Al Qaida in UAE
Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury
March 28, 2009
In June 2002, Al Qaida wrote a letter to the government of United Arab Emirates [UAE] stating that the government was well aware of the fact that Al Qaida infiltrated inside UAE´s security, censorship and monetary agencies. It was also reported in a number of media that several notorious terrorists including Dawood Ibrahim, Adnan Khashogi etc, were sheltered in United Arab Emirates and they were even running various business establishments in that country without much interference of the government.
UAE´s economy is flourishing in unimaginable manner. Dubai, population 800,000, is a self-described "door to a market of more than 1 billion consumers". Its drive is to fashion itself not only as the first post-oil economy in the Persian Gulf but as one of the great postmodern world cities. Dubai represents the essence of globalization at work - globalization, of course, interpreted as the ineluctable triumph of Western laissez faire, where world trade means economic rights trump political rights.
Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan founded the Persian Gulf nation styled the United Arab Emirates - composed of seven city-states - in 1971. When he died in early November 2004, he was a multibillionaire owner of banks, industries and villas on Spain's Costa del Sol and Switzerland's Lake Geneva.
Most of all, he had every reason to be proud of his family's intuition and business acumen - as already in the 1940s they had decided to drain Dubai's port while competitors were sleeping. And he was certainly proud of the way Dubai had evolved, a Hong Kong-by-the-desert with loads of glitz, no "war on terror" and, of course, no free elections. Sheikh Zayed was promised as he lay dying that Dubai would continue to flourish - even without gambling casinos. Not for long, it now seems. Arab Las Vegas, anyone?
During the Middle Ages, Gulf port cities were the essential node in the Arabian Peninsula's monopoly on trade between Europe and Southeast Asia. Today, Dubai as a city-state/world port city by the "Arabian Gulf" [locals wouldn't be caught dead referring to the "Persian Gulf"] is positioning itself as the essential trade crossroads of Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the South Asian subcontinent. The richest of the seven city-states in the UAE may be the capital, Abu Dhabi, floating on a sea of oil. But 63% of the country's income now derives from commerce and tourism, and the bulk transits through Dubai.
In this mish-mash of wealthy Arab women covered in silk black chadors, Indian families in saris, young poseurs with Iranian pop T-shirts, armies of men in dishdashas and fake gold Rolexes, phalanxes of Japanese minibuses and American delivery vans, and the frenzy of trading simultaneously in English, Arabic, Bengali, Urdu, Turkish, Farsi, Russian, German, Tagalog, Thai, Gujarati, Afrikaans or Swahili, the lingua franca is indisputably English, not Arabic.
In the totally deregulated airport, anyone may land piloting any sort of aircraft. As much gold as is extracted all over the world transits every year through Dubai, legally or through smuggling. Even as it strives to replicate Singapore, Dubai feels more like Houston - but with better restaurants, much better cars, much smoother roads and much more alluring state-of-the-art architecture.
Only 25% of the multicultural 2.4 million people living in the UAE are citizens - or "nationals", as they are known in local lingo. In Dubai they represent only 15%. No wonder Dubai boasts no fewer than 85 foreign private schools.
Dubai may be run like a huge corporation. But unlike a US multinational that delocalizes to profit from cheap labor, Dubai imports cheap labor in droves. The result is immigration without citizenship - a model that fascinates assorted American neo-cons and neo-liberal right-wingers, with the added bonus that unlike Mexicans and Central Americans in the US, immigrants to Dubai totally renounce their political rights on the altar of economic improvement. Neo-liberals refer to Dubai as proof that Islam is not incompatible with globalization.
It's fair to argue what distinguishes a citizen from a non-citizen in a state where there's no democracy at all. The power of Dubai's absolute ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, could be defined as Genghis Khan-like. But if you're an immigrant coming from Iran's theocratic nationalism, India's bureaucratic nightmare or Pakistan's barely disguised dictatorship, the last thing you'll want is an interventionist state. So Deng Xiaoping's dictum - "to get rich is glorious" - ultimately prevails. Lee Kwan Yew applied it in Singapore - and it worked marvels.
Racism in Dubai - as in the US south - is pervasive, but off-limits to discussion, even as the fragile social pact between citizens and foreign residents, which in essence means "shut up and do your job", is faltering. A 15% minority could not possibly impose either its language or religion on a cosmopolitan majority - especially when religion is the Wahhabi interpretation of Islam. Thus [Western and Arab] men can get drunk in licensed bars, pubs and restaurants and [Western only] women can wear bikinis on the beach.
Every night an army of multicultural girls - from Southeast Asia, from behind the former Iron Curtain, and elsewhere - officially staying in Dubai as "kindergarten teachers" or "domestic help" descend in miniskirts, halter tops and high heels on the Cyclone nightclub and behave as if they were in Bangkok's girlie bars. At the same time some Internet sites are blocked "due to incompatibility with the religious, cultural and moral values of the United Arab Emirates". A famous Dubai joke has a real-estate agent telling a client to "buy a house in Jumeirah Beach. It's the safest place to be. Half the bin Laden clan lives there." Whatever its compromises, Dubai's empirical globalization process always seem to veer toward an optimum: a society of apolitical consumers.
For Salafi Jihadist, Dubai may be worse than Sodom and Gomorrah put together. An al-Qaida attack in Dubai would instantly turn the overbuilding capitalist frenzy into ashes. So why does it not happen? First and foremost because al-Qaida and assorted Salafi Jihadist funds still transit through Dubai.
Money-laundering in the financial Mecca of the Persian Gulf has been virtually uncontrollable. The US government's case against Zacarias Moussaoui documented how money to finance the attacks of September 11, 2001, was laundered through the UAE. During the mid- to late 1990s, the air path from the UAE to Kandahar was crammed with private jets taking Arab notables on falcon-hunting trips in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Frequent fliers included UAE and Saudi rulers - the UAE and Saudi Arabia, along with Pakistan, were the only countries that recognized and maintained normal relations with the Taliban regime. Return flights laundered Taliban and al-Qaida operatives.
Despite the tremendous economic growth and under the blanket of a rather free society with pub, nightclub and girls on call, United Arab Emirates has become one of the major avenues for terrorists as well as Al Qaida in making investments in several hidden or semi-exposed projects thus cashing millions of dollars.
After the Taliban takes control of the area around Kandahar, Afghanistan, in September 1994, prominent Persian Gulf state officials and businessmen, including high-ranking United Arab Emirates and Saudi government ministers, such as Saudi intelligence minister Prince Turki al-Faisal, frequently secretly fly into Kandahar on state and private jets for hunting expeditions.
General Wayne Downing, Bush's former national director for combating terrorism, says: "They would go out and see Osama, spend some time with him, talk with him, you know, live out in the tents, eat the simple food, engage in falconing, some other pursuits, ride horses.
Both bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar sometimes participate in these hunting trips. Former US and Afghan officials suspect that the dignitaries' outbound jets may also have smuggled out al-Qaida and Taliban personnel.
Osama bin Laden's operatives still use this freewheeling city as a logistical hub, more than half of the Sept. 11 hijackers flew directly from Dubai to the United States in the final preparatory stages for the attack.
Since past five years, Al Qaida has started running various under-cover business establishments such as restaurants, grocery stores, pubs, cocktail lounge, nightclubs and departments stores. In most of such establishments, especially Asian females are employed and given secret training on various offensive tactics. Some of these girls are heavily compensated for agreeing to get infected with HIV virus. Later they are posted in various nightclubs only to attract western tourists and spend night with them. This is termed as ´Noble Cause´ or ´Secret Holy War´ of Al Qaida aimed at spreading HIV virus to the western society at a larger frequency. Some females from Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, Turkey, Yemen, Iraq and other Arab nations also join such ´noble cause´ by accepting HIV virus thus turning into living bomb for the westerners.
UAE´s economy is flourishing in unimaginable manner. Dubai, population 800,000, is a self-described "door to a market of more than 1 billion consumers". Its drive is to fashion itself not only as the first post-oil economy in the Persian Gulf but as one of the great postmodern world cities. Dubai represents the essence of globalization at work - globalization, of course, interpreted as the ineluctable triumph of Western laissez faire, where world trade means economic rights trump political rights.
Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan founded the Persian Gulf nation styled the United Arab Emirates - composed of seven city-states - in 1971. When he died in early November 2004, he was a multibillionaire owner of banks, industries and villas on Spain's Costa del Sol and Switzerland's Lake Geneva.
Most of all, he had every reason to be proud of his family's intuition and business acumen - as already in the 1940s they had decided to drain Dubai's port while competitors were sleeping. And he was certainly proud of the way Dubai had evolved, a Hong Kong-by-the-desert with loads of glitz, no "war on terror" and, of course, no free elections. Sheikh Zayed was promised as he lay dying that Dubai would continue to flourish - even without gambling casinos. Not for long, it now seems. Arab Las Vegas, anyone?
During the Middle Ages, Gulf port cities were the essential node in the Arabian Peninsula's monopoly on trade between Europe and Southeast Asia. Today, Dubai as a city-state/world port city by the "Arabian Gulf" [locals wouldn't be caught dead referring to the "Persian Gulf"] is positioning itself as the essential trade crossroads of Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the South Asian subcontinent. The richest of the seven city-states in the UAE may be the capital, Abu Dhabi, floating on a sea of oil. But 63% of the country's income now derives from commerce and tourism, and the bulk transits through Dubai.
In this mish-mash of wealthy Arab women covered in silk black chadors, Indian families in saris, young poseurs with Iranian pop T-shirts, armies of men in dishdashas and fake gold Rolexes, phalanxes of Japanese minibuses and American delivery vans, and the frenzy of trading simultaneously in English, Arabic, Bengali, Urdu, Turkish, Farsi, Russian, German, Tagalog, Thai, Gujarati, Afrikaans or Swahili, the lingua franca is indisputably English, not Arabic.
In the totally deregulated airport, anyone may land piloting any sort of aircraft. As much gold as is extracted all over the world transits every year through Dubai, legally or through smuggling. Even as it strives to replicate Singapore, Dubai feels more like Houston - but with better restaurants, much better cars, much smoother roads and much more alluring state-of-the-art architecture.
Only 25% of the multicultural 2.4 million people living in the UAE are citizens - or "nationals", as they are known in local lingo. In Dubai they represent only 15%. No wonder Dubai boasts no fewer than 85 foreign private schools.
Dubai may be run like a huge corporation. But unlike a US multinational that delocalizes to profit from cheap labor, Dubai imports cheap labor in droves. The result is immigration without citizenship - a model that fascinates assorted American neo-cons and neo-liberal right-wingers, with the added bonus that unlike Mexicans and Central Americans in the US, immigrants to Dubai totally renounce their political rights on the altar of economic improvement. Neo-liberals refer to Dubai as proof that Islam is not incompatible with globalization.
It's fair to argue what distinguishes a citizen from a non-citizen in a state where there's no democracy at all. The power of Dubai's absolute ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, could be defined as Genghis Khan-like. But if you're an immigrant coming from Iran's theocratic nationalism, India's bureaucratic nightmare or Pakistan's barely disguised dictatorship, the last thing you'll want is an interventionist state. So Deng Xiaoping's dictum - "to get rich is glorious" - ultimately prevails. Lee Kwan Yew applied it in Singapore - and it worked marvels.
Racism in Dubai - as in the US south - is pervasive, but off-limits to discussion, even as the fragile social pact between citizens and foreign residents, which in essence means "shut up and do your job", is faltering. A 15% minority could not possibly impose either its language or religion on a cosmopolitan majority - especially when religion is the Wahhabi interpretation of Islam. Thus [Western and Arab] men can get drunk in licensed bars, pubs and restaurants and [Western only] women can wear bikinis on the beach.
Every night an army of multicultural girls - from Southeast Asia, from behind the former Iron Curtain, and elsewhere - officially staying in Dubai as "kindergarten teachers" or "domestic help" descend in miniskirts, halter tops and high heels on the Cyclone nightclub and behave as if they were in Bangkok's girlie bars. At the same time some Internet sites are blocked "due to incompatibility with the religious, cultural and moral values of the United Arab Emirates". A famous Dubai joke has a real-estate agent telling a client to "buy a house in Jumeirah Beach. It's the safest place to be. Half the bin Laden clan lives there." Whatever its compromises, Dubai's empirical globalization process always seem to veer toward an optimum: a society of apolitical consumers.
For Salafi Jihadist, Dubai may be worse than Sodom and Gomorrah put together. An al-Qaida attack in Dubai would instantly turn the overbuilding capitalist frenzy into ashes. So why does it not happen? First and foremost because al-Qaida and assorted Salafi Jihadist funds still transit through Dubai.
Money-laundering in the financial Mecca of the Persian Gulf has been virtually uncontrollable. The US government's case against Zacarias Moussaoui documented how money to finance the attacks of September 11, 2001, was laundered through the UAE. During the mid- to late 1990s, the air path from the UAE to Kandahar was crammed with private jets taking Arab notables on falcon-hunting trips in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Frequent fliers included UAE and Saudi rulers - the UAE and Saudi Arabia, along with Pakistan, were the only countries that recognized and maintained normal relations with the Taliban regime. Return flights laundered Taliban and al-Qaida operatives.
Despite the tremendous economic growth and under the blanket of a rather free society with pub, nightclub and girls on call, United Arab Emirates has become one of the major avenues for terrorists as well as Al Qaida in making investments in several hidden or semi-exposed projects thus cashing millions of dollars.
After the Taliban takes control of the area around Kandahar, Afghanistan, in September 1994, prominent Persian Gulf state officials and businessmen, including high-ranking United Arab Emirates and Saudi government ministers, such as Saudi intelligence minister Prince Turki al-Faisal, frequently secretly fly into Kandahar on state and private jets for hunting expeditions.
General Wayne Downing, Bush's former national director for combating terrorism, says: "They would go out and see Osama, spend some time with him, talk with him, you know, live out in the tents, eat the simple food, engage in falconing, some other pursuits, ride horses.
Both bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar sometimes participate in these hunting trips. Former US and Afghan officials suspect that the dignitaries' outbound jets may also have smuggled out al-Qaida and Taliban personnel.
Osama bin Laden's operatives still use this freewheeling city as a logistical hub, more than half of the Sept. 11 hijackers flew directly from Dubai to the United States in the final preparatory stages for the attack.
Since past five years, Al Qaida has started running various under-cover business establishments such as restaurants, grocery stores, pubs, cocktail lounge, nightclubs and departments stores. In most of such establishments, especially Asian females are employed and given secret training on various offensive tactics. Some of these girls are heavily compensated for agreeing to get infected with HIV virus. Later they are posted in various nightclubs only to attract western tourists and spend night with them. This is termed as ´Noble Cause´ or ´Secret Holy War´ of Al Qaida aimed at spreading HIV virus to the western society at a larger frequency. Some females from Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, Turkey, Yemen, Iraq and other Arab nations also join such ´noble cause´ by accepting HIV virus thus turning into living bomb for the westerners.
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