Only political pressure or the most stubborn stupidity could justify this punishing rotation.
There's no logic reason for that whatsoever.
Many airlines employing expats on long haul (THY and KAL come to mind) for quite some time are very happy re productivity etc on rotation 20 days on 10 days off.
A funny explanation is that the local pilots would be 'jealous' about the expats having too much 'priviledges', so they press the management to enforce this punishing rotation.
Tipically the expats spend much more time sitting at the hotel than involved on duty rest/flight activities. Complete nonsense.
