Page 143 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

140 Arabia, the Gulf and the West

impressive (and about which he waxes lyrical) was the large-scale recruitment
of children into the ranks of PFLOAG. At the ‘Lenin School’ at Hauf children
not only received a formal education but they were given political instruction

and military training as well. Such was the demand for education, Halliday
reports, that on his second visit in 1973 he found that another school, the ‘9
June School’ had been opened at Hauf, the two schools having a combined
enrolment of 850, a quarter of which were girls. There was also a so-called
‘Revolution Camp’ at Hauf for young men and women, where the inmates
spent a sixteen-hour day in military training, political instruction and domestic
chores. Halliday was greatly moved by what he saw as the devotion and
eagerness of all these young volunteers, many of whom, and especially the

young women, had made strenuous efforts to reach Hauf and enlist in
PFLOAG’s ranks.
Such, then, is the view taken by a committed English Marxist of the nature
of the insurgency in Dhufar and its consequences for the country’s inhabitants.
Another view is provided by a British army officer, Sir Ranulph Fiennes, who

served with the SAF in Oman and Dhufar from 1968 to 1970, and who
recorded his experiences in a book published in 1975, Where Soldiers Fear to
Tread. Captain Fiennes has many interesting details to impart about
PFLOAG’s methods of recruitment, training and political proselytizing, as
well as about Chinese, and later Russian, involvement in the rebellion, some of
his information having been obtained from defectors from the Front who
deserted after the proclamation of an amnesty for the rebels by the Omani

government in the summer of 1970. What Fiennes has to relate contrasts quite
markedly with Halliday’s description, a contrast which no doubt can be
ascribed to the different perspectives from which they saw the campaign -
Halliday as a sympathetic visitor, anxious to ascertain how the revolution was
faring, Fiennes as a fighting soldier, stalking and being stalked by PFLOAG

guerrillas through the ravines and along the ridges of the Jabal Qara.
The testimony of PFLOAG deserters revealed the recruitment of children
to the Front and their indoctrination at the ‘Lenin School’ in Hauf m a
somewhat different light from that cast by Halliday.

In the spring of 1969 [Fiennes records], when child recruits were first sought, it a
been with parental consent, but when this brought little response, groups of guern as
were sent out to bring back a set number of children regardless of the parents ee ing .
... Salim Amr [a PFLOAG adherent] remembered the morning in
weeping girl accompanied the latest batch of children into the camp. She co^^aara
been no more than twenty. One of the little boys was her son and that evening
[punishment unit] member had caught her attempting to take the lad a'va^ f°e]ease
camp. First they stripped and flogged her. Then, since she still screame or
of her child, the Idaara leader caught her up by the ankles and swung frJ^ent
round. The uproarious mirth of the onlookers had affected the man s ,u hum.
later received a reprimand - for he swung ever faster, moving towar s