A Day in Dubai

My face-to-face experience in "the other Middle East" is just a lovely day spent in Dubai, in between flights. The flight from JFK landed in the morning, and the flight to Kolkata, India was in late evening. A good friend, my MBA class fellow who I had not seen for over two decades, agreed graciously to pick me up at the airport and give me a feel for Dubai. He is a CEO level executive in the chemical industry, so it was possible for him to arrange a day just to laze around with me.

It was a very pleasant day -- sunny but not unduly warm (it was mid-winter in USA). Among the highlights of the day:

• Driving around the bustling construction sites... one after another after another. I have not seen such concentration of construction sites in one place, ever.
• Mid-morning stroll through a semi-open-air mall, enjoying a cup of cappuccino with a view of the ponds and canals that give a Venice-like feel and a view of the towering Burj Dubai hotel.
  
• Later, a visit to the huge Mall of the Emirates and the stunning indoor ski area. It was mind-boggling to see ski lifts, skiers, and little kids learning to ski and skate at the bottom of the hill, all inside a building that looks like a huge, tilted aircraft hangar from the outside.
• There is an entire road devoted to educational buildings. One after another are branch campuses of leading educational institutions from Europe, India, and so on.
  
• Lunch at the Dubai Golf Club, where Tiger Woods has launched an annual golf tournament.
• A drive through the enormous Jebel Ali port and free trade zone, with miles and miles of warehouses and assembly plants and petroleum tanks, and of course deep-water berths and cranes for loading and unloading of vessels.
  
• Drive to the outlying sand dunes, where -- as the sunset approaches -- All-Terrain Vehicles (ATVs) romp through the sands while SUVs loaded with tourists offer dare-devil steep dune rides.

The place is so unreal, yet so palpably real, that it leaves you dizzy. All the building activity is on a rush schedule, as if to get the post-petroleum economy in place way, way before petroleum resources run out. Which they might soon, at least in the case of Dubai, for among the UAE emirates, Dubai is not that oil rich.

If China as a country seems to be on an economic development rush, the city-state of Dubai is in a red-hot, jet-speed super rush.

Nik Dholakia
Professor
University of Rhode Island

Networking

As a major complement to my research, I will be exploring a variety of resources that both Professor Dholakia and myself determine will be beneficial to our understanding of the economic climates of the region. I will be developing a valuable network of individuals, those who have done business in the Middle East, lived in the region, attend school in the region, are in academia or are connected through politics in one way or another.

I was directed to my first contact through my father, Stephen, who lives and works in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He has a business contact who he knows personally and professionally, by the name of David Culp. David is the President and CEO of Luichart International, LLC, which was established in June, 2007 with the merging of World Trade Group Inc, based in Pittston, Pennsylvania, and Luichart Technology Ltd. They have conducted business in many regions of the world, including China and the UK, and are currently focused on extensive alternative energy systems as well as RFID technology and asset management systems. They are committed to commercialize and bring these innovative technologies to the market.

In a very detailed email conversation with David, he discussed his ideas for a venture into the promising markets of Dubai: "Back in May, Dr. Calvin Tan (his business partner) and I had discussed addressing the Middle East market with the manufacture of composite medical gas cylinders with an embedded RFID tag in freeport Mina Jebel Ali. We had talked seeking a joint venture with an Arab company, thus the product would be “local” and we could avoid import taxes and having an Arab partner naturally would make the product more attractive to Arab companies."

I am looking forward to continuing our discussion on the Middle East and discovering more about his business talks with investors. I am particularly interested in learning more about the business culture in the region, if it is the traditional, conservative environment, or if it is a hybrid of old traditions and new western ideas. I will post updates to our ongoing conversations, and hope to introduce new contacts whom engage in business dealings in the region as my research progresses.

-KD

Unfortunate Stereotypes

To reiterate on the previous posting, one of the major goals of this blog will be to dissuade the common Western stereotypical thought concerning the region. As unfortunate as stereotyping is, it is a reality, often fueled by widespread misinformation and the media. When I tell my close friends and co workers about my directed study research, their initial reaction is generally unenthusiastic. However, as soon as I bring up the theme of my study, and discuss the importance of studying the rising economies of this region, and the fact that I will not be researching the conflict areas, the attention tends to be regained. I do not have any particular reason for reactions such as this, but I will attribute much of the American perspective on the region to the horrific events that occurred on 9/11/2001. Unfortunately, racism and hatred are almost always a result of such epic events as 9/11, and many individuals in America were persecuted for their skin color, Arabic decent and especially religion. This is inevitable, but as we move further away from this date, we as a nation are beginning to learn more about the tremendous opportunities and resources available to the world in this region of the Middle East.

Islam is the major religion in the Middle East, and has shaped much of the culture as it exists today. I will examine the difficulties many locals are having with the surge of western ideas and influence, and especially the economical impacts the transition has had on the culture.

I will also discuss the multi-faceted societies of this region, and examine the movement of millions of foreigners into the region. Dubai, for example, is transforming into more of an ethnic melting pot as New York City was back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries with tens of thousands of immigrants making the move to the city of opportunity. In fact, just 17% of the actual population of the Dubai Emirate is of native Arabic decent. The remainder is comprised mainly of Indian (51%), Southeast Asian (24%) and increasingly Eastern European. Immigrants come in search of steady labor in the many thousands of construction projects, as well as those seeking lucrative investment opportunities.

-KD

A Different Middle East

In the west, particularly USA, some stereotypical images of the Middle East colonize the mental landscape of the people. What are these stereotypical images? Here are the main ones:

• The home of radical Islam, where strict Sharia law governs the daily life of people
• A land of constant strife: Palestine and Israel, Iraq, and more
• A throwback to Middle Ages, where obscurantist ideas are bandied about by men in decrepit coffee shops or in Bedouin tents.
• A gusher of Oil: the land of unlimited Black Gold buried under the sands.
• A quaint, exotic Oriental fantasy of Camels, Souks, the Casbah, Belly Dancers and Masked Rifle-shooting Horsemen

As with all stereotypes, there are some grains of reality in all these images that float in western imaginations. But the whole reality is, always, complex and multigrained and not easy to characterize.

In this project, under my guidance, Kyle Dunlap - a senior at the University of Rhode Island - looks at what we have termed "The Other Middle East". These are the smaller nations around the Persian Gulf which are racing at a furious pace to modernize and diversify and (in their particular national ways) even "westernize" before the petroleum-driven revenues dry up. UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, and Oman -- and a few others -- are transforming at speeds that often make the East and Southeast Asian development pace look like a crawl.

Our hope is that this blog will create a deeper understanding of what is happening in these parts of the Middle East, and what these breathtaking changes mean not just for the Middle East region but for the world as a whole.

Nik Dholakia
Professor
College of Business Administration
University of Rhode Island

Welcome

Welcome to The Other Middle East. The last semester of my undergraduate career has just begun, and I am off to a great start with my research and resources for my directed study. I will be conducting a directed study on the emerging markets of the Middle East, focusing specifically on the nations of the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait. This blog will serve as a progressive journal that I will post to several times a week. I will report my research, post new and exciting developments in the booming economic zones of the prosperous Middle East and simply keep my readers informed of new contacts I will be developing. I will be working closely with my professor Nik Dholakia, who, as of today, is the only other member of my blog community. He will be evaluating my progress and my performance on a weekly basis, and will also connect me with valuable resources to utilize in my research.

The idea for this independent study came from a presentation that I made in Professor Dholakia's Global Marketing class last semester. I presented the rise of one of the premier cities in the Middle East; the key business hub for the region. The city, or emirate, of Dubai is one of the most incredible achievements in human history, boasting the most profitable service oriented businesses in the world, the tallest, longest, largest and most expensive buildings in the world, thousands of kilometers of man made coastline, and the most innovative and exciting plans any city in the world has ever witnessed. Through this blog and my Wiki page that I will be developing simultaneously, I will not only strive to make my readers believe that the Middle East is the globe's newest center of commerce, but convince everyone to invest heavily in any and every aspect of this booming region!

Just imagine, meeting with the investors of your business, sitting on the 67th floor of the world's only 7 star hotel, the Burj al Arab, sipping a martini and watching the sunset overlooking the elegant Palm Islands on the horizon...