No one better understands the precarious tightrope Abu Dhabi walks when it tries to balance its relationships with western Europe while weighing the complex geopolitics of the Gulf region than Manchester City’s chair, Khaldoon al-Mubarak. He was eight when his father, ambassador Khalifa Ahmed Abdel Aziz al-Mubarak, left the family’s Paris apartment for work on 9 February 1984, and was assassinated on the street by a Palestinian terrorist. And no one outside the emirate’s royal family could be more wrapped up in the project of making and maintaining Abu Dhabi as a significant and secure world power and the dominant member of the United Arab Emirates, a nation state still only 55 years old.
His paternal grandfather, Ahmad bin Abdul Aziz al-Mubarak, was chair of Abu Dhabi’s Sharia judicial department and senior adviser to Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, the founding president of the UAE. As such, Ahmad bin Abdul Aziz was the James Madison of the UAE (the founding father, not the Spurs player) in that he crafted the Islamic legal framework of the new nation in the 1970s. Khaldoon’s father was assassinated by a group led by Abu Nidal which, according to the CIA, was “the most dangerous and effective of all terrorist groups [and] the best organized of the radical Palestinian terrorist groups” before the emergence of Hamas.
The murder was justified in a phone call saying that the UAE “had expelled Palestinian and Arab residents and was linked with American imperialism”. In essence, they were accused of being too soft on the west, not radical enough for Palestinians. Both al-Mubarak’s grandfather and father have streets named after them in Abu Dhabi, with his father honoured as a martyr of the state.
It is fair to say the City chair has honoured the family tradition as chief adviser to the UAE president and Abu Dhabi ruler, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, for whom he first worked after graduating from Tufts University in Massachusetts. Given his father’s martyrdom, the royal family is said to have looked out for al-Mubarak as a quasi-adopted son. According to a source in the Financial Times, al-Mubarak is “diplomatically in charge of the UK file as well as the China file … and he’s the main liaison with the US administration” and has diplomatic immunity in the UK.
That said, he appears to have made a rare misstep with his belligerent tone on Manchester City. According to Manchester City’s lawyer Simon Cliff, it was al-Mubarak who dictated the aggressive, confrontational stance City have taken with football authorities. As far back as 2014, when City were fighting their first Uefa charge, Cliff wrote, according to leaked documents first published by Der Spiegel: “Khaldoon says he would rather spend £30m on the 50 best lawyers in the world and sue them [Uefa] for the next ten years than agree a financial penalty.” He backed down on that occasion, along with the co-accused Paris Saint-Germain, both clubs agreeing a small fine and minor transfer restrictions with Uefa.
It is extraordinary that City kept fighting thereafter, whereas the Qatar-owned PSG accepted their punishment, cosied up to Uefa – with the club’s president, Nasser al-Khelaifi, becoming chair of the European Club Association (now European Football Clubs) and chief opponent of the breakaway Super League – and built the most exciting and successful team in Europe, bringing admiration for the Qatari brand from observers willing to ignore human rights abuses. Al-Mubarak, in fighting to the end with City, appears to have broken an ambassador’s cardinal law: don’t embarrass your boss. Should City lose their appeal against an independent commission’s finding that they were guilty of multiple breaches of financial rules, al-Mubarak may be instructed to organise the sale of the club.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
