| A Quarter of a century ago, in March 1968, in response to an announcement
by Britain that she was pulling our east of Suez in 1971, the Rulers of
seven south-eastern flank of the Arabian Peninsula came together and agreed
to establish a federation, They were disparate in size, ranging from small
to tiny, and had total poplulayion of only some 180,000.
A few had no roads, no schools, no hospitals, no development at all, while conflict between them was a matter of recent memory, rather than distant history. Yet, with changes a head, after 150 years of a British presence, the
seven Trucial states had no choice but to get together. Outside observers
gave them littel chance of success. As is so often the case, the observers
have been proved wrong. In the years since the federation was established
in 1971, the seven, joined as the United Arab Emirates, have undergone
a rapid process of economic and social development within the protective
shield of a political stability that has been able to weather not only
the vicissitudes of regional conflicts, like Iraq's invasion of Kuwait,
but also the impact of a population explosion, largely immigrant, that
has seen the number of ihabitants rise more than ten fold to over 1.8 million.
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