Perhaps a bit of artistic exaggeration here and there, but by and large the article hits dead centre. The fat, incompetent and lazy locals (youth especially), their sense of entitlement born of nothing but inherited artificial wealth and stupidity, the morally questionable expat scene, the malls, the roads going nowhere, the uselessness of it all, the corruption and nepotism and, above all. the greed and obsession with money - it's pretty much spot on.
As for the expats being not too clever, well, if any of the comments on this site relating to any manager (and a very large part of western expats commands just such a title) is anything to go by, then it's not far off the mark. Discounting that as hearsay, which is tempting, I can only rely on my own experiences with the dozens upon dozens of expats we've shipped off sandpit way. And I'm afraid to say that a fairly large part of them were pretty far from being the sharpest knife in the drawer, and had long since either hit - or in come cases even passed (Peter Principle) - the point where their careers would take them no further. Except they could potter of to the land of Sand, and build little empires of incompetence and misguided sense of achievement. After all when the US DoD is throwing money at you like it's going out of fashion, even the most incompetent flock of baboons can manage to get decent numbers on a P&L sheet. But once that stops, the music stops and a lot of the guys will have to face something they'd rather not: Reality of returning to Europe, the US or dunnunda.
Let me just finish this off by making it absolutely clear the above rant is directed at expat managers only, not by any stretch of imagination towards the boys and girls sat up the front end of 200 million worth of spare parts flying in tight formation.