Creating divisions within society where none really existed before may work in the short-term, but it risks generating movements that develop a momentum of their own and move beyond the capacity of governments to control. Saudi Arabia's tacit encouragement of jihad in Afghanistan, Chechnya, and Bosnia in the 1980s and 1990s is one example; another, more recent instance, is the Bahraini government's ruthless deployment of sectarian rhetoric to fragment the swelling opposition movement that briefly threatened to topple the Al-Khalifa ruling family last year. In this they succeeded, but at the price of shattering social cohesion and polarising people as never before. In the UAE, the danger is that alienation from the Abu Dhabi-run government (and security apparatus) reinforces and deepens the simmering discontent held by many nationals in the Northern Emirates at their difficult socio-economic situation.
These feelings of alienation and loss of an overarching identity are compounded by the reconfiguration of power in the post-Zayed generation. Sheikh Zayed was succeeded as President of the UAE and Ruler of Abu Dhabi by his designated heir (and eldest son) Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, in a relatively smooth succession. However, Khalifa is reputedly in poor health and rarely seen in public, and has delegated much of the day-to-day governance of the federation to his younger half-brother, Mohammed bin Zayed. He is a hard-liner, particularly with regard to Islamists and the Muslim Brotherhood. His eldest son, Khalid bin Mohammed, is believed to be responsible for the ‘Islamist file' at the State Security Directorate, which itself is headed by another trusted member of his inner circle.
Power in the UAE federal government thus appears to be coalescing around Mohammed bin Zayed and his full brother, the national security advisor (and head of the State Security Directorate until 2011) Sheikh Hazza bin Zayed. This suggests that the portrayal of Islamists and Islamism as threats to national security will continue to take priority over any political engagement or willingness to tolerate dissenting views. Moreover, by cracking down so hard and so widely, the authorities in the UAE are creating a sophisticated police state wherein people and organisations fear arrest or sanction if they cross vaguely-defined (and constantly-shifting) ‘red lines.' This calls to mind Foucault's notion of the ‘self-policing subject' under the gaze of suffocating surveillance and constant peer pressure to denounce transgressors and prove one's own loyalty.
This securitisation of the response to domestic advocates of political and human rights is troubling. The leadership of the UAE may think that it can go its own way and violate international norms as it pleases. But, in reality, their draconian approach does nothing to tackle the root causes of socio-economic discontent in the Northern Emirates, or the concern held by many Emiratis that they are largely excluded from the dizzying emergence of Abu Dhabi and Dubai as ‘global cities.' In 2006, for example, Emirati nationals constituted just 2 per cent of Dubai's total workforce. By viewing any peaceful critic as a threat to state security, the ruling clique in Abu Dhabi has shown itself to be out of touch with reality, and completely unable to accept or incorporate pluralist views within the existing political system.
