Saudi Arabia tried to bribe a prince of the UAE’s al-Nahyan family to cede control of a desert oasis suspected of containing vast quantities of oil. The sheikh rejected the offer to betray his family, and Saudi Arabia launched a failed invasion of the territory.
That is how the late journalist David Holden summed up the legendary 1950s Buraimi dispute between the Saudi royal family, Oman, and the Trucial States, which would become the United Arab Emirates, in his classic 1966 book, Farewell to Arabia.
The sheikh the Saudi Arabians tried to bribe, by Holden's telling, was Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, then known as the “Lord of Buraimi” but remembered in history as the founder of the UAE. His son, President Mohamed bin Zayed, is now locked in his own nasty spat with another Saudi family member, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
“If you put ideology, family and history together, you can understand the Saudi-UAE feud,” Patrick Theros, a former US diplomat and ambassador who first arrived in the Middle East when the Buraimi dispute was still warm to the touch, told Middle East Eye.
Right now, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are at loggerheads in almost every theatre imaginable, from the deserts of Libya to global energy markets.
