Close to midnight on May 8, my roommate, an American journalist called Adam Baron, received a phone call. It was from the National Security office in Sanaa, asking him to come to their office the following day to fill out some papers for his residency application so that he could continue working officially as a journalist in Yemen.
The next morning, we went down together to be greeted by an officer and escorted into an office with the title “Director of Surveillance and Deportation” on his desk. I grew uncomfortable. A few minutes passed in silence. The officer returned and demanded Baron’s mobile phone and passport. “You are no longer welcome in our country,” he announced
The officer asked me to go book a flight for Baron, adding that they would detain him in a holding cell until I returned with the ticket so that national security could transport him to the airport and deport him.
I couldn’t believe it. I insisted there must have been a mistake. I asked the question I would ask a hundred times in the subsequent weeks and months: Why was he being deported? The only response was that the decision was non-negotiable.
Once Baron was in the holding cell I started calling Yemeni officials I knew from years of political activism and journalism. I still believed the issue, like most things in Yemen, could be resolved if the right person intervened. Hours passed and my face flushed red. The officer laughed with paternalistic arrogance. “Wow what a big difference,” he said mockingly. “You are so different from when you are on TV. Where has that confidence, eloquence and calmness gone?”
“Don’t think you have a voice,” another officer, listening to our conversation, said. “Decisions are still taken in the same old places.”
That remains the most accurate statement I have heard about the state of Yemen’s government today. While I – like many other Yemenis – was originally optimistic about Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, the man who replaced Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen’s autocratic leader of 33 years, in 2012, it has become increasingly clear that the “new order” in Yemen is a carbon copy of the old one, albeit with a different face.
Deportation isn’t the worst thing that can happen. And it certainly isn’t among the worst things happening in Yemen. But what is worrying is that so little has changed since the time when our former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, had Yemeni activists and journalists jailed and sometimes tortured to death.
This latest incident was just a reminder that Yemenis and foreigners who criticise the way the country is run are still powerless in front of a deeply entrenched machine of corruption and nepotism.
Several hours after Baron was detained, I received a call from one of my contacts. He told me to go to a house where a high-ranking security official was chewing qat. This official was most probably the one who had ordered Baron’s arrest, and he was probably the only person who could reverse or at least explain the decision.
I arrived at about 6.30pm and made my way to a room where a dozen of some of the most powerful men in the country were seated. My contact had already placed Baron’s documents in front of the official. But the man didn’t so much as look at them. The conversation rolled on with no regard for my presence.
After sitting silently for two hours, the awkwardness of the situation grew increasingly difficult to ignore. The official received several phone calls, some to do with Baron’s case. His phone would ring, he would look up at me briefly without uttering a word. He sat smoking, casually resting the left side of his body on a plush cushion. It was almost the image of an intelligence officer one would expect to find in a movie. Fighting my own feelings of impatience, I tried to assure Baron by text message that he would get out tonight, urging him not to waste the battery on the phone I had smuggled into the prison for him.
Around 8.30pm I took advantage of a pause in the conversation to explain to the room why I was there. The official took a single look at the papers laid out in front of him. “He has to leave the country,” he replied curtly. The decision was not solely his, he said, and the matter was now out of his hands.
When I asked him if he could tell me why Baron was being deported he simply replied: “It is our business, and no one can interfere in it.”
The official did, however, agree to release Baron from prison on the condition that he left the country as soon as possible. I agreed. He said I should wait for a call from his staff, and that Baron would be temporarily freed to make travel arrangements. It was over. Baron would have to leave, but at least he was out of jail.
This episode is not just about the deportation of a good friend and colleague, nor about the regular harassment other activists get from the security services.
Rather, each one of those issues cuts through the rhetoric around the highly touted “Yemen model” of replacing the head of state while leaving the pre-existing state apparatus largely untouched and seeking to reform it slowly over time.
While ostensibly allowing for a “smooth transition”, the flip side of the model is that the aims of the 2011 revolution that prompted Yemen’s political transition have been discarded at best and trampled upon at worst.
Those in power are more or less the same people who were in charge before 2011. And they have no intention of ever allowing substantive reforms.
To many of us it looks as if the government’s real priorities are not making long-term investments in education and infrastructure – but, rather, using drones against suspected terrorists and deporting international journalists and harassing Yemeni ones.
In the Hadi era, the authorities have a new weapon to silence dissent. Whereas former president Saleh was forced to reckon with international opinion when he suppressed his political opponents, Mr Hadi is able to cast them as “enemies of the transition”. This designation is rarely questioned. He recently labelled participants in protests demanding an end to the now-frequent 20-hour long power blackouts in Sanaa as “traitorous”.
Driving back from the airport after Baron was deported, I noted one of the many giant posters praising the National Dialogue Conference (NDC), a 10-month series of talks held in 2013 and 2014.
“The NDC is the change with the least cost” it read. Like most government propaganda, I had rarely paid attention to it.
But recently, as the number of posters seems to increase in direct proportion to the increasing corruption of the establishment, they have taken on a new meaning to me.
Instead of being a statement about the ease of the transition, they point to its total lack of substance.
The changes brought about by the NDC are indeed very cheap. With the transitional authorities substituting long-term reforms for drone strikes, media censorship, election-blocking, and in effect ending accountability behind the slogan of “the transition”, I worry that the costly sacrifices and high hopes of the Arab Spring may soon be lost. If, in fact, they are not already.
Farea Al Muslimi is a Yemeni activist and writer
On Twitter: @AlMuslimi
A State of Passion
Directors: Carol Mansour and Muna Khalidi
Stars: Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah
Rating: 4/5
PFA Premier League team of 2018-19
Allison (Liverpool)
Trent Alexander-Arnold (Liverpool)
Virgil van Dijk (Liverpool)
Aymeric Laporte (Manchester City)
Andrew Robertson (Liverpool)
Paul Pogba (Manchester United)
Fernandinho (Manchester City)
Bernardo Silva (Manchester City)
Raheem Sterling (Manchester City)
Sergio Aguero (Manchester City)
Sadio Mane (Liverpool)
Specs%20
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COMPANY PROFILE
Name: HyperSpace
Started: 2020
Founders: Alexander Heller, Rama Allen and Desi Gonzalez
Based: Dubai, UAE
Sector: Entertainment
Number of staff: 210
Investment raised: $75 million from investors including Galaxy Interactive, Riyadh Season, Sega Ventures and Apis Venture Partners
Formula Middle East Calendar (Formula Regional and Formula 4)
Round 1: January 17-19, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 2: January 22-23, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 3: February 7-9, Dubai Autodrome – Dubai
Round 4: February 14-16, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 5: February 25-27, Jeddah Corniche Circuit – Saudi Arabia
ANATOMY%20OF%20A%20FALL
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Cracks in the Wall
Ben White, Pluto Press
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
2025 Fifa Club World Cup groups
Group A: Palmeiras, Porto, Al Ahly, Inter Miami.
Group B: Paris Saint-Germain, Atletico Madrid, Botafogo, Seattle.
Group C: Bayern Munich, Auckland City, Boca Juniors, Benfica.
Group D: Flamengo, ES Tunis, Chelsea, Leon.
Group E: River Plate, Urawa, Monterrey, Inter Milan.
Group F: Fluminense, Borussia Dortmund, Ulsan, Mamelodi Sundowns.
Group G: Manchester City, Wydad, Al Ain, Juventus.
Group H: Real Madrid, Al Hilal, Pachuca, Salzburg.
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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Innotech Profile
Date started: 2013
Founder/CEO: Othman Al Mandhari
Based: Muscat, Oman
Sector: Additive manufacturing, 3D printing technologies
Size: 15 full-time employees
Stage: Seed stage and seeking Series A round of financing
Investors: Oman Technology Fund from 2017 to 2019, exited through an agreement with a new investor to secure new funding that it under negotiation right now.
HAJJAN
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Mane points for safe home colouring
- Natural and grey hair takes colour differently than chemically treated hair
- Taking hair from a dark to a light colour should involve a slow transition through warmer stages of colour
- When choosing a colour (especially a lighter tone), allow for a natural lift of warmth
- Most modern hair colours are technique-based, in that they require a confident hand and taught skills
- If you decide to be brave and go for it, seek professional advice and use a semi-permanent colour
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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Courses%20at%20Istituto%20Marangoni%2C%20Dubai
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Things Heard & Seen
Directed by: Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini
Starring: Amanda Seyfried, James Norton
2/5
Company profile: buybackbazaar.com
Name: buybackbazaar.com
Started: January 2018
Founder(s): Pishu Ganglani and Ricky Husaini
Based: Dubai
Sector: FinTech, micro finance
Initial investment: $1 million
Milestones on the road to union
1970
October 26: Bahrain withdraws from a proposal to create a federation of nine with the seven Trucial States and Qatar.
December: Ahmed Al Suwaidi visits New York to discuss potential UN membership.
1971
March 1: Alex Douglas Hume, Conservative foreign secretary confirms that Britain will leave the Gulf and “strongly supports” the creation of a Union of Arab Emirates.
July 12: Historic meeting at which Sheikh Zayed and Sheikh Rashid make a binding agreement to create what will become the UAE.
July 18: It is announced that the UAE will be formed from six emirates, with a proposed constitution signed. RAK is not yet part of the agreement.
August 6: The fifth anniversary of Sheikh Zayed becoming Ruler of Abu Dhabi, with official celebrations deferred until later in the year.
August 15: Bahrain becomes independent.
September 3: Qatar becomes independent.
November 23-25: Meeting with Sheikh Zayed and Sheikh Rashid and senior British officials to fix December 2 as date of creation of the UAE.
November 29: At 5.30pm Iranian forces seize the Greater and Lesser Tunbs by force.
November 30: Despite a power sharing agreement, Tehran takes full control of Abu Musa.
November 31: UK officials visit all six participating Emirates to formally end the Trucial States treaties
December 2: 11am, Dubai. New Supreme Council formally elects Sheikh Zayed as President. Treaty of Friendship signed with the UK. 11.30am. Flag raising ceremony at Union House and Al Manhal Palace in Abu Dhabi witnessed by Sheikh Khalifa, then Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi.
December 6: Arab League formally admits the UAE. The first British Ambassador presents his credentials to Sheikh Zayed.
December 9: UAE joins the United Nations.
More from Armen Sarkissian
VEZEETA PROFILE
Date started: 2012
Founder: Amir Barsoum
Based: Dubai, UAE
Sector: HealthTech / MedTech
Size: 300 employees
Funding: $22.6 million (as of September 2018)
Investors: Technology Development Fund, Silicon Badia, Beco Capital, Vostok New Ventures, Endeavour Catalyst, Crescent Enterprises’ CE-Ventures, Saudi Technology Ventures and IFC
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Kumulus Water
Started: 2021
Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid
Based: Tunisia
Sector: Water technology
Number of staff: 22
Investment raised: $4 million
