Abu Dhabi is new Dubai, Current affairs, NewAgeIslam.com

Current affairs

Abu Dhabi is new Dubai

By S. Nihal Singh

December 3rd, 2009

First it was Dubai, with its glittering path-breaking facade, and now it is the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Abu Dhabi. At 38, as the federation of seven emirates preened itself to celebrate the National Day, Dubai sprang a bombshell by seeking a six-month freeze on billions of dollars of debts plunging regional and world markets, the capital with the world’s biggest sovereign wealth fund was going about its business to become the new magnet for the region.

It was ironical that days before Dubai shocked the markets, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai and the federation’s Prime Minister, met the international press, including myself, to show the stiff upper lip. Sheikh Mohammed is a hands-on ruler in managing Dubai’s ascent to the region’s trading hub and the aggressive, if extravagant, development of hotels, malls, marvels of tourist attractions and the world’s highest building at 800 metres, still under construction, piercing the sky like a missile. Dubai recently opened a spanking new metro.

The world economic crisis was particularly unkind to Dubai because it prospered on tourists and a diversifying economy and borrowed to build brash new attractions, including a ski slope in a mall. When tourist levels and hotel occupancy fell and property prices halved, Dubai was in trouble, to be bailed out by Abu Dhabi to the extent of $10 billion, with two Abu Dhabi banks more recently buying Dubai paper for $5 billion. Dubai can still call upon the remaining $5 billion tranche Abu Dhabi had agreed upon.

http://newageislam.com/abu-dhabi-is-new-dubai/current-affairs/d/2181

Israel’s ‘no’ to Palestinians costing them a great deal, Islam and the West, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and the West

Israel’s ‘no’ to Palestinians costing them a great deal

By S. Nihal Singh

Israelis are doing precisely that — expanding their illegal settlements on the West Bank and expropriating even more land on the fringes of the Wall that replicates the doomed apartheid experiment in South Africa. All that the energetic US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice can do in response is to murmur her displeasure in an undertone.

Palestinians themselves are hopelessly divided between the Fatah and Hamas factions, the latter controlling a Gaza Strip converted by Israel into a vast open-air prison. The Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas’ rationale for continuing his make-believe talks with Mr Olmert on an illusory peace process is that the alternative would be war. Arab efforts at reconciling the two Palestinian factions have yielded little but recrimination.

The truth is that with Americans perennially handicapped by the clout of the American-Jewish lobby and the love of the Christian evangelical Right for Israel, no US administration can do much to resolve the problem. Mr Barack Obama, who flaunts his liberal credentials, was the first to pay homage to the Israeli lobby, promoting the dubious Israeli claim to an undivided Jerusalem as its capital.

http://newageislam.com/israel%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%98no%E2%80%99-to-palestinians-costing-them-a-great-deal/islam-and-the-west/d/744

No quick fix for Afghanistan, War on Terror, NewAgeIslam.com

War on Terror

No quick fix for Afghanistan

By S. Nihal Singh

Apart from America fighting a resurgent Taliban in the South and East, Nato has been given charge of conducting the overall operation. It was a first for Nato in its new role as something of a world policeman, having travelled a long way from its founding purpose of fighting Communism and the Soviet Union. There are national caveats on the use of troops, tardiness in providing adequate infrastructure, particularly in air transportation, and faulty co-ordination of economic activity with military operations.

The situation has been further hampered by Pakistan’s own preoccupation with a troubled transition to democracy, with a fragile coalition still to take full charge while a diminished Pervez Musharraf occupies the presidential office, and the Army under a new chief is seeking to be more professional than has been its wont. The coalition government has been torn between seeking peace with elements of Pakistani Taliban and mounting punitive exercises to please the American allies. The intelligence agency ISI has traditionally enjoyed much leeway and has been blamed by Afghanistan and India for helping organise the daring raid on the Indian embassy.

http://newageislam.com/no-quick-fix-for-afghanistan/war-on-terror/d/291