MUSCAT AND OMAN A DESERT COUNTRY ALL RUN BY RADIO-TELEPHONE

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32037, 11 July 1969, Page 10

MUSCAT AND OMAN A DESERT COUNTRY ALL RUN BY RADIO-TELEPHONE

Jrom the “Economist’* by arrangement)

few countries still exclude the foreigner as a deliberate act of policy. The Sultanate of Muscat and Oman deliberately rebuffs the tourist the journalist, the explorer and all those who seek to visit the country for reasons other than those personally approved by the sultan. Possibly no other country is subject to so great a degree of personal rule. It is true despotism, though not malign and not necessarily oppressive.

The country is run by one man using a radio-telephone, living in seclusion on the shores of the Arabian Sea, 500 miles from his capital which he has not visited for more than ten years. The sultan has not always lived in Salalah in Dhofar province, but after he succeeded his father in 1932 his absences from his capital town of Muscat became ever more frequent and of longer duration.

Many explanations have been advanced for this selfimposed seclusion. Fear of assassination has been suggested, but the only known attempt on his life was made in Salalah three years ago, when members of his locally recruited defence force fired at him and missed. The only active rebellion in the sultanate during the last five years has been confined to Dhofar province, where mining and ambushes make any form of land travel a hazard.

It has been claimed that he retired to Salalah to escape the importuning and soliciting for funds by his people, endemic to traditional Arab life, and which he was in no position to meet from his empty treasury. But since October, 1967, he has joined the ranks of the oil-rich Arab rulers. Some say that he is a recluse, but Europeans who meet him all speak of his charm, fluent English and conversational capacity. He was educated in India, is well travelled and visits London from time to time.

An Astute Man

Sultan Saeed bin Taimur is a very astute man. He needs to be to hold his position amongst the competing factions within the country. He is also suspicious, particularly of the other members of his family, whom he has been careful to keep in positions where they are isolated from the mainstream of life in the country or in posts with negligible power and responsibility. A man of simple tastes himself, he has always been careful to keep his relations short of money. Inheriting an empty treasury from his father, and a gross national income measured in thousands rather than millions of pounds, he has become obsessive over matters of finance. It is against this background that his isolation and inaccessibility must be judged. A cautious man, he has always felt the need to keep his distance from his people, and as he gets older—he is now verging on 60—he becomes increasingly set in his ways. The sultan has one son, Sayyed Qabus bin Saeed, 28 years old, who is characteris-

tically kept in isolation in his own house in the palace grounds in Salalah. Qabus completed his education in England, and went on to Sandhurst. After this he served for a spell in Germany with the Cameronians, the regiment which helped crush the rebellion in the sultanate in 1957. His education was rounded off with a world tour. Since then he has not left Salalah and to the people of Oman he is completely unknown. Self-Imposed Exile The sultan has four halfbrothers, but only one of them represents any competition. This is Sayyed Tariq, an intelligent and well-edu-cated man, who is now in self-imposed exile. After several years of vegetating in Muscat on a financial pittance from the sultan, where his principal occupation was making up one in the Muscat bridge four, he left the country with his family. For some years Tariq claimed that his unauthorised departure from the sultanate had no political significance, but shortly after the production of oil started in 1967 he gave an interview to a British newspaper correspondent in which he made public his political opposition to the sultan and his aim to supplant him.

The government, if one can call it such, consists of a number of officials, many of them British, who reside in Muscat town, and carry out the instructions of the sultan as passed to them from Salalah. They fly to Salalah should the sultan wish to see them personally, but many of them never see him from one year’s end to another. The most influential of these officials are his personal adviser, a British subject and former consulgeneral in Muscat whose knowledge of Arabic is embryonic; his military secretary, a former British army officer of considerable experience in the sultanate who speaks rather more Arabic; and a venerable bearded Omani, Sayyed Ahmed bin Ibrahim, a distant relative of the sultan, who is minister of the interior, a post he has occupied for more than 30 years. Balancing Act Elsewhere the settled areas of the sultanate are divided into wilayets. The walis, or regional administrators, are either related to the sultan or members of influential families. Part of the sultan’s balancing act is achieved by appointing the strongest characters to wilayets far removed from their own tribal areas.

Neither the ruler nor the regime is popular, but popularity is not desired or sought. Public relations are nonexistent, nor considered desirable or necessary by the regime. Development has started, but it is very much a step by step process. There is absolutely no evidence of money being squandered as has been the case in other oil-rich Arab states. There is no repression of minorities and a refreshing absence of racialism and religious intolerance. But the population is subjected to petty restrictions, which are both irksome and apparently irrational. Requests and petitions for the simplest things, such as minor improvements to property, have to be referred to Salalah, and these after long delays are as often as not refused without explanation.

Political prisoners are held in an old Portuguese fort overlooking Muscat harbour;

many of them have been there since the rebellion and they will probably end their days there. Public executions by shooting are still carried out according to religious custom, but severing of hands for theft is not practised. Slavery still exists in the sense that every tribal sheikh of substance has his band of unpaid retainers, but the right of manumission is there for those who desire their freedom. It is many years since this right has been invoked, as far as is known. Medical services, schools and communications are conspicuously lacking throughout the country. Nothing is known of any development plans for the interior. Buttress Of Regime The main buttress of the regime is the army, which is largely mercenary. At the time of the rebellion in the mid-1950s it consisted of a field force of indifferent standard, which was quite incapable of suppressing the revolt on its own, with the result that British military assistance had to be sought. After this steps were taken to improve and enlarge the army with the aid of a British financial subsidy. It is now a well-balanced force organised on infantry lines which garrisons the country. The result is that, except for Dhofar province, where sporadic fighting has been going on since 1963, peace and quiet have been maintained for the past 10 years. At the higher levels the army is entirely British-officered by seconded and contract officers. Some administrative posts are filled by Pakistani officers and there are a few locally commissioned officers in the junior grades. Only about half the rank and file are Arab; the remainder are Baluchis recruited for the most part from the Makran in the Pakistan-Iran border regions. Army Coup Excluded An army organised in this way at least precludes the practice inherent in this part of the world whereby politi-cally-minded officers use their position and weapons to overthrow the existing regime and seize control for themselves. On the other hand a mercenary army is never popular, and this one is no exception. However, over the past 10 years even the warring tribes of the interior have come to see the benefits of the peace enforced by the army, and grudgingly admit that stability and comparative prosperity have been brought to an area where they never existed before—even though life is rather more dull than it used to be.