UN Refugee Agency Faces Challenges in India

The following first appeared on The Interdependent's website on June 9 2012.

UN Refugee Agency Faces Challenges in India

In late April, around 2,500 Rohingyas asylum seekers camped outside the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in New Delhi for a month, seeking to pressure the High Commissioner to grant them refugee status. Their protest brought into focus India's broken refugee system. Experts are now urging India to bolster its protection system for refugees by signing the UN convention on refugees.

The predominantly Muslim Rohingya people live along the border between Bangladesh and Myanmar and are heavily discriminated against in both countries. They are denied citizenship and passports in both countries. In Myanmar, their mosques are boarded up. They must pay hefty taxes to get married, and their movement between villages is restricted.

Following their protest, the Rohingya who came to New Delhi were granted special asylum seeker cards that are all but identical to those of refugees in India. The cards are unique to the group and designed to shield them against discrimination by schools, landlords and the police. India also granted them long-term stay visas, allowing them to stay on in India while their asylum claims are adjudicated.

The UNHCR hailed the move as a victory, but it also highlighted the ad hoc system in India, where refugee status and even the right to avoid deportation can be whimsical and vary between different nationalities and ethnic groups.

Despite playing host to nearly 200,000 refugees, India has no law governing their right to stay in the country.

Currently, refugees are allowed to stay on in India thanks to a series of case laws interpreting India's Bill of Rights. The Supreme Court has ruled that asylum seekers at least have the right to have their refugee status adjudicated before they are deported.

The UNHCR argues that those legal protections are insufficient and a formal system to handle refugee claims is needed.

"India needs a legal framework because all the refugee communities are granted different privileges," said Nayana Bose, external communications officer for UNHCR in New Delhi. "The Tibetans were given land and help to build monasteries. Somalis only last week were granted the ability to apply for residency permits."

Bose was quick to emphasize that India freely welcomes refugees, and that despite not signing the convention on refugee protection, the country followed most of the principles contained within the document. "There are very few cases of refoulement," she said, referring to the practice of deporting refugees back to their home countries. "To our knowledge, less than 10 refugees have been deported since 1981."

When the UN convention on refugees was introduced in 1954, "India found the refugee convention to be Euro-centric," said Rajeev Dhavan, a leading legal advocate for refugees in India. "India made a conscious decision to stay out because of its non-aligned status." The initial convention was designed to protect European refugees after World War II.
When the UN introduced the so-called 1967 Protocol that removed the territorial restrictions on refugee protection, India again refused to sign, claiming that the convention was part of the Cold War struggle, in which it refused to take sides, explained Dhavan. "It joined the executive committee of the convention, because Pakistan joined, but it did not sign the convention."

India's refugee population is divided into two major categories: those who entered India as part of a mass migration and individual asylum seekers. The former group makes up the overwhelming majority of the refugee community and is composed mostly of Tibetans and Sri Lankans. India deputizes the UNHCR to determine the status of the remaining 22,000 individual asylum seekers.

Of that 22,000, "less than a 1,000 people don't get residency permits, mostly Iranians, Somalis and Iraqis," said Bose.

Less than 1,000 out of 200,000 may sound like a good figure, but experts assert that the small numbers mask larger problems with India's favoritism toward some groups and apathy toward the plight of refugees.

The Rohingyas are a good example of India's apathy and, at times, outright hostility to some asylum seekers.

"One of the major problems with the Rohingyas is that they are Muslim," said Sabyasachi Basu Roy Chaudhary, president of the Calcutta Research Group, which focuses heavily on refugee protection. "There is pressure from right-wing Hindu parties like the Bharata Janata Party (BJP) and Shiv Sena." Members of these parties have expressed concern that some Rohingyas have joined the Harakat ul Jihad al Islamic, a South Asian Islamic fundamentalist organization.
The BJP responded to the Rohingya protest by calling for their expulsion from the country. When news of the Rohingya protest began making headlines in the international press in late May, the BJP demanded to know what the Indian government was doing to evict and deport them. The Hindu nationalist group Vishwa Hindu Parishad called them a "security risk" because of their alleged ties to militant groups.

The demand for the deportation of Rohingyas may be hypocritical given the lack of controversy over many, non-Muslim refugee populations, but under Indian law, they are justified.

"India is governed by the Foreigners Act of 1946," which requires them to report to the nearest police station and register their presence with the government upon arrival in India said Dhavan. "If you are here in violation of the act, you are to be deported."

India, however, turns a blind eye to violators in the case of asylum seekers. The system works, most of the time. "In practical terms, refugees are protected," said Bose. India respects UNHCR's rulings on refugee status, and grants them the right to live in India, even in those cases where it refuses to grant residence visas.

However, India's lack of a comprehensive framework to handle refugees leaves wide gulfs through which asylum seekers fall. "We don't keep track of those whose asylum claims are rejected. Some choose to go home, others stay on illegally. That is the gap," said Bose. "If the government dealt with this, they would take them in, decide their status and deport those who fail to meet the test."

Additional problems arise in UNHCR's limited reach within India, which is predominantly limited to working in Delhi and a field office in Tamil Nadu in the South. When the Rohingyas set up camp in Delhi, the UNHCR had trouble verifying many of their claims of discrimination, chief of which was the inability to get their children into government schools. Technically, anyone in India can attend free public schools, but since the Rohingyas live mostly outside Delhi, "we don't know why they are having problems with getting their children into schools."

The UNHCR faces the same problem with other refugee communities from Myanmar and other countries along India's eastern borders. There are around 7,000 Myanmarese refugees registered with UNHCR in New Delhi, but according to Human Rights Watch and other international organizations, there are an estimated 50,000 to 100,000 more Myanmarese living illegally in the North East, where UNHCR is denied access for security reasons.

Northeastern India borders several countries, including Myanmar, Nepal, Bangladesh and China. India heavily restricts travel, even by Indians, to these areas.

Despite the obvious flaws in the system, India is loath to change it. Experts say that in the case of the Rohingyas, the problem is mostly politics. In addition to opposition from right-wing parties, the government must overcome objections from northeastern states, where most refugees from Myanmar end up. They argue that creating a scheme under which people could claim refugee status would result in a flood of refugees and an explosion of inter-ethnic and tribal violence, said Dhavan.

Northeastern India is a hodgepodge of tribal and ethnic communities that often straddle national boundaries. Violence has broken out several times in the decades since the partition of the subcontinent when one community is resettled in areas traditionally belonging to another community.

For example, when 100,000 members of the Chakmas hill tribe from Chittagong fled in 1964 after their homeland was flooded by dam construction, India resettled 40,000 of them in Arunchal Pradesh. They suffered a violent backlash from the indigenous people in the mid-90s. They were never granted citizenship, and remain stateless to this day.

In the 1980s, India tried to set up tribunals in the northeast to adjudicate refugee claims, but it was shot down by the Supreme Court for bias and an overly broad mandate.

Then there are India's myriad concerns with militancy. "The Indian government says that, for security reasons, we cannot have terrorists entering our country masquerading as refugees," Dhavan said. "This is untenable since the stringent refugee determination process is designed to separate the real refugees and illegal migrants, including terrorists."

Nationally, Indians are sympathetic toward refugees given that many of their forefathers were refugees during the partition, said Dhavan. It is merely the opposition of border states in the northeast that prevents such a law.
Various efforts by citizen and lawyer groups have been made, including by Dhavan, to have a refugee law put in place. "There has been no response," he said.

"There irony and contradiction in India's stance on refugees," said Dhavan. "It joined the executive committee on the UN convention, but not the convention itself. Its Supreme Court says refugee protection is a fundamental right, but this is not reflected in the law. India welcomes huge migration from neighboring countries, making it one of the most welcoming in the world, but its policy on refugees is overly strict."

The UNHCR, meanwhile, is trying to do its best with a limited budget and mandate. "The biggest problem with the refugee problem is poverty. They live in bad situations because they cannot find good work," said Bose. Unlike in states that have signed the UN convention, India does not allow its refugees the right to work, meaning that many have to seek out employment in the so-called informal sector as maids, waiters or tailors. Many of these people are exploited due to their lack of other options.

The UNHCR runs a handful of production centers to employ the most desperate, but it can afford only to pay around 3,000 rupees ($55) a month.

"Living expenses are going up," said Bose. "There is a lot we can do with more money."

Will the world pay for a slimmed down US military?

The following first appeared in The National on 9 January 2012.

Will the world pay for a slimmed down US military?

Barack Obama claimed on Thursday to have seen the future of combat. He announced a new strategic vision for the US military. America will shed its "outdated Cold War-era systems", he said, and create a "leaner" fighting force that is "agile, flexible and ready for the full range of contingencies and threats". There is just one problem: Mr Obama didn't have a choice.

He made these remarks shortly after signing the Congressional Budget Control Act, which requires large government spending cuts. Like the US defence budget, the US military is about to become smaller out of necessity, more than because of Mr Obama's vision of the future.

The US Congress has mandated military spending be cut by anywhere between $500 billion (Dh1.8tr) and $1 trillion over the next decade. In concrete terms that means roughly 100,000 fewer soldiers and around 200 fewer aircraft.

Reeling from a decade of spending on two wars and a painful recession, Americans no doubt are eager to see a peace dividend.

There is probably ample room for spending cuts. The two wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq, by most counts, cost US taxpayers around $1 trillion. The Pentagon, by its own admission, was paying around $400 a gallon to put fuel into armoured vehicles in Afghanistan.

Mr Obama's speech, however, rang of political doublespeak. It was especially striking to hear him quote the former US President Dwight Eisenhower's farewell speech to the nation.

Against the backdrop of the Cold War and fears of the spread of communism and consequent calls for greater military spending to counter the threat, he said: "Each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs."

This is the same President Eisenhower who unveiled the so-called "New Look" national security policy, which drastically cut the manpower of the US military and concentrated on building a massive air force designed to drop atomic weapons. He too was convinced that this was the future of warfare.

The New Look policy was also widely blamed for creating the so-called "hollow military" of the 1970s, a termed coined soon after the then President Jimmy Carter was considering bombing Iran during the hostage crisis. He reportedly asked how many B-52 bombers the Air Force could muster, and was told: four.

The reason was that while the US had grown a massive air force, it lacked mechanics, support aircraft, supplies and fuel to get them airborne. Today, the "hollow military" or "hollow force" has sprung up in almost every piece of punditry condemning Mr Obama's planned revamp of the US military, with some justification.

The US has a habit of drawing down after a conflict only to be left unprepared for the next one. It is a cycle that has happened with unerring regularity since the First World War, and started even after the country's War for Independence when it reduced its army size to 80 people.

Every reduction in military might has been followed by a conflict that left the US struggling to muster the number of troops it needed to effectively engage.

The most recent examples in Iraq and Afghanistan are no different. The US resorted to calling up thousands of inactive military personnel, some of whom had not trained for years, and National Guardsmen.

Despite what his critics may argue, Mr Obama is unlikely to create another hollow military.

A reduced number of soldiers overall can be expected to create a better equipped, more capable and - most importantly - cheaper fighting force.

But his conclusion that this will make America better equipped to wage war does not necessarily follow. The world has yet to see a conflict where the size of your army does not matter.

It should be noted, however, that the overall size of militaries across the globe has steadily reduced since the end of the Cold War. But this period of relative calm is in large part due to the military might of the United States.

Mr Obama would have America, as well as its allies and enemies across the globe, believe that the US can spend half a trillion dollars less and yet field a stronger military.

If wars could be won with drones and superior technology alone, he would be right. Unfortunately, neither history nor common sense has convinced anyone of this.

Rather than perpetuate the crimes of his predecessors Mr Obama should have encouraged a serious debate on the future of international security, from Asia Pacific to the Middle East. He tacitly admits that the US cannot continue to field a military the likes of which we saw in the mid-20th century, but then claims that this is no worry.

America is no longer capable or willing to be the sole guarantor of world peace. Increasing international security cooperation has rightly been the watchword of the current US administration since Mr Obama's inauguration.

America will not be able to prevent the next major war forever. At the same time, the world will not cease to produce Adolf Hitlers, Kaiser Wilhelms, Kim Il-sungs, or even those who will be seen as comparatively minor villains in future history books, such as Osama bin Laden.

Mr Obama said last week: the US "can't afford to repeat the mistakes that have been made in the past".

He would be wise to remember the words of the 20th century philosopher, George Santayana. "Only the dead have seen the end of war."

Solutions aside, Anna Hazare has touched a nerve

The following first appeared in The National on August 22, 2011


On Monday last week, my morning tea was disrupted by loud chanting. A group of six college students were carrying a banner down our street and shouting slogans in support of Anna Hazare, the now famous champion of India's anti-corruption drive.

I remember thinking: "That's it?" Only six kids?

Actually, these were just the first trickle of the torrent of people amassing on the Indian capital.

Most people did not expect Mr Hazare's second fast to amount to much. His first, in April, had ended in acrimony. But while his methods and solutions for addressing India's crippling corruption might raise eyebrows, his power to galvanise is now unquestionable. He has the government's own missteps to thank.

Mr Hazare has sought to strong-arm the government into adopting his version of an anti-corruption bill called Jan Lokpal, or Citizen's Ombudsman bill. The government balked at including the president, prime minister and high court judges under the oversight of an independent watchdog, with good reason.

Mr Hazare would have had the country's Central Bureau of Investigation rolled into the Lokpal, creating a police service outside the control of the government. In theory, it would allow impartial investigations and prosecutions of corruption scandals like the recent ones which have cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of rupees.

But in actuality it would have sought to solve the problem of public accountability by creating yet another unaccountable body. One can only imagine the sort of potential chaos that could ensue should the head-of-state and the arbiters of the law be put under the eye of a super-empowered and unaccountable police service.

So the government is right on its stance on the Jan Lokpal.

But that has ceased to matter.

Less than 24 hours after those angry college students marched past my home in south-east Delhi, Anna Hazare was in jail and 5,000 of his supporters were detained in a disused stadium. The government has been in crisis mode ever since.

As news broke of Mr Hazare's early morning arrest, protests erupted across the country. In the capital people travelled hours from neighbouring states with the sole purpose of being arrested to "fill the jails" - a reference to a tactic used against the British in India's freedom struggle.

Mr Hazare himself has capitalised on this sentiment by calling his fast and multiple efforts to strong arm the government a "second freedom struggle". It isn't, but that is what those who support him believe and that is why the situation has spun out of control.

The government, it seems, has failed to realise the depth of the people's anger. Ordinary Indians, tired of being made to pay corrupt bureaucrats for every government service, do see corruption as the single greatest evil in their lives.

To the farmer, corruption is the reason he can't get electricity to power his machinery, or the bribes he must pay to claim government subsidies on grain. To the housewife, it is the reason she must pay several hundred rupees to get a food ration card to feed her family.

Mr Hazare is their champion. He has a largely unblemished record of fighting for the rights of the downtrodden, and is seen as one of the few upstanding public figures in India.

The government, meanwhile, has played into his hands. It first tried ignoring Mr Hazare by agreeing to consult with him following his first fast and then disregarding his suggestions. Then it tried bullying him with a smear campaign.

It was not until after his arrest and the country's explosion in outrage that it sought to debate Mr Hazare on the merits of his bill, something it should have done in the first place.

The fast of eccentric yogi Baba Ramdev in June should have been instructive. He too sought to force the government to agree to the Jan Lokpal. His fast attracted popular and global media attention. But he offered few real solutions (not to mention some questionable theories on cancer, yoga and AIDS). One plan for tackling corruption was to outlaw 500 and 1,000 rupee notes so it would be harder to pay bribes. In short, he talked himself out of a following.

Had the government opened the forum to Mr Hazare, many of his more harebrained schemes might have failed the sanity test as well. But it is too late for that now. The protests and the fast have ceased to be about the Jan Lokpal. This is now a referendum on the government and the Indian political establishment as a whole.

Ordinary Indians believe that every politician is corrupt and any truth spoken by a politician, no matter how it is couched, will be seen as a lie.

I remember a friend once relating a conversation he had with a member of a major political party. "How much is a Lok Sabha seat worth?" my friend asked. "If he does nothing?" the party member replied. "100 crore (Dh9 million)." That is how much a politician can be expected to earn over his five year term by virtue of his position.

In short, Indian politicians raid the public purse as a matter of routine and the people are tired of it. Mr Hazare merely provided the spark to ignite this powder keg.

The government has few avenues to escape this crisis, but it must immediately seek to halt the escalating anger, or risk implosion. The decision to allow him to return to his fast for 15 days is a start. But it must now bring Mr Hazare to the table and fully and openly engage with him on the Lokpal.

Only then will the protests cease to be directed against the government and actually become about tackling corruption.

It's 3am and Abu Dhabi is awake

The following first appeared in The National on June 18, 2011

Laura Collins, Sean McLain, Tahira Yaqoob and Faisal Al Yafai

"I want to wake up in that city that doesn't sleep," the lyrics go. And it is perhaps not too culturally insensitive to say everyone recognises them as being from the New York, New York. Locally, it is Dubai, that siren city, which has the reputation of being jazzed up and ready to roll. Yet the "little town blues are melting away" in the capital city. Yes, the hotels are open late and you just might hear someone lip-syncing Sinatra, but there's more to life here than clubbing.

We are a city of 1.5 million people, about the size of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the sixth largest US city, and a bit larger than Amritsar, the 29th largest in India. And as such we have the needs of a city of 1.5m, whether we're at work or play: filling up with petrol because there's no line in the middle of the night, grabbing a shawarma and a carrot juice just because, relaxing at the end of a work day, or rising at 3 because the shift starts at 4 and someone has to keep this sundial city running. And who is out there at that hour? The National encouraged a team of four feature writers, three photographers and two videographers to stay awake (or get up early) to find out.

Mina Zayed

As locations for moonlight picnics go this isn't the most obvious choice. It is flanked by the rust-streaked hull of a looming dredger, the Willem Van Orange, and grease, dirt and debris mingle underfoot. No matter how dim the light or late the hour, the end of the dock at old Mina Zayed could hardly be described as aesthetically pleasing.

But brothers Nabeel, 24, and Basel, 19, and their friend Mohammed, 25, are perfectly content to sit at the end of the dock drinking from cans of Sprite and sharing pistachios, crisps and conversation.

It is just after 3am. They have been here for more than an hour and are in no hurry to leave. It is 32 degrees but with 80 per cent humidity it feels 10 degrees hotter in town. Here, a soft coastal breeze brings some respite. That it carries the pungent smell of the tens of hundreds of onions being unloaded in the nearby fruit and vegetable market and the fetid stench of yesterday's rubbish, presumably still kicking about somewhere as the smell is borne here on the wind, seems of little concern to this trio.

"We come here for the sea," explains Nabeel, pointing into the damp darkness to where black sky blots into black water. "And for the wind. Today the weather is much better here."

Nabeel is back home in Abu Dhabi for a month, on vacation from university in Damascus, where he studies pharmacy. His younger brother studies engineering in the emirate where Mohammed also lives and works.

Earlier, the guys went to the cinema to see The Hangover 2. Then they drove here, bumping past skeletal dhows and closed-up shops, moored boats and parked lorries. Basel and Mohammed unrolled a large yellow and green rug while Nabeel popped open a small white deckchair. And here they sit in the quiet moments before life really begins further back along the port, at the fish and vegetable markets and the Iranian souq.

"There is nowhere quiet to come in Abu Dhabi," Nabeel says. "Only here and the breakwater. We sometimes go there, too."

Around the dock as 4am approaches so too does the end of a long shift for the 300 workers at Al Dafra Tourist Village, a catering company.

From Saturday to Wednesday 16,000 school lunches come out of this small factory down by the shore and are driven to 32 schools across the emirates. They are loaded onto air-conditioned lorries as lithe feral cats, their tales high in expectation of the rich pickings available here at the docks, skip about underfoot.

Each meal that is prepared is the same: one sandwich, one cake, one piece of fruit, one cup of water, one fruit juice and one yogurt. Wednesday night/Thursday morning, the last of the working week, is everybody's favourite shift. Remarkably affable for a man who works such harsh hours, Aswan Adahab has been catering supervisor here for the past five years working from 10pm to 4am. Mr Adahab smiles and explains: "No work tonight. Just sleep."

Midtown

The neon sign and fairy lights illuminating the Lebanese Flower restaurant act as a beacon, drawing in the city's hungry. The city centre in Abu Dhabi goes to bed early, but the shawarma stand at Lebanese Flower does brisk business long after most of the shops and restaurants have closed for the night.

The rush is greatest at around 1am, but a steady stream of cars pull up with orders until the lights go out promptly at 3.

"They come for the rolls, lamb or chicken," says Khalil al Hariri, night manager, from Syria. Outside he puffs shisha and chats with his boss, Jihad Sharafuddin, the general manager, whose family has owned the restaurant for more than a decade. Both are here every day, from 7am until 3 at night (with a three-hour break at 4pm), but they are not the last staffers standing.

Abdul Rafik is the Indian chef in charge of the graveyard shift at Lebanese Flower. He and 20 other compatriots will be busy for the next four hours marinating chicken and chopping vegetables, preparing the shawarma for the next night's crowd of hungry insomniacs.

Three in the morning is the only time Naveed Khaled Mehmood and Jahanzeb Aurangzeb have a quiet moment to themselves. Taxi drivers, roommates and best friends, the two meet up at the same hour every night at a 24-hour cafe, Rawabi al Shams, next to the taxi station at Abu Dhabi Central Bus Terminal.

"You can't find customers at this time, so we come for a cup of tea, conversation and a little rest," said Mr Aurangzeb. He and his compatriot have been working the night shift exclusively for the past two years, waking up a few hours before sundown and going to bed at 9 or 10 in the morning.

They prefer to work nights to avoid the searing midday heat, but in Abu Dhabi sunset brings little comfort. Even at this early hour the mercury hovers around 30 degrees and with a wet blanket of humidity driving the heat index nearer to 40.

The speciality of the cafe is biryani, and every table in the cafe is full. As the hour hand ticks nearer to four, the stream of customers only seems to grow. Taxi and lorry drivers dominate the clientele, but every segment of the city's society seems to be here. The cars parked two abreast outside the entrance are a mix of Toyotas and Lexuses, old Nissans, a few Mercedes and even a Porsche 4x4.

The Rawabi al Shams, with an air-conditioning unit on every wall of the five-sided building, is an oasis from the heat for denizens of the night. Threnve Tecsom, however, is sitting outside in the heat. He has just arrived from Dubai. "On the weekends I visit my wife in Dubai, where she works," he said. "Now I'm headed to the airport where I work."

At 4am, the azaan rings out from the bus terminal's mosque calling the faithful to prayer. More than 60 sets of shoes sit in the shelves or lie scattered on the floor outside the entrance to the prayer room.

In Rawabi al Shams, Jassem Ali al Nuami is exchanging jokes with a group of young Emiratis arguing over who will pay for their tea. For the past two years he has sat at a counter selling gum, breath mints, tissues and cigarettes - essential supplies for this late-night crowd. He sees only a few hours of daylight, but he enjoys his job and the company. "We are open 24 hours, and every night it is like this."

The Corniche

Down at Special cafe, there's a convivial fug as waiters scurry back and forth, a wood-fired oven merrily churns out pizza and saj bread; shisha smoke hangs in the air.

There isn't an orange leather banquette free in the house as a waiter shouts an order for another shish tawouk and a strawberry shisha for a weary customer coming in from a 12-hour shift.

But this is not the close of a working day: although it is 3am, this lively hub with its blue neon sign - one of a string of three round-the-clock cafes garlanding the Corniche - is a magnet for a motley crew of insomniacs, night-shift workers knocking off in the early hours and revellers who have run out of places to go.

Salem Obaid, 31, an Emirati foreman for Enoc, the petrol company, draws deeply on his shisha, gulps down tea and turns to play a computer bowling game by his seat, content to sit in silence with his friend Mohammed Salmeen, 31, an army security officer.

"I work a fortnight, then have a fortnight off, so when I have a break, I like to come here to relax. I prefer the city after 10pm and can survive on a few hours' sleep," says Obaid.

Carmen Potecka, 26, and Svetlana Shcherbakova, 25, both Etihad cabin crew from the Czech Republic, are incongruously dressed in bright, skimpy frocks - outfits at odds with the cantina-style setting - as they attack a shawarma and chips with gusto after a night at the Hilton Hotel nearby.

"Because of our jobs, we sleep a lot during the day," explains Potecka. "This is a nice place with a good atmosphere and a pleasant crowd. It is always packed."

Across the road at an Adnoc petrol station with a fast-food outlet, a stream of 4x4s pull up, full of the sleep-deprived who just happen to have a hankering for a McDonald's Happy Meal or a Dunkin' Donut.

A celebratory meal at McDonald's marks the end of an era for four friends, Youssef el Rahimy, 15, an Egyptian; Nanja Miseljic, 16, of Bosnia; Pedro Barros, 16, of Brazil, and Tynmar Yoghi, 16, a Palestinian. All pupils at the American Community School, they decided to hold an all-nighter as el Rahimy is returning to Canada, where he grew up, in two days. As they are too young for shisha cafes, they have instead spent the past 15 hours alternating between playing video games and wolfing down fast food.

Gulping down energy drinks, el Rahimy says: "This is one of my last days in Abu Dhabi and we are trying to spend as much time together as we can. This is not a regular thing, it is a special occasion - but it is part of Middle Eastern culture to be up at this time. It is too hot to go out during the day."

Three Emirati friends, Mohammad Ateeq, 27, of the Coastguard; Mohammed Ibrahim, 21, and Ali Hamad, 24, students at Al Ain University, have fallen into a pattern of going to the gym after work or study, playing cards until the early hours and snacking on burgers and salad.

"Turkish coffee keeps me going," says Ibrahim. "We don't mean to stay awake; it just happens."

Mohammed Salem, 18, Saeed Bakheet, 19, and Fahad Amer, 18, have not even made it inside the restaurant, admitting from their parked car: "We have nothing better to do. Once a week, we just drive around."

Outside Special, Muhammad Suleman, 28, a taxi driver from Peshawar, Pakistan, waits patiently to ferry customers home. It's a busy shift, especially at this hour, but he will make up for it by sleeping all day until he starts work again at 6pm.

As the first dawn light starts to filter through steamed-up windows at the cafe, the crowd finally begins to thin. By 6am, there is a lone Emirati, puffing contemplatively on a shisha. Staff sweep the floors around him, tidy chairs and prepare for the day's customers. Tonight will be another busy night, but for now, he has the place to himself.

Musaffah

The deep orange of the street lamps stretch away, ahead and behind, left and right. In every direction there are only shadows on tarmac, lighter patches of road like zebra stripes. In the distance, a flame burns above the warehouses, above the concrete buildings that house the sleeping people of Musaffah. Occasionally, we turn a corner and see queues of lorries, their engines idling, but there are no people in them. An area built by the hands of men is deserted of human movement. The hands that build Abu Dhabi are resting.

Three am on the outskirts of the city and only a few people are still awake. At a petrol station, two bus drivers languish in the passenger seats, waiting for their shifts to start, unable to doze in the clammy night heat.

Outside a Romana water plant, with trucks idling all around, stand two workers, one wearing a towel bunched up around his thighs. "Kerala style!" his friend Abhishek says. They are preparing the water to be delivered to corner shops and news-agents in time for their morning customers. "We have to work now," says Abhishek. "Because if no water, no life in all Abu Dhabi!"

We walk for a while, around the backstreets of Musaffah. Occasionally dogs rush past on their secret, silent journeys. The factories and workshops are all dark. Outside a Porsche building, four young men are walking purposefully towards the road. They turn out to be welders and engineers working extra hours, finally coming off a shift that began at 8am the previous day.

They are all from various parts of Kerala, in south India, and in their mid-twenties.

"It's better to work now because we can, when we are not too old," says Paul. "We work like this many times because the money is always better. For our families." They are exhausted and there are no taxis. We offer them a lift in the car and they shyly pile in, three in the back, two of us in the front passenger seat.

Left and right, right and left, once off the main arteries of Musaffah, the roads look the same. We are somewhere in the depths of the industrial zone, in streets that look similar to us but must be full of small landmarks to those who live here. There are piles of uncollected rubbish, empty cars with doors left open and the vague uncertainty of the maze-like darkness.

We drop the four workers off at their home, a large four-storey building, plain white, very much like the buildings all around. Inside, strip-lights illuminate corridors packed with boots in neat lines. The workers wash briefly and slump into bunk beds; although talkative a few moments before, the fatigue is calling them and they forget about us. Feeling awkward for intruding on such a personal scene, we leave them to their dreams.

By the time we find our way out of Musaffah, the sun is rising. At 5.33am, the street lamps switch off, marking the moment the living infrastructure of the city moves into the day. The rest of Musaffah is moving, too: lorries and buses have found drivers, cars queue for petrol, street cleaners move across their patches. The hands that build the city prepare for another day.

Endangered exotic animals are not your pets

The following first appeared in The National on June 4, 2011.

Sean McLain and Tahira Yaqoob


Lions and tigers and bears. Snakes on a plane. A barrel full of monkeys. Newspaper headlines for the recent spate of smuggling cases involving exotic and endangered animals nearly write themselves.

While the headlines may be amusing, the facts of the illicit trade in wild animals are from a laughing matter. Most people will have fumed in anger at the Emirati man who is alleged to have tried to leave Bangkok with a suitcase stuffed with four leopard cubs, a Malayan sun bear and a red-cheek marmoset, all endangered species. And they will no doubt have felt a sense of impotent indignation at the news on Tuesday that he got on a plane and fled the country, thereby escaping justice.

The heart-wrenching story of the two young lions recently rescued in Abu Dhabi will have induced even deeper outrage. The ends of their paws had been amputated to remove their claws and their canine teeth had been filed down until the roots were exposed. The cruelty shown by their owners is contemptible. Sadly, it is not unique.

On Sunday, a cheetah was spotted limping through the streets of Karama in the capital. Malnourished, the eight-month-old animal broke its chain presumably out of hunger and leapt from a rooftop, breaking a foreleg.

Reports have trickled in over the years showing a slow, but steady trade in exotic species, often endangered, often imported in violation of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) and UAE law. The National has reported on tiger cubs being sold openly in the markets of the Emirates.

Under the law, potential owners of exotic and dangerous animals such as lions and tigers must apply for a permit with the Ministry of Environment and Water, which monitors the origin and care of these animals. This process is necessarily onerous and time-consuming to protect both the animals and the public, however many people simply choose to bypass this process, encouraging a thriving global black market for rare and endangered species.

The effects of the trade in animals goes far beyond the sad cases we read about. Most of the traded animals are captured in the wild, often when very young and often illegally; their mothers are frequently killed in the process. So two generations of an already dwindling species are removed from the wild population, with little prospect of the young being able to be reintroduced when they are adult. Human-reared animals are rarely capable of fending from themselves in the wild.

Luckily, there are organisations and private citizens across the UAE that take in these animals. They give them homes, ensure that they are properly cared for and - where appropriate - introduce them into breeding programmes. You can see the fruits of their labour the next time you visit a zoo.

Zoo is next-best thing for some

Arshad Toosy is not your average veterinarian. When the call came from the Fujairah municipality that two baboons were "running around the city", Dr Toosy and his crack team were called in to capture them.

"We have a team of four vets who are trained in remote capturing, armed with dart guns and nets," said the manager of veterinary operations at the Al Ain Wildlife Park and Resort. "The drugs are quite dangerous so only the vets are allowed to use them." He likens the vets to a sort of Swat team. "We get a lot of requests from other emirates when an animal escapes or they need veterinary assistance."

Dr Toosy has had to deal with a lot of baboon-related cases in the past months. "We received 20 baboons from the Ministry of Environment and Water last year; they were seized at the border with Saudi Arabia." He says the increase in the number of baboons being caught is a sign of the increasing popularity of primates as pets.

The Hamadryas, or sacred, baboon is indigenous to the region, found in Yemen and southern Saudi Arabia. Kevin Budd, an assistant operations manager at the Arabian wildlife centre in Sharjah, agrees that baboons are increasingly sought by lovers of exotic pets.

"The baboons are clearly coming through in the pet trade right now," he said. "The baboons aren't endangered. They are probably one of the few [in the exotic pet market] that aren't." His centre helps care for such indigenous species as the baboon. "Since the beginning of the year, I think we've received seven baboons. Some of them are in such a bad condition that there's nothing we can do."

The Al Ain Wildlife Park contains one of the world's largest exhibits of big cats, partly because of their popularity as pets in this region. One in five of the lions it has on display was either someone's pet or was rescued after being smuggled into the country.

Two lions rescued this month ended up at the park, and Dr Toosy hopes to eventually introduce them into the existing population of 34 lions.

The exhibit also includes white lions and white tigers, genetic mutations that are rarely found in the wild. Their colouring makes them prime targets for poachers. As a result the zoo in Al Ain, which rescues the rareties, is one of the few places in the world you can see these beasts.

The park maintains breeding programmes for its big cats, hoping to bolster the numbers of endangered species and reintroduce them back to the wild whenever possible. The nature of poaching, however, makes that difficult. "The origin [of an animal] is very important for breeding because there are many subspecies," Dr Toosy said. Unfortunately, animals smuggled into the country do not come with information regarding which population they were taken from. Genetic testing can help determine the place of origin in some cases, but not in all.

Dr Toosy blames the buyers of these animals for the harm inflicted on them. "If there is a demand, there will be a supply," he explained. "The public should understand that these animals are wild and by importing them they are jeopardising their lives."

These animals are also a disease risk. Not only can they introduce harmful diseases to the desert's fragile ecosystem, but they can also transmit diseases such as rabies, hepatitis or tuberculosis to humans.

Some owners do eventually realise the dangers and ask the park to take their pets. The park usually accepts without asking awkward questions, although Dr Toosy has his own hypothesis: "These animals, when they are small, they are cute and cuddly, but when they get older they can be dangerous."

Sadly, her menagerie is growing

There are 232 animals living in Ayesha Kelaif's 12,000-sq-ft villa in the Al Barsha district of Dubai, but among the chinchillas, tortoises and assorted cats and dogs, a few stand out.

Minkey, a Sykes monkey, was found in Jumeirah leaping around a villa. The distressed owner of the villa called Mrs Kelaif, who captured the primate. She is now looking after Minky until he can be placed in a welfare centre.

"He is very tame and friendly, but monkeys live in groups so it's very sad he doesn't have any companions," Mrs Kelaif said. The monkey was malnourished and underweight when found, but "he has been with us for two-and-a-half months and is now much healthier".

Rango, a baby fox, was mistaken at first for a pet chihuahua when he was discovered running around the streets with a leash and collar. He was taken in by Mrs Kelaif three months ago and has been treated by a veterinarian. "He was being kept as a pet and was so distressed, he was chewing his hind leg. He is looking much better now."

Sid, a boa constrictor, was also being kept as a pet in a tiny glass box by his Indian owner and was so emaciated, his bones were sticking out. "We put him in a special enclosure and lined it with a heated blanket. He gets fed live rats and baby mice and has grown by more than one foot in the six months since we took him in. He is now extremely healthy."

Mrs Kelaif's extraordinary menagerie began when she rescued a stray cat, which she named Crystal. Since then, her refusal to turn away any abused or mistreated animal has led to her giving refuge to hundreds of creatures over the years, including alpacas, owls, possums and ferrets.

Every spare inch of her home and garden has been taken over to build huts and kennels for the animals - yet most days see her receiving a phone call or two asking her to take in still more.

She is worried at the increase in the number of exotic animals people attempt to keep as pets. The Emirati mother of three says: "People want to own lions and cheetahs because they are status symbols, like owning a Ferrari.

"They are becoming more easily available because they are bred here. The government is getting tougher on the practice but unfortunately, there is a market here. It worries me because all wildlife should be in its natural habitat. Animals like lions do not belong in this climate, nor should they be kept in cages."

Although she has never taken a big cat into her care, her home is overrun with smaller exotic animals. The unusual creatures are nursed back to health, then given to animal welfare centres in Sharjah and Abu Dhabi; the more domesticated animals find homes with new families.

Mrs Kelaif, 46, says animal cruelty and abuse comes down largely to ignorance. "There are a lot of Emiratis who love animals but generally, there is a lack of awareness about how to look after their pets, and culturally, they are thought of as dirty. The conception is that they are not as important as humans.

"But to us, our animals are part of the family and we are devastated if we lose any of them. I get so much love from them. They are much safer here. When I go to the pet shops in Satwa, I get so depressed at seeing the animals living in tiny cages."

She said the country's animal cruelty laws are rarely enforced.

Mrs Kelaif regularly invites schoolchildren into her home, where she runs Dubai Animal Rescue Centre to teach them the importance of caring for animals.

Her devotion doesn't come cheap: veterinary bills amount to about Dh70,000 a year while the animals gobble up food worth thousands of dirhams every month. Their carer rarely takes a holiday, preferring to spend her money on them.