Opinion | Dubai’s runaway Princess Haya is the least of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid’s problems

The Dubai ruler’s image took a hit when one of his six wives, Princess Haya, fled to Britain

But it was a reliance on credit and a dalliance with Iran that really hurt his legacy – and left him in the shade of big brother Abu Dhabi

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Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, the ruler of Dubai, and his wife Princess Haya of Jordan at Royal Ascot in Britain during happier times. Photo: AP

Published: 1:30pm, 13 Jul 2019Updated: 8:06pm, 13 Jul 2019

Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, is in a league of his own. His approach to governing the emirate – he functioned more as a corporate chief executive with a knack for investing than as an oil monarch presiding over a tribal polity of loyalists turned citizens – made him an exception in the Gulf. His other interests – he was an acclaimed poet, equestrian, and regular at the Royal Ascot every year – made him a rock star to the West.

That image has taken a huge dent with news last week that one of his six wives, Jordanian royal Princess Haya bint Al Hussein, had fled the palace for Britain several months ago and was now asking for a divorce. She is the third of Sheikh Mohammed’s immediate family to flee Dubai, after his daughters, Sheikha Shamsa Al Maktoum, who left in 2003, and Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed Al Maktoum, who defected early last year. Both were subsequently recaptured by Emirati forces.

Princess Haya bint Al Hussein has fled to London. Photo: AFP

The fallout from the latest episode is likely to hit Dubai’s commercial standing. Sheikh Mohammed, who is also the prime minister and vice-president of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), has seen his political influence recede over the last decade or so, mainly as a result of the global financial crisis of 2008-9, which hit Dubai badly, but his reputation for being a deft wheeler-dealer remains.

“Sheikh Mo”, as he is popularly known, rose to power in January 2006, when his older brother Sheikh Maktoum, who had ruled since their father’s death in 1990, died of a massive heart attack while vacationing in Queensland, Australia. Groomed by his father, the visionary Sheikh Rashid, and among the first generation of Gulf royals to have been trained at Britain’s Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst in Britain, he was the foreign minister of the UAE at its inception in 1971, a post he occupied until he became prime minister in 1990.

Sheikh Mohammed was instrumental in defining the course of Dubai’s economic progress. Acting on their father’s advice, he, along with his two older brothers, evolved and implemented a policy leveraging migration, tourism and foreign investment at a time when the rest of the Middle East was reorienting itself around its new-found oil wealth.

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