Slaves and semi-slaves in Gulf societies
Danilo Antón

Societies in the Persian Gulf or Arabian Gulf (as it is also called) seem to be predestined to operate based on the exploitation of slave (as it was historically) or semi-slave labor (as it is today).
For many centuries coastal communities based much of their income on the extraction and sale of pearls. For this they used slaves who had to constantly dive to collect as many pearls as possible. The task was so hard that divers could not resist more than a few years. 
At present the heavy work is carried out by immigrants from Asian countries. These workers live and work in conditions of semi-slavery. They live in unhealthy constructions, with poor food, without rest or labor benefits, with arbitrary payment (or not) of  wages and without freedom to be able to return to their countries because in the Gulf countries the employers retain the passports of their employees. 
Here is a brief historical review of life in Gulf Coast communities.

Pearl divers

The collection of pearl from oysters has been one of the hardest extractive operations in history. Usually slave divers were forced divers to constantly dive to obtain the valuable gems in order to satisfy the greater profits for the local employers and employers.
Since Sumerian times, in Mesopotamia, and at least since the sixth Pharaonic dynasty in Egypt (in the third millennium BCE), pearl collection was the basis of the economy of the Persian Gulf societies. 
At the beginning of the first century BCE, Pliny the Elder, in his book Historia Naturalis considered that the most perfect and exquisite pearls were obtained from the Persian Gulf in Arabia. Shortly afterwards, the Roman-Egyptian historian Ptolemy wrote about the pearl fisheries on the island of Tylos, which was the Roman name of Bahrain.
In the fourteenth century the Moroccan traveler and narrator Ibn Batuta, who toured the cities and territories of Shiraz, the oases of Al Hasa and Al Qatif, the island of Bahrain (formerly known as Awal), the Strait of Hormuz and Oman, Ratified the existence of this prosperous activity in the coastal areas of the Persian Gulf.
In the 16th century the Portuguese established several forts (in Bahrain, Al Qatif, Hormuz and Muscat), and later, when the area fell under British influence, pearl extraction continued to be the main economic support for coastal towns. In the 17th and 19th centuries the pearl banks continued to be exploited in the islands of Bahrain and Dalmah (near Abu-Dhabi), Abu Musa, Hormuz and the Lavan-Kish archipelago.
Due to the excessive extraction of oysters90 in the shallow intertidal zone, it was necessary to extend the extractive dive to the deeper waters (more than 10 meters) with the consequent risk to the divers ..
The dive was made from small wooden boats (called "dhow"). Until the early nineteenth century divers were usually slaves forced to perform 50 to 60 submersions per day. To submerge they were allowed to sink with heavy stones collecting the largest quantity of oysters before returning to the surface91. The use of slaves for the extraction of pearls on the coasts of the Persian Gulf continued until the twentieth century. In 1930 there were still several thousand slaves in the States of the Truce (now the United Arab Emirates), Qatar, Oman and Bahrain.

The Gulf in the 21st Century

Things have changed in the Gulf emirates since the days of the pearl divers.
The cause was the inflow of financial resources due to the exploitation of the local hydrocarbon deposits.
The small traditional fishing villages, which had only a few hundred or a few thousand people, became modern cities with hundreds of thousands and even millions of inhabitants.
The Emirate of Dubai, which was a tiny community at the beginning of the 20th century, today has 2,300,000 inhabitants on an area of ​​4,100 km2, Abu Dhabi has a population of 870,000, Sharjah 700,000 and Bahrain 700,000, far superior to the few dimensions of these villages in old times. The cities of today are cities built with abundant resources, great building development and daring projects that required large investments.
The case of Dubai is symptomatic. In this emirate is the tallest building in the world (Borj Khalifa with 828 meters), the largest Mall of the planet (Dubai Mall), the largest source (Dubai Fountain), extensive artificial islands (Palm Jumeirah and World Islands) , It is maintained that there is the "unique" seven star hotel that exists in the mu (Burj el Arab), as well as a subway and numerous avenues.