With uncertainty looming over the course of the war against Iran—the ceasefire notwithstanding—countries on the Arab side of the Persian Gulf are preparing for post-war times. India must sit up and pay attention to these preparations, which may be lost in the region’s habit of speaking with a forked tongue.
The United Arab Emirates, which was ahead of the rest of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) crowd in preparing for a future away from oil at least two decades ago, is in the lead once again in mapping plans for a post-Iran-war era. Take, for instance, the new law promulgated in Dubai precisely a fortnight after Israel and the US began bombardment of Iran. Under this law, signed by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum in his capacity as Dubai’s ruler, private companies are required to employ one UAE citizen for every foreigner in order to do any work for the government, or to validate any contract with the public sector. Hitherto, only 10 percent of a company’s workforce was required to be made up of Emiratis.
Typical of UAE government decisions, the new law will not be enforced in a disruptive manner. Emiratisation is to be achieved in a phased manner: private companies must increase the number of UAE citizens in their workforce by 1 percent every six months. So Indians, who make up the largest section of the UAE workforce, need not panic as the change will be gradual. But they must come to terms that Dubai, which provides the most employment opportunities to foreigners within the UAE, can no longer be their home forever. They must gradually plan to return home or relocate elsewhere.
The idea of ‘localisation’ in jobs—employing more citizens—is not new in the Gulf region. But hitherto, it was mostly a slogan. Only lip service was paid to the concept. In the UAE, the 10 percent mandate for employing citizens was never met or enforced. This is evident from a new directive to meet the target of one-tenth in emiratisation by the end of this year.
In 2020, Kuwait’s National Assembly set in motion a legislative process to reduce the number of foreigners in that country from 70 percent to 30 percent. A Bill was also mooted to impose a 15 percent ceiling on any single nationality. Both these measures would have resulted in 8 lakh Indians having to leave Kuwait, it was then estimated.
Kuwait is the only GCC country with the closest semblance of a democratically-elected National Assembly. Now, democracy has brought with it populist posturing and polarisation. Meanwhile, Kuwait’s institutions are far from strong. ‘Kuwaitisation’ in employment has political appeal, but collides with realities. Therefore, the effort to reduce foreigners by legislating a ceiling on their numbers never got anywhere. Some years ago, Saudi Arabia tried to replace foreigners with Saudi nationals in many jobs. That experiment also did not make much headway.
The new law promulgated by the Dubai ruler, therefore, will be watched with much interest in all GCC countries, because the Iran war has changed imperatives across the region. Huge property and infrastructure damages and economic losses caused by Iranian missiles and drones have uprooted the old economics of labour. The workforces in these countries have to be trimmed and productivity increased to make economic sense like never before. Profligacy cannot be the norm any more as repairs and rebuilding will require big expenditures.
Pushing more Gulf citizens into national workforces and reducing the number of foreigners—with checks on their outward remittances in some countries—will become necessary. Experiments like the one in Kuwait six years ago will have to go beyond exercises in populism and lip service. If such concrete shapes are indeed taken, they would affect expatriates in the medium run.
Countries such as Bahrain will have to make preparations of a different kind to deal with the future. The former island nation has been sitting on a knife-edge since the war began on February 28. If Saudi Arabia had not shown strategic foresight and opened the King Fahd Causeway in 1986 linking the two kingdoms, Iran would have been tempted to occupy Bahrain during the current conflict. Iran claims all of Bahrain for itself. Going by some of Russia’s reasons for its military operations against Ukraine, Shia Muslim countries may have endorsed any Iranian occupation of Bahrain because it has a Shia-majority population ruled by a Sunni monarch.
If the ceasefire talks proposed for later this week end the war but leaves Iran in a strong position, Bahrain will continue to live on the knife-edge. Its presidency of the United Nations Security Council this month shows how frantic Bahrain is to obtain global endorsement for its post-war security arrangements. The failure of its lobbying this week at the UN to get the council to pass a resolution on reopening the Strait of Hormuz—despite watering down the draft resolution to bare bones—shows weaknesses in its domestic and foreign policies. New alliances may have to be crafted after the war and reassessments will have to be made about Bahrain’s future.
Fortunately, an Arab version of the Soviet Union’s glasnost (openness) has prevailed in most Gulf Arab states since Iranian missile and drone attacks on them began. I was particularly struck by an article published on March 28 by UAE intellectual Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi, who is read by the region’s leaders. Al-Qassemi’s most interesting suggestion is to host more military bases in the UAE—and possibly within the GCC—to supplement the US military facilities, which are irritants for Iran, Houthis, Hezbollah and others.
He cites the example of the French Camp de la Paix (Peace Camp) naval air station that exists in Abu Dhabi. Al-Qassemi writes, “The UAE can opt to expand the French base and also extend an invitation to other friendly States to set up military bases, like Egypt or Morocco; both Arab nations have capable militaries with policies that largely align with the UAE’s.”
It’s the Gulf’s military version of India’s multi-alignment in foreign policy. It’s promising that the suggestion has come from an individual and not any government.
K P Nayar | Strategic analyst
(Views are personal)