For These Reasons, Emirati Students Were Expelled From the Royal Academy of Sandhurst in Britain

The Daily Mail published a report on its website, revealing that seven Emirati students at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in Britain were expelled due to their luxurious life during training.

The newspaper added that Commander Major General Duncan Capps felt the necessity of expelling at least seven students from abroad—all from the United Arab Emirates—due to what is described as disciplinary incidents.

The Daily Mail reported that the problem became so serious at one point that the military police investigated allegations of "huge bribes."

It explained that the students gave expensive gifts to coaches in the academy, which are BMW and Mercedes cars, Rolex watches, and trips to luxury resorts.

The UAE pays exorbitant sums for its relations with Sandhurst. It recently built a new apartment building there, the Zayed Building, at the cost of £15 million.

 

Princess Haya Case

The expulsions come at a time of strained relations between London and Abu Dhabi over the case of Princess Haya, the ex-wife of Dubai's ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who was ordered by a British court last December to pay 554 million pounds to settle a custody dispute over his two children.

This came in the wake of previous rulings of the Supreme Court regarding Bin Rashid's planning of the kidnappings of two of his daughters and the use of phone hacking software on British soil.

The newspaper pointed out that there could be cultural differences between Arab princes and British officers in Sandhurst. It added that Sandhurst's commandant, Maj Gen Duncan Capps did his best to issue a warning last year when he said in an interview with Middle Eastern readers, "Regardless of background or position, officer cadets are treated the same. Monarchs are treated just like everyone else."

 

Russia's Camp?

American, British, and other Western officials were outraged by the UAE's abstention on an issue that soon became the number one goal of Western foreign policy to isolate Russia.

The sharpness of the western rhetoric towards Abu Dhabi has risen so sharply that it was considered as siding by the Moscow camp.

The Axios website reported that the US State Department withdrew a diplomatic message that was to be sent to the embassies in the UAE and India, stating that the two countries' neutrality in the Ukraine crisis "puts them in the camp of Russia."

The draft telegram said that continuing to call for dialogue, as happened in the Security Council, is not a neutral position but rather puts you in the camp of Russia, which is the aggressor party in this conflict.

"It is harmful because it is a very public indication of tension," said Cynthia Bianco, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, and compared the abstention to other non-public channels in which Abu Dhabi had previously expressed its displeasure.

Some diplomats linked the UAE's reluctance to condemn Moscow to Russia's support for the United Nations embargo on the weapons of the Yemeni terrorist group al-Houthi, which launched drone and missile attacks on the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

After Houthi missile attacks killed three civilians in Abu Dhabi in January, the UAE sought to push Washington to reclassify the Houthi group as a terrorist organization and help the UAE strengthen its defenses against such attacks.

"They consider the US response to be modest…They were really insistent on designating them (the Houthis) as a terrorist group," a Western diplomat told Reuters.

 

Strain Relations

With the increase in this tension, Western and American analysts provide justifications for the crisis in UAE and UK. "The leadership in Abu Dhabi is not ready to be a proxy force," Kamel emphasized. They are not an arm of the Western countries in the Middle East."

Abu Dhabi officials believe that Iran, which supports the Houthi militia in Yemen, is increasing its support for armed groups in Iraq and Lebanon. In early February, an Iraqi armed group affiliated with Tehran attacked the UAE with drones, which the UAE Ministry of Defense announced its interception.

In order to balance Iranian power to some extent, the UAE is establishing strong relations with the West enemies such as China and Russia and seeking to enhance its defense capabilities.

"This tendency towards the east necessarily means a departure from the Emirates from the West," said Andreas Craig, assistant professor at the School of Security Studies at King's College in London, adding that the UAE will seek to achieve its national interests.

Despite the UAE's security cooperation with Russia, Craig says that most of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries "will continue to lay their security eggs in the US basket."

James Dorsey, an academic and professor of international relations who specializes in the region, says that US sanctions that are extraterritorial in nature and force third countries to comply or be subjected to similar punishment can accelerate the trend of the Gulf states' return to the American jaw.

He continued: Neither Russia, should it falter in Ukraine, nor China, is willing or able to replace the United States as the guarantor of Gulf security. As a result, the UAE's hedging bets (accepting a guaranteed small loss at the cost of a larger one) may understand one thing: not to act against Russian interests while acting against American interests.

It is a policy of "playing with fire" where you will lose allies at the same time. There are no guarantees that the eastern ally or the eastern dictatorships will be able to offer the same approach.