The dark side of Dubai
independent.co.uk
independent.co.uk
Roughly this is how the society is organized:
1) Arabs - first-class citizens - dumb, don't like to work, but often hold 'mudira'/'manager' positions in companies. They don't have college degrees but they hold senior-level positions in companies and are uber-slackers :)
2) Western expats - they get paid huge expat salaries and in general live in a world of their own (read: huge gated communities where typical restrictions in a Muslim country don't apply - alcohol, women, etc). There's very minimal interaction between them and the Arabs, or the Indians, or the Filipinos.
3) Educated immigrants from poorer countries (mostly from Indian sub-continent) - They do most of the work which their Arab bosses are not interested in doing or incapable of doing.
4) Construction workers/other physical labour - mostly immigrant workers from Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and other poor countries.
The western world seems to acknowledge this problem finally when their people are starting to suffer due to the economic crisis. This is how Middle East works and it has been like this for a long long time.
Middle-east is one place I won't move to even if Google offered me a job there.
I won't move there for any amount of money. Life isn't worth living the way one has to live in the ME (I am Indian, I hear many horror stories). I'd rather go be a Somalian pirate or something like that.
You say it like it is a bad thing! Many people would love to be a bad-ass Somalian pirate.
I read somewhere that the conditions in Somalia are so bad that becoming a pirate is the most sought after career option for young men. They believe that even European jails would be better than living in Somalia. OTOH if you don't get caught/killed, you live like a king. bunglows, booze women!
Wait, what? You mean Somalia isn't actually a Libertarian paradise? I'm shocked. Shocked I tell you!
http://www.mises.org/story/2066 "Stateless in Somalia, and Loving It"
http://www.mises.org/story/2701 "The Rule of Law without the State"
I'd modify your list to be a little more finely grained (although this might be more KSA specific than other Arab countries):
1 - Members of the royal/ruling family/clan/tribe.
2 - Arabs (Sunni)
3 - Arabs (Shi'ite)
4 - White collar expats (westerners and what you point out as educated immigrants)
5 - Blue collar workers (muslim)
6 - Blue collar workers (infidel)
Our family has lived in the middle east (at various times, my father worked for Saudi Aramco and what is now called Honeywell), and the stories seem to be getting worse over time, both in the slacking-off of the natives and the abuse of the menial labor. The money is very lucrative for western white collar workers, but I'd have a hard time collaborating with the abuse.
Part of the problem is that the locals don't feel that they're bound by any contract they sign (and the Arabic language version is the definitive one, in any case). Consequently, foreigners tend to get the dirty end of the stick. The stories of workers getting shafted are quite often the results of this.
Also, is a list the best way of describing it. #3 & #2 (to an extent) are often a lot poorer then #4. I assume you are referring to rights rather then financial position.
The Gulf (oil-rich) countries are not the entire middle east. Things are very different in the Levant, North Africa, Yemen, Persia,...
Not that what you say is not true in Saudi Arabia or the UAE but it's an important distinction to make... these are cultural and economic problems particular to certain countries, not to the Middle East as a whole, or to all arab countries.
It's not totally fair to call the "Arabs" the top of the pile. It's more like whoever is a citizen of that state: be it Emiratis or Quataris or whatever. There's a definite hierarchy of "Arabs" depending on what country one's from, and in my experience it's not so much who's higher up, it's who's farther from the bottom and thus more difficult to fire.
I'm not going to argue that it's not a shitty situation for the servants. I know that there is some hired help that is treated fairly, paid what was agreed, and is free to leave if they so desire, but I can't speculate on what proportion that is, and further my experience is primarily in Jordan. In my short time in Dubai, it was pretty obvious that the opulence of the town could only exist by taking advantage of its poor. I guess if you live there the only way to live with yourself would be to ignore that, as this article shows so many do.
About your last comment, I don't think I'd be that harsh about the middle east. It's not all bad, really. The Gulf States IMHO are pretty f'd up, and I don't think I'd want to live there, but the "Levant" region really has a lot to offer, having not been messed up by ridiculous amounts of oil money.
> but the "Levant" region really has a lot to offer
I urge you to reconsider your views on Arabs. I really wouldn't want anymore false info spreading about us. If i could down-vote, i would.
I am suspicious when people pull the "race card" so let me quote the original post (I didn't write it, I am just a bystander)
I quote
"Roughly this is how the society is organized:
1) Arabs - first-class citizens - dumb, don't like to work, but often hold 'mudira'/'manager' positions in companies. They don't have college degrees but they hold senior-level positions in companies and are uber-slackers :)"
Which part are you objecting to? Are you saying that Saudi Arabia (which the OP seems to be talking about) is a race blind meritocracy and the Arabs (a) are not on top by virtue of being Arab (b) they work harder than anyone else (c) most of them have advanced college degrees and/or are more educated than their subordinates (d) they don't hold senior positions or (e) they aren't slackers but are very hard workers? [ which is the same as (b) I guess].
You'd contribute more if you explained which of these many assertions is the "false information" you object to.
The key point the OP seems to make is that there is a very stratified society the strata depending primarily on race and not hard work or educational qualifications and that being an Arab allows you to occupy the highest layer without any other qualifications necessary.
Are you saying this is not true?
My friends who work in the gulf tell me the same thing, so I am curious (and eager) to hear a counter opinion.
The answer would simply be that there are all kinds of people...some good, some bad. Just like every other place.
I can point to the UAE, for example, where i know of several high positions occupied by qualified people who happen to be Indian.
While in KSA, a number of my friends hold high positions in various fields. Most large companies are owned by a member of the royal family. But newer generations of the royal family all hold college degrees and so are far off from the stereotype most often described.
Again, i really don't like picking the worst possible scenario and then generalizing it and setting a stereotype. I apologize if i came off as rude, but i still suffer in my work every day because of such attitudes.
Much of this (debtors prisons [and people fleeing Dubai immediately upon losing jobs and leaving behind luxury cars/apartments to avoid it], modern day enslavement, under-classes [predominantly based on ethnicity] and lack of civil-rights and liberty for most classes) has been publicised for a long time among the ethnic communities.
However, it seems when times were good it was easy for western people to turn a blind eye and what most people saw in the mainstream western media were positive articles about how great Dubai was/would be (due to vested interests?), even ignoring obvious issues regarding Arab law and culture and environment.
Now that the worldwide financial crisis is catching up with Dubai it is good to see these issues being brought out into the mainstream and exposed more openly, but I cannot help but think it is predominately because Westerners themselves are now being affected. Where was the outcry for the Fillipinos/Bangladeshis/etc. in mainstream Western media before?
Yet this very same mistreatment occurs in Saudi Arabia (one of the places I've lived in), and we continue to ignore it. My suspicion is that we need their oil far more than we need justice.
A recent HN thread on Dubai: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=547553
And here is an article by some folks in Dubai that they need to diversify away from oil: http://www.business24-7.ae/articles/2009/4/pages/05042009/04...
It's a global scam where the idea is to make money out of slavery and ensuring profit to every person in the chain, from the sheikh to the so called "travel agencies" and take away the right to complain from the only people who may complain.
The things is that I wrote a school paper years ago on the UAE and back then it wasn't exactly a hidden fact that many workers on the massive construction projects were treated badly.
But then I forgot that not everyone has access to the internet and/or reads human rights reports.
Shame on me.
Either way, the rule of law is absolutely essential to continued economic growth - both countries will run into a brick wall if they don't get their act together. China seems to be reducing corruption and trying to restore investor confidence... the UAE doesn't seem to be doing much of anything.
We very frequenty mix up slavery with low salary job. An artist being contracted by a label company for $5 million is a slave of some form. The person who works for $5 / day but has the freedom to choose to work or not is a free man with all his wills.
If there is a demand for $2/day workers and there is a supply for $2 workers, not allowing it because the goverment is not happy with it seems mistreatment to me.
Everyone should have a free will and everyone should have the right to work at any rate.
My view.
Just out of curiosity, is that the same globalized world that the author used to fly there while speaking only English the whole time? Anti-globo self-righteousness, direct to you from the Dubai airport. Nice.
Also, having read the article, I'm missing the "neo-liberal" part. "Medieval dictatorship" (as he himself put it)? Check. No rule of law? Check. No concern for individual rights? Check. No constitution to hinder government expansion of powers? Check.
That tends to be the dominating antagonistic definition of "neoliberalism". It may not be that far off.
To clarify what I said though, relative to any western society, Dubia's laws are obviously more strict. However, when compared to other Islamic nations, Dubia is more liberal. As the article discussed, the fact that gays in the region migrate to Dubia is an indication of this.
Yes, by Islamic standards, Dubai and the UAE in general are more "tolerant", depending on how you define tolerance. I suspect--and especially after reading the article--that it's a veneer to lure westerners under the guise that Dubai is a modern, center-left, run-by-a-benevolent-dictator-type of society that wants it's citizens to flourish. Underneath the polished marble and 10-lane highways though, it's a repressive, feudal regime. Of course, when money is involved though, the arms and wallets open, and suddenly what was impermissible before is fine, or at least tacitly accepted.
"Perhaps Dubai disturbed me so much, I am thinking, because here, the entire global supply chain is condensed. Many of my goods are made by semi-enslaved populations desperate for a chance 2,000 miles away; is the only difference that here, they are merely two miles away, and you sometimes get to glimpse their faces? Dubai is Market Fundamentalist Globalisation in One City."
They hate anything which wrestles control away from their philosophy.
And so they use any crazy/authoritarian/doomed/etc scheme as a straw man to attack liberalism/libertarianism.
Because in their minds, only their control of society will lead to peace and prosperity. Any loosening of their control must lead to doom.
Therefore if it's a disaster it MUST be because it veered off from their philosophy.
But the irony is that both far and left and far right are untied by their desire to control society.
And that's why they can never attack the control elements. They can never blame the disaster on them, they WANT something like that.
They use the failure to attack everything else and just call it an obscure word for too much freedom!
Modern Liberalism is based in large part on the idea that being rich does not make the air cleaner. There are limits on the value of personal wealth and there is little difference once you cross the threshold into extreme levels of personal comfort.
The Right holds dear the idea that rich people can take care of them selves and the goal should be to maximize personal wealth.
Taken to an extreme each of these ideas break down, but IMO the left wing is closer to reality. Granted in the real world we need huge helpings of corruption, stupidity, and hypocrisy, but that's going to infect any form of government over time.
Then there are all the lies such as the republican leadership hating the idea of ever banning abortion etc. And all the liberal "think of the children" reteric that sounds great but is a pointless power grab.
But I've always looked at liberalism as more of a practical economic not philosophical approach to problems.
And yes economics always ends up deep inside both politics and philosophy but deep underneath all of that ideological baggage there's still a kernel of practicality.
This kernel of practicality aims for the most efficient use of resources.
To achieve that goal, there are many real world practical strategies:
1. Rule of law - free of both government and private coercion. (No cartels like the RIAA, OPEC, DeBeers, but also no labor unions or government cartels like what used to ma bell AT&T)
2. Free competition.
3. Free information. (Not to be confused with perfect information in perfect markets).
The above imply that active fraud and monopolistic practices are against the law.
But I, like many other libertarians would take it even further.
By that I mean that in practice there are many things for which the free market does nothing. Health is one example.
The demand for insulin is the econ 101 example of things for which normal supply and demand doesn't work.
So for me liberalism is not a fanatical extreme of no government ever, but a practical optimization. Seeking the most effective market and government which implies a very small government but acknowledges that things like market failures exist and some government is essential.
That government is preferably small, local and a direct democracy like Switzerland.
"In Saudi, it's hard to be straight when you're young. The women are shut away so everyone has gay sex ... I need to find real gays, so this is the best place. All Arab gays want to live in Dubai."
I'd never really thought about the fact that Arab teens would "go gay" in response to their natural libidos being locked away, but it makes sense.
If you ever see the movie "The Kite Runner" they have a scene where one of the two boys is chased down by the gang of teenagers. Later on his son is also being molested by the same guys, now adults.
I'm never going to Dubai. And I don't have much sympathy for the expats there either - ignoring basic dignity of others, spitting on their whole inheritance of liberal democracy and hard-won human rights just to make a quick buck. The whole place can disappear back into the sand as far as I'm concerned.
Before that happens though, after reading that article I sure wish I could drop a few planeloads of small arms into one of those worker prison camps first, for a very abrupt and entertaining demonstration of reaping what one has sown.
I'm really glad I didn't take that opportunity. I remember seeing the buses with the blue-coverall-ed construction workers. This article put that trip in another light, that's for sure!
A middle eastern friend explained the situation: "we just stepped off the camel and into the mercedes." It took Europe quite a long time to reach the level of civilization it sports today, but there's no reason to repeat the mistakes and not learn.
Am I missing something?
he was getting confused. It was so unlike Daniel, I was
surprised. We got into a little bit of debt." After a year,
she found out why: Daniel was diagnosed with a brain tumour.It can't possibly be that companies are left to police themselves... can it?
"Evil Paradises: Dreamworlds of Neoliberalism" by Mike Davis, Daniel Bertrand Monk. (http://books.google.com/books?id=TQRoAAAACAAJ)
The chapter on Dubai is excellent.
dubai is windows vista.
What makes you sure of that?
Wealth entirely based on combination of oil and slave labor.
Unsustainable water supply situation.
I don't see much cause for optimism.