Endangered Minority: Dubai Natives

"You see them at government offices, together in malls and cafes, or glimpse their silhouettes behind dark-tinted car windows on Dubai roads," notes the AFP. What mysterious rare species is this?

Answer: the native citizen of Dubai, a shrinking minority in their own land - both numerically and metaphorically. (The photo at right captures a rare sighting.) Ironically, they have become a minority whose culture is at-risk:

Amid the massive construction and development drive under way in Dubai that is bringing in each year tens of thousands of expatriates and Asian labourers and aims to attract 15 million tourists by 2010, a large number of the small native population have resettled on the city's fringes to preserve cherished tribal and family values.

Many are proud of Dubai's achievements, but an increasingly vocal few speak of alienation, question the social and political cost of fast modernisation and even say they should have been consulted...

"I was living three years ago in Hamria, but it was invaded by Indians, Pakistanis and bachelors, so I moved out," said Suhail al-Awadhi, 37, a senior municipal official, referring to an area in Dubai's historic centre.

"Many people oppose this hyper-development and wonder who are we building all these projects for," said Ibtisam Suhail, a political science professor at the UAE University in Al-Ain and a Mizher resident

"You feel this is not your country anymore. There is a great feeling of alienation among Emiratis."

In March Dubai passed a law allowing property ownership by foreigners.

Suhail said the government is sinking huge sums of money to provide services and infrastructure to new inhabitants, whose loyalty is going to be to their native countries.

"Citizens have been sidelined in the decision-making process, people have not been asked whether they want this," she said.

The ironies in all this are many and layered. If population trends continue and the disenfranchised majority rises up, the Emirates may well find itself the first modern Arab state to drop out of the Arab League member.

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