Camels To Rollses In 25 Years Prosperity, Stability Celebrated In United Arab Emirates

In 25 years, a string of poor desert sheikdoms has become one of the world’s richest countries in a transformation so breathtaking it has stunned many who have lived through it.

The generation whose parents eked out a living diving for pearls and captaining wooden trading dhows now vacations at southern Spain’s exclusive resorts.

They pull up to gleaming shopping malls in the world’s most expensive cars and play golf on greens flown in from the United States.

Awash in money from oil, gas and trade, the United Arab Emirates celebrates its silver jubilee next week with expectations it will post a whopping gross domestic product of $41 billion this year.

“We have gone from riding camels to carrying mobile phones and driving Rolls-Royces in what’s been only a matter of years,” says Ahmed Murad, a prosperous construction company owner.

Though the discovery of oil drastically changed life in other Persian Gulf states as well, the small population and concentrated development of the United Arab Emirates have made the contrast more striking.

The United Arab Emirates was born on Dec. 2, 1971, a day after the British pulled out of the sheikdoms known as the Trucial States, after an 1820 truce. Sheik Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, ruler of the federation’s largest and richest emirate, Abu Dhabi, became president of a country roughly the size of Scotland.

Oil was discovered off Abu Dhabi in 1958. With Kuwait still reeling from the Iraqi invasion of 1991, the United Arab Emirates has emerged as the second-richest and most influential of the Persian Gulf Arab states, behind the super-rich Saudis.

Dubai, the dynamic commercial hub of the gulf, has dwindling oil reserves but now is getting rich on trade. With its low taxes, everything from cars to spices passes through Dubai to countries as far off as Central Asia.

The other five emirates, Sharjah, Ajman, Fujairah, Ras al-Khaimah and Umm al-Qawain, are smaller and less prosperous, but they benefit from the prosperity next door. Each emirate has a large degree of autonomy in running its internal affairs.

The more-populous Abu Dhabi and Dubai sport a cosmopolitan lifestyle more in tune with the West than any other Arab country.

The Muslim emirates have a long trading tradition that has brought them into contact with foreigners. Today, three-fourths of the 2.4 million residents are expatriates, mostly Asian workers from the Indian subcontinent but also tens of thousands of Americans and Europeans.

The United Arab Emirates is unhindered by the political dissent and Islamic fundamentalism that have swept much of the Muslim world. But the rapid change and growing prosperity have not come problem-free.

There is concern about controlling the foreign work force. Earlier this year, 200,000 unskilled Asian workers in the country illegally were told to leave under an amnesty program.

And the government is alarmed at the large number of native men marrying foreign women. Emirates leaders fear that the native population will dwindle even further if Arabs don’t marry among themselves, so the government donates $19,000 to those who do.

Another new phenomenon, virtually unknown in the tribal society of a quarter of a century ago, is divorce. Nearly 30 percent of all unions don’t last.

One thing that has lasted is the traditional pattern of succession in Arab societies - leadership passed from father to son.

That could be a potential source of instability, but diplomats say a smooth transition is virtually assured after Sheik Zayed’s death.

Zayed, recovering from a recent neck operation in the United States, has an undisclosed number of wives and children. But Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the 78-year-old ruler’s eldest son, is the undisputed crown prince.