Fri. 8:38 a.m.: UAE’s long-ailing leader Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed has died
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The United Arab Emirates’ long-ailing ruler, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, died today, the government’s state-run news agency announced in a brief statement. He was 73.
Khalifa, the president of the UAE, oversaw much of the country’s blistering economic growth and his name was immortalized on the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, after bailing out debt-crippled Dubai during its financial crisis over a decade ago.
He suffered a stroke and underwent emergency a decade later,
Khalifa, meanwhile, helped boost the UAE’s regional profile with relief missions to Pakistan after devastating floods and by sending warplanes to the NATO-led mission against Moammar Gadhafi’s regime in Libya in 2011.
In 1969, while the area was still a British protectorate, Khalifa was named as Abu Dhabi prime minister and chairman of the emirate’s Department of Defense, which later became the core of the UAE’s armed forces. After independence in 1971, he became defense minister along with other roles. Later, the title of supreme commander of the armed forces was assumed by Mohammed bin Zayed.
The UAE also supported efforts in the region to quash the Muslim Brotherhood, including in Egypt.
He was believed to be among the world’s richest rulers with a personal fortune estimated by Forbes magazine in 2008 at $19 billion. He built a palace in the Seychelles, an island-chain nation in the Indian Ocean, and faced complaints there about causing water pollution from the construction site.
In 2007, Khalifa made a major gift to the Johns Hopkins Medicine complex in Baltimore. The size of the donation was not disclosed, but it was described as “transformational.”
In September 2014, the Emirates became one of the most prominent Arab participants in U.S.-led airstrikes against the Islamic State militant group in Syria, deploying its first female air force pilot on the initial raid.
He is known to have had eight children — two sons and six daughters — with his first wife, Sheikha Shamsa bint Suhail Al Mazrouei
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