Dubai, a sheikhdom in the United Arab Emirates, is driven by commerce--and that helps explain the government-owned airline's success.

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This small sheikhdom of some 906, 000 people demonstrates anew that the true source of wealth is not "natural resources" but human ingenuity.

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Menon, who still shuttles between India and Dubai, has now set up his personal home in the Gulf sheikhdom, while maintaining ties to his native Kerala.

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Despite the arch-capitalist atmosphere, half the sheikhdom's top hotels, its airport, seaports, refinery, dry dock, aluminium smelter and two of its three banks, among other assets, are government-controlled.

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Only a small fraction of Americans had ever heard of Kuwait before Iraq invaded it in 1990, yet the U.S. sent hundreds of thousands of troops to liberate the sheikhdom.

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Former Afghan officials say that the bribery and influence-peddling was at times florid and spectacular, with some of it unfolding in Dubai, the Vegas-like sheikhdom where many high Afghan officials maintain second homes.

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The tiny sheikhdom of Dubai, just a few years earlier known as a place that looked the other way as extremists transferred money through its banks and Iran shipped weapons parts through its ports, had transformed itself into the Gulf state most openly cooperating in the war on terror.

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