From: Sultan Bin Sulayem To: Jeffrey Epstein <[email protected]> Subject: Golden dubai Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2012 02:43:41 +0000 < M > http://www.economist.corn/node/15006764?story_id=15006764&source=hptextfeature From the archive Golden Dubai 1970: Dubai is in strange and welcome contrast to anywhere else on the Gulf Jun 6th 1970 If the accident of oil had not brought such wealth to Abu Dhabi Sheikh Zayed, remarkable a man as he is, would not have been the unchallenged leader among the Trucial states' rulers. His neighbour, Sheikh Rashed bin Said al Maktum, a shrewd, cunning and hard-working merchant who has ruled Dubai since 1958, would have been as likely a candidate. And Dubai, which in effect is a town straddling a 6-mile long creek (although there are 1,500 square miles of desert too) has for centuries been the main port and trading post serving the Trucial states and the interior of Oman. Sheikh Rashed intends that it shall remain so. With a thriving and well-established trading community of some 60,000 people, a frantically active waterway running through its heart, with lighters and dhows being loaded and unloaded 24 hours a day at its centre, Dubai is in strange and welcome contrast to anywhere else on the Gulf. The difference is not only physical. The tolerant and broadminded attitude of Sheikh Rashed (what other Arab ruler would lay the foundation stone of a Protestant church?) infects the life of his state. There are almost no restrictions on anyone opening businesses; the foreign community (Iranians alone number 11,000) is treated as equal to the indigenous, and no eyebrows are raised if young Arabs take to the dance-floor. The tolerance extends to trade. It is no secret that a large proportion of the wealth accumulated by Dubai merchants comes from smuggling gold bullion (mostly from Britain), Swiss watches and Japanese cloth into Pakistan and India and tea into Iran. Between 15 and 20 tons of gold (at £600,000 a ton) arrive b