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

One of the most obvious relaxations in the region relates to alcohol consumption, as (apart from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait) up until recently alcohol could only be purchased in hotel bars and restaurants or in specific and very discreet stores if a resident could prove their non-Muslim status to the police and had been provided with a ‘liquor consumption licence’. Now almost anybody can purchase alcohol, especially in Dubai and Bahrain, as licences are rarely checked and hotels are non-discriminatory. Moreover, in Dubai’s case, and in violation of the original Trucial States alcohol regulations that date back to the mid-1950s, [659] 2. Foreign Office 370/109814. over the past decade it has become possible to consume alcohol during Ramadan and on Islamic holidays. Many of its hotels serve alcohol after 6pm during Ramadan, and bars no longer close on the eve of major holidays or during mourning periods for deceased members of the ruling family. This also now applies in Abu Dhabi and other parts of the UAE. Nor is there any real prohibition on the daytime consumption of food during Ramadan in Dubai. It is now almost acceptable to walk down a busy street eating a takeaway meal, and indeed major fast food chains remain open for this purpose — in the recent past a policeman or offended national would have remonstrated at such a sacrilegious act, but now, with all year round tourism and an increasingly culturally insensitive expatriate population, such protests have become rare.

Remarkably, in early 2011 it was reported that the Gulf monarchies had some of the highest alcohol consumption growth rates in the world. Dubai’s growth rate was believed to be between 26 and 28 per cent during the boom years of 2006–2008, while since then Abu Dhabi has taken the lead with an estimated growth rate of 28 per cent. Indeed, regional distributors point to the emirate’s rapidly expanding tourism and entertainment industry and expect the demand for alcohol to grow even faster. At present, the region’s beer industry is dominated by Dubai, with a joint venture between the state-backed Emirates airline and Heineken International enjoying a two-thirds market share in the UAE and with its products also being the market leaders in Oman, Bahrain, and Qatar. [660] 3. Financial Times , 3 January 2011. Meanwhile, the spirits industry is dominated by imports, with Scotch whisky being the preferred liquor and described as the ‘mainstay choice of the region’. According to research conducted in 2010, Euromonitor International concluded that the UAE is now the world’s biggest consumer of Scotch, with its volume sales having grown by 9 per cent in 2010 to reach a total of 10.2 million litres, enough to push France into second place. One of the main distributors also claimed that the ‘increased investment from global drinks giants [in the UAE] would lead to the country retaining its importance in the future’ and ‘[with] the persistently lacklustre figures coming from developed core markets, the UAE should stop raising eyebrows and become the focal point of rising [alcohol consumption] expectations in the region’. [661] 4. Arabian Business , 19 January 2011. With regard to officially dry Gulf monarchies such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, alcohol consumption growth has also been very high, but has been harder to measure. Industry insiders believe that margins are getting higher, with the average black market bottle of whisky now selling for about $150. Much of the smuggled liquor is believed to originate from alcohol stores that operate in the UAE’s poorer northern emirates. These undercut the licensed outlets in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, and it is estimated that more than half of the alcohol sold to traders in these emirates ends up being smuggled into Saudi Arabia. [662] 5. Financial Times , 3 January 2011.

Also seen as eroding the status of Islam, and in particular Islamic holidays, has been the shopping mall-backed rise of the commercial and secular Christmas. In the 1990s Christmas trees were rarely seen in public places in the Gulf monarchies, but are now featured prominently in many retail outlets, hotels, bars, and restaurants, especially in the UAE. While in the past government-sponsored Eid and national day street lights and decorations were always dismantled shortly before Christmas, so as to avoid any confusion, they now often remain in place throughout the Christmas period, especially if Ramadan is late and finishes in December. On occasion, the UAE’s high spending on Christmas has caught out the establishment. In late 2010, having spent approximately $10 million assembling a giant 43 foot tall Christmas tree festooned with diamonds, Abu Dhabi’s most prestigious hotel, the Emirates Palace, was forced to admit that it had ‘taken the holiday spirit a bit too far’ and removed the tree following a large number of complaints. In its defence, the hotel — which is regularly used for high level government conferences — explained that it was simply an effort to ‘…boost the holiday mood for its guests, based on the UAE’s values of openness and tolerance’. [663] 6. The Guardian , 19 December 2010. Further to the changing status of holidays, even the Muslim Sabbath day is now considered to be under threat, given that in late 2006 the UAE’s official public sector weekend changed from Thursday and Friday — as it had been for thirty-five years — to Friday and Saturday. Ostensibly to bring the UAE more in line with other Middle Eastern states [664] 7. Gulf News , 1 September 2006. (including Kuwait, which had already switched), the real reason was to provide government departments and state-backed companies in the UAE with an extra day of contact and trade with their internationally based counterparts and colleagues. There is now a fear among some UAE nationals that the country will soon fully follow the western weekend, especially given that many private sector employees are already following such a schedule.

While gambling remains a fragile taboo, with no lawful casinos in operation, some Gulf monarchies have nevertheless legitimised such thrills by allowing lottery-style tickets at horse-racing events and, in the UAE’s case, by recently introducing prize-carrying ‘national bonds’ which offer savers the ‘chance to win 41,750 rewards [per annum]’. [665] 8. E.g. the ‘Dirham Savings Scheme’ offered by the UAE’s National Bonds Corporation. Perhaps most controversially, as part of the aforementioned overseas investments strategy, some of the Gulf monarchies have been investing in Western companies that focus on gambling. In 2007, for example, the state-backed Dubai Holdings acquired a $5 billion, 9.5 per cent stake in the Nevadaheadquartered MGM Mirage Corporation — the world’s second largest gaming group and the proprietor of the Monte Carlo, the Bellagio, Caesar’s Palace, the Luxor, the Mirage, and several other extravagant casinos on the Las Vegas strip. At the same time it was also reported that Dubai Holdings had bought a 50 per cent stake in MGM Mirage’s $7 billion residential and leisure CityCenter project. [666] 9. Financial Times , 27 August 2007. And in 2008 it was reported that Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Development Company was setting up a joint venture with MGM Mirage. [667] 10. AME Info, 14 April 2008. This has resulted in the building of a $3 billion MGM resort in Abu Dhabi, including a 600 bedroom MGM Grand hotel. [668] 11. Construction Week , 4 March 2010; The National , 6 June 2011. The Abu Dhabi MGM resort will, however, be a non-gambling resort.

Prostitution is also on the rise in the Gulf monarchies, with Dubai and Bahrain having long stood out as major centres in the region’s sex tourism industry, and with the authorities in Abu Dhabi and Qatar increasingly turning a blind eye to the activity. Almost all demands appear to be catered for, with many hotels in these cities — including luxury establishments — being awash with high class escorts in the evenings, while in Dubai there are also many streetwalkers in certain areas. Although there are occasional crackdowns, usually preceding Ramadan, in practice the police rarely intervene and soliciting and kerb crawling is usually left unchecked. Most prostitutes arrive in the Gulf monarchies on tourist visas, or are initially employed as hostesses or waitresses in hotels and restaurants. In many cases they are separated from their passports by their sponsors or employers, and often end up trapped in a debt cycle, where they have to find ways to pay off the cost of their visas and accommodation. While some originate from other parts of the Arab world and Iran, a large number come from much further afield, including Central Asia, East Asia, and Eastern Europe.