“The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has proven all skeptics wrong from day one until today,” Emirati political scientist Abdulkhaleq Abdulla told Al-Monitor. Forty years after the rulers of the six Gulf Arab states met on May 25, 1981, at the InterContinental Abu Dhabi Hotel to attend the first GCC summit, the political and economic alliance is still alive and well.
Over the span of four decades, the GCC reaffirmed existing social ties and shaped a stronger “Khaleeji identity,” Abdulla said, in reference to a term referring to a person from one of the GCC states. “There are now about 30 million Khaleejis today who say they are Khaleejis.”
