Children wear fatigues and boots in appreciation for the sacrifices made by the country’s heroes
On Sunday, Saood Al Riyami will don fatigues and a matching cap, lace up his boots and report for National Day duty.
Saood is one of thousands of children who will commemorate the formation of the country by wearing a military uniform.
Children’s uniforms have become an integral part of National Day since the introduction of Commemoration Day in 2015 led to a new appreciation of the Armed Forces.
“It was my idea to wear the uniform,” says Saood, 11, a year six pupil in Dubai. “It makes me proud of the soldiers who went to risk their lives for the war to protect their country.
“They sacrifice their life to defend their country and if no one went then the war would spread to different countries.”
Six years ago only servicemen wore fatigues. But public and civilian displays of support for the military took off after the Arab Coalition intervened in the conflict in Yemen in 2015 to restore the internationally recognised government of president Abdrabu Mansur Hadi.
Boys’ uniforms are now mandatory at some schools for National Day celebrations.
The month before National Day is the busiest time of year for Technical Scissors, Abu Dhabi’s largest uniform company. Its 400 tailors began sewing children’s uniforms in September.
The family business expects to sell 4,000 children’s uniforms this month and a uniform for a three-year old can cost up to Dh430. “Before it was optional,” says Rezk Salem, the company’s sales representative. “Now schools insist.”
Some schools place mass orders directly to the company. “It’s because of schools that this business has grown,” says Reema Owaimer, head of the company’s schools section.
“The government curriculum has guided them in this direction so that children now believe that uniforms are important. When the child wears this suit, he feels respected.”
Ms Owaimer is the daughter of the company’s Palestinian founder, Mohammed, who arrived in Abu Dhabi in 1968 as a refugee.
When she was a child, National Day celebrations were little
more than a flag-raising event at school.
Children’s uniforms are identical with adult ones in every detail, from customised badges for name and rank to boots.
“Some parents buy the whole uniform and go the whole way because they love the army,” says Mr Salem says.
Advertising is geared to children. A video released by Technical Scissors features a boy trying on helmets and boots. Few girls’ uniforms are sold. At parades and state-sponsored concerts featuring Emirati poets and pop stars, boys dress in fatigues. Last year’s Ras Al Khaimah concert featured a story about a boy who pledges to defend his country.
His mother tells him: “With your blood, you should protect the nation and when it calls on you, you must answer with your soul before your body.”
Recent celebrations also promote qualities such as self-sacrifice, obedience and pride.
All year-round, children in small towns and villages are surrounded by physical tributes to the heroes. Mosques, roads, community buildings and football fields in the Northern Emirates have been renamed for those who have died in service.
“The demand comes from schools, they request all this” said Mohammed Taj, a partner at Al Maroof Ready-Made Garments, a shop at RAK’s Kuwaiti Street market.
Down the road, Maryam Youssef did last-minute National Day shopping for her daughter.
Shopping for her sons was easier. Ms Youssef says this prepares them for National Service, which boys can begin from the age of 16.
This weekend sees perhaps the most important days in the UAE’s national calendar. Today marks Commemoration Day, which will be followed by the celebration of the 47th National Day on Sunday.
The former marks the sacrifices of those who have laid down their lives for the country, from the first to fall in conflict, Salem Suhail Al Dahmani, defending the island of Greater Tunb in 1971, just before the federation was born on December 2, to the latest casualties in the conflict in Yemen.
National Day, meanwhile, marks the completion of yet another year in the life of what has proven to be a remarkably successful experiment in political union and the pursuit of wide-ranging social and economic development.
For people living in the UAE, the signposts of a nationwide celebration are everywhere. Flags and decorative lights line streets and adorn houses and malls.
For the young, special events are being arranged in schools, one of which I attended earlier this week. That’s an important way of promoting both knowledge of – and pride in – the UAE’s progress, among the children of citizens and residents from overseas alike.
For UAE citizens, of course, it’s easier to grasp the magnitude of what is being celebrated.
Most families still have members of an older generation, who can recount to younger members of the family how the UAE began and how it evolved over the years. The days of hardship are now distant memories for those old enough to have them but it is still important – perhaps more than ever before – that those memories are shared and passed on, in the hope that a younger generation can comprehend the benefits they have reaped.
They should not be taken for granted. Above all, it’s important to ensure that a sense of entitlement does not arise. The progress that has been made is the fruit of much hard work over the years and can best be preserved and built upon through continued effort.
On such a day, there is a particular resonance to the oft-quoted statement of the late Sheikh Zayed: “He who does not know his past cannot make the best of his present and future, for it is from the past that we learn.”
Since there is a long holiday weekend for National Day for both the public and private sectors, it is almost impossible, even for new arrivals, to overlook the fact there is a special occasion underway.
It is to be hoped that its significance and the achievements that have been made since the formation of the federation will not pass them by.
In this, the Year of Zayed, now drawing to a close, something of that message and of the role played by Sheikh Zayed and the other founding leaders should be clear to all.
It’s more difficult, however, for the real meaning of Commemoration Day to be understood by the UAE’s communities of foreign residents, except for those who have a close relationship with some of the country’s citizens.
Until this millennium, less than a dozen Emiratis had died in the service of the state, including six who died in the first Gulf War to liberate Kuwait.
I still recall vividly both the sense of shock widely felt when the news of those deaths came through and the burgeoning sense of nationhood and patriotism that has remained with us ever since.
It is a marker of a changing world that those numbers have tragically risen, with conflicts erupting across the region in recent times. While compared to other nations engaged in conflict, the losses might seem relatively few, they represent a heavy toll on the UAE’s one million or so national citizens. In a country such as the UAE, with its tight-knit familial and tribal structure, the impact is greater still.
It’s never easy for a community to become accustomed to such losses; harder still for those more directly affected. Although, rightly, Commemoration Day pays tribute to the sacrifices made by the fallen and offers continuing support to their families, including their parents, widows and children, the hurt still runs deep.
A few weeks ago, on the centennial anniversary of the end of the First World War, I paid tribute to the memory of those who had laid down their lives in that conflict and in other battles that have followed.
That was an occasion of global significance, commemorated around the world. This weekend, it is the UAE’s time to recall and to honour its own losses.
It’s important that the country’s communities of residents from overseas recognise and understand what this event means to the citizens among whom they live.
The number of losses might seem small but in tight-knit communities, the impact is great