Dubai (Somalia Today) — Dubai faces an existential threat as the escalating war involving the United States, Israel and Iran shakes the foundations of the glittering Gulf city-state, prompting foreign residents and tourists to leave in droves.
The United Arab Emirates has absorbed more than two-thirds of Iran’s recent retaliatory strikes.
Analysts say the US-allied state is under attack because of its deep military and intelligence ties with Western powers, as well as its long-standing status as a favoured hub for global finance and Western tourism.
“The shine has definitely been taken off,” said John Trudinger, a British headteacher who has lived in Dubai for 16 years.
He employs more than 100 teachers from the UK and said most have been so “deeply traumatised and really struggling to cope” with the sudden arrival of war that they have left and will not return.
They are among tens of thousands of residents and tourists who have fled Dubai since the US and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran almost two weeks ago.
‘Dubai is finished’
Each day, alerts flash across mobile phones in the emirate, warning of “potential missile threats” and telling residents to seek shelter and stay away from windows.
The UAE’s advanced air defence systems have intercepted more than 90 percent of the estimated 1,700 Iranian projectiles.
However, several have slipped through the shield and hit major targets, including military bases, industrial complexes and Dubai International Airport, shutting down one of the busiest aviation hubs in the world.
Strikes on two datacentres briefly left residents unable to use their phones for digital payments, dealing a severe blow to a largely cashless society.
The physical toll has also reached the city’s most exclusive enclaves.
The Fairmont hotel on Dubai’s famous palm tree-shaped artificial island, home to mega-mansions and lavish beach clubs, was hit dramatically.
Zain Anwar, a taxi driver from Pakistan, saw his car destroyed in the strike on the Fairmont after parking it to pray.
“I am the luckiest person in the world to have survived,” he told The Guardian. “But now my family are telling me to come home. I don’t want to be in Dubai any more, there is no business, we are earning nothing since this war.”
“Everybody knows that Dubai is finished,” he added.
Billions at stake
The conflict’s economic consequences for the UAE are likely to be severe, but nowhere more so than in Dubai, where tourism brings in around $30 billion a year.
More than 90 percent of Dubai’s residents are foreigners, including one of the world’s highest concentrations of billionaires, drawn by the absence of taxes on income, capital gains and inheritance.
Unlike neighbouring Abu Dhabi, Dubai does not have vast oil wealth to fall back on. Analysts warn that losses will be stark if the war drags on and the city’s reputation as a haven for tourism and Western business continues to fade.
On Wednesday, major financial institutions including Citibank and Standard Chartered evacuated their Dubai staff because of “heightened security concerns”.
“Already Dubai is losing out significantly,” said Khaled Almezaini, a professor at the UAE’s Zayed University.
“So far it’s bearable for the UAE’s economy, but if this goes on for another 10 or 20 days then the impact on tourism, on aviation, on expatriate businesses, on oil, will be very difficult.”
‘Sound of safety’
The ruling sheikhs have made a clear effort to control the narrative and project calm.
After a wave of panicked posts on social media, Dubai police threatened to arrest and jail influencers who shared content that “contradicts official announcements or that may cause social panic”.
Cheerful official messaging routinely assures people that the “big booms” in the sky are simply “the sound of safety”.
Residents and tourists who remain say it has been remarkably easy to carry on as normal, even though beach bars, shopping malls and five-star hotels are eerily empty.
Along Jumeirah Beach, influencers in bikinis still pose for cameras as jetskis slice across the horizon.
Ironically, many tourists said they had come to the Gulf to escape conflict.
“We’re from Ukraine so unfortunately we came from one war zone to another, but that’s life,” said Christina Hallis, 26, while sipping a cocktail on a sun lounger. “I still feel safe here… You wouldn’t know there’s a war.”
The mass departure of wealthy expatriates has also triggered a wave of abandoned pets.
Hundreds of cats and dogs, favoured by Dubai’s TikTok and Instagram stars, have been dumped at city shelters, tied to lamp-posts or left in boxes on the streets. K9, a Dubai animal shelter, described the situation as “disgusting”.
Migrants trapped
Yet for the millions of economic migrants who came to Dubai for construction, delivery and driving jobs, boarding a plane home is simply not an option.
An estimated two million Indians, 700,000 Nepalis and 400,000 Pakistanis live in Dubai. Many are low-paid workers tied to restrictive contracts and cannot return home when they wish.
They are paying the deadliest price in the conflict. Of the four people killed in the UAE since the strikes began, three were South Asian workers: a Pakistani taxi driver, a Nepali security guard and a Bangladeshi water tanker driver.
Drone strikes near Dubai airport early on Wednesday morning injured two Ghanaians, an Indian and a Bangladeshi national.
In Muhaisnah 2, a district on the far outskirts of Dubai where most labour hostels are located, Ebenezer Ibrahim, a 29-year-old labourer from Nigeria, brushed aside the danger.
“We are all humans and we bleed so of course I worry about these missiles,” he said. “Coming from Africa, there are many problems in my own home too. I have my goals and I will stay here to work for them.”
For others, the lack of official information has proved fatal. The family of Saleh Ahmed, a 55-year-old Bangladeshi driver killed by missile debris at his worksite, said the failure to give labourers clear warnings cost him his life.
“I only understood the scale of what was happening when I came back to Bangladesh and saw the news here,” said his younger brother, Zakir Hussein, 35, who also works in Dubai.
Hussein said returning to Dubai without his brother felt “unbearable”, but he had no choice.
“Dubai is the only place we know how to earn,” he said. “Our families are depending on us.”
