Письмо из Бахрейна
Feb. 9th, 2012 11:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
toyahara_kПолучено на выходные. Имена вычеркнуты. Письмо настоящее :)
Hi
The situation here at the moment is this:
30% of the population is Sunni with the remaining 70% being Shi’a. Without a doubt the minority oppresses the majority and the Shi’as have taken to the streets to advocate large scale changes to this repression. Unfortunately the Imams are preaching dissent but a large percentage of the protesters are children and minors who are easily influenced. Until this occurred the majority of the expats lived in the north west corner of the island in places such as Saar & Budaiya, which are close to the Shi’a hamlets where the trouble emanates from.
The major problem is that there is only one main road from Saar and Budaiya and the West of the island which is easily interrupted by the placement of rubbish skips which are then set on fire along with old tyres. It makes commuting from these areas haphazard at best and a lot of my friends are finding the daily disruption a very tiresome business.
The other major topics of grievance are directed towards the Asian expatriates who are seen to be taking the jobs that could be done by the unemployed Bahrainis. In reality if the Asians left the whole edifice would come crashing down as the locals would never fulfil the posts that the Asians come here to work at. This is true throughout the Gulf, Dubai, Qatar and especially Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE.
We here in Amwaj, Google Earth N.E corner of the island past the airport, have so far managed to avoid all of the instability. If you could secure accommodation on Amwaj with either a flat or a house you would have an enviable lifestyle. There are
plenty of good restaurants here and a plethora of similarly aged people. A 2 bedroom flat here at Amwaj would cost around BD750 going up to BD950 for a 4 bedroom flat. A 2 bed house rent would be BD1000 and that would be fully furnished along with an
internet service & satellite TV. This housing package should be INCLUDED in any job offer that you receive and as a Western expat with ‘in demand’ job experience should be easily on offer. (1 Pound =0.596 BD, at the moment)
Moving to Dubai after a year would bring you a much enhanced social life with a much more active lifestyle although there are as you know associated dangers with the lack of understanding of the overall restrictions. However Dubai is considerably more expensive to live in and is very much based on the needs of the overwhelming majority of it’s inhabitants – Indians.
To sum up. I have been here for ** years and ****** & I have never felt unsafe. We do not experience much difficulty unless we are going to and from the kennels, which are located near to some problem villages. We have only once been caught in a display of discontent and yet again we were in a queue of cars some two miles long, at night. Why we would be singled out would be hard to imagine. If the package on offer gives you a reasonable tax free package along with accommodation in a safe area then there is no reason why you should not come here for a period of a few years. There will be some trouble on February 14th, the anniversary of the onset of the protests, with rumours of an effort to gain access with what was the Pearl Roundabout. I am sure that the GP will be cancelled again in March but at the moment it is still being planned to occur.
The situation with Iran is very simple. They are fermenting a lot of the trouble, not just here, but throughout the Gulf. They are in dispute with the UAE over theTunb's islands and Abu Moussa and the Gulf leaders would secretly love the Israelis to sort them out. The two US CBG’s are more than adequate to take out the entire Iranian armed forces and with the HQ of the US 5th Fleet being here in Bahrain the concentration of force is quite overwhelming. Rhetoric from Iran does not make up for a serious inequality of the opposing forces. I was here in the tail of the Iran Iraq ‘88 war and the subsequent mining of the Straits of Hormuz where the Kuwaitis re-flagged their tankers. After a couple got hit a show of force was made that deterred any more aggression. We will see.
If you take on a job here I am more than happy to find some accommodation for you to rent as I do know some competent & reliable people in the property business. The rest just normally rip you off!
The only serious threat to life and limb here is the excruciatingly bad standard of driving from the locals, especially the Saudis at the weekends.
Keep in touch
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