Dubai: 'We Need Slaves To Build Monuments'

[Purveyor]

It is already home to the world's glitziest buildings, man-made islands and mega-malls - now Dubai plans to build the tallest tower. But behind the dizzying construction boom is an army of migrant labourers lured into a life of squalor and exploitation. Ghaith Abdul-Ahad reports

The Guardian, Wednesday October 8 2008

The sun is setting and its dying rays cast triangles of light on to the bodies of the Indian workers. Two are washing themselves, scooping water from tubs in a small yard next to the labour camp's toilets. Others queue for their turn. One man stands stamping his feet in a bucket, turned into a human washing machine. The heat is suffocating and the sandy wind whips our faces. The sprinkles of water from men drying their clothes fall like welcome summer rain.

All around, a city of labour camps stretches out in the middle of the Arabian desert, a jumble of low, concrete barracks, corrugated iron, chicken-mesh walls, barbed wire, scrap metal, empty paint cans, rusted machinery and thousands of men with tired and gloomy faces.

I have left Dubai's spiralling towers, man-made islands and mega-malls behind and driven through the desert to the outskirts of the neighbouring city of Abu Dhabi. Turn right before the Zaha Hadid bridge, and a few hundred metres takes you to the heart of Mousafah, a ghetto-like neighbourhood of camps hidden away from the eyes of tourists. It is just one of many areas around the Gulf set aside for an army of labourers building the icons of architecture that are mushrooming all over the region.

Behind the showers, in a yard paved with metal sheets, a line of men stands silently in front of grease-blackened pans, preparing their dinner. Sweat rolls down their heads and necks, their soaked shirts stuck to their backs. A heavy smell of spices and body odour fills the air.

Next to a heap of rubbish, a man holds a plate containing his meal: a few chillies, an onion and three tomatoes, to be fried with spices and eaten with a piece of bread.

In a neighbouring camp, a group of Pakistani workers from north and south Waziristan sit exhaustedly sipping tea while one of them cooks outside. In the middle of the cramped room in which 10 men sleep, one worker in a filthy robe sits on the floor grinding garlic and onions with a mortar and pestle while staring into the void.

MORE...

GUARDIAN UK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/08/middleeast.construction

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Who died and made them Pharaohs?

[The Inquisitive]

5. I think diatoms, foraminifera, and radiolaria

[Kitty Herder]

14. lol Interesting way to look at it. nt

[tularetom]

2. In 10 years, America will be the source of these slaves

Cheap labor and extracted resources will be our only exports

[maxsolomon]

3. in some ways, we already are

who is designing & engineering this monument to hubris? american & europeans. and it's paid for with our gas purchases.

[lonestarnot]

8. Ten years? You haven't been paying attention.

[Chimichurri]

4. This is so sad. The uber wealthy couldn't do this here or in Europe so

they go where there are no rules.

Thom Hartmann talks about how certain cultures believe exhorbitant wealth is a mental disease. I agree. You have to have no soul and complete disdain for humanity to sit back puffing on cubans as your workers suffer like this.

[TomClash]

6. I view Dubai

as one big terrorist target.

[nebenaube]

13. well

wasn't it Nostradamus who said a terrible wind will befall the new city? If Iran gets a nuke and Darth & Co. lives there?

[TomClash]

15. Not Iran

But AQ, or its biggest benefactors.

[TomClash]

16. Self-delete

[Junkdrawer]

7. Figures...Dubai is where Halliburton (Cheney's Firm) is moving....

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Politics/story?id=2943017

Cheney is "James Bond villain" evil....

[csziggy]

9. Thanks - just sent the link to my idiot sister whose new hubby just took her to Dubai

To live the life of the rich and vacuous. Sis used to be for human rights but since her new hubby came into her life she has become shallow and indifferent. Maybe seeing a description of the reality of the situation in Dubai will bring her back to some of her former core values.

[GAtomboy]

10. I will never go to Dubai

Why line their pockets even more?

[pnutbutr]

11. All of Dubai

Was built on slave labor. It is a horrible land of excess, waste and environmental destruction. Maybe one day it will all sink into the ocean. One can only hope.

[fascisthunter]

12. Palin Republicans Would AGree