I'm writing from Abu Dhabi, the oil-flush capital of the United Arab Emirates, where foreign workers make up an estimated 85 percent of the population. In the service industry, the vast majority of laborers are South Asians, but you can also find Sudanese, Egyptians, Somalis, Filipinos, Moroccans and others behind the wheels of cabs, in the scaffolding of high-rise building sites or serving as nannies to wealthy families.

Most of the laborers are supporting extended clans back home; several South Asian economies rely heavily on the remittances of workers overseas. Economic and political factors compelled the workers to make their way to the glittery world of the Persian Gulf: wars, dictatorships, unemployment, religious persecution. They can make fortunes here compared to their limited opportunities at home, but the suffering doesn't always end with an Emirati work permit, as outlined in this 2006 Human Rights Watch report, "UAE: Building Towers, Cheating Workers."

Today, I got a glimpse of the factors that bring foreign laborers to the Emirates from two taxi drivers who spun chilling stories as they shuttled me to interviews here.

The first was a Somali who fled when civil war broke out in 1988. He pines for the Mogadishu of his memory, a place with fine Italian architecture, "women 100 times more beautiful" than the Somali supermodel Iman, and delicious seafood dinners at restaurants overlooking the Indian Ocean. As the country descended into anarchy in the late 1980s and early '90s, the taxi driver moved to Egypt and, later, to the Emirates. He seemed incredulous when he realized it has now been a full two decades since he's seen his battle-scarred hometown. His voice grew pained when he talked about the effect of the war on legions of Somali children. This is what he said:

How many generations have we lost? How many? This is from our hands. We started it and now the CIA is finishing it. But we started it with our own hands, by God. We are responsible for this because there is no patriotism for a country, only clans, clans, clans. One night I was listening to Horn of Africa radio and there was a program asking people what they had witnessed in Somalia. One man called in and said that one day he was having lunch with a friend and the friend's young son came to his father and said, 'I'm hungry.' The father gave his son a pistol and told him, 'This is all you need, my son. With this, you can get your food, your khat, whatever you need.' The boy took the gun and left, but he came back soon and said, 'Father, I'm still hungry.' His father took the pistol, walked for a bit and shot a man who had cash and khat. He said, 'Here, my son, this is how you do it. Now you can buy food and you have your khat.' You see what I mean? This is all we learned from this conflict. How to kill each other."

The second driver was a gaunt, charismatic man from northwest Pakistan. He grew up in the mountainous, treacherous Waziristan region along the Afghan border. He saw the surprise on my face and said, 'Yes, we are all mujahideen there.' I laughed. 'No, I am not making a joke. Of course, we are with the mujahideen.' His father died and he was forced to support his extended family, so he left for the UAE about eight years ago. He was proud of the fact that he now speaks fluent English and Arabic in addition to his native Urdu. He asked if I knew any Urdu, then offered a 10-minute lesson while we were stuck in traffic. I asked him what he thought about the American-backed Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. He made a face. "Very, very bad," he said, shaking his head before elaborating:

Waziristan is such a beautiful place. My God, if you saw the mountains. Oh, the beauty! And they say we are terrorists because we fight for Islam, because we protect our country. What should we do instead? Say, 'Welcome, Americans?' like Musharraf? Let them do what they want? No, we refuse this and we will always refuse this. We are one with our brothers in Afghanistan and we will not leave them. We all have weapons there. All of us. It's something normal to see men walking with their Kalashnikovs. We are not like Benazir Bhutto, who ran to Dubai. We are not like Nawaz Sharif, who ran to Saudi Arabia. The mujahideen never left...Did you see Lal Masjid? Did you ever dream you would see a Muslim leader ordering his forces to shoot at a mosque? A mosque?! (He gestured as if letting off rounds from an invisible machine gun.) You see how many people Musharraf killed in Lal Masjid? This is why we keep our weapons. He will pay, sister. They will all pay. You will see, God willing.