What can be seen in practice in the UAE scene is Abu Dhabi’s centrality in the political field and Dubai in the economic field.
Pak Sahafat News Agency, International Group: May 13 – Khalifa bin Zayed, President of the United Arab Emirates, dies. He was appointed to the post in 2004, suffered a stroke in 2014, and was effectively in charge of the Crown Prince and his half-brother, Muhammad bin Zayed. The day after the caliph’s death, Muhammad was unanimously elected president of the UAE Federal Supreme Council, after years of powerful but nominal presidency over the UAE, and now holds the official presidency.
During the eight years that the caliph was bedridden and Muhammad in power, the UAE entered new spheres of power and was able to establish itself as one of the regional powers. Now, however, Muhammad ibn Zayd is in a very formal atmosphere; although he is unlikely to have been barred from entering the constituency before, he is now more open than ever, given his official position as president of the UAE.
In addition to the foreign sphere in which the UAE faces serious challenges, it seems that Muhammad bin Zayed does not face any problematic and challenging sphere at home. Here we try to describe some of the most important internal challenges of the new president of the UAE. It is natural that some emerging events can exacerbate or reduce these challenges.
Foreign policy challenges in domestic politics
What can be seen in practice in the UAE scene is Abu Dhabi’s centrality in the political field and Dubai in the economic field. Such a separation has, in fact, caused the considerations of the two emirates to be disputed, not now, but long ago. For example, in the case of the eight-year Ba’athist Iraq-Iran war, the Emirate of Dubai, along with the Emirates of Sharjah and Umm al-Qayyun, opposed Saddam’s attack, while Abu Dhabi, along with other emirates, sided with Saddam, as in many Arab countries. This means that the extension of the UAE’s foreign policy at home has not always been accompanied by the alignment of all the UAEs.
Even now, according to some experts, the Emirate of Dubai does not have a full-fledged stance on the Yemeni war that Mohammed bin Zayed has entered into. Due to its oil resources, Abu Dhabi does not have a momentary and widespread vulnerability, and therefore, it is as vulnerable as other countries with oil resources. But Dubai is much more vulnerable and dependent on regional and international developments due to its presence in sensitive industries such as tourism and its polarity in business, and even as a hub for digital currencies. Therefore, the kind of action of Muhammad bin Zayed in the foreign arena, if it affects the economic life of Dubai, can lead to a negative reaction from Muhammad bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Emir of Dubai.
In the crisis related to Qatar, some emirates of the UAE were not associated with the hostile policy of Muhammad bin Zayed towards Qatar. When bin Zayed decided to sever ties with Qatar along with Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Bahrain and impose various sanctions on the country, whispers of claims of independence and secession from the Emirate of Al-Fujairah were heard and even Rashid bin Hamad, the son of the ruler.
Other examples of differences between Abu Dhabi and other emirates over Muhammad ibn Zayed’s foreign policy were the normalization of relations with the Zionist regime. It was expected that in such an important matter, all the emirates would unite in support of bin Zayed. But there was no news of other emirates except the elders of Abu Dhabi. The ruler of Dubai, who was most under surveillance, tweeted a picture of Bin Zayed a few days after the adaptation, and later a poem he wrote in his honor; A poem that, of course, a user of “Without Shadow” who is famous for exposing the backdrop of power in the UAE on Twitter, claimed to be imposed on Muhammad bin Rashid. Whether this claim is true or not, the widespread and unified support of other UAE emirates for naturalism shows that Muhammad bin Zayed’s foreign policy could pose challenges for him at home. He has to think about these internal challenges in his external maneuvers.
Read more:
Who was the newly deceased President of the United Arab Emirates?
Substitution Challenge
Who is the next president of the UAE? This is a serious question for Muhammad bin Zayed, who is now 61 years old. According to the current situation in the UAE, the Emir of Abu Dhabi retains the post of President of the UAE and the Emir of Dubai is his deputy (not his Crown Prince). Therefore, the person who is the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi can potentially be the next Emir and President of Abu Dhabi and the UAE. Therefore, the person who is the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi can potentially be the next Emir and President of Abu Dhabi and the UAE. Thus, although a crown prince at the level of an emirate does not seem to be a very dental option, its potential importance in the future could catch the eye. According to experts, Muhammad ibn Zayed has three groups of people in front of him to appoint his crown prince: his half-brothers, his half-brothers and his children.
If Muhammad bin Zayed wants to value his half-brothers like the previous president, Khalifa bin Zayed, the UAE Interior Minister Saif bin Zayed is the most important option. But what is more prominent among experts now is Muhammad ibn Zayed’s attention to his physical brothers, Bani Fatima. Fatima was the beloved wife of Zayed bin Sultan, the founder and first president of the UAE. In addition to Muhammad, who is now the President of the UAE, he has five other sons named Abdullah, Tahnoon, Mansour, Hamdan and Haza. Meanwhile, Abdullah, the current UAE Foreign Minister; Tahnoon, the UAE’s national security adviser and one of the most powerful economic and security figures, and Mansour, the UAE’s vice president, Mohammed bin Rashid (Emir of Dubai), are more prominent.
Of course, Mansour, since in addition to being the deputy of Muhammad bin Rashid, is also his son-in-law, seems to have a level of desirability for Al-Maktoum. But if Muhammad ibn Zayed, like Salman bin Abdul Aziz in Saudi Arabia, wants to turn the transfer of power from “brother to brother” to “father to son”, his son Khalid bin Muhammad ibn Zayd is the most important option. The 61-year-old president of the UAE will soon have to enter the field of appointing the Crown Prince of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi and its potential president. It seems that Mohammed bin Zayed, who has been able to take over the emirates of this country in various ways, along with or without protests, since 2014, will have challenges in appointing the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, but these challenges will not be the same as in Saudi Arabia, unless a new variable.
The challenge of accompanying other emirates
Although some of Muhammad bin Zayed’s domestic challenges stem from his adventurous foreign policy, not all challenges are unique. The rulers of Abu Dhabi have for years been well aware of the tribal differences and economic biases of some emirates and have sought to exploit some political, economic and security tools to curb possible divergences.
Those who have more stable economic power than other emirates due to the oil resources of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, use the oil dollars to control the behavior of the Emirate of Dubai and to somehow prevent their political and economic independence from Abu Dhabi and their cohesion within the framework.
It is natural that Dubai’s need for Abu Dhabi made this symbolic acceptance possible. Dubai later sought to strengthen its weight against Abu Dhabi by transforming itself into a diverse hobby in the region and the world, while consolidating its vitality and economic independence, but the corona and its inevitable economic consequences actually made Dubai Al-Maktoum even bigger than before. Disagreements are not just between Dubai and Abu Dhabi; Some sources say that the UAE, which is not in a good financial position, such as Ajman, Fujairah, Ras al-Khaimah and Umm al-Quwain, are protesting against structural discrimination in the UAE army, because the ranks sent to Yemen are mainly from Abu Dhabi. There are other objections to this, such as the Sharjah ruler protesting the government’s interference in its internal affairs. Muhammad ibn Zayed has no choice but to resolve these differences with various tricks in the current situation.
Ben Zayed in the face of challenges
Muhammad ibn Zayed considers himself a man of regional and even international activism. His performance since 2014 shows that he is very interested in being polarized in the region and the Islamic world; even in the field of religion, he has tried to support the mystical approaches that are strongly anti-Islamist in competition with the discourse of the Islamic Revolution of Iran, the Brotherhood and the Wahhabis. With such an approach, it seems that bin Zayed does not want to be trapped in the equations of power at home in order to avoid external maneuvers. Thus, just as he has so far taken advantage of domestic challenges by leveraging political, economic and security levers, in his new position, the presidency of the UAE, he is trying in every way to have the consensus of the seven emirates with him, albeit ostensibly, in practice.