After the Sheikhs: The Coming Collapse of the Gulf Monarchies (18 page)

The other Gulf monarchies have also made high profile purchases in the West, although due to greater caution or more limited resources they have tended to capture less attention. Kuwait’s Investment Dar, for example, currently owns 51 per cent of Britain’s Aston Martin luxury car company
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—a brand normally associated with James Bond and other British action movies. Even Bahrain has been active, despite more modest sovereign wealth investment capabilities, with the state-backed Mumtalakat Holding Company taking a 30 per cent stake in Britain’s McLaren Group in 2007—manufacturer of the McLaren supercar and owner of the multiple F1 championship-winning McLaren Formula One team.
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In 2011 Mumtalakat increased its stake to 50 per cent, perhaps explaining McLaren’s initial reluctance to boycott the 2011 Bahrain Grand Prix following the first wave of protests in the kingdom, as discussed later in the book.

The Gulf monarchies’ hosting of increasingly high profile international sports events can also be considered a component of this strategy, as although these are not directly connected to investments in Western companies and are also intended to contribute to economic diversification (namely supporting nascent tourism industries) in the region, they nonetheless make a strong contribution to the international sports industry and help boost awareness of the Gulf monarchies among primarily western audiences. Alongside Bahrain, Abu Dhabi also hosts an annual Formula One Grand Prix, while Dubai hosts an ATP tennis tournament and European PGA golf tournament, among numerous other events. Qatar’s hosting of the 2022 FIFA World Cup is now by far the strongest example. Having defeated bids from several other countries, including the US and Japan, Qatar has committed to massive spending in order to create the necessary infrastructure for the event, including at least twelve brand new, world class stadiums. It has been estimated that the total cost will be around $211 billion, with $163 billion being spent on the stadiums and $47 billion being spent on transport infrastructure. Thus a decade looms of lucrative contracts for construction companies and sports-related industries, with Qatar likely to keep winning soccerrelated headlines in Western and other international newspapers for years to come. Meanwhile Qatar is also intending to bid for both the 2017 World Athletics Championships and the 2020 Olympic Games.
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Offering further evidence of the Gulf monarchies’ soft power strategy has been the increasing number of explicit gifts and donations to institutions and organisations in the West. In some senses, even though these involve wealth transfers from developing countries to developed countries, they can be viewed as a form of development assistance. Unsurprisingly, Qatar has been particularly active in this regard with its ambassador to the US visiting New Orleans in 2006 and pledging $100 million to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina. When asked to explain, the ambassador stated that this ‘wasn’t about improving Qatar’s image in the US… or about public diplomacy’. Nevertheless, Qatar’s gift was one of the largest foreign grants in the wake of Katrina, with one prominent Louisiana observer predicting that ‘the [Qatari] ambassador would be met with lots of questions and praise for his country’s benevolence when he comes to the region’.
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But even more directly underlining the emirate’s soft power strategy, when Qatar’s prime minister was thanked by a US dignitary for the gift, he reportedly replied that ‘We might have our own Katrina one day’,
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clearly hinting at Qatar’s vulnerability and potential need for US protection. Another recent example of Qatari development assistance to the West is its setting up of a $50 million fund in 2011 to help young entrepreneurs in Paris’ impoverished and predominantly immigrant North African suburbs or
banlieues
. Described as ‘part of a broadening effort by the small country to expand its international presence through investment and diplomacy’ the gift is likely to be well received by the French government, which has been accused of abandoning these restive, high unemployment, districts.
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The UAE has similarly been involved in urban regeneration projects, With Abu Dhabi having signed an agreement worth a reported $1.5 billion with Manchester City Council and regeneration body New East Manchester in 2011 to develop an 80 acre site close to the soccer stadium, thus tying in with Abu Dhabi’s ownership of Manchester City Football Club. There are plans to build a cluster of new sporting facilities in addition to a swimming pool with the aim of ‘using sport to inspire and transform the lives of children in an area with massive deprivation—and some of the lowest life expectancies in Britain’.
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In September 2009, at the exact time when the UAE was waiting for the US Congress to ratify its civilian nuclear deal (which had been delayed due to allegations concerning the Abu Dhabi ruling family, as discussed later), a large donation was made to the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington,
DC. Amounting to $150 million—reportedly the largest ever grant given to paediatric surgery—the money has been channelled via the Abu Dhabi government-backed Sheikh Zayed Institute and, according to the Center’s president, will ‘…allow us to serve the world for the next 100 years’.
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Connecting the strategies of development assistance to the West and support for Islamic credentials, both the UAE and Saudi Arabia have also been building new mosques in Western Europe. Most recently, in late 2010 construction work was completed on Europe’s largest mosque, in the Netherlands, financed by Dubai’s Al-Maktoum Foundation—named after the emirate’s ruling family. Located in Rotterdam, the mosque can accommodate 3,000 worshippers, boasts two fifty metre tall minarets, and also houses a centre for ‘charity, mutual understanding, and forgiveness’. Strongly opposed by Dutch far-right movements, which have stated that ‘this horrible thing doesn’t belong here but in Saudi Arabia’, the mosque is nevertheless likely to prove extremely popular with Rotterdam’s substantial Muslim population.
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Elsewhere, however, opposition has been more robust, and the mosque financing strategy in Western Europe may prove increasingly awkward for the Gulf monarchies involved. In Norway, for example, attempts by Saudi Arabia’s Tawfiiq Islamic Centre to spend tens of millions of dollars on building new mosques have been blocked by the government. Explaining in 2010 that ‘…it would be a paradox and unusual to accept funding from sources in a country where there is no religious freedom’ and that ‘…the acceptance of such money would be a paradox since it is a punishable crime to establish the Christian faith in Saudi Arabia’,
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Norway’s minister for foreign affairs has seemingly closed the door on further Saudi funding.

Soft power in the West: cultural institutions

In some ways an extension of the development assistance model, especially when the Western institutions involved have run into financial difficulties, and in others a more subtle example of the sponsorship and naming rights strategy, the Gulf monarchies have been increasingly active in supporting well known museums, art galleries, and other cultural institutions. The UAE has been financing a new art research centre in Paris and is providing $32 million to help the Louvre repair a wing of the Pavilion de Flore. When complete, the latter will host a new gallery of
international art named after the former ruler of Abu Dhabi.
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Moreover, Abu Dhabi has reportedly been paying for the $10 million restoration of Chateau Fontainebleau’s Napoleon III theatre—controversially to be renamed after Khalifa bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, the current ruler. Following the signing of the deal in 2007 Abu Dhabi’s representative stated that ‘This is proof to the deep-rooted cultural and tourism relations between the UAE and France. We consider it as an additional pillar of our bilateral relations’ before explaining that ‘Sheikh Khalifa’s initiative is part of a long history of cooperation between France and the UAE and is set to be followed by other cultural partnerships’. Despite allowing the renaming of a building that is part of a classified UNESCO World Heritage Site and was home to more than thirty French monarchs and emperors, the French minister for culture claimed that ‘…this current cultural cooperation is proof to the approach the two counties adopt in further boosting cooperation and peaceful rapprochement among the world’s cultures and civilisations’.
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As part of the same strategy, although in reverse, some Gulf monarchies have imported the biggest western cultural institutions into the Gulf itself, often by providing massive financial inducements which have clearly been used to bolster the resources of the home institutions. Most astonishingly, at a total cost of over $27 billion, Abu Dhabi’s Tourism and Development Investment Company is currently developing Saadiyat—‘the island of happiness’. Intended to become the emirate’s main cultural hub, it is being linked by ten bridges to the mainland and will host branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim in addition to a new Sheikh Zayed National Museum, a performing arts centre, a maritime museum, and a nineteen-pavilion cultural park. The Louvre Abu Dhabi will alone cost $110 million to build, and TDIC has agreed to pay a further $520 million for the Louvre brand name and the loan of various exhibitions and collections. Being built at similarly great expense, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi will be the sixth international branch of the renowned New York museum. Designed by Frank Gehry, described by
Vanity Fair
as ‘the most important architect of our age’,
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the new building will cover over 30,000 square metres and become one of the world’s largest exhibition centres.
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When the French president visited Abu Dhabi in 2009 to open a new French military base in the emirate—as discussed later—he went out of his way to state that ‘…relations between the two countries go beyond economic issues … there are rich cultural
relations between the two countries in light of innovative, promising initiatives such as Louvre Abu Dhabi’ before assuring that ‘…France is on your side in the event your security is at risk. France… is ready to shoulder its responsibilities to ensure the stability in the region. This region is strategic for the world balance’.
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Although the Sheikh Zayed National Museum is not a product of western branding, it is nonetheless being designed by Norman Foster’s Foster and Partners of London, and the British Museum is being paid to be the project’s primary consulting partner, advising on a range of issues from design, construction, and museography, to educational and curatorial programming as well as training. Upon completion, the British-designed museum will feature at least five different galleries dedicated to glorifying aspects of the former ruler’s life, namely his ‘interest in protecting the environment’, his commitment to heritage and the ‘traditional values close to his heart through his life’, his ‘role in the political and social unification of the Emirates’, his role in ‘establishing education for all of the UAE’, and his ‘humanitarianism… and support of Islamic values and religious tolerance’.
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As with building mosques in Europe and other development assistance to Western countries, the funding of such high profile cultural institutions by Gulf monarchies has also on occasion generated opposition. The various Saadiyat Island developments, which were originally scheduled to be completed in 2013 but which have now been delayed pending a government bailout of TDIC,
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have recently been boycotted by 130 leading artists on the grounds that the expatriate workers involved in constructing the museums are being routinely exploited. Published in March 2011, the artists’ pledge states that ‘[they will] refuse all cooperation with the project until the Guggenheim and its partners guarantee enforcement mechanisms to reimburse workers for any recruitment fees paid, and hire a reputable independent monitor that will make its findings about working conditions public’. Meanwhile a spokesperson for Human Rights Watch has stated that ‘this leading group of artists is making it clear that they will not showcase their work in a museum built by abused workers, and that the steps taken to date by Guggenheim and TDIC are inadequate… if the Guggenheim and TDIC fail to address the artists’ concerns, the museum may become better known for exhibiting labour violations than art’.
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Saudi Arabia’s attempt to fund Book World Prague—one of the world’s largest book fairs—also proved controversial. In 2011 Saudi
Arabia was listed as one of the fair’s ‘guests of honour’ and reportedly a ‘huge and lavish stand’ was erected, taking a central position in the fair. This was ‘…in the form of a turreted (and carpeted) mock fortress, replete with scale models of Mecca and Medina, a children’s play area, some blonde women in Saudi costumes, and plenty of individually plasticwrapped dates for all. There were even a few books, presumably as a concession to this being a book fair’. There were, however, no Saudi authors present at the fair, most notably no Abdo Khal, despite his winning of the 2010 International Prize for Arabic Fiction for a book—
Spewing Sparks as Big as Castles
—that remains banned in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia’s involvement, therefore, was heavily criticised, being described as ‘…an oppressive regime hoping to buy itself some cultural legitimacy with its petrodollars’ and ‘…the hijacking of literary culture for use as instant kudos by the distinctly anti-literary regime of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’.
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