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Three years ago, the Louvre Abu Dhabi, one of the most spectacular museums of the new century, opened. Located on the edge of the desert on the Persian Peninsula, it took ten years to build and cost the equivalent of 20 billion Swedish crowns.
The project is the favorite of Mohammed bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and who decides everything in the United Arab Emirates, the union of seven sheikhs on the Arabian Peninsula, of which Abu Dhabi is the most significant.
I was at the museum opening in November 2017 and I remember there was tension in the air. It was not just due to the extraordinary works of art on display and the striking architecture of the museum building.
Louvre Abu Dhabi Museum.
Photo: Anette Nantell
No, what the assembled diplomats, dignitaries and journalists were waiting for was to hear Mohammed bin Zayed’s keynote address. MBZ, as they call it, is constantly hatching ideas that make the UAE speak for itself in the world, but it is legendary and reluctant to appear in public.
But even this time, Mohammed bin Zayed avoided the spotlight. At the last minute, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, the Emir of Dubai, was sent to inaugurate the museum.
It’s just shyness or nervousness that causes MBZ to withdraw from the spotlight. Mohammed bin Zayed, now 59, adopts the same motto as our own Wallenberg financial family: Can not be seen, to be without being seen.
The Crown Prince is concerned that the United Arab Emirates, or UAE, as the country is often called by its English abbreviation, will prove progressive. That is why Mohammed bin Zayed, among other things, has blessed the UAE with an advanced space program.
Less than a year ago, Hazzan Al Mansouri of the United Arab Emirates became the first astronaut from the Gulf States when he accompanied the Russian Soyuz MS12 capsule to the International Space Station ISS. In mid-July, the UAE launched a space probe bound for Mars. Mohammed bin Zayed has even outlined a century-old plan for space exploration that includes an urban construction project on Mars.
An illustration of the Hope spacecraft launched in June.
Photo: Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center / AP
The United Arab Emirates, which is the world’s ninth largest oil exporter, is also investing heavily in both solar and nuclear power. During the summer, the country’s first nuclear power plant began to charge. When the plant is fully operational, it will account for a quarter of the UAE’s energy needs.
But apart from culture, space and nuclear power. It is in foreign policy that the UAE has made the deepest and fastest impression.
Mid august Israel and the United Arab Emirates surprised the outside world by concluding an agreement aimed at normalizing relations between the countries. Otherwise, there are hermetic gaps between Israel and its neighbors in the region. Only Egypt and Jordan of the nations of the Arab world have diplomatic relations with Israel.
Photo: Majdi Mohammed / AP
Photo: Doug Mills / Zuma Press
The agreement, which was drawn up with the help of the United States, contains some questions. For example, countries do not appear to agree with Israel’s plans to incorporate even more Palestinian territory into the West Bank. Do they stop, as Mohammed bin Zayed says, or do they just stop, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims?
In any case, all observers seem to agree that the deal benefits Mohammed bin Zayed, who is now taking a real step up the Middle East pyramid of power.
Mohammed bin Zayed is the son of Sheikh Zayed Sultan bin Nayhad, the man who founded the United Arab Emirates. The father had a total of 30 children with seven different wives. When Zayed Sultan bin Nayhad was born in 1918, the area that is now the United Arab Emirates was little more than a Bedouin camp in the Persian Gulf, populated by camel drivers and pearl fishers.
In the late 1950s British BP and French Total made major oil discoveries in the emirate. The UAE has lived well off oil so far, when falling prices and concerns about the corona pandemic have rattled the calculations.
He (Mohammed bin Zayed) does not believe that the countries of the Arab world are ripe for democracy because they constantly vote for the “wrong” parties.
Several of Mohammed bin Zayed’s brothers (the sisters are off the throne) are involved in things traditionally associated with the royalty of the Gulf states: they own football teams (little brother Mansour controls Manchester City) or they collect giant yachts.
But MBZ has focused on politics since his father appointed him Deputy Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi in 2003. He was a recent graduate of the Sandhurst British Military Academy. Today, Mohammed bin Zayed is the undisputed leader of the United Arab Emirates and has purposely worked for the UAE to become a factor of power in the region.
If there is any line in Mohammed bin Zayed’s policy, it is to fight against political Islam. Whether it is practiced by the Shiite Muslim regime in Iran or by the fully Arab Muslim Brotherhood, which belongs to Sunni Islam.
He (Mohammed bin Zayed) does not believe that the countries of the Arab world are ripe for democracy because they constantly vote for the “wrong” parties, a Western diplomat told DN.
Thus, the UAE backed the military coup in Egypt in July 2013, which toppled popular Muslim Brotherhood sympathizer Mohammed Mursi and paved the way for current dictator Abdelfattah al-Sisi.
Mohammed bin Zayed He has also wholeheartedly supported warlord Khalifa Haftar in Libya. Its armed forces are trying to overthrow the internationally recognized government in Tripoli, which Haftar says is too lenient towards Islamists.
The United Arab Emirates, along with Saudi Arabia, have also been boycotting the small neighboring country of Qatar for three years, accused of supporting extremist organizations such as Hamas in Gaza and the Taliban movement in Afghanistan.
In particular, the UAE is active in Yemen. Previously, they were the driving force behind the coalition that Saudi Arabia had joined together to fight the Houthi armed movement and had been waging a bloody war of aggression in Yemen for more than five years.
Mohammed bin Zayed.
Photo: Andrew Harnik / TT
But for some years now, the United Arab Emirates has largely withdrawn its forces from the Huthi territories in northern Yemen. Instead, the UAE armed forces are dedicating themselves to supporting the Southern Transitional Council (STC) liberation movement, which wants an independent South Yemen.
The reason Mohammed bin Zayed wants to divide Yemen is that it benefits the United Arab Emirates, which are striving to control the strategically important strait between the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.
Under the leadership of Mohammed bin Zayed, the UAE has gained a strong presence in the Horn of Africa, the triangular peninsula that juts out into the Indian Ocean. The UAE is building airports in the separatist Somali regions of Puntland and Somaliland and a new port in Berbera, Eritrea.
The United Arab Emirates has For several years it has been on the annual list of the Sipri Peace Research Institute of the world’s ten largest arms buyers. More recently, the UAE has completed the purchase of the United States’ new Lockheed F-35 “superplane,” which is invisible on radar screens.
Also, the UAE has long-range plans to start manufacturing its own weapons systems.
Like many other countries in the region and the world, the United Arab Emirates has been affected by the covid-19 infection. Official figures show just over 300 dead and just over 64,000 infected.
Dubai, the main emirate of the United Arab Emirates alongside Abu Dhabi, relies almost entirely on the financial and tourism sectors, which have been most significantly affected by the shutdown that followed in the footsteps of the corona pandemic. Among other things, the great world exhibition Expo 2020, which should have opened in October this year and was expected to attract 24 million visitors, was postponed until 2021.
Above all, the infection brutally shows the insecurity that prevails among the country’s guest workers. And they make up nearly 90 percent of the UAE’s nearly 10 million people.
According to the report As the Reuters news agency did earlier this summer, many of the poor immigrants from, say, Nepal and Bangladesh struggling in low-wage industries in the hotel and construction sector have simply not been paid. Many have also left the UAE for an uncertain existence in their home countries.
But the weak economy does not appear to stop Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed’s grand ambitions for power. He does not learn to risk criticism at home: the free press does not exist and the small political opposition that exists in the United Arab Emirates would fit in the pocket of MBZ Snow White Push, if any.
