Dubai, from pearl fishing villages to the extravagance of mammoth projects
Slavery and worker exploitation through
time
Danilo Anton
In the fourteenth century Moroccan
traveler and narrator Ibn Battuta, who toured the cities and
territories of Shiraz, the oasis of Al Hasa and Al Qatif, the island
of Bahrain (which in ancient times was also known as Awal), the
Strait of Hormuz and Oman, confirmed the existence of the thriving
activity of pearl fishing in the coastal areas of the Persian/ Arabian Gulf.
When the Portuguese explorers arrived
in the sixteenth century and established several strong (in Bahrain,
Al Qatif, island of Hormuz and Muscat), and later, when the area came
into the British sphere of influence, the pearl extraction continued
to be the main economic support of the seaside towns of the region.
From the seventeenth to the nineteenth
century pearls banks continued to be exploited in the islands of
Bahrain and Dalmah (near Abu Dhabi), in Abu Musa, in Hormuz and the
Lavan-Kish archipelago.
Due to excessive extraction oysters in
the shallow intertidal zone it was necessary to extend the extractive
dive to deeper waters (10 meters) with the consequent risk for divers
..
Diving was made from small wooden boats
(called "dhow"). Usually it was required to perform 50 to
60 dives per day. They were sunk with heavy stones to facilitate
diving and in depth the divers had to collect as many oyster as
possible before returning to the surface. The use of slaves for the
extraction of pearls off the coast of the Persian/Arabian Gulf continued
until the twentieth century. In 1930 there were still several
thousand slaves in the Trucial States (now the UAE), Qatar, Oman and
Bahrain.
The Gulf in the XXI century
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 deposits.
Small villages of traditional
fishermen, who had just 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, today has 2,300,000 inhabitants in an
area of 4,100 km2, Abu Dhabi has a population of 870,000,
700,000 and Bahrain Sharjah 700,000, much larger than the small size
of these villages in old times. Today's the Gulf cities are built
with abundant resources, large housing developments and bold
projects requiring huge investments.
Dubai's case is symptomatic. This
emirate possesses the world's tallest building (Borj Khalifa 828
meters), the world biggest mall (Dubai Mall), the most fruitful
source (Dubai Fountain), extensive artificial islands (Palm Jumeirah
and World Islands) is , the "only" seven stars that exists
(Burj el Arab) hotel and a metro and numerous streets, canals and
bridges.
One wonders how this wasteful
extravagance was possible from that modest beginning. The answer lies
in the fact that Dubai is in the heart of the most important world
oil production region. Its geopolitical and geographical position has
allowed it to concentrate financial surplus raised by neighboring
countries and by bold business marketing strategies at regional and
global level.
Without going as far as 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 countries in Africa and Asia, such as 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 are often in semi-slavery conditions.
With long-term
contracts, harsh working conditions, with part of their wages and
passports withheld they have become virtual hostages of a situation
from which they can not escape. In the Persian Gulf slavery has taken
new forms but did not disappear.
From "Chronicles of the Human
Adventure" Danilo Antón, Piriguazú Editions.
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