After Winning Expo, Emirate Fumes at Allies It Says Didn’t Back It
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Version 0 of 1. DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — From the start, Dubai took the competition to land the 2020 World Expo rather seriously. Signs exalting Expo 2020 blanket every spare inch of this sprawling metropolis, a vast eruption of climate-controlled steel and glass. The local press printed special sections tracking every stage of the bid. At the airport, duty-free receipts bear logos congratulating the city for its eventual triumph at November’s end. Dubai’s unbridled enthusiasm might seem odd, given the World Expo’s declining hold on the public’s attention in recent decades. But the United Arab Emirates love nothing so dearly as a commercial pursuit, and for Dubai, the Expo offered a chance to grab global attention and celebrate its resurgent affluence after a long stretch of boom-and-bust upheaval. So it is perhaps unsurprising that simply winning was not enough. The Emirates wanted answers: Who among their allies had failed to support their vision? Almost immediately after the announcement that Dubai had beaten out three other cities — Izmir, Turkey; São Paulo, Brazil; and Yekaterinburg, Russia — for the 2020 event, word spread through the emirate’s business community that two of its close regional allies had cast their votes for others. The region’s biggest English-language daily newspaper, Gulf News, picked up on the growing outrage and decided to return the slap. The headline on a Dec. 14 editorial put the issue out on the table: “Expo 2020 vote: U.A.E. deserves answers from Pakistan and Afghanistan.” “Despite their assurances, those two countries declined to vote for Dubai, which leads to serious questions about their credibility as allies,” the editorial board wrote, calling it a betrayal given the aid and friendship the Emirates have shown to both nations. “Islamabad and Kabul chose to disregard all that binds us and turned their back on us at a critical moment,” the editorial also said. “And that is just incomprehensible.” The Pakistani consul general in Dubai struck back immediately, accusing the newspaper of producing what was “apparently an orchestrated attempt to damage and defame the historic fraternal relations between Pakistan and the U.A.E.,” according to his letter to the editor. He continued, “Not only is the language offensive, the article is factually incorrect.” Afghanistan made no such public statements. But reached by phone, the deputy minister of commerce and industry conceded that his country had opted to vote for Turkey. “Dubai is quite important for us, especially as a transit hub,” said Mozammil Shinwari, the deputy minister. “But this decision came mainly from the cultural and historical connections between Afghanistan and Turkey, as well as their contribution to the development of Afghanistan.” But the Emirati pride is a stubborn one. And while Dubai or the rest of the Emirates are unlikely to do something drastic like cut back aid or investment in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the lack of support was taken as a notably unamusing threat to Dubai’s business prospects. After all, one of Dubai’s most celebrated features is the four-million-square-foot Dubai Mall, which claimed 65 million visitors in 2012. It is also home to such retail extravaganzas as the Dubai Shopping Festival, which started on Thursday. For years, the city epitomized the boom-and-bust cycle the world has been reckoning with since 2008. While it can claim the tallest building in the world, the stunning Burj Khalifa, perhaps the most enduring image of Dubai during that stretch was of the forlorn airport parking lot, filled with luxury cars abandoned by Westerners unable to pay off crippling debts. It is worth noting that the Burj Khalifa, a monument to the city’s luxury and excess, was renamed for the leader of neighboring oil-rich Abu Dhabi, which rescued Dubai from its mountain of debt in 2009 with a $10 billion bailout. But the economy has made a surprising rebound in the intervening years, gaining the admiration of much of the Middle East. In 2012, home prices in Dubai became the fastest growing in the world, according to the real estate firm Knight Frank. Tourism surged 11 percent in the first half of 2013, while airport traffic rose almost 17 percent, to 32.6 million passengers, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit. In some respects, winning the 2020 World Expo offered a way for Dubai to emerge from its dark days with a new vigor. In decades past, the event captured the world’s imagination, introducing the telephone, the diesel engine and even the Eiffel Tower. The event’s trailblazing days are long gone, but it can still carry social and economic importance. Emirati officials saw it as a way to supercharge infrastructure and development projects that the government says it believes will strengthen tourism and businesses. While it will require an estimated $7 billion in financing, the event is expected to generate about $23 billion and bring 25 million attendees, according to official figures. Those figures, of course, might be optimistic. But the last World Expo, held in Shanghai in 2010, proved to be a fiscally solid investment. Figures published by the government, which put on the most expensive World Expo in history, said it had made $157 million when all was said and done. So Dubai campaigned hard to secure the necessary votes to win the event, and it had banked on support from Pakistan and Afghanistan to make it happen. “We expected those two countries to be the first to offer their backing, considering the close-knit relationship that binds our people,” the editorial said. The United Arab Emirates have taken an interest in helping to develop their war-torn ally, Afghanistan. The wealthiest Afghans park their money in Dubai, an estimated $4 billion spread among the 500 richest businessmen, according to the Afghan Embassy to the Emirates. There are numerous daily flights between Kabul, the Afghan capital, and Dubai. And since 2003, the Emirates have stationed soldiers in Afghanistan to assist in the delivery of aid and, occasionally, fight off Taliban ambushes. But when it comes down to playing favorites, the reality is that most Afghan officials and businessmen feel closer to Turkey. And as a regional power, Turkey remains the dominant player. Its economy is roughly twice the size of the United Arab Emirates’, and in the last decade, trade between Turkey and Afghanistan increased 36-fold, to $264 million as of 2010. Turkey’s aid and military presence also outstrip the contributions of the Emirates. “Turkey’s investment here is quite huge,” said Mr. Shinwari, the Afghan deputy minister. After the editorial kicked up a furor in Pakistan, from news media and officialdom alike, Gulf News felt compelled to weigh in again. The headline this time: “Gulf News stands by editorial on Expo 2020 vote.” |