Marginalised teenagers turning to gang culture

DUBAI // Cultural transition, scant social outlets and a yearning for attention are leading to gang-like behaviour that culminated in the murder of a 13-year-old Emirati boy in Dubai this month, experts say. It might not yet be appropriate to officially label as gang members the people who knifed to death Ali Mohammed Hassan on the streets of Al Rashidiya, but their seemingly organised actions were symptomatic of gang activity the world over, said Rima Sabban, a Dubai-based sociologist.
"There are many reasons why youngsters choose gangs. In the UAE particularly, it's about this growing fear of marginalisation, this aura of nationals feeling crushed in their own land," she said. "They find themselves trapped between cultures, and they have a rebellious strand in them." Too little had been done to address the needs of Emirati youth, affected by rapid cultural change, she said, "and this is seeping into the soul of young people".
Ali, described by family and friends as intelligent, thoughtful and polite, left his house on a Thursday evening with his cousin and encountered a group of "armed" Emirati teenagers. In what police described as a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, he was surrounded by about a dozen boys and stabbed 11 times. The attackers sped off in cars, leaving Ali bleeding on the pavement. He died of his wounds on his way to hospital.
Ali's brother, Essa, said of his sibling's killers: "They had come to kill. They would kill anyone. Why would they carry knives and drive around town? My brother was just there by accident and they killed him." Professor Natasha Ridge, a research fellow at the Dubai School of Government who specialises in male education, said such random violence was probably a symptom of a lack of organised activities for youths.
Physical education was all but absent in government schools, as were programmes such as art, music and after-school activities, she said. That has encouraged a trend in which roughly 10 per cent of Emirati boys drop out of school by grade 10, and then often opt out of finding employment. "In the traditional society, they would have had more time to sit around the majlis, to be mentored by their family and their extended families," said Prof Ridge. "In this modern era, their fathers may be busy. Some may be absent, too."
Prof Ridge said the breakdown of the traditional support structure, whether through divorce or neglect, could exert tremendous pressure on teenagers. "In the case of absent fathers, the burden for providing for the family often falls on the eldest son," she said. "So you often have a lot of young males who are facing a lot of pressure from the families to be more than they can actually be. That can lead to depression, anger."
An Emirati principal at a government secondary school in Ras al Khaimah agreed. "We aren't suffering from gangs in Ras al Khaimah, but we have some problems," he said. "That has to do with families who aren't co-operating with the teachers, the principals." He decried a lack of funding for child psychologists - there are only two for several dozen government schools in the emirate. "They have a very important role and those two are not enough for so many schools," said the principal, who did not want to be named.
After Ali's death, the Knowledge and Human Development Authority, which is responsible for schools in Dubai, said there were too few social workers. Yousef al Shehhi, a principal at Al Rams secondary school in Ras al Khaimah, said: "The school has to keep an eye on these things. "It has to identify the troublemakers. You have to follow them all the time, have social workers giving advice, counselling, meeting the students outside the school."
hnaylor@thenational.ae