UAEs relatively open borders and economy have won praise from advocates of expanded freedoms in the Middle East while producing financial excesses, social ills such as human trafficking, and opportunity for UAE-based Iranian businesses to try to circumvent international sanctions. The social and economic freedoms have not translated into significant political change; the UAE government remains under the control of a small circle of leaders who allow citizen participation primarily through traditional methods of consensus-building. To date, these mechanisms, economic wealth, and reverence for established leaders have enabled the UAE to avoid wide-scale popular unrest. Since 2006, the government has increased formal popular participation in governance through a public selection process for half the membership of its consultative body, the Federal National Council (FNC ). But, particularly since the Arab uprisings that began in 2011, there has been an increase in domestic criticism of the unchallenged power and privileges of the UAE ruling elite as well as the spending of large amounts of funds on elaborate projects that cater to tourists. The leadership has resisted any dramatic or rapid further opening of the political process and has suppressed Muslim Brotherhood-linked Islamists and secular opposition activists, drawing substantial criticism from human rights groups. On foreign policy issues, the UAE has become increasingly assertive in recent years to try to achieve regional stability, using primarily its ample financial resources. The UAE was the first Gulf state to order the most sophisticated missile defense system sold by the United States, demonstrating its support for U.S. efforts to assemble a regional missile defense network against Irans missile force. The UAE also has implemented significant financial and economic sanctions against Iran, while seeking maintaining trade and commercial ties with and thereby avoiding antagonizing that large neighbor. The UAE has de ployed about 250 troops to Afghanistan since 2003 and pledges to keep some forces there after the existing international security mission there ends in 2014. In 2011, it sent 500 police to help fellow Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) state Bahrain confront a major uprising by its Shi ite majority; UAE pilots flew combat missions against Muammar Qadhafi of Libya; and the UAE jo ined the GCC diplomatic effort that brokered a political solution to the unrest in Yemen. The UAE is financially backing armed rebels in Syria and it is giving substantial aid to the transitional government of Egypt that followed the military ousting of President Mohammad Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood leader. The UAE also donates large amounts of international humanitarian and development aid, for example for relief efforts in Somalia and for the Palestinians.


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    Title :

    United Arab Emirates (UAE): Issues for Policy. October 17, 2013


    Contributors:
    K. Katzman (author)

    Publication date :

    2013


    Size :

    31 pages


    Type of media :

    Report


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English