Middle East Research and Information Project

Critical Coverage of the Middle East Since 1971

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UAE

Desert Solar—A Spectacular Fiction, Not a Spectacular Future — Rendering of the Al Maktoum Solar Park distributed for official publications by the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority.Cover of the Middle East Solar Industry Association’s Solar Outlook Report 2019, with a view of Morocco’s Noor Laayoune Solar PV Park.Masdar Future Energy display at COP28. Author’s photo, December 2023.Portrait of Mustapha, the man responsible for the distribution of water in the oasis. January 2021, Tighmert, Morocco. By artist Seif Kousmate, from his project Waha about the relationship of humans to the environment in oases. Mixed technique using fire on a paper print.

MER Article

Desert Solar—A Spectacular Fiction, Not a Spectacular Future

On the visual power, and pitfalls, of solar mega projects.

Natalie Koch • 10 min read

Transnational Repression Against Exiled Women Activists — A projection on the Louvre Museum in Paris by Amnesty International depicts jailed Saudi human rights activists including Loujain Al-Athloul (C) and reads “Mr Macron, demand their release,” ahead of the virtual G20 summit in November 2020. Thomas Coex/AFP via Getty Images

Transnational Repression Against Exiled Women Activists

In Spring 2011, as the uprising against Bashar Al-Assad erupted in Syria, Sana, the daughter of Syrian exiles living in Canada, began engaging in online activism. Her support for the revolution rapidly gained traction among fellow Syrians and a widening global audience. But as her voice grew louder, she found

Noura Aljizawi, Siena Anstis, Marcus Michaelsen • 13 min read

Normalizing the Surveillance State—Cybersecurity Cooperation and the Abraham Accords — Under Secretary Silvers on a panel February 3, 2023 with Israel National Cyber Directorate Director General Gaby Portnoy, Head of the UAE Cyber Security Council Mohamed Al Kuwaiti, CEO of the Bahrain National Cyber Security Center Shaikh Salman bin Mohamed bin Abdulla al-Khalifa and Director General of Morocco’s General Directorate of Information Systems Security El Mostafa Rabii. Photo by DHS, public domain.

Normalizing the Surveillance State—Cybersecurity Cooperation and the Abraham Accords

The new, and not-so-new, cyber dimension of Arab-Israeli normalization.

Marwa Fatafta • 9 min read

Illicit Flows to the UAE Take the Shine off African Gold — Gold miners empty containers of earth removed from a mining shaft in Koflatie, Mali, 2014. Sebastien Rieussec/AFP via Getty Images

MER Article

Illicit Flows to the UAE Take the Shine off African Gold

Following Mali's artisanal gold to the markets of Dubai.

Bruce Whitehouse • 9 min read

Illicit Flows to the UAE Take the Shine off African Gold — Gold miners empty containers of earth removed from a mining shaft in Koflatie, Mali, 2014. Sebastien Rieussec/AFP via Getty Images

Current Analysis

Illicit Flows to the UAE Take the Shine off African Gold

What we can learn from Mali's artisanal gold trade.

Bruce Whitehouse • 9 min read

Masdar City 2020 — The new City Centre mall next to Masdar City anchored by the French supermarket chain Carrefour. Photograph by the author.

MER Article

Masdar City 2020

In February 2020, shortly before the COVID-19 lockdowns, I visited Masdar City in Abu Dhabi, the capital city of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). I had not been there in five years.

Gökçe Günel • 4 min read

The Battle for South Yemen

Despite the recent agreement brokered by Saudi Arabia, it may also be the case that the fight for the future of the country has begun between forces that want militarily either to occupy or liberate South Yemen.

Susanne Dahlgren • 12 min read

Regional Uprisings Confront Gulf-Backed Counterrevolution

Wealthy, ambitious and emboldened by US acquiescence, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have emerged as key protagonists in thwarting popular movements.

Jonathan Fenton-Harvey • 11 min read

MER Article

The Secret Lives of UAE Shell Companies

The UAE’s growing number of free zones are providing secretive havens for offshore companies to avoid taxes, regulation and accountability at home. Shell companies and money laundering abound. But it is still possible for determined researchers to discover who controls and ultimately benefits from t

Florence Wolstenholme • 15 min read

Scholars, Spies and the Gulf Military Industrial Complex — UAE Dubai Courts

Current Analysis

Scholars, Spies and the Gulf Military Industrial Complex

A military-industrial complex is growing in the Gulf states. In May 2018, a British researcher Matt Hedges was arrested in the UAE and charged with espionage for researching this industry as a spy, not a scholar. His colleague Shana Marshall explains why.

Shana Marshall • 11 min read

MER Article

The UAE and the Infrastructure of Intervention

Rafeef Ziadah investigates the rise of humanitarian logistics hubs such as Dubai International Humanitarian City, which, although ostensibly humanitarian, have become a key mechanism of intervention and increasingly a central element in the projection of power for the Gulf regimes such as the United

Rafeef Ziadah • 9 min read

MER Article

The UAE's Space Race

At a 2007 Harvard workshop focusing on sustainable architecture in the Persian Gulf, the assembled academics and practitioners quizzed a public relations official from a large Abu Dhabi real estate developer. The workshop participants, among them experts in the field of sustainable development, were

Ahmed Kanna, Arang Keshavarzian • 13 min read