Stop Calling the UAE an 'Ally'

The problem isn’t just that the UAE doesn’t behave like an ally, but that it isn’t one and should not be confused with one.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) sent weapons to fuel the conflict in Sudan instead of the humanitarian assistance that it had promised the U.S. it would send:

When a cargo plane landed in Uganda’s busiest airport in early June, its flight documents said it was carrying humanitarian aid sent by the United Arab Emirates for Sudanese refugees.

Instead of the food and medical supplies listed on the aircraft’s manifest, Ugandan officials said they found dozens of green plastic crates in the plane’s cargo hold filled with ammunition, assault rifles and other small arms.

The weapons discovered June 2 at Entebbe airport were part of an effort by the U.A.E., a U.S. ally, to support Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, a Sudanese warlord who is battling for control of Africa’s third-largest country, African and Middle Eastern officials said.

The report is well done, and I recommend reading the entire article. Unfortunately, there is one error, and that is the choice to designate the UAE as an ally in both the headline and the story. The problem isn’t just that the UAE doesn’t behave like an ally, but that it isn’t one and should not be confused with one. Another story earlier this week in The New York Times makes the same common mistake in an article on the UAE’s cultivation of its ties with Russia and China.

This might seem like quibbling over semantics, but it makes a big difference in how readers understand the relationship that the U.S. and the UAE have.