The UAE is a tool in the service of the US and Israel

The United Arab Emirates is a relatively a young country that is small in both area and political weight. Nevertheless, it has the ability to conspire against Muslims, not only in the Arab world, but also around the world, from Mali to Turkey, the Balkans — where it is allied with anti-Muslim Serbs — and India, as well as China.

What sort of country is the UAE, the group of several small emirates that has not yet completed its fifth decade? Is it driven by self-ambition and expansionism? Or is the UAE being manipulated to serve the interests of others? Where does its force and influence come from which enables it to move north, south, east and west?

It doesn’t actually take much to see that the UAE authorities are not actually in control; that they are being used by others. The UAE, in fact, is a state that has dedicated its resources to serve foreign agendas. As Turkey’s Minister of Defence Kulusi Akar said recently, it is just a pawn that is being exploited remotely by several countries to serve their political and military ambitions. Who are these parties, he asked rhetorically; on whose behalf is the UAE acting?

Akar is aware, of course, that the UAE is a tool in the hands of the Zionists to move whenever and wherever they want. It is, therefore, an arm of the Zionist colonial entity, Israel. In this sense, too, we can deduce that the small Gulf State is working for the US and its colonial projects in the region at the expense of the Arab world from which it has separated itself.

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It is possible that we only realised that the UAE is playing such a role after the outbreak of the Arab Spring revolutions, as many of us were fascinated by its transformation from a barren desert into a green haven. The government built valleys and artificial lakes with a sophisticated infrastructure, luxurious hotels, high end shops and enchanting sights that captivate people’s eyes and hearts. We thought that this was all about the ambition of a young country that was able to make such a major shift, and admired this ambition and encouraged it, while wishing that a similar transformation could take place in all Arab countries.

Many young people hoped to get a job in the Emirates, until its mask fell off after the Arab Spring and we saw the role played by the UAE against the people across the region to abort their revolutions; and how it was used by the Zionists to stab the people in their back, divide us and flood our region with pools of blood in Syria, Libya and Yemen.

This small country feared that the winds of the Arab revolutions would sweep through and grant its own people a chance to experience freedom, justice and equality in the distribution of its natural wealth. That, of course, is usurped by the ruling family, which refuses to allow genuine popular participation in political life in case democracy topples their throne.

The UAE established an operations centre to counter-the Arab revolutions, with the help of Israel’s Mossad and America’s CIA. Washington did not support the revolutions, contrary to what is rumoured by some who try to establish a link between the popular uprisings and the US plot for creative chaos as announced by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2006. If the US administration was happy with the revolutions, they would all have been successful.

What is important to the US, above anything and everything, is the Zionist entity. It is well aware that Israel is threatened by political freedom in the Middle East. Hence, plans are available for immediate implementation to thwart any democratic tracks in the Arab countries, especially those with Islamic orientations. It was at this level that the UAE found common ground with the US and Israel to make sure that the Arab Spring revolutions didn’t achieve anything.

The UAE spent billions of dollars along with Saudi Arabia because they both feared the rise of Islamic trends in the Arab Spring countries. The most important of these was the Muslim Brotherhood. Abu Dhabi and Riyadh not only banned the movement in their own fiefdoms but also used every means at their disposal — arms, money and media — to support dictators and try to persuade the international community to classify it as a terrorist organisation. They have failed in the latter, for the time being at least.

The latest stage of this war against democracy is seen in the UAE’s conspiracy against Tunisia. Its attempts to destabilise the North African country include financing a campaign by Abir Moussi MP and some parties loyal to the former regime of ousted President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to topple Parliamentary Speaker Rached Ghannouchi, the leader of Ennahda which is affiliated with the Brotherhood. The fact that Ennahda is the most popular party in Tunisia means nothing to anti-Democratic forces such as the UAE.

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However, these efforts have failed, and the parliament in Tunis not only gave Ghannouchi a vote of confidence, but also gave the Arab world another lesson in democracy. Tunisia won and the conspirators lost their money, but they will not stop trying to sabotage the country; the UAE and its allies do not want Tunisia to be a democratic model for the Arab world.

The UAE’s first counter-revolution was in Egypt, where it funded the coup which toppled the country’s first democratically-elected president in 2013, even though Dr Mohamed Morsi won free and fair elections. The UAE buried Egypt’s nascent democracy before hiring mercenaries to back Bashar Al-Assad and turn the noble revolution into a fierce civil war. The UAE has helped to destroy the country and people, and transformed a beautiful land blessed with a captivating landscape and great architecture into mountains of rubble swimming in seas of blood.

Such atrocities have also been extended to Yemen, which the UAE invaded in 2015 as part of the Saudi-led coalition. Tens of thousands of people have been killed and Yemen’s whole society has been destroyed. The war-torn country’s land has been divided by the UAE, which occupies the south and has usurped its ports under fake pretexts, as it did in Somalia and Djibouti before being expelled by the local authorities. The UAE’s delinquent ambition was exposed when it tried to seize a port occupied by the US only to be told, “Know your limits”.

It has attempted to do the same in Libya by supporting the traitorous renegade Khalifa Haftar with money and weapons, despite his defeats at the hands of the Turkey-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) based in Tripoli. That situation is worthy of an article in its own right.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.