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Construction workers in their distinctive blue overalls building the upper floors of the new Burj al-Arab hotelThe dark side of Dubai

Dubai was meant to be a Middle-Eastern Shangri-La, a glittering monument to
Arab enterprise and western capitalism. But as hard times arrive in the
city state that rose from the desert sands, an uglier story is emerging.
Johann Hari reports

Tuesday, 7 April 2009

The wide, smiling face of Sheikh Mohammed ˆ the absolute ruler of Dubai
ˆ beams down on his creation. His image is displayed on every other
building, sandwiched between the more familiar corporate rictuses of Ronald
McDonald and Colonel Sanders. This man has sold Dubai to the world as the
city of One Thousand and One Arabian Lights, a Shangri-La in the Middle
East insulated from the dust-storms blasting across the region. He
dominates the Manhattan-manqué skyline, beaming out from row after row of
glass pyramids and hotels smelted into the shape of piles of golden coins.
And there he stands on the tallest building in the world ˆ a skinny
spike, jabbing farther into the sky than any other human construction in
history.

But something has flickered in Sheikh Mohammed's smile. The ubiquitous
cranes have paused on the skyline, as if stuck in time. There are countless
buildings half-finished, seemingly abandoned. In the swankiest new
constructions ˆ like the vast Atlantis hotel, a giant pink castle built
in 1,000 days for $1.5bn on its own artificial island ˆ where rainwater
is leaking from the ceilings and the tiles are falling off the roof. This
Neverland was built on the Never-Never ˆ and now the cracks are beginning
to show. Suddenly it looks less like Manhattan in the sun than Iceland in
the desert.

Once the manic burst of building has stopped and the whirlwind has slowed,
the secrets of Dubai are slowly seeping out. This is a city built from
nothing in just a few wild decades on credit and ecocide, suppression and
slavery. Dubai is a living metal metaphor for the neo-liberal globalised
world that may be crashing ˆ at last ˆ into history.

I. An Adult Disneyland

Karen Andrews can't speak. Every time she starts to tell her story, she
puts her head down and crumples. She is slim and angular and has the faded
radiance of the once-rich, even though her clothes are as creased as her
forehead. I find her in the car park of one of Dubai's finest international
hotels, where she is living, in her Range Rover. She has been sleeping here
for months, thanks to the kindness of the Bangladeshi car park attendants
who don't have the heart to move her on. This is not where she thought her
Dubai dream would end.'
Les verder: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/the-dark-side-of-dubai-1664368.html