Abu Dhabi and Dubai Blog

Details continued to emerge yesterday on the assassination of senior Hamas member Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai last week. Dubai police chief Dahi Khalfan told local reporters yesterday at least seven people with European passports were involved. He did not name the specific countries of the passports, but said the Dubai police approached the nations for information on these individuals.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1146622.html

The financial crisis and now two criminal cases that have generated critical headlines in other countries have demonstrated that the emirates remain an absolute monarchy, where institutions are far less important than royalty and where the law is particularly capricious — applied differently based on social standing, religion and nationality, political experts and human rights advocates said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/world/middleeast/22uae.html

Even as the site was being excavated more than five years ago, during the halcyon days of the Dubai miracle, the Emirates construction business was disillusioning. Dogged by human and civil rights violations, the Pakistani, Bengali, Indian, and Chinese workers who poured the reinforced concrete, put in place the support beams, and manned the high cranes that still dominate the Dubai skyline were often subjected to unhygienic, overcrowded living quarters, unsafe working conditions, and withheld wages.

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/currents/81082807.html

“The fundamentals in the market are too strong,” he said. “There won’t be a crash.” These words were spoken last year by the head of the largest state development firm in Dubai. But it seems that things have changed:

Since then, residential real-estate prices in Dubai have slumped by almost 50%. Developers have slashed jobs and scrapped projects. Groundbreaking on the tower was long ago put on hold. The yearlong retrenchment culminated in last week’s surprise announcement that Dubai would seek to restructure $26 billion of debts owed by Dubai World, the holding company for many of the government’s port, infrastructure and real-estate businesses.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125988807548075805.html?mod=rss_Today%27s_Most_Popular

Some brief but astute comments from a blogger at the New Yorker:

Last Wednesday, Dubai asked to be excused six months of payments on a debt of fifty-nine billion dollars owned by Dubai World, the state-backed conglomerate. Yesterday, Dubai’s stocks fell 7.3 per cent; today they fell another 5.6 per cent. And the Gulf News, an English-language Dubai newspaper, has reported this online with the headline: “UAE markets bounce back at the end of trading sessions.”

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2009/12/dubai-in-debt.html

This is a question more people are asking, given the turbulence in world financial markets this past week. The BBC provided this interesting analysis:

Although frequently described as a city state or even as a country in its own right, Dubai is a constituent member of the federation of United Arab Emirates along with six other emirates.

Only one of these, Abu Dhabi, possesses substantial oil reserves, and as such it has dominated most areas of federal politics – including foreign affairs and defence – since the UAE was formed following Britain’s withdrawal from the Persian Gulf in 1971.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8382275.stm

Former French intelligence officer Herve Jaubert believed he was essentially being held captive in Dubai when his passport was confiscated by authorities amid a dispute with his employer, a powerful government-run conglomerate. He claimed he was threatened with torture and worried each day he would be arrested.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jE1-VH9PrgVg27sL1tDZ8UFjifQgD9C5R0080

Interview with Dubai Metro boss:

Contrary to expectations, the average number of passengers using the Dubai Metro has gradually been increasing since its launch on September 9, thanks to some quick measures taken to improve various services at the Metro stations, a senior official has said.

http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/uae/traffic-transport/dubai-s-commuters-getting-used-to-the-metro-1.522049

This is a couple years old, but still a relevant and under reported topic. Brain Ross of ABC investigates:

Less than a week ago, a 15-year-old sex trade victim turned to Dubai Police to free her from her captors after she managed to escape with the assistance of a client. Captain Ahmad Obaid Bin Hadibah, Head of Dubai Police’s Department of Combating Human Trafficking, told Gulf News the section handled 15 cases of human trafficking in the first nine months of this year, which is close to the figure dealt with in the same period in 2008

http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/uae/crime/dubai-turns-up-heat-on-human-traffickers-1.512618