UAE: ostentatious luxury and modern slavery

The obscenity of unconscionable wealth

D.Anton
Things have changed in the Gulf Emirates since the days of pearl divers.
The cause was the influx of financial resources due to the exploitation of local oil fields.
Small villages of traditional fishermen, who just had a few hundred or a few thousand people, were transformed into modern cities with hundreds of thousands and even millions of people.
The Emirate of Dubai, which was a tiny community in the early twentieth century, has 2,300,000 inhabitants today in an area of ​​4,100 km2, Abu Dhabi has a population of 870,000, Sharjah 700.000 and Bahrain 700,000, much higher than the small size of these towns in old times. Today's cities are cities built with abundant resources, large housing development and bold projects requiring large investments. Dubai case is symptomatic. In this emirate there is the world's tallest building (Borj Khalifa with 828 meters), the planet's largest shopping mall (Dubai Mall), the most fruitful source (Dubai Fountain), extensive artificial islands (Palm Jumeirah and World Islands) the "only" seven-star hotel that exists in the world (Burj el Arab) a subway and numerous avenues, canals and bridges. One wonders how it has developed this wasteful extravagance from that modest beginning.

The answer lies in the fact that Dubai is in the heart of the region's most important world oil production areas. Its geopolitical and geographical position has allowed it to concentrate financial surpluses raised by neighboring countries through skillful marketing strategies at regional and global levels. Without reaching the level of Dubai other Gulf cities have also established particularly onerous urban, commercial and industrial projects. To carry out these projects the region has been able to count on abundant cheap labor from densely populated and poor regions in Africa and Asia, including India, Nepal, Pakistan and the Philippines.
Despite this apparent wealth, the workers who built and work in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and other Gulf cities often live in conditions of semi-slavery. With long-term contracts, harsh working conditions, with part of their wages and passports withheld, they are transformed into virtual hostages of a situation from which they cannot escape.
In the Gulf slavery has taken new forms but did not disappear}..
Reproduced fromj Chronicles of the Human Adventure, D.Antón, PiriGuazú Editions