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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