Word: dubai
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While the Anglophile sheik kept a stiff upper lip, Dubai's inability to pay its debts is a heavy blow to an ego that easily dwarfs Dubai's gleaming new 160-story skyscraper. In the wake of the 2008 global financial meltdown, Sheik Mohammed repeatedly waved off predictions of Dubai's demise, staunchly defended his economic development model and dismissed Western media criticism as a bigoted slur on an Arab success story. "I can safely say that we have succeeded in containing the risks of the global financial crisis in record time," he said last April. Indeed, even...
Sheik Mo, as he's dubbed by the media, was tweeting in London last week when officials back home stunned financial markets by announcing a request for a six-month repayment standstill on part of the sheikdom's $80 billion debt. The immediate issue is Dubai's inability to come through on a $3.52 billion tranche due in mid-December. Yet, with some 400 property projects already reportedly frozen in Dubai, the news raised the specter of a gigantic default that would sink exposed creditors around the world. "Inspired by Islamic artifacts," read the sheik's post on Twitter during...
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...
...beginning," Sheik Mohammed once told an Arab journalist, "they said that Dubai was crazy." Certainly few Arab leaders have demonstrated such a relentless drive to succeed. He imagined Dubai as a great city from Islam's rich heritage, a Baghdad or a Cordoba. His immense appetite for work is matched by a passion for play. He is a world-class thoroughbred racer and breeder and, at 62, he remains a celebrated equestrian who engages in arduous endurance races across hundreds of miles of terrain. Doubtless it takes a politician of supreme self-confidence not only to write Arabic poetry...
...would 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...