Who Cares for the Caged Bird?
Wasta
Chapter 5
The UAE runs on wasta.
The vacuum left behind by the dearth of a meaningful, comprehensible legal framework is colonised by what the locals call wasta. Loosely translated, it can hold several truths: social capital, clout, nepotism, cronyism—whatever vocabulary the heart and mind find fitting to make sense of the puppeteer and his puppet strings, neatly affixed to limbs, livelihood, land, and law… Everything and everyone in the country is embraced by the widereaching arms of wasta. Few have not felt its oppressive, seductive touch.
Everything and everyone in the country is embraced by the widereaching arms of wasta. Few have not felt its oppressive, seductive touch.
Before the UAE drew its borders and sanctioned itself country, the region was a nomadic tribal society of Bedouins. At the time, wasta was utilised as a mechanism to mediate between families and tribes. The head of the tribe, the waseet, would act as a middleman to negotiate points of conflict. This system began as a means to preserve the interests of each tribe, maintaining the unity within tribes as well as promoting social cohesion between them. Over time, wasta has been bastardised to protect individual ambitions instead. For a country that desires so passionately to mimic the so-called progressive, unadulterated systems of the democratic West, little has been done to purge wasta from its institutions. Therefore, it is not uncommon today to learn that most jobs in the country are “earned” through wasta, not merit. Similarly, most handcuffs fastened and cases registered in court are done so through wasta. Even monetary capital is insufficient without wasta (although it is difficult to build the former without the latter, and vice versa).
One caregiver, jailed in place of her husband who was implicated in a sham case, shared, “[The police] took me to a station in Ajman [another Emirate, or city, in the country]. It is a place where [a landlord who filed the case] has a lot of power and influence, since they were in broking and financing. I was not legally arrested; not even one female police constable came to arrest me. If you have to arrest a woman, you need a female police constable and a police car. But I was taken in a random, public car by a male police constable. At the police station, I was asked why I was there. I told them, ‘I do not know, I have not done anything illegal.’ They had set this up.” She surmised that those who filed the case plotted to arrest her husband, but were happy to take her in his place despite the lack of legal ground to do so. As Jim Krane writes in his 2009 book Dubai: The Story of the World’s Fastest City, “Enforcement of the law in Dubai depends on who is breaking it” (239).
“Nationality will make a difference to how much wasta you have,” Dubai FAQs, an unofficial website for newly arrived expats once read. “So can having the name and phone number of somebody with a lot of wasta.” (cited in Krane 2009, p. 239). Wasta is thus why many of those who languish in the nation’s prisons are from migrant backgrounds, and why their families continue to suffer the enveloping ills of incarceration. Moreover, what one builds through the course of a lifetime is often lost to prison walls. A couple who had spent over three decades building their social capital in the country found their connections deserting them once news broke of the husband’s incarceration. His wife called those she believed she could trust to help, to no avail. “I had built these friendships so carefully, with so much attention to detail,” she explained. “I would attend every anniversary celebration, remember every son’s or daughter’s name, make all the arrangements for every trip an important connection made to Dubai. What was all this for?” The stigma of incarceration weakened even the strongest of bonds.
In this context, several of the caregivers we spoke with noted how it was who they knew (and who chose to stay), rather than the legal expertise of their lawyers or even the weight of their wallets, that ultimately helped them gain the release of their loved ones. When returning home from one of our interviews, we dropped a caregiver off at another location. On the way there, we discussed our lives more casually: our faiths, our families, our imagined futures. At the end of our conversation, she offered to share the number of a famous and wealthy Indian businessman in the Gulf, someone who had gained much fanfare in the UAE for bailing out those who had been detained in the country’s prisons. She had somehow secured his contact details in her frenzied search for people who could help free her brother. Although she ultimately never got in touch, she commented on how he could probably pull some strings for other women we may know. This is how wasta was often forged and shared among caregivers in the country: through whisper networks and a mutual understanding of what it means to split crumbs of capital between those who cling on to scant influence.
...most handcuffs fastened and cases registered in court are done so through wasta...
“They had set this up."
“Nationality will make a difference to how much wasta you have...”
“So can having the name and phone number of somebody with a lot of wasta.”
It was who they knew (and who chose to stay), rather than the legal expertise of their lawyers or even the weight of their wallets, that ultimately helped them gain the release of their loved ones.
