In the playground of the rich, no one wanted this war. For decades, Dubai stood as a sanctuary of pure consumerism visited by tourists from all over the world.
But now, the United Arab Emirates city faces an existential threat, as the war between the United States, Israel and Iran has shaken the foundations of the “Dubai dream” that so many foreigners had believed in.
The United Arab Emirates has borne the brunt of more than two-thirds of Iran’s attacks; The state was attacked in part, analysts say, for its deep military and intelligence partnerships with Western powers, and Dubai’s reputation as a favorite hub for global finance and Western vacations.
“The shine has definitely been lost,” said John Trudinger, a Briton who has lived in Dubai for 16 years and principal of an Emirati school in Dubai. It employs more than 100 UK teachers and said most have been so “deeply traumatized and really struggling to cope” with the sudden arrival of war in Dubai that they have left and will not return.
They are among tens of thousands of residents and tourists who have fled Dubai since the United States and Israel launched joint attacks on Iran nearly two weeks ago. The city’s large migrant worker population largely does not have that option.
Alerts ring on everyone’s phones daily, warning of “potential missile threats” and telling them to seek safety and stay away from windows. More than 90% of the 1,700 Iranian projectiles have been repelled by the UAE’s defense systems, but some have hit important targets, including military bases, industrial complexes and Dubai airport, shutting down one of the world’s busiest aviation hubs. Attacks on two data centers briefly left Dubai residents unable to use their phones for digital payments.
The Fairmont Hotel, located on Dubai’s famous palm-shaped artificial island, home to mega-mansions, luxurious hotels and luxury beach clubs, was also dramatically affected.
Zain Anwar, a taxi driver from Pakistan, saw his car destroyed in the Fairmont attack after he parked it while going to pray.
“I’m the luckiest person in the world to have survived,” she said. “But now my family is telling me to come home. I don’t want to be in Dubai anymore, there is no business, we haven’t won anything since this war and I don’t see tourism coming back. Many taxi drivers like me are now thinking about going to another country. Everyone knows that Dubai is finished.”
The economic consequences of the conflict for the United Arab Emirates are likely to be significant, but nowhere more so than in Dubai, where tourism generates around $30 billion each year. More than 90% of its residents are foreigners, including one of the largest concentrations of billionaires in the world, who enjoy the lack of income, capital gains and inheritance taxes.
Unlike other Gulf emirates, Dubai does not have vast oil resources to draw on. Analysts say financial losses will be large if the war drags on and the city’s reputation as a tourism haven and Western confidence in business, banking and real estate investment continues to erode. On Wednesday, Citibank and Standard Chartered bank evacuated their employees from Dubai “due to heightened security concerns.”
“Dubai is already losing significantly,” said Khaled Almezaini, a professor at Zayed University in the United Arab Emirates and co-author of An Introduction to Gulf Politics. “So far it is bearable for the UAE economy, but if this continues for another 10 to 20 days, the impact on tourism, aviation, expatriate businesses and oil will be very difficult.”
There has been a marked effort by the sheikhs who rule Dubai to control the narrative and maintain an image of calm and security. After a series of panicked posts on social media, Dubai Police threatened to arrest and jail social media influencers who shared social content that “contradicts official announcements or may cause social panic.” Cheerful messages from officials assure people that the “big bangs” in the sky are “the sound of safety.”
Residents and tourists who remain in the city insist that it has been remarkably easy to carry on with normal life, even though beach bars, shopping malls and five-star hotels remain eerily empty. Along Dubai’s Jumeirah Beach, bikini-clad influencers can be seen pouting at their cameras, while children frolic on giant sea-borne inflatables and jet skis routinely cruise across the horizon.
Ironically, many of the tourists said they had come here to escape the war. “We’re from Ukraine, so unfortunately we come from one war zone to another, but that’s life,” said Christina Hallis, 26, while sipping a cocktail on a lounge chair. “I still feel safe here, I’m happy to come to the beach and we’ve enjoyed life here. You wouldn’t know there was a war going on.”
Collateral damage from the mass exodus of tourists and influencers has included hundreds of dogs and cats, so favored by Dubai’s famous TikTok, Instagram and YouTube stars, who in recent days have been unceremoniously dumped in the city’s shelters, tied to lampposts or abandoned in boxes on the streets as their owners hastily left the country. K9, an animal shelter in Dubai, called the situation “disgusting.”
However, for millions of economic migrants who came to Dubai in search of labor, construction, delivery and driving jobs, the option of hopping on a plane back home simply does not exist. There are 2 million Indians, up to 700,000 Nepalis and 400,000 Pakistanis living in Dubai, many of them exploited and low-status economic migrants who are often not free to return as they wish.
Of the four people who have died in the United Arab Emirates since the conflict began, three were South Asian workers, including a Pakistani taxi driver, a Nepalese security guard and a Bangladeshi water tanker driver. Drone attacks near Dubai airport early Wednesday morning injured two Ghanaians, an Indian and a Bangladeshi national.
In Muhaisnah 2, a district on the outskirts of Dubai where most of the worker hostels are located, Ebenezer Ibrahim, 29, a Nigerian worker, was one of the few who was informed of the conflict.
“We are all human and we bleed, so of course I am worried about these missiles,” Ibrahim said. “But the government is doing a good job intercepting them for now. Since I am from Africa, there are also many problems in my own home. I have my goals and I will stay here to work for them.”
The majority in Muhaisnah 2 downplayed the concerns and said the war had nothing to do with them. But the family of Saleh Ahmed, a 55-year-old Bangladeshi driver who was killed by missile debris at his workplace in Dubai, argued that the lack of information and clear warnings given to him and other workers about the conflict had proved fatal.
“I only understood the magnitude of what was happening when I returned to Bangladesh and saw the news here,” said his younger brother Zakir Hussein, 35, who also works in Dubai.
“Honestly, workers in Dubai are afraid to speak; we always had the feeling that we can’t say anything bad about the country because it would get us in trouble. If we had known what was really happening, my brother could have tried to get to a safer place or return home.”
Hussein said that after losing his brother, returning to Dubai, especially as the conflict continued, seemed “unbearable.” “But Dubai is the only place where we know how to make money,” he said. “Our families depend on us.”
Redwan Ahmed contributed to this report from Dhaka.
