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03/01/2005:

"How Dubai, the playground of businessmen and warlords, is built by Asian wage slaves"

Twenty storeys above the streets of Dubai tiny figures of workmen hammer steel into place day and night in the Middle East's biggest construction boom.

Labourers from south Asia man the forest of cranes along the half-built tower blocks south and west of Jumeira Beach, the world's second-biggest building site after Shanghai and a magnet for those hoping to make money by buying property here, ranging from Afghan warlords to the England football team.

The sheikhs who run Dubai plan to make it the commercial capital of the Middle East, so dozens of skyscrapers and thousands of apartment blocks are shooting up. The boom has sucked in an army of workers from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, unskilled men who toil for years away from families to save £30 a month.
Full Article: independent.co.uk