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"You're Essentially a Prisoner": Why do Dubai's Princesses Keep Trying to Escape?

The story of Sheikh Mohammed and Haya’s parting of ways is a winding tale, full of unexpected twists and turns and the font of so many rumors that I could barely keep them straight. The Gulf states are involved in an information warfare campaign at the moment—in particular, the UAE and Saudi Arabia are pitted against Qatar—and conspiracy theories in many realms abound. It’s possible to even hear impassioned explanations of how the real killers of Jamal Khashoggi, the dissident and Washington Post reporter, were actually Qatari spies who framed the Saudis to get back at them for the Saudi-led blockade of Qatar. (And, by the way, part of why the Saudis blockaded the country was said to be jealousy over Qatar landing the 2022 World Cup.)

Theories about Haya’s departure, too, have come hot and heavy. Facts are scant—and certainly not found in the public square. It is simply understood that the emir’s wives and daughters are off-limits as a subject of chatter. “It is said that human scorpions dwell on the earth in the form of gossipers and conspirators, who trouble souls, destroy relationships, and subvert the spirit of communities and teams,” is the way that Sheikh Mohammed has described loose talk.

But in private among Arabian experts, royal watchers, and journalists in the West, each move in Haya’s departure from Dubai has been scrutinized. Many question why Sheikh Mohammed, who is known to keep close tabs on his citizens, would have allowed his wife to leave when Dubai has more surveillance than anywhere on Earth, with 35,000 cameras trained on street corners (Washington, D.C., only has about 4,000). If the sheikh had an inkling that things were awry in his marriage, wouldn’t he have asked one of his ministers to monitor his wife’s digital footprint, and even revoke her privileges on their (multiple) private planes?

Many are also questioning what exactly Haya’s escape may have to do with Sheikh Mohammed’s daughter Latifa fleeing on a yacht and if the two departures are linked. The downside of monarchical prerogative may be felt through the heirs, as it is so often. The sheikh needs to run his state and keep his offspring from embarrassing him, and he may do that in a strict and potentially brutal way.

[...] In Dubai’s royal family, for women, life may be stricter. “You have the fancy title of being a princess, and of course you have people waiting on you [hand and foot], but you’re essentially a prisoner,” says an Arab dissident. “You’re not supposed to socialize. You don’t have a normal life.” Though some women in Dubai’s royal family are educated abroad and have public profiles, others simply bear children, spend their monthly stipend, and remain quiet. “If you want to be in favor, you buy into what the king does. If you’re not, you’re pushed aside and nobody really cares about you—you’re not a high-profile monarchy anyway,” says a source with knowledge of Dubai’s royals.

[...] In 2001, according to The Guardian, Sheikh Mohammed’s daughter Shamsa bint Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, a tall, dark-eyed college student and equestrian who once came in behind Princess Anne in a long-distance horse race, abandoned her black Range Rover near the stables at the family’s Surrey estate. When the vehicle was discovered the following morning, Sheikh Mohammed took a helicopter from another racing area to join the hunt. Shamsa was eventually found in Cambridge, after which she was reportedly snatched by bodyguards and returned to Dubai; her father followed up by moving 80 horses off the property and firing nearly all of the estate’s staff.

When this news spilled into the press—via Shamsa hiring a London barrister and also reportedly calling British police from Dubai—there was an outcry. In London, the government opened an investigation into whether she had been taken out of the country “against her will.” But the investigation apparently languished, and Shamsa remained in Dubai, though she has not appeared in a photograph circulating on the internet or elsewhere in the intervening 18 years.

Could this court case unlock the mystery of Dubai’s missing princesses Latifa and Shamsa?

Princess Haya in court for London hearing in legal battle with Dubai's ruler