Sheikh Zayed: His Principles and His Legacy
Sheikh Zayed: His Principles and His Legacy
The prosperity, harmony and modern development that characterises the UAE is due to a very great extent to the role played by Sheikh Zayed, both prior to the formation of the Federation and in the nearly 33 years that followed until his death in November 2004. Born around 1918 in Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Zayed was the youngest of the four sons of Sheikh Sultan, Ruler of Abu Dhabi from 1922 to 1926. At the time, the emirate was poor and undeveloped and life, even for members of the ruling family, was simple. Throughout the late 1920s and 1930s, as Sheikh Zayed grew to manhood, he displayed an early thirst for knowledge that took him out into the desert with the bedu tribesmen and into the sea with the fishermen and pearl divers, to learn about the people and the environment in which they lived. He later recalled with pleasure his experience of desert life and his initiation into the sport of falconry, which became a lifelong passion.These travels provided Sheikh Zayed with a deep understanding both of the country and of its people. In the early 1930s, when the first oil company teams arrived to carry out preliminary surface geological surveys, he obtained his first exposure to the industry.In 1946, Sheikh Zayed was chosen to fill a vacancy as Ruler’s Representative in the Eastern Region of Abu Dhabi, centred on the oasis of Al Ain. The job involved not only the task of administering the six villages but also the whole of the adjacent desert region, enabling Sheikh Zayed to learn the techniques of government as well as deepening his knowledge of the tribes. Sheikh Zayed brought to his new task a firm belief in the values of consultation and consensus, in contrast to confrontation, and swiftly established himself not only as someone who had a clear vision of what he wished to achieve for the people of Al Ain, but also as someone who led by example. Despite the lack of government revenues, Sheikh Zayed succeeded in bringing progress to Al Ain. However, oil production was to provide Sheikh Zayed with the means to fund his dreams with the export of the first cargo of Abu Dhabi crude in 1962.On 6 August 1966, Sheikh Zayed succeeded his elder brother as Ruler of Abu Dhabi, with a mandate from his family to press ahead as fast as possible with the development of Abu Dhabi. One of his early steps was to increase contributions to the Trucial States Development Fund. When, in February 1968, the British announced their intention of withdrawing from the Arabian Gulf by the end of 1971, Sheikh Zayed acted rapidly to initiate moves towards establishing closer ties with the emirates, these efforts culminating in the establishment of the UAE. Sheikh Zayed was elected by his fellow rulers as the first President of the UAE, a post to which he was successively re-elected at five-year intervals.The new state came into being at a time of political turmoil in the region. A couple of days earlier, on the night of 30 November and the early morning of 1 December, Iran had seized the islands of Greater and Lesser Tunb, part of Ra’s al-Khaimah, and had landed troops on Abu Musa, part of Sharjah. Foreign observers, who lacked an understanding of the importance of a common history and heritage in bringing together the people of the UAE, predicted that the new state would survive only with difficulty, pointing to disputes with its neighbours and to the wide disparity in the size, population and level of development of the seven emirates. Better informed about the character of the country, Sheikh Zayed was naturally more optimistic and the predictions of those early pessimists were shown to be unfounded.During his years in Al Ain Sheikh Zayed had been able to develop a vision of how the country should progress. Once Ruler of Abu Dhabi, and then President, he had over three and a half decades to devote to making that vision a reality.One foundation of his philosophy as a leader and statesman was that the resources of the country should be
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