Jan
25

Quick reading recs on Darfur, Egypt, the UAE and more

Sean Brooks What I am reading Add your comment

Some good articles and blog posts on issues covered recently here at Brains Like a Shoe.

On Darfur, Alex de Waal takes on the chatter among some Darfuris about self-determination. He discusses the various arguments in support of self-determination in the context of current Sudanese politics. And this week in the medical journal The Lancet researchers concluded that about 300,000 people died over the past six years in Darfur, but that disease, rather than violence, killed at least 80 percent of them. This is probably the most reliable mortality study to date. I am sure people like Mahmood Mamdani will make as much hay as they can with this study to argue that the conflict in Darfur has been exaggerated by activists. He and others will no doubt in the process conveniently ignore the fact that roughly 3 million Darfuris fled the violence and still remain in displaced camps.

On Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood elected its new leader this week amid reports of much internal dissent. The Economist has a good summary of what the elections mean for the Brotherhood and Egypt. Meanwhile, last week the Project on Middle East Democracy held an event on Capitol Hill to assess the Obama Administration’s first year. A prominent Egyptian blogger, Bassem Samir, provided a pessimistic account of the situation in Egypt, reflecting upon his recent arrest and detainment for 30 hours in advance of his flight to the United States. In explaining prospects for reform, he posed the question, “What do [Egyptians] want?” He answered, “We want Egypt to be better by ourselves, not by others – but we need help.”
that about 300,000 people died, but that disease, rather than violence, killed at least 80 percent of them.

On the United Arab Emirates, The New York Times ran a more analytical than normal piece on the now crumbling image of the Emirates as an Arab model of modernity: “Then the crash came and revealed how paper-thin that image was, political and financial analyst. That realization, not just in Dubai but also in Abu Dhabi, the oil-rich capital of the United Arab Emirates, has cast a harsh light on an opaque, top-down decision-making process, not just in business but in matters of crime and punishment as well, political and financial analysts said.”

And here are some quick recommendations of other interesting pieces:

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Dec
06

Dubai: So that a remarkable vision could be realized

Sean Brooks UAE 2 comments

“I don’t know when is the last time that humanity created something that is going to live on for years to come.” - Nakheel advertisement

It was almost a full year ago that I heard these words in the state-of-the-art visitor’s center of Nakheel, the real-estate subsidiary of Dubai World. The unfinished development projects of Nakheel in Dubai – like The Palm and The Globe – now have investors around the world fearing another massive jolt to the international financial system. From what I have read, even if Dubai World were to fold completely, the actual effect on global markets would pale in comparison to the collapse of Lehman Brothers – which ushered the world dramatically into our ongoing Great Recession. See this chart to compare the relative sizes of the companies.

Nevertheless, I think that the expansive coverage of Dubai World’s woes is appropriate. It serves as another important chapter in the rise and fall of the over-hyped myths of the commanding heights of global finance. In addition to writing down in my notes the highly entertaining quote  above, the only other thing that I wrote during the video was: “This is a bet on on global capitalism!!!” Indeed, the development project of Dubai was quite simple: complete integration with the ever-churning engines of international commerce, finance, and tourism – greased, of course, with the oil and natural gas revenues of neighboring Abu Dhabi. What could possibly go wrong?

As Jan Randolph, head of the sovereign risk group at IHS Global Insight, noted, Dubai’s rags to riches, and possibly back to rags, tale “has all the elements of a Greek tragedy.” And these pictures taken this past year visualize for us this roller-coaster story. Luckily for Dubai though, global capitalism will most likely bounce back in the next few years which will once again attract investors, tourists, and globe-setters back to its prodigious condos, malls, and man-made islands. On its rebound, perhaps Dubai will act with a bit more humility and forgo boasts, such as ”We are now building and shaping the vision of a modern world.”

With this said, I hope that Dubai and the Emirates as a whole do not completely abandon their dreams. Located in a region where violence, repression, and destruction dominate the daily realities of so many, the success stories coming out of the Gulf states - if you could put aside the legitimate concerns over labor and human rights for a second – were unique over the last few decades. In many ways the ambitious state-building and relatively liberal environments did inspire many people in the region. In addition to the often mistreated laborers (who also are bearing the brunt of the collapse), middle class Arab professionals – lawyers, accountants, journalists, and engineers – have flocked to the U.A.E., Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar and built quite successful careers and enjoyable lives there.  As propagandistic as it might sound, there is a shred of truth in the quote of an employee in the video: ”Nakheel is a company that allows you to dream and it empowers us to make those dreams a reality…We are building a country.”

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