© 2025 WDM | By Ismail H. Warsame
For decades, mass deportation was a silent policy in the shadows of the Gulf—a brutal tool for managing migrant labor. Now, it has been imported, polished, and implemented with chilling efficiency by its former critics in the West.
The Great Reversal
Where glass palaces of moral authority once stood, deportation centers now rise. Western capitals that long lectured the world on human rights are perfecting a new craft: the industrial-scale expulsion of asylum seekers, often back to the very conflicts and crises they fled. The irony is historic. As Riyadh and Abu Dhabi modernize their labor laws, Washington, London, and Paris are adopting the zeal—if not the exact methods—of the Gulf’s immigration police of a bygone era.
This is more than a policy shift; it is a fundamental reversal of the West’s civilizational narrative. The nations that authored the doctrine of universal human rights are now revealing its fine print: those rights are conditional, reserved primarily for the right kind of people.
From Citizenship to Conditional Residency
The logical next step is already materializing: the redefinition of citizenship itself. Under the banners of “security” and “social cohesion,” the inviolable guarantees of passports and birthrights are being quietly rewritten. The unstated goal is a last stand against demographic change—an effort to preserve a certain image of nationhood that looks less like a diverse modern state and more like a nostalgic advertisement.
The hypocrisy is staggering. The same Western think tanks that for years advised Gulf monarchies on “integrating” their migrant populations are now watching as their governments test mass deportation as a legitimate tool of domestic policy. If hypocrisy were an Olympic sport, the medals would be awarded in gold, silver, and bronze to its founding proponents.
The Collapse of a Global Order
The long-term consequences are yet to be seen. Can the international human rights framework, already on life support, survive this betrayal by its architects? Or are we witnessing the birth of a new, grim global standard: “Rights for us, walls for you”?
The message for now is unequivocal. The West has become what it once claimed to resist. The moral high ground has been sold, its proceeds funding a sprawling network of detention camps and deportation flights. The world is watching the teacher become the student, and the lesson is one in realpolitik, devoid of principle.
WDM 