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It is a question often asked, the frequent subject of private conversations and regional chat show debates: how Islamic is Islamic finance?

Expatriates in the Gulf are used to horror stories about exit permits refused, passports withheld and people being held indefinitely under house arrest, but most accept it as one of the risks of working in a developing country

Iranian forces on 4 January hijacked the South Korean tanker Hankuk Chemi, in an apparent effort to pressurise Seoul into releasing some $7bn in oil-related assets that are frozen for breaching US sanctions. It came just a few days after a thwarted mine attack against the Liberian-flagged tanker MT Pola off the Iraqi port of Basra, following a campaign of intensified mining attacks on tankers in the Red Sea, most recently against vessels discharging oil products at the Saudi ports of Jeddah and Al-Shuqaiq.

While America and Europe continue to present a united front in response to Russia’s war in Ukraine, the UAE’s more ambivalent stance continues to cause concern in western capitals – and has the potential to undermine, or at least complicate, the country’s diplomatic and commercial relations with the United States and its allies.

With increasing amounts of Moscow's business now being transacted through Gulf states, impending G7 and EU sanctions on Russian diamond exports offer opportunities and risks for the Dubai Diamond Exchange, which has grown rapidly to become the largest trading hub in the world for the rough gems. 

Sheikh Khalid Bin Mohammed Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan has attempted to cement his status within the political arena and strengthen his profile among local citizens since he was named Abu Dhabi’s crown prince on 29 March, in a move which put the 41 year-old first in line to succeed his father, President Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan (MBZ). 

Attempts to reassure world markets that the emirate’s debt is no more than $80bn have been overshadowed by the revelation that Dubai World alone owes $59.3bn. Last November, Emaar Properties chairman Mohammed Ali Alabbar – for long a key ally of UAE Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum (MBR) – attempted to reassure financial markets that Dubai’s debt was no more than $80bn. It now appears the figure is higher.

While the secession of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) area has occupied most attention, a failure of state-building in post-Baathist Iraq might also see other regions looking for at least Kurdish levels of autonomy, if not outright independence. Of most concern to Baghdad would be the hydrocarbons-rich south. GSN spoke to a range of decision-makers in Basra to test the support for different kinds of decentralisation in the province, which has been called ‘the failed Gulf state’ by historians of the area

Saudi Arabia, after all, is to house the planned Gulf Co-operation Council central bank. Following the 11th GCC consultative summit, held in the Kingdom on 5 May, the GCC’s outgoing secretary-general Abdelrahman Al-Attiyah announced that Riyadh would be the new joint monetary council’s base; this institution will eventually evolve into the GCC central bank.

Kuwait’s press has rightfully earned itself a reputation as one of the most vibrant and free in the Arab world. It is not uncommon to see Kuwaiti papers splash on political and economic scandals and controversies, or even report on infighting within the ruling Al-Sabah, something which would scarcely be imaginable in the other Gulf monarchies. But over the last few months, the press in Kuwait has grown increasingly silent; uncannily so. The silence does not reflect a period of political calm, however. Rather it shows a growing fear among journalists and politicians that reporting anything about brewing political issues might get them into trouble

Turbulent times push everyone to buck up their thinking – and in this respect, Gulf Co-operation Council governments are no different from their international counterparts. Soaring oil revenues may provide Arabian states with a wealth cushion against global volatility; but an economic storm

Leave aside for a moment the football politics, so often an opaque affair, and the disappointment of much larger and more established soccer-playing nations, whose hopes of hosting a World Cup were dashed by the Zurich-based Fédération Internationale de Football Association (Fifa), the sport’s governing body. What does the success of Qatar’s bid to host the 2022 Fifa World Cup say about the nature of polities and geopolitics as the world remakes itself after a decade defined by the West’s unresolved interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, and staggers to an end with European economies and the United States struggling to recover from the credit crunch?

Two thirds of business executives in the Middle East believe corruption is widespread, with backhanders, facilitation payments and bribes often used to win contracts, according to an April report by Ernst & Young, the Middle East Fraud, Bribery and Corruption Survey.

None of the Gulf’s emerging ´middle powers’ have issued a detailed policy document setting out their approach to projecting soft power, even as they continue to spend extravagantly while drawing in investment and talent. Autocracies have no real need to orchestrate the sort of public debate that might follow, even if they regularly sound out local opinion via traditional diwans or more modern polling techniques — not to mention ever more pervasive surveillance of their citizens and others’ communications.

The influence and financial muscle of Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) states was more apparent than ever at the 6-9 October International Monetary Fund/World Bank annual meetings in Washington.