by corrupt officials in the emirate-level governments. In 2008 a $4.3 billion grant was allocated by the federal government to oversee physical infrastructure projects in the northern emirates. But despite the size of the sum, the announcement of the package was greeted with scepticism by some of the recipient municipalities, with one anonymous spokesperson stating ‘We often hear about these projects from Abu Dhabi, but we haven’t seen them come into action’. [557] 96. The National , 28 July 2008. In 2011, shortly after the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions, it was announced that the northern emirates would receive an additional $1.6 billion in aid. The federal government also claims that it has a twenty year plan in place that will address some of the ‘gaps and other issues such as healthcare, education, housing, roads, and water’. [558] 97. Reuters, 6 July 2011. It also promised to build more than 100 kilometres of new rural roads, [559] 98. The National , 25 December 2010. and doubled the funding for a small business development programme that aims to increase job creation in the region. [560] 99. Financial Times , 27 June 2011.

These planned improvements have prompted some analysts to argue that ‘…the federal government is capable of increasing spending in these smaller emirates to stave off any social unrest’. [561] 100. Reuters, 6 July 2011. It seems likely, however, that the UAE’s wealth gap will keep on growing. A report from summer 2011 remarked of Ra’s al-Khaimah that ‘[although] less than 300km from the UAE’s capital territory of Abu Dhabi, its neighbourhoods of low cement buildings and dusty cars feel as if they are in a different country’. [562] 101. Financial Times , 27 June 2011. Similarly, UAE nationals interviewed by reporters complained that ‘…the wealth disparity between the northern emirates and Dubai and Abu Dhabi remains the most challenging issue for the stability of the country as a whole’. They also agreed that developing utilities, health care and education were the most pressing needs and added that they rarely travelled to emirates outside Dubai and Abu Dhabi because they lacked adequate services. [563] 102. Reuters, 6 July 2011.

Usually considered immune from economic deprivation or other such problems due to the country’s very high wealth per capita, even some Qatari nationals have recently begun to bemoan their circumstances. In 2007, a prominent Qatari cleric [564] 103. Ahmed Muhammad Al-Bunain. began to highlight their cause, claiming that there is ‘poverty in cash-rich Qatar and [there need to be] programmes to alleviate it by providing long-term interest-free housing loans and opportunities for self-employment to low-income citizens’. [565] 104. The Peninsula , 16 January 2007. In early 2011 a state-backed newspaper threw more light on the issue when it was reported that some Qatari nationals had been posting on internet fora about the need for greater assistance for ‘low income families who are living off a meagre dole’, the problem of ‘salaries being high, but resources getting exhausted by the middle of the month since rents and food prices were skyrocketing’, and the increasing need to cross the border to the nearby Saudi city of Hassa to ‘buy household provisions every month… in order to make ends meet’. [566] 105. The Peninsula , 18 January 2011. And later in 2011, although a rather narrow example, the same newspaper claimed that a number of Qatari families were upset over the Qatar Tourism Authority’s cancellation of the annual Doha Summer Festival. Explaining that these families were hard-pressed due to ‘piling bank loans which make it more difficult for them to afford holidaying abroad’ and had been ‘looking forward to the summer festival… due to [their] financial problems’, [567] 106. The Peninsula , 14 April 2011. the report again seemed to challenge the stereotype that all Qatari nationals enjoy substantial state-provided benefits. More recently, an extensive report by a Qatar-based consultancy firm argued that it was a ‘myth that all Qataris were rich… this is not the case’, and claimed that nearly three-quarters of Qatari national families were actually in debt, often to the tune of $65,000 or more. [568] 107. As reported by the Qatar-based management consultancy firm Almaras.

A similarly under-reported problem affecting the indigenous or de facto indigenous populations of many Gulf monarchies has been the ongoing discrimination — in some cases state-sanctioned — against various minorities. In particular, there has been a continuing failure to address the issue of statelessness, with large numbers — perhaps now hundreds of thousands — of bidoon jinsiyya or people ‘without nationality’, whose families have lived in the region for many generations, but who have, for a variety of reasons, failed to secure sufficient documentation to acquire full citizenship. There is also a worrying trend in some of the Gulf monarchies of bias and intolerance — including sectarian violence — from predominantly Sunni political and business elites against indigenous Shia populations. This has undoubtedly been exacerbated in recent years and, as later sections of this book will demonstrate, has now become a key flashpoint for opposition in the region in the wake of the 2011 Arab Spring. Both these phenomena are undermining the ruling families’ legitimacy, especially as divisions within national populations have not been bridged, resentment has been allowed to build, and — more subtly — increasing stratification within supposedly equitable societies has either gone unchecked or even been encouraged.

With regard to statelessness, Kuwait is by far the worst offender — at least in proportion to its total population — with some 106,000 bidoon now living in the emirate. [569] 108. Human Rights Watch, 13 June 2011. The majority are classed by the government as ‘illegal residents’ and the issue is dealt with by the Ministry for Interior, indicating its treatment as a matter of security, [570] 109. BBC News, 18 July 2011. but in practice the bidoon are best viewed as second class citizens who are unable to access the benefits of the state. Many of Kuwait’s bidoon claim they are indigenous, but missed out on full citizenship because their parents did not complete the necessary registration papers with the government after the country’s independence in 1961. This was mostly due to illiteracy, or a lack of understanding of how significant citizenship papers were going to become. For most of the 1960s and 1970s the bidoon had access to the welfare state and its benefits in the same way as regular citizens, although they were not eligible to vote in Kuwait’s parliamentary elections. [571] 110. Human Rights Watch, 13 June 2011. Causing much resentment during this period, however, a Saudi tribe [572] 111. The Al-Ajmi . was granted full Kuwaiti citizenship — an attempt by a prominent member of the ruling family (and the present day chief of the National Guard) to boost his support base. [573] 112. Personal correspondence, January 2012. The man being Salem Al-Ali Al-Sabah, the oldest member of the Al-Sabah family. Following a period of instability in the 1980s — which led to increased xenophobia and a government-perpetuated belief that the bidoon were originally from neighbouring countries such as Iraq and had deliberately destroyed their documents in the hope of becoming Kuwaiti — their situation worsened considerably. [574] 113. Human Rights Watch, 13 June 2011.