Nowhere does compromise quite like Dubai. It is a city-state in one of the most conservative regions of the world that manages to attract millions of Western tourists every year. It is a place that has avoided the religious and tribal conflicts of its neighbors while pursuing a single-minded foreign policy. Before the crash, it was feted in Western capitals as an example of a progressive Arab model of development. And when the global economy faltered, it was ridiculed as an example of the worst excesses of laissez-faire capitalism.
But the downturn has highlighted other, more complex compromises than the obvious ones -- and the consequences go further than the clichéd headlines about seven-star hotels and indoor ski slopes would suggest. Dubai, an emirate with seven times more expatriates than locals, is going through a major identity crisis. And the resolution of its crisis could have a serious impact on its relationships with the six other emirates in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and its regional neighbors, including, crucially, Iran.
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It's easy to forget that Dubai is a conservative Islamic emirate, with a set of rules to match. Public displays of affection are not allowed, men and women aren't supposed to stay in the same room unless they're married, and public drunkenness is illegal. But these rules go almost entirely unenforced because if they were, Dubai's tourism industry would collapse.
So instead, Dubai has operated under a "don't ask, don't tell" policy, which covers everything from its attitudes toward alcohol and sex to its often murky trading partners. And unsurprisingly, a massive influx of Westerners over the last decade -- in 1996, 1.9 million visitors came to the emirate, a figure that rose to around 7 million in 2009 -- has brought consistent cultural clashes between tourists and local authorities. Even long-term expatriates (only 4 percent of whom are Western) often have no idea what is allowed and what isn't.
This system has functioned, more or less, for years. But as Dubai's economy faltered and the UAE's local population grew more frustrated at the country's changing demographics, ruptures started to show. Locals are getting frustrated with Dubai's cultural ambiguities and the vagueness of Emirati laws that leave Westerners confused about social mores. As Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi, an Emirati commentator, wrote in the Abu Dhabi-based National newspaper last month, "It is time that the UAE has a serious conversation with itself about what is and isn't acceptable in public. It is no longer possible to expect that these issues will sort themselves through a policy of ambiguity."
The ambiguity was illustrated last month when the Dubai city government issued a circular banning the use of alcohol in all food served in restaurants and hotels. Barely 48 hours later, it claimed there was no ban and that the whole thing was a "misunderstanding."
Dubai's police, too, have become increasingly active: In recent weeks, expatriates have made news for kissing in public and sending allegedly explicit text messages.
According to Christopher Davidson, author of Dubai: The Vulnerability of Success, the crackdown is a threat to the mainstay of Dubai's economy: the 7 million tourists who bring in an estimated $1.5 billion each year. "The latest string of incidents is pushing Dubai precariously close to the point of no return when it comes to tourism potential," Davidson says.
If the crackdowns are a signal that Dubai's government, spooked by the financial crisis, is planning to pass broader Islamic laws -- or at least enforce the ones it already has -- Dubai's pre-eminence as a regional business and tourism hub could be seriously in jeopardy. As one Irish businessman told me, "I don't want to bring my family up in Kuwait or Abu Dhabi as Dubai is far more open, but if Dubai were to become stricter, I would take a job somewhere else in the Gulf where the pay is better."
And yet such crackdowns are nothing new, as Jim Krane, a nonresident fellow at the Dubai School of Government, points out. In his book, City of Gold, he writes, "Vice cleanups have been a Dubai staple for generations. There was a crackdown on hookers in Deira in 1936 when Sheikh Saeed's wali forced them to get married or leave town."
What is new is the increasing lack of identity many Emiratis feel in their own country. At a conference on national identity last year, Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, professor of political science at United Arab Emirates University, said the UAE's 800,000 citizens "are lost" among millions of expats. "My anxiety is for the younger generation, that they don't know a lot about their culture and history and we fail to tell them about our history and traditions," he told the conference, titled "Who Am I? Who Are You? A Dialogue on National Identity." This belief was reiterated last month during a session of the Federal National Council, a 40-member quasi-parliamentary body, in which some members criticized the lack of "Emirati values" in the country's media. This week, the National reported that many Emiratis are moving back to the deserts, alienated by the large foreign populations in urban areas.
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