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Notes -
You should visit Qatar sometime
The Khaleejis were smart, but it hasn’t been very long. If the laborers actually rebel en masse, they are powerless. (The US isn’t going to fire on tens/hundreds of thousands Indian and Pakistani laborers to preserve Gulf Arab rule, especially given the importance of the relationship with their countries of origin). They do cycle them out, invest heavily in surveillance, take precautions, but it’s not not dangerous.
The danger isn't rebellion. The danger is the softening of attitudes by the Gulf Arab elite that lead to gradually more and more rights for guest workers until it alters the demographics of the country.
Modern demographic inversions are almost always non-violent and gradual.
This is the people group that notably doesn't have an underclass of descendants of slaves, despite importing more than 2x as many slaves and the most prolific nation in the Atlantic, because they were brutal enough to sterilize them before they sold them for labor. I suspect they're culturally quite innoculated against that particular threat.
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Why bring the US into this? Qatar can just hire mercenaries that will happily shoot up these labourers, who will then instantly surrender (remember these are Indians - Britain ruled them with much worse control and military superiority for centuries)
From where and how fast? When 200,000 people storm your palaces you really don’t have a lot of time to react, and the biggest mercenary groups are strongly tied to state actors like Russia and Ukraine who won’t want to involve themselves in that kind of conflict.
To organize, train and arm 200k people would be effort taking lots of time and money, this would be definitely noticed and nipped in the bud long before even by much more incompetent regime than Qatar or UAE.
You underestimate exactly how incompetent Qatar and UAE are. The Khaleejis couldn't win against the houthis, and they literally share a land border with them. Khaleejis themselves are not very competent; the vast majority of state capacity is in the hands of foreigners, such as arabs or westerners.
A rebellion doesn't occur because the guest-workers do not have a mind for rebellion, and their inferiority is constantly reinforced. No khaleeji even pretends that they owe rights to them, unlike in the west.
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