News 20. Translated by Michel Aronssohn.
SUPERB OR AWFUL
Dubaļ
Dazzling ! ! ! From the EMIRATES A320 Airbus I am offered a first glance on this city casting its light over the desert.
On this December 22nd 2006 I am heading toward France with a eight hours stopover in DUBAI. Out of question to sleep on the cozy seats in this magnificent airport. I go through the immigration and here I am with a free visa for sixty days.
Easy bargaining with Hamal, owner of a 406 fully air conditioned Peugeot. Let’s go for a five hours trip to discover the sumptuous or monstrous city of tears and joy.
Capital of one of the seven States composing the UNITED ARAB EMIRATES, federation born in 1971 following the U.K. withdrawal, DUBAI had no important oil resources, unlike ABU DHABI. On the other hand it affirms its intercontinental crossroad and luxury tourism vocation.
A brief page of history.
At the beginning of year 2000, His Highness Cheikh General Muhammad Bin Maktoum, UAE Ministry of Defense announced in a press conference that DUBAI Government will open the country to the Internet revolution and to the new economy.
With its oil resources ABU DHABI is the wealthiest.
On the contrary in DUBAI business was always … the big business. Only the scale and the nature of this business have changed impetuously. Scarcely one generation ago cheikh Rashid, founder of the modern DUBAI was established on the shore of the famous bay and earned few dirhams by letting people crossing it on its ferry-boats. Today, under his son Muhammad, ruling by default since his elder brother is more interested by horses than by politics, DUBAI is perhaps becoming the “global city” and the “intercontinental crossroad” with the fastest development rate in the word.
DUBAI has a 16 billion Dollars GNP and is tiny compared to its models, SINGAPORE for instance, however just for the time being. It is extraordinarily dynamic, ambitious and thriving. The city is covered with superlatives and each new performance is worth the Guiness Book of Records. These performances are generally due to “Maktoum & Co” the ruling family. The highest and more luxurious hotel in the world, the improbable Burj-Al-Arab, built on a artificial island in the Gulf. The Jebel Ali free zone the biggest artificial harbor ever built.
But another record, never publicized is however the more typical, the immigrated population is, with regard to the number of national citizens the highest in the world. On the total of UAE’s 2,5 million inhabitants the nationals are seven times less numerous than the foreigners. They are mostly not Arabs : 1,2 million Indians, 600 000 Pakistanis, 100000 Iranis and citizens of a lot of other nations among them 50000 British.
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It is well known that taxi drivers are informed about everything. My driver speaks freely, with pleasure, and replies to all my questions.
I am discovering Dubai’s system.
Cheikh Muhammad is advised by cultivated managers which are sharing his views. He is obstinately oriented toward modernity, he uses his autocratic authority conferred by tradition and is able to take decisions and to realize them with an astonishing and amazing ability. The financial resources are not so important but they are used in a positive and effective way. Furthermore inexhaustible reserves of manpower (I’ll come back on this subject) and foreign knowledge are helping the achievement.
The system and the society ruled by the cheikh are unique by their opening of mind and their ethnical variety. Here very few traces of Islamic fundamentalism are found. Mainly very conservative, Dubai inhabitants, except a small elite, are staying with few external contacts. The philosophy officially stated and actually applied is the mutual tolerance.
Restaurants, terraces, bars and night clubs are countless, despite the official interdiction, prostitutes from different Asian countries are numerous. Alcohol is only prohibited on the Prophet birthday from 6 am to 6 pm. Western and even Arabic women are going alone, without problem to the movies or in night clubs. This reminds me the country where I am presently residing : Malaysia which is also a liberal country, anyhow the most liberal in Asia after Dubai.
The international appeal of this city is anchored into brand new infrastructures. And despite the great haste to build them they are well conceived, seriously built and designed with a certain good taste, therefore Dubai is a city where living is pleasant. Order is reigning. The administration is really efficient and corrupted to a minimum. Cheikh Muhammad is performing by himself unprepared inspections.
More surprising, Dubai is green. Situated in one of the most arid region in the world it absorbs nearly four times the world average water consumption by inhabitant.
Most of this water is produced by desalinization and is used to irrigate artificial parks cool like a British forest or huge immaculate freeways and obviously golf greens. Four golf links among the most famous in the world have grown in ten years, one being illuminated for night competitions.
Sport is only one of the numerous means to make an incessant promotion. The Dubai World Cup is the best prized horse race in the world.
For the time being the mirage is performing well, full throttle. When the neighboring countries are lagging behind, Dubai is showing a fantastic hotel boom. Burj el Arab is an unlikely hotel. The first seven stars in the world.
This hotel, since its building, is a landmark and a tourist curiosity. The access is not free. Unless to be a resident (night fare from 600 US $), or to pay a visit to a resident, you must churn out a 50 $ bill (refunded in drinks) to have access to the halls lounges and bars lavishly decorated with gold like one thousand and one nights palace.
The souks in the Medina are gorgeously colored, full of products coming from every part of Orient, and give a less sanitized impression than the ultra modern shopping malls.
Dubai urban developers were not satisfied with the gifts of the nature, they had to strike and make something grand and exceptional. Palm island is a pharaonical achievement aiming to create out of the water an artificial island shaped as a palm tree, its branches being islets surrounded by tropical lagoons along with an archipelago, also artificial, shaped as a planisphere.
Skiing with Ski Dubai, a complex installed in a commercial center, with ski slopes covered with artificial snow and European instructors. It is said that with the skilift fee avalanche electronic detectors are offered !!!
Buses are providing cheap transportation as in any city, however here they are amphibian and cross the channel in between the boats.
However Dubai is not only luxury, good life and dream holidays for everybody or a billionaire paradise…
Obviously numerous Muslims are considering Dubai as Islamic world shame. Numerous are the dirty countries in the world but to my sense DUBAI STINKS.
The sea side is shallow, the water is not clear; no corals, just sand. The climate is oppressing with peaks to 50° C compelling to live permanently with air conditioning. A local executive asserts that Dubai wish to leave to the posterity the equivalent of Egyptian or Maya pyramids. This seems very unlikely, an utopia. The country offers a lot of facilities, business is tax free, businesses are thriving there by hundreds. The banks also along with traffickers of all sorts.
To build fast and big needs a huge quantity of manpower. HERE WE ARE.
Cheap manpower, true slaves, the workmen are emigrants of Indian, Indonesian, Chinese origin. Usually their passports are confiscated upon arrival and will be given back at the end of the contract only, the said contracts being largely bogus. The “emiratis” let Indian, Indonesian, Chinese “kapos” do the dirty work of managing this manpower. A workman earns roughly between 4 and 7 US $ a day for 12 to 14 hours work. The accommodation is very poor, tiny unhealthy rooms were roughly 17 persons are piled up. The beds are not enough, there is neither electricity, nor water.
In Dubai there is one weekly suicide among construction workers.
Household workers are facing a large array of serious abuses. Women and girls are detained with hard labor conditions or are subject to traffics obliging them to accept ancillary works near slavery with, obviously, sexual abuses exerted in private houses far from any external view.
A riot occurred in March 2006. Extract from “Nouvelobs.com” dated march 22nd 2006 4:17 pm :
“dissatisfied by their working conditions, 2500 workmen from Burj Dubai construction site rebelled and caused nearly one million US$ damages.
Revolt of the biggest tower in the world manpower (AP).
The building of the highest tower in the world, “Burj Dubai”, stopped Wednesday march 22nd after the revolt of workmen dissatisfied by their working conditions and salaries. The 2500 employees have caused more than one million Dollars damages by vandalizing cars and offices, according to the United Arab Emirates Government.
Instead of titling :” SUPERB OR AWFUL DUBAI”, I thing more appropriated to write :
“SUPERB AND AWFUL DUBAI”.
I am heading back to the Airport with a dizziness sensation !
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