By James M. Dorsey
The
hacked email account of Yousef al-Otaiba, the influential United Arab
Emirates ambassador in Washington, has provided unprecedented insight into the
length to which the small Gulf state is willing to go in the pursuit of its
regional ambitions.
Mr. Al-Otaiba is unlikely to acknowledge the contribution
the insight has made to understanding the ten week-old Gulf crisis and
diplomatic and economic boycott of Qatar that was engineered by the UAE. The
ambassador may, however, have greater appreciation for the contribution his
private email exchanges have made to the theory and policy debate about the
place of small states in an increasingly polarized international order.
Similarly, Mr. Al-Otaiba is unlikely to see merit in the
fact that his email exchanges raise serious questions, including the role and
purpose of offset arrangements that constitute part of agreements on arms sales
by major defense companies as well as the relationship between influential,
independent policy and academic institutions and their donors.
To be sure, Mr. Al-Otaiba is likely to be most concerned
about the potential damage to the UAE’s reputation and disclosure of the Gulf
state’s secrets caused by the hack. No doubt, the selective and drip-feed
leaking of the ambassador’s mails by Global
Leaks, a mysterious group that uses a Russian email address, is designed to
embarrass the UAE and support Qatar in its dispute with an alliance of nations
led by the Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
Mr. Al-Otaiba as well as his interlocutors have not
confirmed the authenticity of the mails. The UAE embassy did however tell The
Hill that Hotmail address involved was that of the ambassador. Moreover, various
of the leaks have been confirmed by multiple sources.
The UAE is hardly
the only government that donates large sums to think tanks and academic
institutions in a bid to enhance soft power; influence policy, particularly
in Washington; and limit, independent and critical study and analysis. While
Gulf states, with the UAE and Qatar in the lead, are among the largest
financial contributors, donors also include European and Asian governments.
Think tank executives have rejected allegations that the donations undermine
their independence or persuade them to do their donor’s bidding.
The latest leaks, however, raise the debate about the funding
of think tanks and academic institutions to a new level. Mails leaked to The Intercept, a muckraking online
publication established by reporters who played a key role in publishing
revelations by National Security Council whistle blower Edward Snowden, raise
questions not only about funding of institutions, but also the nature and
purpose of offset arrangements incorporated in arms deals. Those deals are intended
to fuel economic development and job creation in purchasing countries and
compensate them for using available funds for foreign arms acquisitions rather
than the nurturing of an indigenous industry.
The
mails disclosed by The Intercept as well as The Gulf Institute, a
Washington-based dissident Saudi think tank, showed that a UAE donation of $20
million to the Washington-based Middle East Institute (MEI) involved funds funnelled
through Tawazun, a Abu Dhabi-based
investment company, and The Emirates
Center for Strategic Studies and Research (ECSSR) that is headed by UAE
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, that had been paid to the UAE in cash rather
than projects by defense contractors as part of agreements to supply military
equipment.
The US embassy in Abu Dhabi reported as far back as 2008 in
a cable to the State Department published by Wikileaks that “reports as well as
anecdotal evidence” suggested that “that defense contractors can
sometimes satisfy their offset obligations through an up-front, lump-sum
payment directly to the UAE Offsets Group” despite the fact that “the UAE's
offset program requires defense contractors that are awarded contracts valued
at more than $10 million to establish commercially viable joint ventures with
local business partners that yield profits equivalent to 60 percent of the
contract value within a specified period (usually seven years).”
The cash arrangement raises questions about the integrity of
offset arrangements as well as their purpose and use. In the case of MEI, it
puts defense contractors in a position of funding third party efforts to
influence US policy. In an email to Mr. Al-Otaiba, MEI president Wendy
Chamberlain said the funding would allow the institute to “counter the more
egregious misperceptions about the region, inform US government policy makers,
and convene regional leaders for discreet dialogue on pressing issues.
The UAE has been a leader in rolling back achievements of
the 2011 popular Arab revolts that toppled the leaders of four countries,
promoting autocratic rule in the region, and opposing opposition forces,
particularly the controversial Muslim Brotherhood.
The donations by countries like the UAE and Qatar to
multiple think tanks as well as the source of the funding links to the even
larger issue of strategies adopted by small states to defend their independence
and ensure their survival in a world in which power is more defuse and
long-standing alliances are called into question.
The leaked emails provide insight into the UAE’s strategy
that is based on being a power behind the throne. It is a strategy that may be
uniquely Emirati and difficult to emulate by other small states, but that
suggests that given resources small states have a significant ability to punch
above their weight.
US intelligence officials concluded that the
hacking of Qatari news websites to plant a false news report that sparked
the Gulf crisis in early June had been engineered by the UAE. The UAE move was
embedded in a far broader strategy of shaping the Middle East and North Africa
in its mould by turning Saudi Arabia into its policy instrument.
Leaked
email traffic between Mr. Al Otaiba and three former US officials, Martin
Indyk, who served in the Clinton and Obama administrations, Stephen Hadley,
former President George W. Bush’s national security advisor, and Elliott Abrams
who advised Presidents Bush and Ronald Reagan, as well as with Washington Post
columnist David Ignatius documents what some analysts long believed but could
not categorically prove. It also provided insight into the less than idyllic
relationship between the UAE and Saudi Arabia that potentially could become
problematic.
In the emails, Mr. Al-Otaiba, who promoted Saudi Crown
Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Washington as Saudi Arabia’s future since he came
to office in 2015, was unequivocal about UAE backing of the likely future king
as an agent of change who would adopt policies advocated by the UAE.
“I think MBS is far more pragmatic than what we hear is
Saudi public positions,” Mr. Al-Otaiba said in one of the mails, referring to
Prince Mohammed by his initials. I don’t think we’ll ever see a more
pragmatic leader in that country. Which is why engaging with them is so
important and will yield the most results we can ever get out of Saudi,” the
ambassador said. “Change in attitude, change in style, change in approach,” Mr.
Al-Otaiba wrote to Mr. Ignatius.
In another email, Mr. Al-Otaiba noted that now was the time
when the Emiratis could get "the most results we can ever get out of Saudi.”
In a subsequent email dump, published by Middle
East Eye, an online news site allegedly funded by persons close to Qatar,
if not Qatar itself, and also sent to this writer, Mr. Al-Otaiba, makes no
bones about his disdain for Saudi Arabia and his perception of the history of
Emirati-Saudi relations.
Writing to his wife, Abeer Shoukry, in 2008, Mr. Al-Otaiba
describes the Saudi leadership as "f***in' coo coo!" after the
kingdom’s religious police banned red roses on Valentine’s Day. The powers of
the police have been significantly curtailed since the rise of Prince Mohammed,
who has taken steps to loosen the country’s tight social and moral controls.
In one email, Mr. Al-Otaiba asserts that Abu Dhabi has
battled Saudi Arabia over its adherence to Wahhabism, a literal, intolerant and
supremacist interpretation of Islam, for the past 200 years. The ambassador
asserted that the Emirates had a more "bad history" with Saudi Arabia
than anyone else.
Taken together, the leaked emails involving multiple other
issues, including the UAE’s
military relationship with North Korea as well as its competition with Qatar
to host
an office of the Afghan Taliban, serve not only as a source for
understanding the dynamics of the Gulf crisis, but also as case studies for the
development of more stringent guidelines for funding of policy and academic
research; greater transparency of military sales and their offset arrangements;
and the place of small states in the international order as well as the factors
that determine their ability to maintain the independence and at times punch
above their weight.
To be sure, that was not the primary purpose of the leaks.
The leaks were designed to further Qatar’s cause and undermine the UAE’s
arguments as well as embarrass it. The jury is still out on the degree to which
the leakers may have succeeded. Nonetheless, one unintended consequence of the
leaks is that they raise issues that go to the core of a broad swath of issues,
including accountability, transparency, economic and social development, and
international relations.
Dr. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S.
Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the University of
Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and the author of The Turbulent World
of Middle East Soccer blog, a book with
the same title, Comparative Political Transitions
between Southeast Asia and the Middle East and North Africa, co-authored with Dr.
Teresita Cruz-Del Rosario and four forthcoming books, Shifting
Sands, Essays on Sports and Politics in the Middle East and North Africa as
well as The Gulf Crisis: Small States Battle It Out, Creating Frankenstein: The
Saudi Export of Ultra-conservatism and China and the Middle East: Venturing
into the Maelstrom.
