ABC news in America has received and released video footage of a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family torturing an Afghan man. Sheikh Issa bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, the half-brother of the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Sheikh Mohammed, is clearly visible throughout the 45-minute video leading a group of men – including a man in police uniform – in torturing the man that he believed was trying to defraud him. The torture – which the Emirati embassy has admitted was carried out by Issa – ranged from setting fire to the man’s testicles with lighter fluid to being beaten with a stick with a nail in the end.
The sheer impunity with which Issa behaved and the gross unfairness of this powerful multi-millionaire with a group of men attacking a lone Afghan grain trader is breathtaking. Thankfully, egregious examples such as this are rare.
Unfortunately, some of the underlying principles – of contempt for the law and a belief in a strict hierarchy in society – can be found throughout the Gulf monarchies and in society more generally.
At the highest levels this high-handed ‘divine right of Kings’ mentality was one of the principle causes of the recent dissolution of Kuwait’s parliament.
The Kuwaiti Prime Minister, Nasser Mohammed Al-Sabah, resigned as he refused to submit himself to the indignity of answering questions and accusations of serious mismanagement and financial irregularities. This forced his uncle, the Emir, Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jabr Al-Sabah to dissolve the Parliament. It is this very notion of hierarchy which is the key. The Prime Minister manifestly considered himself too important to countenance the notion that he might be called to account. The Parliamentarians were, it could be suggested, upsetting the natural order of things in Kuwait; they were getting above their station.
At lower levels of society examples of such behaviour is visible too. At my school in Kuwait during a sports day event, after over an hour of bottles being thrown over the wall into the school, a Kuwaiti policeman finally decided to get off his chair and go and talk to the kids responsible. This developed into a minor brawl but the policeman soon got control and arrested the lead child.
“You can’t touch me, my father is the chief of police shouted the boy indignantly. “I couldn’t care less, my father is minister of Justice, replied the policeman. This example is similar in some aspects to the Kuwaiti Prime Minister and even the UAE torture case. At the core of each is a belief that the person in question cannot be called to account for their actions because of the natural order of things or of who they are and who their father, brother or uncle is.
Such notions can be traced back to Ibn Khaldoun and his social observations about life on the Arabian Peninsula. Familial allegiances were the key to survival. Webs of families, extended families and tribes allied and intermarried to solidify control of areas of land and for protection. There were families who were unquestionably more important than others and who had ties with more powerful allies. Using family connections in this way is thus only natural.
The most prevalent modern-day issues stemming from early Arabian notions of hierarchy are with migrant labor issues. Kuwait, the UAE and Qatar are countries where the national citizens are minorities in their own lands. A veritable army of laborers, cooks, gardeners, taxi drivers, shop workers and nannies build and run these countries, with the nationals in charge. The working conditions of the laborers in the work camps in Kuwait, the UAE and Qatar are well documented and are frequently horrific. This, however, is by no means the end of the problem. Read the Kuwait Times any day of the week and you are certain to see stories of maids and nannies running away from abusive households. To talk of modern day slavery in the Gulf is scarcely an exaggeration.
The migrant workers from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Egypt and elsewhere are placed firmly and unequivocally at the bottom of the pile.
Going to a Kuwaiti or Emirati shopping mall can be a sobering experience; seeing a Gulf family walking around with a maid walking three paces behind them, dressed up in some ridiculous and humiliating nineteenth century maid’s outfit looking utterly depressed. Bags and children are dumped on them without a glance. Live in Kuwait long enough and you’ll see a Kuwaiti screaming at, berating or even hitting their maid in public. This kind of attitude is imbued in many Gulf children from a young age. Kids leave school at the end of the day, dump their bag on the floor as their maid comes towards them to collect them and walk off without a flicker of thanks or acknowledgement. It is all too easy to get the impression that domestic workers are seen and treated as objects and not people. Ask anyone that has spent an extended period of time in the Gulf and they are practically guaranteed to have their own stories of this nature. This is, of course, not to say that Gulf countries are alone in such practices, but to highlight that the fantastic wealth that has arrived so quickly for Gulf societies has brought with it profoundly negative side effects.
Out of this depressing description of affairs there is – potentially – hope.
The State of Qatar has been trying for some time to put itself on the international map by, for example, promoting Al-Jazeera, expanding its airline, hosting countless conferences and sporting events, engaging in international mediation and establishing media freedom watchdogs, to highlight but a few strategies. To give an overall coherence to their brand, to combat their regional neighbors’ brands and to give themselves a comparative advantage, Qatar should place human rights front and center by overhauling its migrant worker system and guaranteeing standards and wages with international inspections. Indeed, they could follow – as a start – Bahrain’s recent decision to get rid of the traditional Kafala system of sponsorship that is open to so much abuse. Qatar already spends hundreds of millions of dollars per year on aid and countless other projects whose aim is to increase their international profile. Using their huge gas and oil created wealth to focus on human rights would surely grab some headlines and garner plaudits for all the right reasons.
Needless to say, overcoming imbued societal tendencies is no easy task.
Yet Qatar is truly in a unique position and has already proven that it is able to make leaps that are not possible in other GCC states: Qatar, after all, is a Wahabbi state which recognises Israel and has good relations with Iran. It is this kind of unconventional thinking that could lead Qatar to take the fore in the battle to assure reasonable levels of human rights for migrant workers in the Gulf.
David B Roberts is a doctoral student at the University of Durham, UK. He has written for Daily News Egypt, the Kuwait Times and Asia News Online. His blog can be found at www.thegulfblog.com
