Foreign National Workers

We had a frustrating encounter last night involving Kuwaiti authorities and one of the foreign national workers here. This worker has been delivering military newspapers to our base for over a year without issue when suddenly one of the Kuwaiti gate guards decides he no longer will be allowed to enter the gate. Now I would assume he did something severly wrong but the reason given was that his arabic was simply not good enough.

This sounded absurd to me in a country filled with foreign workers and I assumed an officer would clear things up. To my amazement the officer confirmed his underlings demands. His official papers were taken away and he was forced to leave the gate while we escorted him out. We had the hopes of allowing him through our own US gates, and I figured the issue would be easily resolved.

The next day he returned to see about retrieving his papers and was interviewed for over two hours, which allegedly ended with him exiting in tears and told he would be deported. From what I understand he's from India which has a notoriously high unemployment rate.
(which possibly explains this crazyness?).

I was enraged about all of this and I couldn't figure out why these Kuwaitis take so much pleasure in abusing their foreign work force as I've witnessed and heard stories about on several other occasions. From all I can gather it's a simple case of power breeding corruption in a country that is essentially a huge welfare state. Here's a quote pulled from this link at the BBC:

"Notoriously, the women who make up a third of the national workforce, among them many at the very top of business and academic life, still cannot vote or stand for election.
The state still owns most of the economy and employs some 96% of the Kuwaiti workforce, who are guaranteed jobs for life.

It's an irony of the Gulf War that the coalition led by Republican America and Conservative Britain should have ensured the survival of a vast nationalised industry in one of the world's richest welfare states.

Education and healthcare are free, housing and food are subsidised. And there is no income tax - not a single dinar.

It's hard to identify what Kuwaitis do other than work for the government or the government's oil."

You may want to me to concede that this is simply a different culture, but it's proposterous that these people could hide behind their culture to justify acts of oppression. For all the hassle modern democracies get about their overpowering mindless beurocracies at the very least I can appreciate that things like this could have a chance at being changed in those countries.

Sandstorms

It's been a quiet month here, but it's not going to last as I've received word we may move from this base to another one in Kuwait sometime soon. They've already begun gutting the store here and I can imagine other facilities are soon to follow. There are rumors that we may stay but it's hard to tell as rumors are abundant about most subjects here.

In any event I suppose the move could be good to mix things up a bit but in all honesty I hope we end up staying here. More news to follow, but for now here are a few pictures of the recent sandstorm that rolled through. Each shot is accompanied by another taken at the exact same time of day.

*Note: I've switched over to a Flickr account for my photos. All new photos will be placed here: http://flickr.com/photos/krimzen

Standing next to the 10th Mounain Division's mural. Most of the 10th Mountain Division is located in upstate New York at Fort Drum.






The morning shift takes over.






The tents we call home, white oil tanks in view in the non sandstorm picture.






Riding around in the morning heat.