In truth, though, the erstwhile “Pearl of the Gulf” was always far more complex. Its rulers long envisioned themselves as leading a kind of Arab Switzerland, and with the UAE’s expansive and secretive finance industry, and its large population of foreign guest workers, you have to say they’ve succeeded. But where they haven’t succeeded — where, in fact, they now risk destroying the country’s whole future — is on foreign policy. For unlike the Swiss and their well-honed neutrality, the UAE has enmeshed itself in conflicts all over the region, along the way making for itself a prodigious list of enemies. And now, with their own territory under attack, they may finally be reaping what they long sowed abroad.

The United Arab Emirates is a fairly young country, and one new to the world stage. Founded in 1971 from the embers of the British Empire, it’s formed of seven semi-autonomous emirates, their respective emirs forming a Federal Supreme Council. In truth, though, the country is dominated by the two richest and most populous: by convention the Council’s president is always the Emir of Abu Dhabi, while its vice president and prime minister is the Emir of Dubai. Just as telling, the sovereign wealth funds of both these Emirates control enormous conglomerates, initially funded by oil revenue, and which are involved in a dizzying array of businesses at home and abroad. The most important of these is probably DP World, the Dubai logistics company that’s also one of the world’s largest port operators. The line between these powerful “private” businesses and the state is more or less a legal fiction.

Through the proceeds, Dubai has made itself an international city with all the style and class of Las Vegas, albeit minus the vice. It has the world’s tallest skyscraper; an indoor ski slope; man-made islands meant to look like a world map, but which were never developed and thus are returning to the sea. By reputation, the city is filled with influencers, young Russian “models”, digital nomads of all stripes, as well as various war profiteers and exiles. If, however, a recent Washington Post article refers to the city as an “oasis for business and partying” — the truth is that the great majority of Dubai’s population are foreign workers. Some are Western professionals, yes, but many more are South Asian Muslims in low-skilled jobs. In other words, the majority of people in the UAE are not spending their time partying, and indeed Muslims are banned from buying alcohol.

It’s commonly claimed that these workers are mistreated. Yet if abuse surely happens, the sheer number of foreigners who do make the trip suggests they know what they’re getting themselves into. Zakir Hussein, the younger brother of Saleh Ahmed, a 55-year-old Bangladeshi driver who was killed by missile debris, told the Guardian that following his brother’s death he did not want to return to the UAE. “But,” he added, “Dubai is the only place we know how to earn.” The scale of this is large enough that not just their families, but their countries depend on it: the World Bank estimates that remittances from the country to India, Pakistan, and the Philippines reached $47.5 billion in 2024. Besides, if you follow the law and don’t have a problem with living outside a liberal democracy, Dubai is safe and things work properly, certainly compared to the dysfunctional South Asian cities many migrants arrived from.

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Yet beyond the labor laws, the ultimate myth of the UAE centers on its neutrality. The country received plenty of attention, for instance, when it refused to participate in sanctions against Russia following the invasion of Ukraine. For its part, a 2023 report from The Wilson Center fretted that the country was “non-aligned with a tilt towards China”. Yet while the country does attempt a balanced approach towards the world powers, the reality is that the UAE is a US treaty ally, hosting the Al Dhafra airbase outside of Abu Dhabi, home to 5,000 military personnel. Further, Dubai’s Jebel Ali port, though not technically a military base, is the US Navy’s largest port of call in the Middle East and commonly used by aircraft carriers. Little wonder the US State Department described the UAE as “vital” to supporting the country’s interests as late as last year.

More than this American connection, though, the UAE aggressively pursues what it says are its interests across the wider Middle East. As far back as 2011, it was a direct participant in the intervention against Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. In the aftermath, it then supported the regime of General Haftar, something that continues despite Emirati claims to the contrary. The UAE has also made enemies from Syria to Sudan, in the latter case backing General Dagalo and his Rapid Support Forces, both accused of genocide by the Biden administration. In Somalia, meanwhile, the Emiratis have entirely fallen out with the government over their support of the separatist enclave of Somaliland. The only recent intervention with any obvious national security connection to the UAE itself is Yemen, where they joined Saudi Arabia in its decade long war against the Houthis. Yet here, again, the Emiratis seem erratic at best, backing the so-called Southern Transitional Council — only for it to be defeated by a Saudi-backed alternative just days later.

The point of this hyperactive foreign policy is not entirely clear: besides a lust for gold and glory. Abu Dhabi and Dubai, after all, are both effectively private governments run by wildly wealthy businessmen. And if that explains the country’s glitzy domestic development — from man-made islands to ski slopes in the desert — its foreign stance might be understood in similar terms. To quote Dr Andreas Krieg, an expert on UAE foreign policy, the country seems to want the following: “Strategic depth, relevance, strategic autonomy, indispensability, access to resources, regional broker and hub.” In other words, the Emiratis want it all, and with basically unlimited funds they think they can get it.

Yet this frantic foreign policy is hardly without consequences. Tanzania’s Maasai tribesmen aren’t much of a threat — even if the UAE finally succeeds in taking enough of their land to build a big game hunting resort — but some of the country’s new enemies are dangerous indeed. Consider Yemen. Though it largely went unnoticed at time, when the Houthis were attacking Red Sea shipping last year, with the stated aim of harming Israel, they were also hurting their old enemy the Emiratis: who control many of the ports in the Red Sea and the so-called Suez Canal Economic Zone.

Meanwhile, the UAE has drawn the ire of anti-Zionists the world over for signing the Abraham Accords. Its relationship with Israel is overplayed, yet it has taken a reputational hit for maintaining relations with Israel throughout the Gaza War. At the same time, the UAE has what can only be described as an obsession with the Muslim Brotherhood, which it calls a terrorist organization, and which seems to stem more from the Brotherhood’s republicanism than its Islamism. Again, this arguably hints at the way in which the country’s absolutist style intrudes into government: what the emirs fear is less ideology per se, and more the threat of modern politics to their feudal, personal system of rule.

Either way, all this offers a stark contrast to the UAE’s self-cultivated image of a safe and reasonable country. Though they can certainly justify the US alliance in the name of stability, and can’t be held responsible for this current war, it is enough to make some people second-guess their vision for the country. To be fair, I don’t think that the “Dubai Dream” is dead, as so many have proclaimed. The UAE has a clear narrative here: that they did not want or ask for Trump’s war, even if they now seem to be returning to form and demanding the US secures the Strait of Hormuz by force, while imprisoning Westerners for breaching security laws by taking photographs of drone and missile attacks. 

It seems obvious, then, that despite their pronouncements of loyalty to the US, genuine neutrality might have served the UAE well. And as for the future? If there should be a major terrorist attack citing as its cause the UAE’s actions in Africa, or its “support” of Israel, it may cause citizens and guest workers alike to more seriously examine the country’s record. Just last summer, both the US and Britain issued warnings calling terrorist attacks in the UAE “very likely”. What’s more, in a society made largely of lower-class Muslim foreigners, it is nearly impossible to fully guard against radicalization. As in other aspects of the Dubai model, it’s increasingly clear that money can’t buy you everything, particularly when your guarantor is as erratic as Donald Trump.

The Saudis, backed by President Donald Trump, have of course denied that the murder was officially sanctioned, claiming that a rogue outfit was responsible after an argument got out of hand. However, the killing and dismemberment by the infamous bone saw were recorded in brutal detail by Turkish intelligence; and credible authorities, including senior intelligence officials such as Agnès Callamard, former UN special rapporteur on extra-judicial killings, have been unequivocal in their verdicts. Callamard’s report into the “execution” is damning: “Evidence points to the 15-person mission to execute Mr Khashoggi requiring significant government coordination, resources and finances… Every expert consulted finds it inconceivable that an operation of this scale could be implemented without the crown prince being aware, at a minimum, that some sort of mission of a criminal nature, directed at Mr Khashoggi, was being launched.” Just in case Prince William is in need of some small talk.

Of course, a visit by a senior member of the Royal Family is never just ceremonial. It is an act of diplomacy, and symbolism too. The moral endorsement of the British crown will be cherished by the Saudi regime, which likes to think of itself as “royal” in the grand tradition of the Western monarchies, despite its parvenu origins. But Prince William’s visit raises uncomfortable questions — not only about Middle Eastern realpolitik in an era of shifting alliances, but about the values that the United Kingdom claims to uphold.

These questions have become especially acute in the wake of a recent High Court judgment against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It concerned Ghanem al-Masarir, a Saudi dissident living in Britain since 2003. Through his popular YouTube channel, The Ghanem Show, recorded in Wembley, al-Masarir uses satire to expose corruption and human rights abuses within Saudi Arabia. His reach is vast, amassing over 300 million views, primarily from audiences inside Saudi Arabia who seek alternatives to state-controlled narratives and pro-regime bots.

But the authorities are aware of him too. Al-Masarir has been under constant harassment since 2004. He claims that a large check was forged in an effort to break him financially; that his phones were infiltrated with Israeli-manufactured Pegasus spyware; that he was followed and assaulted in broad daylight; and that he received explicit death threats from individuals linked to the Saudi royal court. The most violent incident, al-Masarir says, occurred in August 2018 he was followed from a cafe and assaulted by two men near the Brompton Road entrance of Harrods. Al-Masarir alleged that during the beating, the attackers repeatedly shouted: “Who are you to talk about the family of al-Saud?” and “How dare you curse Prince Salman, we won’t allow it!” They called him a “slave of Qatar” and threatened to “teach him a lesson”. When an English friend who was with al-Masarir told them they were protected by the Queen and British police, the attackers retorted: “Fuck London — their queen is our slave and their police are our dogs.”

In 2010, al-Masarir was befriended by an individual claiming to be a Master’s student in the UK who repeatedly attempted to persuade him to travel to Italy or Egypt. He later discovered this man’s true identity: Rajeh al-Baqmi, the head of Saudi intelligence at the Saudi embassy in London. He also encountered Maher Mutreb, a Saudi intelligence officer at the embassy, who made an explicit warning that he should never leave the UK. This might have been a back-handed threat with a hint of protection, suggesting that unlike their Russian counterparts who were prepared to murder co-nationals in London or Salisbury, Saudi mafiosi are more comfortable conducting their nefarious operations outside the UK, in countries such as Turkey.

Mutreb is clearly not to be messed with. A brigadier general commanding the Saudi hit squad or “Rapid Intervention Force”, it was he who led the team charged with killing and dismembering Khashoggi, assisted by Dr Salah al-Tubaigy, a forensic pathologist who is thought to have wielded the bone saw. In the audio recordings revealed by Turkish intelligence — the Saudis had failed to sweep the consulate for bugs — it is Mutreb’s voice that dominates. “Keep pushing, don’t remove your hand!”, followed by: “It’s over, it’s over, it’s over,” with the sounds of plastic sheets and the whine of an electric saw. While there is no audio directly linking the Crown Prince to the Khashoggi murder, the circumstantial evidence is compelling. In a separate audio, leaked by the CIA, the phrase “tell your boss” occurs in a conversation between Mutreb and the Crown Prince’s de facto chief of staff, Saud al-Qahtani. As Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst, told The New York Times: “A phone call like that… is as close to a smoking gun as you’re going to get.”

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The disclosures implicating MBS in the murder will certainly be ignored in the current White House — whose incumbents include the Crown Prince’s close friend, Jared Kushner, the President’s son-in-law. But is it really always necessary for the UK to toe the US line? At the very least, the High Court ruling in the Ghanem al-Masarir case should give the Palace — and the Foreign Office — pause for thought. Saudi Arabia initially attempted to claim immunity under the 1978 State Immunity Act. However, the court ruled in 2022 that the Kingdom was not immune to these claims. After the Saudi state failed to pay court costs and its appeal was struck out, the final judgment was delivered on 26 January. Judge Pushpinder Saini found that on the balance of probabilities the Kingdom had been responsible for the physical attack on al-Masarir and for hacking his phone: “The KSA had a clear interest and motivation to shut down the claimant’s public criticism of the Saudi government.”

In its ruling, the court awarded al-Masarir more than £3 million in compensation for the psychiatric harm caused by hacking his phone as well as the physical assault. This marks a significant benchmark in the defense of human rights — though, given its refusal to take part in the legal proceedings, there is no certainty that the Saudi government will actually pay.

Nevertheless, any concerns that the British state has about criminality are outweighed by realpolitik. As David Hearst, an astute Middle East observer, has argued, a profound realignment is underway in the Arab world. It is not driven by palace intrigues, tribal rivalries, or the usual contests between regional proxies. Nor is it about Iran or political Islam — the two habitual anxieties of Sunni Arab rulers. And unlike the Arab Spring, it has not emerged from popular uprisings or mass protests. Yet its consequences could be just as far-reaching.

What has changed, according to Hearst, is that the region’s most populous Arab states — above all Saudi Arabia and Algeria, and potentially Egypt — have begun to recognize the threat of a shared project of Israel and the United Arab Emirates to reshape the Middle East. Their fear is that Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi intend to fragment Arab-majority or Arab-leaning states. This would enable the Israelis and Emiratis to control key maritime chokepoints, such as the Straits of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb, and entrench military and economic dominance across the Red Sea, the Horn of Africa, and beyond.

This strategy is already explicit in Israel’s actions: in its efforts to create de facto enclaves in Syria protecting the Druzes and Kurds; in its recognition of Somaliland, which gives it a foothold in the Horn of Africa; and in its general efforts to weaken Arab polities where national unity tends to be problematic. For the UAE, fragmentation has been a long-running method of power projection. It’s visible in Libya, where the UAE has provided military support to General Khalifa Haftar against the UN-supported government in Tripoli; in Sudan, where the UAE backs the genocidal Rapid Support Forces against the central government; and in southern Yemen, where the UAE armed and empowered the Southern Transitional Council (STC) in pursuit of a separatist state aligned with Emirati interests and open to ties with Israel.

Indeed, Yemen is the decisive fault line in the plan for regional fragmentation. What began as a campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood-linked al-Islah movement evolved into a broader attempt to carve out an Emirati client state in the south, centered on the port of Aden and extending east into the Hadhramaut valley. The separatists’ attempt to take over the port of al Mukalla in the Hadhramaut region at the end of last year proved a turning point. Saudi Arabia, now encircled on its southern frontier, felt that Emirati ambitions were now threatening its security — and duly responded with force. Backing official Yemeni government troops, it bombed STC positions in Mukalla, reversing much of Abu Dhabi’s decade-long project in a matter of days. Almost simultaneously, Israel’s recognition of the separatist government of Somaliland (it is the only UN state to formally do so) confirmed Saudi fears that these were not isolated moves but elements of a coordinated strategy across both sides of the Bab el-Mandeb.

The rift between Mohammed bin Salman and his former mentor, the Emirati president Mohammed bin Zayed, was now gaping. The pair were once close partners in resisting the Muslim Brotherhood and allied movements. Now, Riyadh has not only confronted Emirati proxies militarily but also publicly reframed Abu Dhabi as a destabilizing actor. The Saudi media attacks on Mohammed bin Zayed have been blistering, depicting the UAE’s president as a disruptive force rather than the trusted ally of yore.

And the break reflects a deeper recalculation. Saudi Arabia understands that its strategic weight — in terms of population, territory, and oil power — far exceeds that of the UAE. Once you remove the expat community living in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, there are barely one million Emirati citizens. Abu Dhabi may specialize in covert action and proxy warfare, but it cannot prevail against Riyadh when vital Saudi interests are at stake.

Meanwhile, Washington under Donald Trump has intensified Saudi unease by treating global energy resources as prizes to be seized and threatening to depress oil prices, undermining the kingdom’s fiscal stability. Riyadh has concluded that US military power does not equate to responsible governance, and that American adventurism routinely generates chaos it cannot manage.

So the Saudi turn is not moral but strategic. By resisting Emirati-Israeli plans for regional fragmentation, Riyadh is positioning itself as an autonomous Arab power, potentially aligning more closely with Turkey, Egypt, Algeria — and perhaps, even long-term, with Iran. What it favors is a regional security order independent of Washington and Tel Aviv.

Given the emerging regional configurations, the British government — and the Palace — would be right in thinking that Britain’s interests align more closely with the Saudi Kingdom which, like it or not, is emerging as a leading player in the region and a potential source of stability rather than with the disruptive UAE. But does all this mean that the heir to the throne must cosy up to his murderous Saudi counterpart?

Prince William has cultivated an image as a thoughtful, socially conscious public figure — engaged with environmental issues, interfaith dialogue, and the responsibilities of leadership. It does not befit that persona for him to associate himself too closely with a regime implicated in surveillance, murderous violence, and repression. If William proceeds with the visit, he will need to find ways of expressing a certain distance from his hosts. He should certainly decline any invitations to inspect MBS’s yacht, Serena. According to the anonymous Saudi activist who goes by the name Mujtahid, Jamal Khashoggi’s fingers are kept on board as a trophy.

Modern slavery is not limited to remote corners of West Africa. There are reportedly 1.1 million people living in modern slavery in the US, and 122,000 in the UK. Yet the numbers are clear, with the Arab world, and especially the Gulf, now a hub of modern slavery in the 21st century. Echoed in other corners of the Islamic world, Mali included, it speaks to a practice with deep cultural roots — and to how different societies choose to deal with their past in strikingly different ways.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, many Westerners tend to focus on their own historical relationship with slavery. But if the triangular Atlantic trade came strewn with blood, it was far from unique in either scale or timespan. Enduring some 400 years until the 19th century, European slavers turned some 14 million Africans into property. By contrast, the slave trade in the Muslim world has been even more enduring. Beginning in the 7th century, and continuing right into modern times, the institution has overseen the enslavement of up to 17 million souls.

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From early in the Islamic experiment, this behaviour has been justified on religious grounds: via the Quran,, the Sunnah, or traditions of the Prophet, and Shari’a law. To an extent, that’s endured until the present. Indeed the most famous — and shocking — recent example of slavery in the Muslim world came courtesy of the so-called Islamic State. During its short-lived, self-declared “caliphate”, the jihadis glorified in raping and enslaving Yazidi women and children, seeing slavery as an essential component of contemporary Islamic government. In 2014, Dabiq, their English-language magazine, even ran a piece on reviving the practice, likening its slave-trading fighters to the Companions of the Prophet almost 1,400 years before. At the same time, Dabiq gave specific instructions on how to share the human spoils of war. “Yazidi women and children,” it said, are to be “divided” among Islamic State fighters, all in apparent keeping with Shari’a law.

Nor was that all. ISIS also set up slave markets: which essentially functioned like brothels. One woman was sold 14 times, to 14 different men, and was raped by 12 of them. Some women smeared their baby’s excrement on their bodies to avoid being bought, while others claimed to have periods or professed to be sick. Some fought back. Many received punishment beatings, or were separated from their children and locked in basements amid rising sewage and the boiling heat of the Syrian desert. One woman’s five-year-old daughter was even hanged from a window for bedwetting. No wonder many of the victims describe their plight as something approaching hell.

ISIS, of course, is the exception rather than the rule: no one would argue that pro-slavery views are widespread across the Muslim world today. As far back as 1990, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation issued the non-binding Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, which denied the legitimacy of the institution. Like the ISIS example implies, meanwhile, contemporary voices in favour of slavery tend to be limited to the conservative or extremist fringe. In 2017, for instance, the Kuwaiti cleric Saalim bin Saad al-Taweel declared on his YouTube channel that slavery was “one of the virtues of Islam” since it provided infidels with the opportunity to convert to the faith. A few years earlier, the Saudi government cleric Sheikh Saleh al-Fawzan offered an unequivocal defence of slavery in a secretly recorded lecture. “Slavery is a part of Islam,” he declared, dismissing those who argued otherwise. “Whoever says such things is an infidel.”

As that clandestine recording implies, ISIS are unusual in defending Islamic slavery openly. Yet it is also true that abolition came relatively late in the day. Some of the last nations to abolish slavery include Iran (1928), Saudi Arabia (1962) and Oman (1970). Even relatively secular Turkey only got round to it in 1964, while Mauritania did so in 1981. The fact is that slavery, modern and hereditary, has lingered uncomfortably in parts of the Muslim world. That’s clear enough in the Gulf, where Asian migrant workers from countries like Nepal and the Philippines routinely end up as forced laborers. They may build the skyscrapers, and drive the cabs, and wait the swanky restaurants from Riyadh to Doha. But ensnared by the so-called kafala system, which forbids them from changing jobs without their employer’s permission, they’re also deeply vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. In the UAE alone, there may be 132,000 such workers.

So how is the Islamic world reckoning with the legacy of slavery? It’s a mixed picture, and not entirely encouraging. There may no longer be “a conspiracy of silence”, as Murray Gordon argued in Slavery in the Arab World in 1989. But a recent study of the life of an African slave in 19th century Iran begins with the words: “The history of slavery in Iran has yet to be written.” Writing last year, Zeinab Badawi came to a similar conclusion. While Arab societies benefited enormously over many centuries from “the blood, sweat and tears of African labor”, there has been no public debate on reparations. “The silence,” Badawi adds, “must be broken.”

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Yet if much of the Middle East continues to look the other way, a new generation of scholars has been making important inroads, debating slavery, slave-trading and abolition in books, academic articles and journalism. One good example is Nabil Matar, who’s deftly exposed the legacy of Mediterranean corsairing. The pirates captured hundreds of thousands of Europeans — and Europeans captured large numbers of Muslims, in a multifaith free-for-all — right across the early modern period.

Qatar, for its part, has also started to address the issue directly — albeit tentatively. In 2015, and with Doha under fire for exploiting migrant workers ahead of the 2022 World Cup, it unveiled the Bin Jelmood House. A former mansion, whose courtyard once teemed with enslaved Africans waiting to be sold, the site is now a museum exploring slavery in a global context. According to the museum, the story “begins in enslavement but ends in shared freedom and shared prosperity”. Pretty saccharine stuff, in other words, and hardly a genuine reckoning. You hear similar things elsewhere. “What should we have done?” is how one Arab in the Gulf put it to me the other day. “Everyone was doing it. That was business. Without it we would have starved.”

All the while, survivors of slavery across the Islamic world are battling to reclaim their stolen lives. Last year, I was in Nouakchott, the windswept capital of Mauritania and a repeat offender when it comes to hereditary racialized slavery. Here, in a tiny, sand-blown home of breeze blocks and corrugated metal, I met a remarkable woman called Habi. Like Hamey, she too had escaped decades of enslavement, explaining that it was only once she had been rescued, by her brother in 2008, that she realised she had never truly felt human before. “I’ve dedicated the rest of my life to fighting slavery,” Habi said, her eyes blazing with defiance. But given where countries like Mauritania are right now, she may have her work cut out.

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Captives And Companions: A History of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Islamic World is published by Allen Lane.