A Friend in Dubai?

By Jeffrey Breinholt

An interesting counterterrorism development over the last decade is the group of private American lawsuits seeking to hold foreign governments and individuals civilly liable for terrorist attacks that killed Americans. Victims of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) attacks in Israel have succeeded in obtaining judgments against Iran and the interlocking group of Islamic charities that help fund Palestinian terrorism. Meanwhile, the class action lawsuits filed on behalf of the victims of 9/11 have been winding their way through our courts. As I have noted before, lawsuits are a rich source of strategic intelligence, from which we can gain insight into the capabilities and intentions of our enemies. They are valuable for another reason: determining who the we should call friends. How about Dubai?

In my recent Family Security Matters review of Doug Farah and Steve Braun’s book Merchant of Death, I argue that as the world has gotten smaller, and the U.S. can no longer afford to hang onto friends who do not pass basic morality tests, lest we find that there’s major blowback from them in the future. It remains unfathomable how an international outlaw like Victor Bout, the subject a Farah and Braun’s book and a designated terrorist supporter, could become a U.S. defense contractor and hired to fly supplies into Iraq. Someone who was so recently considered an outlaw should not be able to achieve the benefit we offer friends.

This may be true of Dubai, a country of strategic importance that claims to be a U.S. ally in counterterrorism. The United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is one, hosts more U.S. Navy ships than any other country . Our warm relationship with Dubai was recently strained over the public outrage over the U.S. clearance of a corporate acquisition that would have left Dubai Worlds Ports in charge of several U.S. shipping hubs. When the announcement was made, Americans worried about homeland security complained about the prospect that our port security would be out-sourced to an Islamic country. Though this deal was reviewed and cleared by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS), Dubai World Ports ultimately walked away from the deal. The company and its lawyers have since been complaining that U.S. hysteria (and xenophobia) has raised the specter that the U.S. – horrors! - is not a hospitable place for foreign investment. Meanwhile, the Dubai World Ports incident caused the Bush Administration and Congress to start working on a system to reform how CFIUS operates. No one has bothered to mention that Victor Bout set up shop in the UAE. Now, Dubai is now poised to acquire 20 percent of Nasdaq.

Are concerns over Dubai justified? If, as I believe, morality matters in foreign policy, there is an American lawsuit that raises even more serious concerns with our so-called friends in the UAE, which go well beyond whether it is a good idea to allow one of its companies to operate American seaports and be involved in our securities markets. This case involves human rights, and allegations that some rich Dubai sheiks have been doing some obnoxious things with vulnerable people’s lives for fun and profit.

The main defendant is Sheik Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoun, and he is accused of abducting and trafficking thousands of young boys from South Asia and Africa and enslaving them to work as camel jockeys, camel trainers, and camel tenders in the desolation and heat of the Arab Peninsula. Boys as young as two years old were allegedly stolen from their parents and trafficked to foreign lands, and put under the watch of brutal overseers of camel camps in the region. Camel racing is a favorite pastime of rich Arab sheiks.

Why is this case in U.S. courts? It is because of 28 U.S.C. §1350, which provides that the U.S. district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.

The lawsuit lists five victims, all young boys who were taken from their families in their home countries and trafficked. They are referred to in the complaint by their initials. The defendant, Sheikh Hamdan, is the Minister of Financing and Industry for the United Arab Emirates, and he reportedly has assets – horse farms - in Kentucky, where the lawsuit was filed. The complaint alleges that the boys were literally treated worse than the animals they were forced to pilot. Deprived of food and sleep, some of them were allegedly injected with anti-growth hormones, to keep their size small enough to make them competitive jockeys. Though there have been official efforts to ban the sport, it has, according to the complaint, nonetheless continued under the watchful eye of Dubai aristocracy.

If this is true, should not this be a factor in whether we should permit them to control our ports and be involved in Nasdaq? Meanwhile, the official U.S. reaction to this very inconvenient lawsuit that aims to expose the mass trafficking and enslavement of children is apparently to try to quash it in the interest of foreign policy, so it never reaches the merits. When the first suit was brought in Florida, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum appealed to President Bush to have it dismissed, saying it was interfering with diplomatic relations between America and the Emirates. If the allegations in the camel jockey lawsuit are true, is this the type of conduct we want to give Dubai a pass on? If so, is it worth the cost?

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