DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — In the United States, the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks are seen as the catalyst for fear, war and economic worry.

But in the oil-rich Arab countries of the Persian Gulf, Sept. 11 is increasingly viewed as the event that kicked off a galloping economic boom, when Arabs divested from America and reinvested at home.

Arab investors pulled tens of billions of dollars out of the United States. They were angered by perceived American hostility toward Arabs. They worried that their assets would be frozen by U.S. counterterror measures. And U.S. markets happened to be plummeting while economies in the Persian Gulf were on the upswing, buoyed by rising oil prices.

The results have been spectacular.

Since late 2001, economies in the six Gulf Cooperation Council countries — Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia — have soared, with stock markets up a collective 400 percent. Over the same period, the Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 24 percent.

Most of the credit for the wealth influx here goes to the near-tripling of oil prices since 2001 to more than $67 a barrel.

"It's just been an exceptional period, the likes of which the region hasn't seen in 20 years," said Simon Williams, a Middle East analyst with the Economist Intelligence Unit in London.

Gulf oil revenues are expected to reach almost $300 billion this year, up from just $61 billion in 1998.

In Saudi Arabia, gross domestic product rose 37 percent between 2001 and last year. In the Emirates, GDP jumped almost 50 percent. By contrast, the U.S. economy rose 16 percent during the same period.

The boom is changing the face of Gulf states. Building cranes line the horizon in the Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain. New highways are slicing across once-empty desert, and hives of imported laborers are erecting hospitals, universities and entire districts of shimmering high-rise apartment towers — even artificial islands covered in luxury villas.

The changes are most visible in Dubai, which in the past four years has become one of the world's fastest-growing cities. Dubai currently has $20 billion in residential and commercial building projects either under way or announced, said Daniel Hanna, chief economist at Standard Chartered Bank in Dubai.

Prices of luxury properties have tripled or quadrupled since foreigners were given permission to buy here in 2002.

Investors and economists say the jump in oil revenues is the biggest factor for the boom, but the shift in strategy that led Gulf Arabs to divert funds from U.S. investments to home markets laid the groundwork.

Before 9/11, World Bank figures show that Middle Eastern oil exporting countries were plowing as much as $25 billion a year into U.S. investments. For the three years of 2001-03, the figure only reached $1.2 billion.

"We found an alternative asset class in our own backyard that is performing substantially better," said Walid Shihabie, head of research at Dubai-based Shuaa Capital.

Gulf investors also feared their assets would be seized by U.S. courts probing capital flows for links to Sept. 11 terrorists. Saudi Arabia was the birthplace of 15 of the 19 terrorists; two others came from the Emirates.

"Capital is a coward," Shihabie said. "There was more risk after 9/11. People were worried about their assets being frozen because they were from the Gulf."

Shihabie and others cited anger over U.S.-led wars and Middle East policy, and general hostility toward Arabs as another reason for the exodus.

"The Americans shot themselves in the foot by being so harsh," said Beshr Bakheet, owner of Bakheet Financial Advisers in Riyadh. "Do you want to put your money in a country that is involved in wars all over the globe? Not only Saudis, but a lot of people aren't comfortable with this."