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Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Ruler of Dubai

“He looks much as his ancestors might have nearly two centuries ago when they took over this tiny fishing village on the shores of the Persian Gulf. But Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai and the prime minister of the United Arab Emirates [UAE], is a thoroughly modern prince,” Afshin Molavi wrote for Newsweek International (August 6, 2007). Best known in the West as a major player in the thoroughbred horse-racing world and for his grandiose and perhaps “over-the-top” real-estate mega-developments, the ruler of the emirate of Dubai—“the most famously booming city-state in the Persian Gulf,” as Ahmed Kanna put it in Middle East Report (Summer 2007)—is one of the region's wealthiest and most influential figures. Sheikh Mohammed, whose persona and family have become synonymous in the minds of many with the thriving city they govern and essentially own, has been described as an enlightened despot, a visionary modernizer, a competitive workaholic, “ultramodern, apolitical and open for business,” a “CEO Sheikh,” and, according to Scott MacLeod, writing for Time (April 30, 2006), “a very ambitious chap.” His “bold vision of transforming Dubai . . . ,” MacLeod write, “and raising [gross domestic product] from $8 billion to $37 billion in 15 years is urban planning on a cosmic scale.” While he rose from crown prince to ruler of the emirate only in 2006, after the death of his older brother, Sheikh Maktoum bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Mohammed has been the de facto ruler for more than a decade. Power in Dubai passed to Sheikh Mohammed from his late father, Sheikh Rashid, who, helped by the discovery of oil in the area five decades ago, “transformed Dubai from a collection of rag tag buildings surrounding a port to the economic hub of the Gulf region,” as Stuart Millar and Jamie Wilson noted for the London Guardian (December 10, 2001).

While money from the sale of oil has played a crucial role in the story of Dubai and has fueled many of Sheikh Mohammed's most ambitious projects, he has successfully diversified his emirate's economy beyond its dwindling oil supplies, courting foreign investors to develop new business sectors that include tourism, trade, construction, information technology, and finance. Under Sheikh Mohammed's guidance, Dubai has been transformed into one of the world's fastest-growing cities, with an economy expanding at a rate of about 16 percent a year. (The sheikh himself is one of the world's richest people.) Sheikh Mohammed has his share of critics, who charge him with, among other things, doing business with anybody—regardless of reputation or intent—who has money; taking advantage of the instability in the region; and exploiting cheap labor. Nevertheless, as Julia Wheeler put it for the BBC (January 5, 2006, on-line), “Internationally, Sheikh Mohammed is perceived as someone with whom the West can do business.” For his part, Sheikh Mohammed has said, according to Graeme Wilson, the author of the biography on the Dubai leader's official Web site: “I do not know if I am a good leader, but I am a leader. And I have a vision. I look to the future, 20, 30 years. I learned that from my father, Sheikh Rashid. He was the true father of Dubai. I follow his example. He would rise early and go alone to watch what was happening on each of his projects. I do the same. I watch. I read faces. I take decisions and I move fast. Full throttle.”

Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum is the third son of Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum. (In Arabic, “bin” means “son of.”) He was born on July 22, 1949 in what was then the independent Persian Gulf sheikhdom of Dubai and is now one of the seven emirates that make up the United Arab Emirates. In about 1830 the Al Maktoum family took over Dubai, then a small, backwater fishing and pearling settlement located fortuitously on the shipping routes of the Persian Gulf. Before they were known as the United Arab Emirates, the collection of neighboring Gulf provinces were called the Trucial States or Trucial Sheikhdoms, in reference to an 1892 agreement with the British, who wanted to protect their interests in the region and their sea route to India; the sheikhs agreed, in return for British protection, not to enter into relationships with other states or empires without British consent. That arrangement allowed the Al Maktoums to focus on business, establishing Dubai as a tax-free port to attract traders, shippers, and merchants. Oil was discovered in the Gulf provinces in the late 1950s and 1960s, just after the death of Sheikh Mohammed's grandfather. By the end of the latter decade, Britain, its international influence diminished, was forced to end its arrangement with the seven Trucial Sheikhdoms. On February 18, 1968 Mohammed's father, Sheikh Rashid, and Abu Dhabi's ruler, Sheikh Zayed, met to discuss the formation of a federation. The Union Accord, formalized in December 1971, included six emirates: Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Ash Sharjah, Al Fujairah (also spelled Fujayrah), Ajman, and Umm al-Qaywayn; Ras al-Khaymah joined the following year. The agreement created a Supreme Council made up of the rulers of all seven emirates, with the presidency going to the hereditary ruler of the Al Nahyan clan of Abu Dhabi, which possessed by far the largest oil reserves, and the post of vice president and prime minister going to the hereditary ruler of the Al Maktoum family of Dubai. Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al Nahyan of Abu Dhabi, the new ruler of the UAE, nationalized oil, which, along with a massive influx of foreign investment in the 1970s, led to the exponential growth of Dubai's economy and population as foreign workers, mostly from the Indian subcontinent (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal) and the Middle East, flocked to the booming port city. Dubai grew from just under 60,000 people in 1968 to nearly 185,000 in 1975, roughly doubling each decade thereafter; its population today is estimated at 1.5 million.

Sheikh Mohammed's early years were spent in the Al Maktoum home in Shindagha, Dubai, surrounded by his family, which was headed by his grandfather Sheikh Saeed, the ruler of Dubai. An “athletic and energetic child,” according to Graeme Wilson, Sheikh Mohammed enjoyed hunting and falconry, a traditional Arabian sport. His father also taught him how to ride horses, and the young prince was reportedly an avid equestrian from an early age. In 1955, after a couple of years of private tutoring in Arabic and Islamic studies, he was sent to the Al Ahmedia Primary School in Dubai. After roughly two years there, he was sent to Al Shaab School, where he spent another two years before moving on to Dubai Secondary School. He received a different sort of education at home, sitting beside his grandfather during the latter's informal daily majlis, or public meetings. On September 9, 1958 his grandfather died, and Mohammed's father, Sheikh Rashid, became Dubai's ruler. By all accounts, Sheikh Mohammed was a sharp student with “an almost photographic memory,” according to Wilson, and his father began grooming him to take over the armed forces and police someday. In the meantime, he wanted his son to have a British education, and in August 1966 Sheikh Mohammed enrolled at the prestigious Bell School of Languages in Cambridge, England. There, the young man took an interest in poetry, rowing, hunting, and horses. He completed a six-month training course at Mons Officer Cadet School, in Aldershot, England, graduating with the Sword of Honor award for “achieving the highest mark of any Foreign and Commonwealth officer cadet” in his year, as Wilson wrote.

On November 1, 1968, when Sheikh Mohammed was 19 years of age, his father named him head of Dubai Police and Public Security. Three years later Sheikh Rashid and the rulers of the neighboring emirates signed a constitution, creating the UAE. In December 1971 Sheikh Maktoum, Sheikh Rashid's eldest son, who was both crown prince of Dubai and prime minister of the UAE, appointed his younger brother Sheikh Mohammed as minister of defense, with the rank of general, making the 22-year-old the youngest minister of defense in the world at the time. Almost immediately Sheikh Mohammed had to respond to the destabilizing effects of the Arab-Israeli war, an attempted coup in the neighboring emirate of Ash Sharjah, and a hijacking at Dubai International Airport, among others incidents. In the 1970s his father, who was rapidly strengthening the economy of Dubai, began delegating major tasks to his third son, putting him in charge of Dubai's oil—a crucial element of the tiny emirate's fortunes—as well as the Dubai Dry Docks, which would become the largest facility of its kind in the region and a major global shipyard, bridging Europe and the Far East and positioning Dubai as a leading transport hub. On August 25, 1977 Sheikh Mohammed was put in charge of operations at Dubai International Airport.

In May 1981 Sheikh Rashid fell seriously ill. Three of his sons stepped into the huge void created by their father's extended convalescence: Sheikh Maktoum, Sheikh Hamdan, and Sheikh Mohammed. While they worked together successfully, Mohammed was seen as wielding greater power than his older brothers. Sheikh Rashid died on October 7, 1990, with Sheikh Maktoum taking over as ruler of Dubai; on January 4, 1995 he named Sheikh Mohammed crown prince of the emirate. On January 4, 2006, upon Maktoum's death, Sheikh Mohammed became ruler of Dubai. The following day, as a formality, he was elected vice president of the UAE.

Today, Dubai, which in many ways was modeled on the city-states of Singapore and Hong Kong, is often referred to—derisively by some, admiringly by others—as the Las Vegas of the Persian Gulf; Steve Kroft of the CBS television news magazine 60 Minutes (February 3, 2008, on-line) called it “the setting for a modern day gold rush” and “the playground and business capital of a new Middle East.” While the emirate's oil resources made for an unprecedented economic boom under the hands-on guidance of Sheikh Mohammed, it can be argued that his foresight, opportunism, and business-friendly policies have been a continuation of his forefathers' approach.

One of Sheikh Mohammed's most important achievements has been to make Dubai's wealth largely independent of oil, which now accounts for only between 5 and 10 percent of its gross domestic product. He has done so by taking advantage of Dubai's location—it is roughly equidistant from Singapore and London, England—to attract both workers and foreign investors from various nations, including Iran and India. The regional conflicts that have plagued Dubai's neighbors in the last several decades, including the civil war in Lebanon, the Islamic revolution in Iran, the Iran-Iraq and Gulf wars, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, have also played into its rulers' hands, providing them with both highly skilled and unskilled labor fleeing their war-torn and economically ravaged homelands and turning the city-state into one of the region's few stable, modern, and pragmatic business partners of Western countries and companies. But the fact that Dubai is seen as a land of opportunity for citizens of the Middle East and the Indian subcontinental countries, as well as Western expatriates, arguably owes as much to the Al Maktoums' creation of an attractive, capitalism-friendly environment as it does to the lack of opportunities elsewhere. Dubai “provides investors with a comfortable, Western-style, property-rights regime, including freehold ownership, that is unique in the region,” Mike Davis, an activist and the author of books including Planet of Slums, wrote in his scathing critique of the city-state's modus operandi for the Socialist Review (July 14, 2005, on-line). “Included with the package is a broad tolerance of booze, recreational drugs, halter tops, and other foreign vices formally proscribed by Islamic law. (When [expatriates] extol Dubai's unique ‘openness,' it is this freedom to carouse—not to organize unions or publish critical opinions—that they are usually praising.)” Famous for its high, tax-free salaries, Dubai is seen as a place to make money quickly. “In a region where everything is political, Dubai's greatest distinction—and the secret of its prosperity—is that it is almost utterly apolitical. Here, globalization's triumph has been almost complete,” Afshin Molavi wrote. “Economically, it is inspiring imitators throughout the Arab world. Everyone, it seems, is setting up free-trade zones, cutting taxes, creating industrial ‘cluster cities' and undertaking gargantuan feats of real estate and infrastructure in an attempt to lure tourists, trade and investment along the lines of the ‘Dubai model.'” What some might call opportunism, others have called a wildly successful, pragmatic survival mechanism for a small state surrounded by bigger, wealthier states. “I am often asked, ‘What are Dubai's political ambitions?’” Sheikh Mohammed wrote in an op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal (January 12, 2008). “Well, here's my answer: We don't have political ambitions. We don't want to be a superpower or any other kind of political power. The whole region is over-politicized as it is.” Dubai's tiny local population, and the fact that Sheikh Mohammed is not a head of state but rather the ruler of a province, mean that “much of the regional politics is left to the capital, Abu Dhabi—[making] it a more manageable place than more populous and troubled Arab countries. Dubai is not particularly threatened either from without or within,” as Roula Khalaf wrote for the Financial Times (May 4, 2007). As with many states that derive their income from lucrative nationalized resources, Dubai does not tax its citizens or foreign workers and therefore is not accountable to them as a democratic government would be; there has not been, in fact, any real push for democracy from the international community, businesses, or the local population. “In Dubai, there is no real opposition to the ruling Maktoum family. That's partly because ‘locals' make up only one eighth of the population,” Molavi wrote, going on to argue that “it would be wrong to call Dubai undemocratic . . . . It is more ademocratic, says the journalist Othman al-Omeir, the well-known publisher of the online liberal Arab newspaper Elaph.com. ‘Sheik Mohammed has shown us that efficient management of the state, a lightly regulated private sector and social freedoms might be more important at this moment in Arab history than free elections.'”

Sheikh Mohammed works closely with Mohammed al-Gergawi, Sultan bin Sulayem, and Mohammed Alabbar, who, as Dubai's most important businessmen, run both the private and state-owned companies that the sheikh created in order to “take the lead on development projects,” according to Roula Khalaf. The first developments, initiated by his father but then quickly passed on to Mohammed while still in their infancy, were the dredging of the Dubai creek to build the Jebel Ali port and industrial area, which became a tax- and tariff-free zone, and the creation of Dubai International Airport. Sheikh Mohammed is personally credited with the success of the airport and its showcase, the first of many of his pet projects, the state-owned Emirates Airlines. The first commercial Emirates flight took off on October 25, 1985. The airport and airline have cemented Dubai's reputation as one of the world's busiest cargo and tourism hubs. “People think we're just building Dubai,” Sheikh Mohammed said, according to Khalaf. “But no, we're accommodating 1.5 billion people in the central world, here, between the east and west.”

Since Sheikh Mohammed took the reins of Dubai's business development—and particularly in the last decade and a half—its economy has soared. Dubai presents itself as a “one-stop shop” for business opportunities and financial services, sports and entertainment, shopping, travel and tourism, information technology, construction and real estate. In 1995, shortly after being named crown prince, he announced the inauguration of the Dubai Shopping Festival, a month devoted to a commercial bonanza, which attracts hordes of customers. In addition, since then, he has brought several high-profile annual sporting events to the city, including a Professional Golf Association tournament, the Dubai Desert Classic; an Association of Tennis Professionals tournament; and the Dubai World Cup, the world's most lucrative horse race. Attracted by the shopping, entertainment, beaches, resorts, and, most recently, such landmarks as ostentatious hotels and other structures, tourists are flocking to “Sheikh Mo's” emirate. According to 2004 figures, roughly five million tourists were visiting the city every year, and that number is growing. Although the massive and flamboyant structures that have been constructed recently are seen by some observers as white elephants, many argue that they were not built to make a profit, at least not directly. Referring to the so-called seven-star Burj Al Arab hotel, the construction magnate Khalaf Al Habtoor told Matthew Swibel for Forbes (March 15, 2004) that even though it operates at a loss, the hotel functions as an advertisement for Dubai:

“People don't visit Paris without seeing the Eiffel Tower, do they?”

The words “endless ambition” often appear in articles about the sheikh, which note that he seemingly wants everything in Dubai to be the largest of its kind in the world; not surprisingly, he is regularly accused of arrogance and of having an obsession with trophy-like status symbols. “There's a little bit of Donald Trump in him, at least when it comes to showmanship,” Kroft said. (Sheikh Mohammed asked Kroft rhetorically, “If you can have it in New York, why can't . . . we have it here?”) Not content to limit his investments to the Persian Gulf, the sheikh has developed businesses internationally, many under the portfolio of one of his private companies, Dubai International Capital. He owns the Tussauds Group, the Travelodge hotel chain, and the Doncasters Group, an engineering company, and he has a stake in the automobile giant Daimler-Chrysler, among many other investments. (A multibillionaire, the sheikh is one of the richest people in the world, although it is difficult to distinguish between state and family assets, making it also hard to attach an accurate figure to his net worth.)

Some have charged that Dubai's economic boom has been built on what is akin to slave labor. Human-rights organizations have declared that hundreds of thousands of overworked, mostly Asian and subcontinental laborers there are forced to accept extremely low wages (often less than a dollar an hour) and live in subhuman conditions in what amount to secret camps, eyesores well hidden from the public spotlight. According to those reports, as part of their business-friendly approach, the Maktoums have removed state protection of contract workers and allowed companies to exploit them. The UAE's system of “in-sourcing” labor keeps the unemployment rate at zero but calls for sending workers home when their jobs are done or if they “create trouble,” which includes organizing unions. The workers often face dangerous conditions or go for months at a time without being paid.

March 2006 saw rioting among the more than 2,000 construction workers who were building what was to become Dubai's showpiece--the Burj Dubai, which, when completed, will be the world's tallest building. Because of media censorship, particularly in the area of labor issues, accurate figures regarding the number of strikes and riots in the past few years are difficult to obtain, but according to some observers, they have become increasingly common. In a November 2006 report for Human Rights Watch entitled “Building Towers, Cheating Workers,” Hadi Ghaemi and Sarah Leah Whitson presented detailed evidence of widespread exploitation in Dubai. The same year, Sheikh Mohammed and his subordinates began a program of labor reform. So far, the reforms have not satisfied human- and labor-rights groups or, as several recent investigative reports have revealed, the workers themselves. Sheikh Mohammed and others have argued that the conditions are not unique to Dubai and merely reflect market forces and the workings of capitalism. One justification that has been offered for the labor conditions is that the workers come to the emirate voluntarily and receive far better wages than they would in their home countries; critics counter that in taking that position, the sheikh has abdicated his responsibility to regulate the private sector. Some fear that Dubai, with its many disgruntled workers, and with its liberal Las Vegas–style night life (which includes the availability of alcohol and rampant prostitution), is a breeding ground and potential target for terrorism. Such fears came to light when, in 2005, Sheikh Mohammed's company bought Britain's P&O, a massive ports and ferries group, which once ran six important ports in the U.S.; in response, many American lawmakers vowed to refuse to allow any Arab company to control U.S. ports. Despite Dubai's having endangered itself as a staunch ally of the United States, backing the 1991 U.S.-led war on Iraq (though not the 2003 invasion) and allowing its ports to be used by U.S. Navy warships in the Gulf, Sheikh Mohammed was denounced by many in the media as a terrorist-backing dictator. “Sheik Mo's kingdom has at least 300,000 Iranians, a near equal number of expatriate Palestinian Arab mercenaries and many British expats in decision-making positions,” read an op-ed piece that ran in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review (April 8, 2007). “Sheik Mo shipped nuclear equipment from Pakistan to Iran, North Korea and Libya; he recognized the Taliban in Afghanistan; and, according to the FBI, he allowed their banking system to be used by Osama bin Laden prior to the 9/11 attacks.” The allegations of Sheikh Mohammed's dealings with nuclear arms and terrorists were never confirmed, and there has never been any proof of links between the Dubai ruler and bin Laden's terrorist network, Al Qaeda. Nonetheless, Sheikh Mohammed sold his U.S. assets in order to avoid confrontations that might have hurt his businesses.

In 2004 Sheikh Mohammed and his brother Sheikh Hamdan were alleged to have enslaved young boys from Africa, South Asia, and the Indian subcontinent for use as camel jockeys. A class-action lawsuit, filed in the U.S., claimed that tens of thousands of boys were victims of “one of the greatest humanitarian crimes of the last 50 years.” Camel racing, both a traditional sport and (for owners) a status symbol, is very popular in the emirate. According to the suit, as quoted by Andrew Gumbel in the London Independent (September 15, 2006), “Because [the sport] is extremely dangerous and arduous, especially for children, the Arab sheikhs would not make their own children jockeys and trainers. The sheikhs instead bought boys who had been abducted and trafficked across international boundaries and enslaved as young as two years old.” Investigative reporters and antislavery groups described a situation in which children were abused, undernourished, and given hormones in order to keep them small enough to ride the camels. Although the case was dismissed because of lack of evidence (it was refiled in 2007), in 2005 the UAE banned the use of child jockeys, repatriating thousands of children and making plans to replace them with lightweight robots. But some observers have claimed that the use of child jockeys, acquired through human trafficking rings, persists.

Despite that controversy, Sheikh Mohammed is recognized internationally as a major philanthropist. He gave a reported £1 million pounds to Bob Geldof's Live Aid benefit-concert fund in the 1980s and has donated undisclosed sums to help the people of Bosnia and Afghanistan, among other war-torn regions. In May 2007, at the World Economic Forum in Jordan, he announced plans to set up a $10 billion educational fund in the Middle East, one of the largest charitable donations in history. As quoted by Mark MacKinnon in the Toronto Globe and Mail (May 21, 2007), he said, “There is a wide knowledge gap between us and the developed world in the West and in Asia. Our only choice is to bridge this gap as quickly as possible, because our age is defined by knowledge.” In his Wall Street Journal piece, the Sheikh expanded on that idea, writing, “Education and entrepreneurship are the twin underpinnings for building a safer world. With these two institutions, we'll have fewer angry young people, fewer frustrated youths ready to embrace radicalism because they have nowhere else to turn.” Some saw the donation as at least partly a pragmatic business move; Eckart Woertz, the head of the economics program at the Dubai-based Gulf Research Centre, told Mark MacKinnon: “It's philanthropy, yes, but it's also important for Dubai. If Dubai wants to keep its growth rate, it needs an influx of knowledge.”

Known as one of the most influential figures—and one of the biggest spenders—in the world of thoroughbred horse racing, Sheikh Mohammed has done much to revolutionize and internationalize the sport. He owns one of the world's top breeding and racing stables, the Godolphin stud farm in Dubai, along with several stud farms in England, Ireland, and the United States, and his annual Dubai World Cup boasts the largest horse-racing purse on the planet. Graeme Wilson quoted him as stating that he has always felt a kinship with horses: “A love for horses runs in my blood. Don't forget that horses have been bred for centuries by Arabic tribes, they were used for hunting and fighting and they symbolise our history. Horse riding is more than merely sitting on a horse's back. It is nobility and chivalry.” Sheikh Mohammed is not only a prize-winning horse owner but a champion in endurance races (“the equestrian equivalent of a marathon,” according to Wilson). His sons Sheikhs Rashid, Hamdan, Ahmed, and Majid, have carried on the family tradition with the UAE national team, regularly topping world and Asian rankings and winning several championships.

Sheikh Mohammed is also known as a Nabati poet. Nabati verse is a literary form native to the Arabian peninsula and the Gulf and, according to Wilson, “represents a distinct literary voice for the people of that region.” Influenced by the classical poets Al Mutanabi, Al Buhtori, and Abu Tammam, he began writing verse in school. Later, he published poems under a pseudonym to be sure that any praise he won would not be due to his status. “Nowadays,” Wilson wrote, “he is widely acknowledged as one of the finest exponents of Nabati verse and his work is published under his own name.” The symbols that run through his poetry are the desert and the wildlife of the region, including gazelles and lanner falcons.

On February 1, 2008 Sheikh Mohammed named his second son, Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed, to succeed him as Dubai's crown prince. The same day, Sheikh Mohammed named his third son, Maktoum, who oversees Dubai's information-technology and media sectors, as deputy ruler of Dubai, ensuring that the system of rule by the Maktoum brothers would continue. Sheikh Mohammed lives in Dubai, where he maintains his executive office in Emirates Towers. He has 17 children and two wives. He married his senior wife, Sheikha Hind bint Maktoum bin Juma Al Maktoum, in 1979 and his second wife, Princess Haya bint Al-Hussein, who is a daughter of the late King Hussein of Jordan, in 2004. His memoir is scheduled to be published in 2008.