More on Locals in the Workforce

A comment on one of my previous posts stated that one problem in getting locals into the workforce was that local bosses do not want to hire them. There could be a number of reasons for this and many of them have been discussed here. However, in reading an older EmiratesEconomist post, I found myself wondering if bosses are loathe to hire locals because locals are harder to hold accountable institutionally and legally than foreigners. Why hire a local that you can't hold legally accountable or even fire in some cases when you can have a foreigner by the, um, passport?

Turkey: East, West, or Turkish

Disclaimer: This is a bit of a ramble, but I don't have the time to edit it properly. Hopefully the idea comes through regardless.

The NYT's Baghdad Bureau Blog just posted an Iraqi woman's take on Turkey. The title asks, is it east or west? The verdict isn't completely clear, but it appears that she thinks it is west and it seems like she likes it.

Before I went to Turkey I thought it was an Oriental country. After I arrived, and even though I’ve never been in Europe, I felt I was in a European world.
It is not like the Orient I know: the clean streets, the fancy and high buildings, what people were wearing, the number of Turkish women with such a modern way of wearing the hijab, lovers kissing each other openly in the streets.

She notes the number of mosques, and the Japanese tourists in shorts that are allowed to enter them. The alcohol bars, the happy tourists, the electricity, the clean streets, the clean tram and tunnels. She likens it to what she's seen on TV of France or even America.

What is interesting, though, is that she is talking about Istanbul, which isn't really "Turkey" in toto. Istanbul is quite different from Ankara. They are both quite different from the little villages that lie outside them. And all of that is different from the far-flung reaches that border on Iran, Iraq, Syria. Languages change, people change, loyalties change. One Turk in Istanbul told me that the Turkish identity is "fake." He was not a Kurd, but he said that the Kurds were the only ones who had a "real" identity. I think what he meant is that Turkishness is a constructed identity, made up of many groups of people and the purest of those at this point are the Kurds. What is sure is that within the Turkish identity and the Turkish state there are a wide variety of different regions, groups, and feelings, of which, Istanbul is the most European. It is in Europe after all. I really loved the city. It is an amazing cosmopolitan area, full of amazing history and culture and modern life at the same time, in a way that no city in the Middle East seemed to be able to capture, in my opinion.

Another thing that I found to be very interesting in both Istanbul and Ankara was the amount of modern cultural forms. There were a lot of bookstores, filled with books in Turkish, both original and translated. It was very hard to find a book in English, even in the most modern malls. Also, I saw young students carrying books, instrument cases, art portfolios everywhere. It really was refreshing. Some might say that Turks have given up their true culture to try to emulate the West.

I think that they have created their own modern and enduring culture by coming to their own terms with the rest of the world. For me, the most striking thing was language. The range of books, magazines, movies, TV shows, etc available in Turkish were far greater than what I found in Arabic in the Arab world. And there are far more Arabs than Turks. It seems to me that Arab cultures that have tried to refuse interaction with the rest of the world are in danger of extinction. Witness the perpetual articles about identity in the Gulf (and I don't mean articles by Westerners, but the Arabic language articles that are always in the papers and in magazines like al-Majella). If you do not modernize your culture, people will go to other modern cultures to get what they want. They'll watch movies, listen to music, read books, speak, etc, in English, French, whatever language. They'll walk around museums in their own country about their own heritage, explaining exhibits to their children in English (which is obviously not their native language). They will slowly lose their culture because people are refusing to allow it to adapt. By accepting cultural change, the culture stays fresh and pliable, as does the language.

Consider this. I found it very difficult to converse with most people in Turkey because those not directly involved in tourism can do everything they need in Turkish. In the Middle East, there is almost no need for foreigners to speak Arabic because nearly everyone (especially in the Gulf) speaks English. This is not because they are more cosmopolitan than the Turks, but because they have to. It saddened me to see an older Omani gentleman having to use a picture menu in a fast food restaurant in his own country because he didn't speak English and the server didn't speak Arabic.

Flipping through the channels in my hotel in Turkey, nothing but a few international news channels were in English. Everything else, to include SpongeBob Squarepants, was in Turkish. In the Arab world, non-Arabic programs are almost always subtitled, not dubbed. If you want modern, non-religious literature in the Arab world, you have few choices. Major non-religious bookstores are at least 75% English.

In the Middle East, I did not see students with art portfolios or musical instruments. It was rare outside of a few places near universities in Jordan (in my experience) to see students carrying around a stack of books. Concert halls are rare. Museums are sub-par. To me, this is where Turkey has it right and the Arab world has it wrong (with some exceptions and some new attempts to correct it). Modern high culture is critical to maintaining identity and pride, in my estimation. And the Arab world has very little modern high culture, and even less modern high culture that is accessible to their people, rather than just a stunt to attract foreign tourism and investment.

Dubai Bubble?

An article, originally from the Wall Street Journal and re-posted here takes a look at Dubai's "hot market" in real estate, fears of speculation, and attempts to put a brake on the speculators who are "flipping" properties there. The intense speculation has led not only to quick rises in real estate prices, but may have also enticed developers to create a supply in excess of demand. After visiting the place several times, I refuse to believe that the current level of building in Dubai has already outstripped long-term demand in many areas. I just don't think Dubai will draw the people that speculators are betting on. I think many are in for quite a surprise there. The glittering veneer is already beginning to look a bit faded and worn, so to speak. From the article:

Cracks are starting to show in Dubai's well-crafted and glitzy property-marketing machine. Flipping properties has reached such a feverish pace, driving up prices, that Dubai's Real Estate Regulatory Authority is looking at measures to crack down on the practice, which involves quickly reselling property at a profit. Meantime, a series of legal tussles and property-related scandals have rocked investor confidence, and analysts are forecasting that property prices, which have risen sharply in a matter of months, could tumble by as much as 10 percent, hurt by oversupply. "Many challenges have begun to surface, mainly the prospect of oversupply," said
Bashar Al Natour, a Dubai-based analyst at ratings company Fitch Ratings.

Oman in the Washington Post

Today's Washington Post ran an article about Gulf countries steering jobs to citizens and the online article featured a picture of City Center's Starbucks. After the picture of a familiar place caught my eye, I read on:

Coffee shop manager Lalit Jadeja groaned as white-robed Omani officials swooped down on his Filipina cashier at one of the largest shopping malls in this Persian Gulf kingdom. It was the Omanization squad. ...
But economists and other analysts say the programs have made little difference so far. In some cases, as in hiring quotas for citizens, government efforts have angered employers who say the campaigns have fostered a sense of job entitlement among local young people. ...
The Middle East has the world's highest percentage of young people -- 30 percent of its population -- and the highest percentage of unemployed youths -- 25 percent.

The article goes on to quote one Arab professor from the UAE as saying that these youngsters can be opportunities or "ticking time bombs." The article also notes an aversion to private sector work in some countries.

Specific to Oman:

Even in Oman, one of the less affluent Gulf countries, oil profits are wiping out a culture of hard work.
In the middle of the desert, for example, an Indian stood alone near his home in a cargo crate. The man, wearing floppy leather sandals, a plaid shirt and a fuzzy pink towel, is one of the Gulf's new pool of subcontracted camel-herders -- tending camels for a Bedouin family that had retreated to air-conditioned comfort on a government-provided plot of land, several Omanis explained.

Perhaps this is another problem -- many youths, despite hard work, intelligence, and dedication, cannot get their dream jobs without "wasta." (See "The Yacoubian Building" or 3mara Yaqubi for an Egyptian story about wasta and career frustration gone terribly wrong)

From the article:

At the coffee shop in Muscat, Oman's capital, Jadeja flipped through the country's labor code in his cubbyhole of an office. He cited legal codes allowing Omanis generous leaves for studies, pilgrimages, funerals and other benefits.
Jadeja complained about a hiring quota that he said was compelling some employers to give young Omanis paychecks to stay home, just to have them on the payroll.
Behind the coffee shop's front counter, Rashdi bin Mohammed, a 21-year-old Omani, spoke sadly of trading his dream of becoming a pilot for a job serving lattes.
Bin Mohammed rejected the only public-sector jobs -- policeman or soldier -- he said were available to him as an Omani without "wasta," or connections. He said he shrugged off the looks and comments from friends who would rather keep accepting money from their parents than take an entry-level job.
"They just don't have the will to strive, to better themselves," he said.

Oman and the End of Easy Oil

The Washington Post recently reported on Oman's turn to enhanced recovery techniques to get at its remaining oil. Without enhanced recovery, experts say only ten more years of oil are available in Oman. With it, perhaps forty years' worth. In any case, the techniques are quite costly, which is fine with the current, high price of oil. Yet, as the article says, diversification is ever-more important.

Oman's oil production peaked at 840,000 barrels per day in 2000 and has fallen to a low of 561,000 bpd in 2007.

Etihad Aircraft Loss

Late last year, Etihad lost a brand new A340 with zero hours of airtime when the Abu Dhabi Aviation Technologies crew sent to ground test it ran it through a wall. The story and all the pictures can be found here. Highly recommended reading.

The ADAT crew taxied the A340-600 to the run-up area. Then they took all four engines to takeoff power with a virtually empty aircraft. Not having read the run-up manuals, they had no clue just how light an empty A340-600 really is. The takeoff warning horn was blaring away in the cockpit because they had all 4 engines at full power. The aircraft computers thought they were trying to takeoff but it had not been configured properly (flaps/slats, etc.) Then one of the ADAT crew decided to pull the circuit breaker on the Ground Proximity Sensor to silence the alarm.This fools the aircraft into thinking it is in the air.The computers automatically released all the brakes and set the aircraft rocketing forward. The ADAT crew had no idea that this is a safety feature so that pilots can't land with the brakes on. Not one member of the seven-man Arab crew was smart enough to throttle back the engines from their max power setting, so the $80 million brand-new aircraft crashed into a blast barrier, totaling it.

Israelis Laugh, Arabs Ban

Adam Sandler (hardly one to be taken seriously) is making headlines because his latest movie "You Don't Mess with the Zohan," looks like it is going to be banned across the Middle East. The movie is being panned by reviewers, but is a big hit in Israel. Israelis, in my limited experience can be incredibly arrogant (and they love to admit this), but they know when and when not to take things too seriously. Adam Sandler comedies really have to fall in the second category almost every time.

In contrast, Arab states are making headlines by banning the movie, which its creators insist is "equal opportunity" in its offensiveness. Yet another instance in which the region plays into the stereotype to which it objects. This isn't the only movie the region has made headlines for banning. A Bollywood film has likewise been banned in the last week in UAE.

(Note: see the "headlines" link for a picture of Adam Sandler as a Mossad agent turned New York hairdresser to get an idea of just how harmlessly stupid the movie is.)

How to Get a Gulf Citizenship

Buy property? No
Spend years working for a local company and have a flawless civic record? No
Work as an engineer for an oil company? No
Convert to Islam? No
Help a state university get its first international accreditation? No (You can't even get a raise equal to inflation, evidently)

Be a really strong Bulgarian weightlifter, a Uruguayan footballer, a Chinese chess phenom? Yes
Be a Kenyan runner? Yes, until you compete in Israel

Who wouldn't take a million dollars to change their name and citizenship and become a star athlete?

I can only shake my head and say that I'm not surprised. Culturally pure unless we really want a new toy or some money.

Culture

Culture is a hot topic for everyone operating outside their own borders, from business professionals to diplomats to soldiers. Unfortunately, the attempt to understand others too often means a turn to something like "The Arab Mind," a book that not only simplifies a huge set of people into a single typology, but also does so with the most ridiculous of sets of evidence, logical tools, and conclusions. At the other end of the spectrum, culture means making sure that you never offend anyone, all the while excusing their every fault. This often takes the form of seminars conducted by well-meaning people with bigger hearts than brains talking about how wonderful a given people are and telling all about how to act dainty around them and to uphold cultural norms that even most of them have given to breaking in recent years. Personally, I think that such sensitivity seminars are bullshit conducted by bullshitters who have nothing better to do. The bottom line is that (a) if, regardless of specific cultural norms, you treat a people like decent human beings and keep your word, they'll respect you for that to a degree and (b) if your interests and actions run contrary to theirs, no amount of etiquette in the world is going to keep them from opposing you at the best or trying to kill you at the worst. This is not to say that an attempt to understand culture is bullshit, but that culture-as-etiquette-classes is bullshit.



Professionals operating internationally do not have the luxury to partake in fallacies of prejudice or sympathy. They must avoid over-simplification, but they must not make excuses. They must look for the underlying logic, realizing that some very few actions have no logic, most have a logic that can be understood if you dig deep enough, and some have a logic that is real, but will never be understood by an outsider.



Clifford Geertz, the late preeminent anthropologist, had some excellent insights on this in his collection of essays, The Interpretation of Cultures. I think that he would agree that professionals need to strive to see through the other's eyes, not to focus on aesthetics.

What... most prevents those of us who grew up [in other cultures] from grasping what people are up to is not ignorance as to how cognition works... as a lack of familiarity with the imaginative universe within which their acts are signs.

He goes on to warn:

The danger that cultural analysis... will lose touch with the hard surfaces of life -- with the political, economic, stratificatory realities within which men are everywhere contained -- and with the biological and physical necessities on which those surfaces rest, is an ever-present one. The only defense against it, and thus, turning cultural analysis into a kind of sociological aestheticism, is to train such analysis on such realities and such necessities in the first place.

Israeli Lessons Derived from Russia-Georgia Conflict

One Israeli think tank, the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, published an analysis of the implications of the conflict in Georgia for the Middle East, and specifically Israel. I don't know anything about this center's history and credibility, but they list a number of Israeli generals and defense officials who have recently published papers with them. They seem to be fairly hawkish, but I have no insight on their influence. The report, The Russian-Georgian War: Implications for the Middle East by Ariel Cohen, drew several interesting conclusions, most of which seem to me to be pretty strategically sound, given Israel's world-view, position, and the nature of popular support for activist policies and strategies. That being said, the conclusions are also somewhat scary for the region and for the U.S., as the debacle in Georgia, which has highlighted our inability to help our Georgian allies in a meaningful way, may concurrently be further eroding our already fragile influence in the Middle East. It seems to have convinced at least this Israeli analyst that Israel is even more alone in a realist, self-help world, meaning that American levers on Israeli policy may be shortening significantly, especially once Olmert leaves office and a hawk (probably) replaces him. The report's conclusions:

Watch Out for the Bear - and Other Beasts! Russian continental power is on the rise. Israel should understand it and not provoke Moscow unnecessarily, while defending its own national security interests staunchly. Small states need to treat nuclear armed great powers with respect. Provoking a militarily strong adversary, such as Iran, is worthwhile only if you are confident of victory, and even then there may be bitter surprises. Just ask Saakashvili.

Strategic Self-Reliance. U.S. expressions of support of the kind provided to Georgia - short of an explicit mutual defense pact - may or may not result in military assistance if/when Israel is under attack, especially when the attacker has an effective deterrent, such as nuclear arms deliverable against U.S. targets. In the future, such an attacker could be Iran or an Arab country armed with atomic weapons. Israel can and should rely on its own deterrent - a massive survivable second-strike capability.

Intelligence Failure. U.S. intelligence-gathering and analysis on the Russian threat to Georgia failed. So did U.S. military assistance to Georgia, worth around $2 billion over the last 15 years. This is something to remember when looking at recent American intelligence assessments of the Iranian nuclear threat or the unsuccessful training of Palestinian Authority security forces against Hamas. Both are deeply flawed. There is no substitute for high-quality human intelligence.

Air Power Is Not Sufficient. Russia used air, armor, the Black Sea Fleet,
special forces, and allied militias. Clausewitzian lessons still apply: the use of overwhelming force in the war's center of gravity by implementing a combined air-land-sea operation may be twentieth century, but it does work. Israel should have been taught this lesson after the last war with Hizbullah.

Surprise and Speed of Operations Still Matter - as they have for the four thousand years of the recorded history of warfare. To be successful, wars have to have limited and achievable goals. Russia achieved most of its goals between Friday and Monday, while the world, including President George W. Bush, was busy watching the Olympics and parliaments were on vacation.

Do Not Cringe - within reason - from taking military casualties and inflicting overwhelming military and civilian casualties at a level unacceptable to the enemy. Georgia lost some 100-200 soldiers and effectively capitulated. A tougher enemy, like the Japanese or the Germans, or even Hizbullah, could well suffer a proportionally higher rate of casualties and keep on fighting.

Information and Psychological Warfare Is Paramount. So is cyber-security. It looks like the Russians conducted repeated denial of service attacks against Georgia (and in 2007 against Estonia), shutting down key websites. Russia was ready with accusations and footage of alleged Georgian atrocities in South Ossetia, shifting the information operation playing field from "aggressor-victim" to "saving Ossetian civilians from barbaric Georgians." These operations also matter domestically, to shore up support and boost morale at home.

Cold War Redux

It is pathetic that a number of people around the globe seem to be eager to start a new Cold War. It is almost like a staring contest between former high school linebackers who are now fat and out of shape and stand to hurt themselves more than each other. In one of the most dangerous statements so far, the Russian Army's deputy chief of staff, General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, has warned that Poland's cooperation with the U.S. has opened it up to a strike, possibly even a nuclear strike, according to the Times.

For those who think that bad things could never happen in this "new world order," the New York Times' Paul Krugman gives them pause with an op-ed about globalism's failure a century ago. While the next great power war may not be right around the corner, it looks like "The End of History" ain't here yet.

Smack Smackdown in UAE

Sharjah police, in cooperation with their bros in Dubai, busted a smuggling ring in possession of a whopping 200 kilos of pure heroin with a reported street value of $11 million, said to be the largest ever bust in the region. The story is at ABC News Australia.

By comparison, according to the U.S. Department of State's International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, UAE authorities seized only 242 kg of smack from 2006 to August 2007. The report acknowledges that the UAE is a transhipment country for narcotics, due to its proximity to producing countries like Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, its long coastline, and its porous borders. Is this a signal of increased policing efforts, more effective efforts, and/or an increasingly bold set of smugglers?

Killings By Those With No Honor or Humanity

See this video from CNN on "honor killings" in England.

The people behind these killing are misogynistic savages without honor or humanity. I generally think life imprisonment is a better punishment than death, but these peoples' world-view is so warped that they would probably enjoy the opportunity to turn other imbecilic criminals to their twisted pseudo-religion and culture.

Surely, I do not believe that these people represent the whole of Islam or of any given culture, but in their arrogant and ignorant actions, they themselves dishonor Islam and their home culture. Those who nominally share their religion and culture must speak and act out against their acts of dishonor. Those who can stand idly by at such actions are savages themselves. Masses come to the streets, goaded by the government to be sure, to protest the naming of a teddy bear or the scribbling of cartoons. They scream and rant, wild-eyed and frothy-mouthed. Where is the outrage at honor killings, stonings, beheadings, and the like?

And we wonder...

A dubiously astounding statistic from Nicholas Kristof at the New York Times in an op-ed entitled "Make Diplomacy, Not War."

The United States has more musicians in its military bands than it has diplomats.

Arab Economics and Politics

I found this passage to be very helpful in framing some of my thoughts.

From Marcus Noland and Howard Pack, The Arab Economies in a Changing World, (Washington DC: Peterson Institute, 2007):

"Across the region there is a tendency to rely on centralized regulatory intervention to facilitate the creation of economic rents and their channeling to politically preferred groups. By implication, cross-border economic integration, whether globally or regionally, is discouraged: Opening up would imply a loss of control and the concomitant ability to rig the local market to the benefit of regime supporters. All of this militates against a vibrant private sector that could promote increased productivity, employment, and growth. This combination of political illegitimacy and policy intervention makes it difficult for these economies to liberalize: Reform and the erosion of rents could undermine the very basis for political loyalty."

Can Anyone Take Saudi Arabia Seriously?

Saudi Arabia is building massive economic and industrial cities in an effort to bring its economy into the 21st century. The King announced a project to create a world-class university with the aim of attracting renowned intellectuals from around the world. Yet, the state continues to allow troglodytes acting in the "name" of religion to show just how backward some Saudis want the place to be.

In the latest move, the governor of Riyadh, acting in coordination with the religious police (the hay'a or mutawa'een, many of whom are criminals who got off early for "finding" the true path of Islam while in jail), has banned the purchase of cats and dogs, as well as walking said animals in public. A FoxNews story is linked here, but it is available in a number of local and international sources. My question is: will the religious thugs behead the offending animals?

The biggest challenge for Saudi and many other states is progressing economically and politically while battling the cave-dwellers in their own populations who use religion to promote ignorance and their own power.