The United Arab Emirates finances
the military leader trying to topple a United Nations-recognized government in
Libya. It helps lead a coalition of nations imposing an economic blockade of
Qatar, despite U.S. calls to resolve the dispute. It hired former staffers of
the U.S. National Security Agency as elite hackers to spy in a program that
included Americans as surveillance targets, a Reuters investigation found
this year.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo meets with Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates June 24, 2019. |
And yet, in a highly unusual practice, the U.S.
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) does not spy on the UAE’s government, three
former CIA officials familiar with the matter told Reuters, creating what some
critics call a dangerous blind spot in U.S. intelligence.
The CIA’s posture isn’t new. What’s changed is the
nature of the tiny but influential OPEC nation’s intervention across the Middle
East and Africa - fighting wars, running covert operations and using its
financial clout to reshape regional politics in ways that often run counter to
U.S. interests, according to the sources and foreign policy experts.
The CIA’s failure to adapt to the UAE’s growing
military and political ambitions amounts to a “dereliction of duty,” said a
fourth former CIA official.
The U.S. intelligence community doesn’t completely
ignore the UAE. Another branch, the National Security Agency (NSA), conducts
electronic surveillance - a lower-risk, lower-reward kind of
intelligence-gathering - inside the UAE, two sources with knowledge of NSA
operations told Reuters. And the CIA works with UAE intelligence in a “liaison”
relationship that involves intelligence sharing on common enemies, such as Iran
or al-Qaeda.
But the CIA does not gather “human intelligence” -
the most valuable and difficult-to-obtain information - from UAE informants on
its autocratic government, the three former CIA officials told Reuters.
The CIA, the NSA and the White House declined to
comment on U.S. espionage practices in the UAE. The UAE’s foreign ministry and
its U.S. embassy did not respond to requests for comment.
The CIA’s hands-off practice - which hasn’t been
previously reported in the media - puts the UAE on an extremely short list of
other countries where the agency takes a similar approach, former intelligence
officials said. They include the four other members of an intelligence
coalition called “The Five Eyes”: Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom
and Canada.
CIA spies gather human intelligence on almost every
other nation where the United States has significant interests, including some
key allies, according to four former CIA officials.
The closest contrast to the UAE may be Saudi Arabia
- another influential U.S. ally in the Middle East that produces oil and buys
U.S. weapons. Unlike the UAE, Saudi Arabia is often targeted by the CIA,
according to two former CIA officials and a former intelligence officer for a
Gulf nation. Saudi intelligence agents have caught several CIA agents trying to
recruit Saudi officials as informants, the sources said.
The Saudi intelligence agencies do not complain
publicly about CIA spying attempts but privately meet with the agency’s station
chief in Riyadh to ask that the CIA officers involved be quietly ejected from
the country, said the former intelligence official for a Gulf nation.
Robert Baer, a former CIA agent and author, called
the lack of human intelligence on the UAE “a failure” when told about it by
Reuters. U.S. policymakers, he said, need the best available information on the
internal politics and family feuds of Middle Eastern monarchies.
“If you pride yourself on being a world service,
it’s a failure,” he said. “The royal families are crucial.”
A former official in U.S. President Donald Trump’s
administration said the lack of UAE intelligence is alarming because the desert
monarchy now operates as a “rogue state” in strategic nations such as
Libya and Qatar and further afield in Africa.
In Sudan, the UAE spent years and
billions of dollars propping up long-serving Sudanese President Omar Hassan
al-Bashir, then abandoned him and
supported the military leaders who overthrew him in April. The new government’s
security forces in June killed dozens of
protesters who were pushing for civilian rule and elections.
The UAE has also built military bases in Eritrea and the self-declared Republic
of Somaliland.
“You turn over any rock in the horn of Africa, and
you find the UAE there,” the former Trump administration official said.
The UAE has asserted itself as a financial and
military power in areas “far from its immediate neighborhood,” said Sara Leah
Whitson, executive director of the Middle East and North Africa Division of
Human Rights Watch.
“Whether Somalia, or Eritrea or Djibouti, or Yemen,
the UAE is not asking for permission,” she said.
In Yemen, the UAE and Saudi Arabia have led a
coalition of nations fighting Iran-aligned Houthi rebels, but the UAE recently
started drawing down troops amid international criticism over air strikes that
have killed thousands of civilians and a humanitarian crisis that has pushed
millions to the brink of famine. The U.S. Congress recently passed resolutions
to halt arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, but President Trump vetoed the
measures.
The UAE government has spent $46.8 million on U.S.
lobbyists since 2017, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
One of the three former CIA officials with
knowledge of the agency’s UAE operations said intelligence on its government is
needed for reasons beyond its regional interventions. The UAE is also forging
closer ties with Russia – including a wide-ranging strategic partnership signed
last year to cooperate on security, trade and oil markets – and with China,
where Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi and the UAE’s
defector ruler, last month made a three-day visit for a UAE-China economic
forum.
Some national security experts, however, continue
to see enough alignment between U.S. and UAE interests to explain the continued
lack of spying.
“Their enemies are our enemies,” said Norman Roule,
a retired CIA official, referring to Iran and al-Qaeda. “Abu Dhabi’s actions
have contributed to the war on terror, particularly against al-Queda in Yemen.”
The Abu Dhabi crown prince controls the foreign
policy of the UAE, a federation of desert emirates, with a small group of
advisors. He installed his U.S-educated brother, Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed, a
mixed-martial arts buff who owns a stable of Arabian race horses, as his
National Security Advisor. His son, Sheikh Khalid bin Mohammed, runs the
country’s sprawling internal surveillance network.
The UAE’s rising interventionism dates to 2011.
Mass protests demanding democracy across the region during the so-called Arab
Spring sparked rising concern within the UAE palace elite over the preservation
of its own power, said Jodi Vittori, a former Air Force Intelligence officer
now with the Carnegie Foundation for International Peace.
Like many Gulf royals, UAE leaders viewed the
demonstrations as a threat to monarchic rule in the region. They have since
fought the rise of political Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood, the
international Islamic party that briefly rose to power in Egypt after the 2011
protests that ousted President Hosni Mubarak. The UAE cut off financial support
to Egypt when brotherhood candidate Mohamed Mursi was elected president in
2012, and then resumed sending billions in aid after Egypt’s army ousted Mursi
a year later.
Vittori, of the Carnegie Foundation, acknowledged
some continuing shared goals between the U.S. and UAE governments but said
those interests are diverging as the UAE’s monarchy focuses on
self-preservation.
“When the goal is regime-survival at all costs,”
she said, “it’s not one that’s going to align with the U.S.”
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