UAE Boot to Western Groups Shows Wider Gulf Unease It could seem a bit of overreaching by a local official: Dubai's police chief offering hard-line advice to Gulf rulers about how to deal with opposition such as street protests or anti-state comments on Twitter. Yet it's a vivid lesson in the growing unease across the Gulf as authorities target dissenting voices and pull the welcome mat out from under international groups seen as potential pro-reform sounding boards, including the U.S.-funded National Democratic Institute whose Dubai office was abruptly closed last week. "Be watchful," warned Dubai's Police Chief, Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim, in an interview published Sunday in Bahrain's pro-government Al Ayam newspaper. His comments ranged from encouraging withering crackdowns on Shiite-led protesters in Bahrain to raising alarms about Islamist groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, using social media for outreach. The wider message, however, reflects the hardening views among the Western-allied Gulf states as they band together to try to fend off any possible Arab Spring-inspired challenges. Gulf leaders have endorsed closer alliances on security matters and intelligence sharing. A Saudi-led Gulf force - which came to the aid of Bahrain's monarchy after protests erupted last year - is now viewed as an option if unrest flares anywhere from Kuwait to Oman. Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal, right, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah Khaled al-Hamad Al-Sabah chat prior to a group photo before a US- Gulf Cooperation Council forum at the Gulf Cooperation Council Secretariat in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Saturday, March 31, 2012. Secretary Clinton is visiting the region to speak with leaders about local and global issues including Iran as well as attend talks aimed at ending the violence by the Assad regime towards its citizens in Syria. (AP Photo/Brendan Smialowski, Pool) Close And the UAE - once the most receptive regional hub for think tanks and other political-minded groups - suddenly looks tough minded. In the span of a week, the UAE closed the Abu Dhabi office of the German pro-democracy group, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, and the Dubai branch of the National Democratic Institute, which also had faced pressure from authorities in Egypt along with other Western rights and watchdog groups. Abu Dhabi also decided to cut ties last week with the Washington-based polling organization Gallup, which opened in the UAE's capital to much official fanfare in 2009. Last year, the independent Gulf Research Center relocated from Dubai to Geneva after its license was revoked in the UAE, a collection of seven semiautonomous emirates that include Dubai and the capital, Abu Dhabi. At the time, the group said the UAE had objected to "various aspects" of its work, which included political analyses and studies. "We very much regret" the closure of the National Democratic Institute's Dubai office, said U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton during a meeting of Gulf foreign ministers in Saudi Arabia on Saturday. She said the issue was raised with the UAE's foreign minister, Sheik Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan. But there has been no official comment from the UAE on the closures. "It really shows the nervousness of authorities about anything that could be seen as opposition or encouraging free speech," said Christopher Davidson, an expert on Gulf affairs at Britain's Durham University. The UAE was supposed to be a place where foreign companies and groups could set up camp without fear of this type of interference. The Arab Spring changed that. There's also the potential chill factor on prominent academic and cultural institutions that chose the UAE for its relative openness. State-run universities in the UAE now must get state security clearance for all outside lecturers, said Davidson, who has seen the application forms. Such measures have not been imposed on foreign-affiliated schools such as New York University's Abu Dhabi campus.