When I saw that AP story with the accompanying, four-column wire photo of the United Arab Emirates’ planned $6.8 billion development–the one with a .75-mile ski slope and the world’s tallest residential tower–I had an immediate response. One, however, that had nothing to do with the mega-scale, Meydan One project in Dubai.
It was simply this. The world is aghast and appalled and aggrieved at the refugee crisis playing out from the Mediterranean to Europe. More than 11 million people have been displaced by the Syrian civil war alone. It’s a metastasizing migrant crisis that is reminiscent of worst-case World War II scenarios.
And the UAR and fellow sheikdoms are less helpful than Hungary.
Refugees have been pouring out of Syria through Turkey and Greece on the terrifying trek to Western Europe–especially Germany and Austria–and Sweden and a better life. Europe’s Eastern Bloc, notably wary of accepting racial and religious diversity, is being heavily criticized for being less than welcoming to the migrating Muslim masses. The U.S. plans to allow 10,000 Syrians in 2016.
But for the obscenely rich, geographically proximate Persian Gulf States, the UAR as well as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain, the welcome mat has been missing in action. They bring in temporary workers, not migrants, is their rationale. Besides, they give amply to charities, they’re quick to point out. What they don’t mention is that such charitable giving is offset by subsidies–aka bribes–to various, refugee-creating, Middle East insurgents.
Here’s hoping, frankly, that the world can somehow shame the Gulf States into doing the right thing for their own cultural and linguistic brethren. We’ll know it when we see chartered planes full of displaced Syrian families–not tourists and construction workers–landing in Dubai.