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.

Is Trump baiting Iran into an armed confrontation?

Analysts warn of heightened probability of conflict with Iran as 'hardliners' take control of Trump's foreign policy.

Iran's top commander recently said Tehran could shift from a defensive to offensive military approach [Ebrahim Noroozi/AP]

With US President  Donald Trump’s's top diplomat ramping up his campaign to confront Iran's "malevolent influence" in the Middle East, and his top national security adviser reportedly seeking military options to attack the Islamic Republic, Iran observers are warning the US may be provoking Tehran into an armed conflict that could quickly spread to the whole region.

Sina Toossi, a Washington, DC-based security and nuclear policy analyst, said the Trump administration's Iran policy now "seems firmly under the control of hardliners" such as US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton, both of whom had previously advocated regime change in Iran.

"Even if Trump does not desire further military entanglements in the Middle East, Pompeo and Bolton appear to be edging the US towards military confrontation," said Toossi, research associate with the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), which advocates diplomacy with Iran.

What's the US plan for Iran?

"Already Pompeo is suggesting that a 'regional conflict' is inevitable if the world fails to latch onto the White House's Iran strategy," he told Al Jazeera.

Azadeh Shahshahani, an Iranian American human rights lawyer and peace activist, said with the US president entangled in political controversies at home, he may be trying to "build up" tensions with Iran to divert attention abroad.

"They probably think that the war with Iran is a good way to distract from all of that," she said. "So, as a result, every day you hear a new announcement from the administration about allegations against Iran."

Shahshahani also described the strategy as "very similar" to what the world saw in the run-up to the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

"The Pompeo and the Bolton crowd, they have a very clear goal in mind," she told Al Jazeera.

In recent days, there have been more indications of the "maximum pressure" Pompeo vowed to apply against Iran and its allies in the region.

In his recent Middle East tour, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo emphasised the need to confront Iran's activities [Andrew Cabellero-Reynolds/AP]

On Thursday, the US Treasury announced new sanctions against the Fatemiyoun Division and the Zaynabiyoun Brigade, two militia groups fighting in Syria and backed by Iran's Revolutionary Guard. An airline company with ties to Iran's Mahan Air was also targeted.

In a statement, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin accused Tehran of using the sanctioned entities "to export terrorism and unrest across the globe".

'Ill-timed measures'

Under pressure by the US government, Germany has also banned Iran's Mahan Air, which is already on the sanctions list. An Iranian minister was also quoted as saying the national flag carrier, Iran Air, is also on Germany's banned list.

Earlier in January, Pompeo also threatened Iran with increased economic and diplomatic isolation, if it continues to launch satellites using space vehicles similar to ballistic missiles.

On Friday, France also warned it could slap Iran with more sanctions if there is no progress over its ballistic missile programme, which Tehran has insisted is not covered by the 2015 nuclear deal, and is solely designed for defensive purposes.

The US has also organised what is seen as an anti-Iran summit in Poland, viewed by Tehran as a "hostile act".

The danger is these series of actions by the US and its allies could push Iran into abandoning the historic nuclear deal - a course of action that could quickly escalate, analysts said.

Diako Hosseini, director of the World Studies programme at Tehran's Center for Strategic Studies, told Al Jazeera these "ill-timed measures" could endanger the nuclear agreement.

Hosseini also counselled Europe to resist US pressure and "stay committed" to the nuclear deal, instead of imposing more sanctions that could force Tehran to reconsider its options. So far, Iran has said it will stay with the agreement.

Iraq war playbook

But if Pompeo and Bolton succeed "in baiting Iran" into leaving the 2015 deal, it is likely the neo-conservative establishment will replay the Iraq war playbook and "begin pushing for a military attack under the pretext of stopping the Iranian nuclear programme", Toossi said.

In an article published on Friday, the foreign policy website Lobe Log also warned a war against Iran is "becoming ever more likely".

"Donald Trump's domestic troubles, combined with the current makeup of his foreign policy team, provide a confluence of circumstances, perhaps a perfect storm, to pull the United States into a war with Iran," wrote Jim Lobe and Ben Armbruster.

Iran is not taking kindly of the threats either, responding with a bluster against the US and its allies.

In December, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said the US was turning the Middle East into a "powder keg", with the number of weapons it is directing to its allies.

Last week, Iran's air force commander, Brigadier-General Aziz Nasirzadeh, was quoted as saying the country is "impatient and fully ready to confront the Zionist regime and eliminate it from the Earth" - a reference to the US' closest ally in the region, Israel.

On Thursday, Iran's ground forces wrapped up a "massive drill" in the desert of Esfahan province, wherein Brigadier-General Kioumars Heydari warned "the enemy ... to better think twice before attacking Iran".

"They might be able to start a new war. But they would not be the one to finish it," said Heydari.

Iran's army in an infantry drill in central Esfahan province on Friday [Iranian army via AP]

On Sunday, the army's chief of staff, General Mohammad Baqeri, also hinted it could shift its military doctrine from a defensive to offensive approach at the "tactical level to preserve the country's national interests". 

Trump's 'unpredictability'

The "unpredictability" of Trump could mean "anything is possible", according to Mehran Haghirian, an Iranian analyst and doctorate student of Gulf Studies at Qatar University.

"What I believe is that Trump himself is not really pushing for a war," Haghirian told Al Jazeera, saying the American public would not support him.

Trump had previously shown disdain for American military engagements abroad, while noting his top advisers such as Pompeo and Bolton are the people more eager for confrontation, he said.

"They are not credible enough for the international community to support an action," said Haghirian.

"But anything in the US is possible" under Trump, he added. Still, he also did not discount the likelihood of talks with Iran, pointing to Trump's strategy of mixing rhetoric and diplomacy in dealing with North Korea.

 However, Toossi, the Iranian American analyst, warned the current "aggressive rhetoric of Trump" and the absence of communication and deconfliction channels between Washington and Tehran "creates a high risk of miscalculation and conflict".

"The spark for a massive military conflict could come from multiple directions, whether a clash in contested [Gulf] waterways, US efforts to remove Iranian influence in Syria, or Iranian retaliation for perceived foreign support for terror within Iranian borders," said Toossi.

Already there have been a series of Israeli air raids on reported Iranian targets in Syria in recent days, and some worry it could draw the US into the mix if hostilities escalate.

In response, a commander of the Revolutionary Guard said on Monday Iran's strategy was to wipe "the Zionist regime" off the political map, Iran's state TV reported.

"We announce that if Israel takes any action to wage a war against us, it will definitely lead to its own elimination and freeing occupied territories," Brigadier-General Hossein Salami, deputy head of the organisation, was quoted as saying.

"Israelis won't even have a cemetery in Palestine to bury their corpses," he said.

Shahshahani, the Iranian American peace activist, called on the opposition in the US Congress and the American public to be "vigilant" about the dangers of the Trump administration going to war with Iran.

"People seem to be more sceptical about the US administration's foreign policy. Hopefully, people are waking up and understanding that they need to fight back against any attempts at initiating a war with Iran."

by Ted Regencia

28 Jan 2019

Reference:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/12/trump-baiting-iran-armed-confrontation-181208112950681.html

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.

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.

Blog in Spanish: 

daniloanton.blogsppot.com