The UAE employs foreign mercenaries to modernize its intelligence services
The American magazine, Eurasiareview, highlighted the UAE’s intensification of its campaign to recruit foreign mercenaries to modernize its intelligence services to serve its ambitions for gain and influence.
The magazine said that the geopolitical developments in the Middle East, which were characterized by the Arab Spring, the conflict in Yemen, the threat posed by the Iranian nuclear program and other global geopolitical developments, prompted the UAE to take some important steps to modernize.
The magazine stated that the UAE had intensified its efforts to improve its intelligence services, starting in the middle of the last decade.
As evidenced by the developments of recent intelligence services, countries with large financial resources, such as the case of the UAE, are often developing their technology sectors, such as signal intelligence and, more recently, artificial intelligence (AI), which requires more time to prepare and exploit these capabilities.
Besides enhancing its technical intelligence capabilities, the UAE has also continued to encourage the development of the private sector for security, especially in the cyber domain, with the government already having relatively tight control over these activities.
However, there have been slip-ups, such as Project Raven (Emirati company Dark Matter was involved, among others).
This led to the FBI investigating the use of some digital espionage activities that led to the arrest of foreign dissidents, as well as a certain degree of involvement in the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi and the collection of information about the Gulf monarchies and other Middle Eastern countries.
The UAE also strengthened the capabilities of the National Defense College, which Major General Oqab Shaheen al-Ali currently heads. It appointed Thomas Drohan as dean (preceded by John R Ballard, the college’s first dean).
An important international specialist in military strategy and war history, Joel Hayward, a New Zealand citizen, is mentioned in one of the college’s faculties. In addition, the National Cyber Security Authority (established in 2012 with US assistance) and its headquarters in Abu Dhabi have been renamed the Signals Intelligence Agency (SIA).
The agency is the counterpart of the National Security Agency in the United States, and the penetration of ISIS in the UAE was one of its achievements.
As for the five-year plan 2022-2026, the approved electronic budget for the UAE amounts to $79 billion, the largest in the country’s history. Moreover, according to the Global Security Index 2020, the UAE ranks fifth in the world.
The Financial Intelligence Unit (UAEFIU) is another important institution that Ali Faisal Baalawi currently heads. The name dates back to 2019 and is a continuation of an institution established by the UAE Central Bank in 1998 as a particular investigation unit for fraud and suspicious transactions, which was renamed the Anti-Money Laundering and Suspicious Cases Unit in 2002.
UAE Prime Minister Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum declared, “We want the UAE to become the best-prepared country in the world in the field of artificial intelligence,” and an ambitious 2031 program has been launched for this purpose.
The program will have a significant impact on the development of the UAE intelligence services as well. Last but not least, we note the strengthening of relations with the intelligence services of other countries, especially Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel and the United States, and the maintenance of good relations with the services of correspondents from countries such as Egypt, Russia, China and others.
In developing the activities of the intelligence services, the UAE employs experts from among specialists in the field from other countries, especially retirees in countries such as the United States of America, Great Britain and others who are lured by attractive salaries.
