Mate, I like Dubai as a tourist destination, never been to Abu Dhabi or Qatar but one of my uni flat mates lived all of his life as a Brit in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Bahrain and Qatar and he still lives in Dubai. He regards it as home, having only been to the UK for University and he has many local friends there but he paints a very black picture. Endemic corruption, appalling human rights, absolute control of the political agenda and media. He says people
in the West would be horrified at what goes on but you just don’t hear about. They play a very clever PR game, befriending the West but no-one should be fooled.
His wife is a teacher, teaching at some private school that is a mix of ex-pat kids and rich locals. One day, guys turned up to ‘collect’ a child after school. The kids were all going outside to be picked up. A teacher smelled a rat as these people weren’t the parents or family and it became apparent that is was an attempted kidnapping. Quickly they got the kids back into the school and the would be kidnappers left.
The school quickly got a letter or email out to parents to advise them of the event and warn them of the dangers.
Next day the Head and Deputy head were summoned to the government ministry, grilled about it and told they were being deported for sullying the name of Dubai. They were lucky that’s all they got.