Word: behinds
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Dubai's financial crisis may have calmed a bit now that the central bank of the United Arab Emirates has promised to stand behind the city-state's banks with fresh liquidity. After all, the U.A.E., to which Dubai belongs, has perhaps $700 billion accumulated from petroleum riches - a resource that Dubai, which is apparently stuck with tens of billions of dollars in debt, does not enjoy...
Jealous rivals and cynical pundits will revel in Sheik Mohammed's fall from grace, but none can deny Dubai's remarkable accomplishments - or ignore the fact that only an ambitious dreamer could have made them happen. In the 1980s, when Dubai's neighbors were either hibernating behind a curtain of oil wealth or dabbling, sometimes disastrously, in Middle East politics, Sheik Mohammed began transforming oil-poor Dubai from an Arab backwater into a global city. Within a decade Dubai had a world-class air carrier in Emirates Airlines and a glamorous, iconic "seven-star" hotel, the Burj al-Arab...
...thus be crazy to write off Sheik Mohammed, or Dubai, for that matter. The sheik is a hereditary leader whose ruling tribal lines date back to 1833. Although he only formally became Dubai's ruler in 2006 upon the death of a brother, he has been the driving force behind the emirate for three decades. Of equal importance, his ambition and competence have made him a leading figure - presently serving as Vice President, Prime Minister and Defense Minister - in the United Arab Emirates, the country created by a confederation of seven Arab sheikdoms in 1971. No leader in the U.A.E...
...billion-plus balance sheet of Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund puts Dubai's debt crisis in a softer light. And, as far as Dubai's leaders are concerned, the problem is largely limited to egregious overborrowing by one company in one sector: Nakheel, the Dubai World subsidiary behind huge property projects like the Palm and the World, built on injected sand off the Gulf coast. "It will take a bit of time, but Dubai will come back," a Dubai insider told TIME. "It will come back stronger, because the crisis will help create a more sustainable model...
...international business leaders, Sheik Mohammed chastised Arabs who preferred "to sit around waiting, praising our glorious past and blaming others for our failures and our problems." Instead, he said, "We have to arm ourselves with courage and work quickly and seriously, to tackle the reasons that put our region behind the rest of the world." Sheik Mohammed is a dreamer whose ego proved too large to contain. But his big dream remains the Middle East's hope...