The Culture that is the UAE

BlackBerry cuts made roads safer, police say

A dramatic fall in traffic accidents this week has been directly linked to the three-day disruption in BlackBerry services.

In Dubai, traffic accidents fell 20 per cent from average rates on the days BlackBerry users were unable to use its messaging service. In Abu Dhabi, the number of accidents this week fell 40 per cent and there were no fatal accidents.

Perhaps Blackberry should be expecting that UAE users reward them for the outage.

WaPo covers wackynomics of Dubai

Washington Post

When its gasoline pumps started going dry in the United Arab Emirates’ poorer northern states earlier this year, Dubai’s oil company blamed mysterious service upgrades. Few believed that at the time, and now the company is dropping its subtlety, triggering an uncharacteristically public spat over fuel pricing policies. When its gasoline pumps started going dry in the United Arab Emirates’ poorer northern states earlier this year, Dubai’s oil company blamed mysterious service upgrades....By letting its farther-flung stations run empty, the Emirates National Oil Co., or ENOC, was telegraphing a message: The Dubai government-owned firm was tired of driving itself deeper into the red by shouldering money-losing state fuel subsidies that keep pump prices artificially low. In an unusually strongly worded statement over the weekend, the company said that continuing to cover subsidies mandated by the UAE’s federal government “is clearly not sustainable or viable for the company.” It was a rare public display of power politics in a country where grievances — particularly ones involving the many businesses controlled by the Emirates’ ruling sheiks — are typically resolved behind closed doors. The rift highlights Dubai’s determination to maintain its independence within the UAE federation despite a daunting debt bill, and it throws into question the generous subsidies the country uses to help buy political stability....The problem for ENOC, which also runs stations under its EPPCO subsidiary, is that Dubai has few of the UAE’s oil reserves. Those are mainly controlled by Abu Dhabi, the federal capital and the richest of the federation’s seven semiautonomous emirates. Because Abu Dhabi and Dubai don’t share their energy resources, ENOC has to buy its fuel on the open market at international prices — a situation it says no longer works....Dubai gas stations remain stocked but are often packed with long lines during rush hours. Meanwhile, ENOC and EPPCO stations remain shuttered in Sharjah, a teeming city next to Dubai that is home to many lower-income workers. Authorities there closed the company’s outlets in June after it failed to respond to demands to replenish fuel supplies, further lengthening lines at stations in Dubai....Most likely, ENOC is hoping the central government will step in to cover the shortfall between the subsidized price and the company’s costs, analysts said.

During its go-go years spread its network of petrol stations across the country soaking up markets that might have been served by the cautious Adnoc. Dubai projected itself across the country. As a strategy, it was always peculiar. Dubai simply didn't have the deep pockets to run the network at a loss. But none of that was transparent when Dubai had access to foreign lending throwing money at its other projects.

My guess is that Abu Dubai is simply squeezing Dubai and will end up owning Dubai's petrol networks.

One question I have: Why doesn't Dubai simply refuse to pay the subsidies mandated by the UAE’s federal government"? Would Abu Dhabi swoop in and embarrass Dubai by enforcing the mandate?

Paragraph of note

In 2005, a company called CyberTrust—which has since been purchased by Verizon— gave Etisalat, the government-connected mobile company in the UAE, the right to verify that a site is valid. Here's why this is trouble: Since browsers now automatically trust Etisalat to confirm a site's identity, the company has the potential ability to fake a secure connection to any site Etisalat subscribers might visit using a man-in-the-middle scheme.

There's more at Slate.

Shouting in the Dark

Al Jazeera's documentary on the Bahraini revolution can be seen here.

Political risks to watch in the UAE

In the opinion of AlertNet.

Sad

Some are pushed out, others vote with their feet.

The New York Times:

Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a professor of political science at U.A.E. University, said the Iranian issue was likely to have been a “small reason among many” that may have led to the closure of the Gulf Research Center in Dubai.

Although the center’s license was refused before the Arab Spring began, other experts point to the move possibly being part of a broader plan by the U.A.E. to quell challenges to its authority.

Recent signs of a clampdown include the ongoing trial in Abu Dhabi of five pro-democracy activists accused of undermining public order by seeking free elections. One of the defendants is Nasser bin Ghaith, a lecturer in international economic law at the Abu Dhabi branch of Paris-Sorbonne University.

...

Meanwhile, funding constraints at the Dubai School of Government are believed to have been the main reason behind the resignation of its dean, Tarik Yousef, and a number of other researchers. But a source at the school, who declined to be identified, also said there had been a crackdown on political debate, with some events falling off the organization’s conference agenda.

Mr. Abdulla, the political science professor at U.A.E. University, described the trial of the five activists as an “extreme measure in an extraordinary time,” adding that “as sad as it is, it is not necessarily representative of an emerging repressive trend in the U.A.E.”

Dubai's Arab Spring dividend

If Dubai is a business (it is, by the way), then the Arab Spring is paying dividends. Not in metaphorical political freedom dividends for its citizens, but in real dividends.

The ever-haunting question of the recession, “Who will live in all these flats and houses?” is being answered. It’s not the answer that the city planners or the real estate developers expected, but it is an answer: they are the emigrants resulting from the Arab Spring.

...

Many newcomers to Dubai, including those from the Arab Spring, have the intent to move here for two years, whether this is because their company has relocated them here for that long, or because that’s how long a visa lasts, or because that seems a ‘good’ number of years for which to try out something new and be away from their home-town. More often than not, though, these newcomers are in for a surprise when they find themselves here six or seven years later, and when their families consider Dubai ‘home.’ As a result of many cycles of this, and many families experiencing this, the permanency of Dubai has been established and it seems quite likely that those families currently escaping from the Arab Spring for a short while may end up in Dubai for a much longer time than they had originally anticipated, as many families before them.

Read it in its chirpy entirety.