Furthermore, the oppressive approach is actually self-defeating. Suppose for a moment that the charges against the detainees are indeed based on fact and that some or all are found guilty of plotting to commit anti-state crimes. The problem for the ruling elite is that their overwhelming and disproportionate security response makes any such verdict much less credible in the eyes of local citizens and international observers alike. Far from believing the gravity of the aborted plot, the authorities will be vulnerable to charges of conducting a show trial, and the detainees will become political prisoners and martyrs to an energised opposition. This would mark a substantial regression for the UAE and probably only widen the existing boundaries of discontent and opposition.
International Repercussions
Developments in the UAE matter. Over the past few years, the country's rulers have branded it as a regional hub for businesses and institutions looking to set up in the Middle East. A large part of the appeal rested on the emphasis on tolerance of other cultures, openness to diversity, and special free zones operating beyond national laws. It was very successful, as prestigious and high-profile international organisations and multinational corporations located their regional offices in the UAE, among the most recent being the launch in May of Sky News Arabia, based in Abu Dhabi and bankrolled by the Abu Dhabi Media Investment Corporation headed by the owner of Manchester City football club and Minister of Presidential Affairs, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed. Others included prestigious museums (the Louvre and Guggenheim) planning to open regional offshoots in the UAE, leading universities setting up branch campuses in Abu Dhabi (the Sorbonne and New York University), and a phalanx of British universities naming academic buildings, lecture theatres, and professorial chairs after individual Emirati rulers in return for substantial amounts of funding.
With each new arrest, it will become progressively harder for these predominantly cultural and educational institutions to continue to justify their engagement with a country currently so inimical to the freedoms and values they claim to represent. After having uneasily turned a blind eye to the case of the ‘UAE5' in 2011, any continuing silence over the detention without charge of more than 50 people will be deafening. However, from a cynically realist perspective, the cold truth is that the UAE's strategic and commercial significance means that western institutions and governments are unlikely to make much of a fuss. As with Bahrain, the threshold of tolerance for government-sanctioned violence will be far higher than in Syria or Libya. Acknowledgement of this appears to have spurred on officials in Abu Dhabi to effectively dare their western partners to acquiesce in the crackdown as a necessary measure, or follow their principles and drop their lucrative agreements. In a time of economic austerity and savage cost-cutting, it would be a brave organisation that eschewed a major donor or investor in such a way.
This aside, the trajectory of events in the UAE is disturbing. It suggests that its rulers are simply unable or unwilling to comprehend or tolerate any form of political plurality. Yet all political systems - monarchical or republican, democratic or authoritarian - must adapt to and change with the times. Failure to do so on one's own terms, ‘from above,' leaves open the possibility that pressures will eventually build-up from below. Moreover, their attempt to maintain the status quo at all costs marks the UAE out as one of the most authoritarian political systems in the region with the fewest constraints on the use or abuse of executive privilege. As a core strategic ally of the west, and home to large expatriate communities, any prolonged unrest in the UAE will inevitably assume significance beyond its borders.
However, if a state fails to trust its citizens and conflates the holding of diverse viewpoints with treachery, the greater danger is to Emirati citizens themselves. This leaves the government looking paranoid, weak, insecure, and completely at odds with the image they have so carefully constructed in recent years. The UAE is at a crossroads; it can choose between acceptance of pluralism or continuing repression, and its prospects for consensual domestic development rest on the outcome.
