Page 157 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

154 Arabia, the Gulf and the West

to draw off far more water from the natural underground reservoirs than
could be used productively or the reservoirs could supply without being

dangerously depleted. The water table, which throughout Oman’s history has
been safeguarded by the inability of the population to tap it beyond its capacity
to replenish itself, is now sinking steadily. In some places, especiaily along the
Batinah coast, salinity has increased to such an extent as to poison the soil
and ruin the wells. It would be a terrible irony if the chief legacy of the riches
Oman has derived from oil were to be the reduction of its fertile regions to
deserts.

Little real appreciation, as opposed to idle acknowledgement, of the menace
that hangs over the country exists at the level of government or, indeed, at most
levels of Omani society. Natural temperament, religion, history, social cus­
toms, economic circumstances have all made the Omani, like the peninsular
Arab in general, both fatalistic and feckless. To him all matters are determined

by the will of God. As God has over the centuries willed drought and flood, war
and peace, poverty and plenty, disease and health, disaster and fortune, so also
has he ordained that riches will flow from the ground into the coffers of the
faithful for their delight, enjoyment, pleasure and gratification. To provide
against the future, to husband or conserve the present abundance so as to
exercise some degree of control over one’s fate (and perhaps the fate of
generations to come), is tantamount to challenging the will and authority of

God, who alone has the power to propose and dispose concerning man and his
fate. As God has provided before, so he will provide again. If not, there is
naught that can be done about it. God’s purposes are inscrutable. It is he who
created the desert, and it is the desert that has made the Arab what he is. (There

is neither occasion nor sanction for any irreverent speculation about whether it
might not have been the Arab and his goats who made the desert what it is.)
Against convictions like these the criticism of outsiders is powerless. And it is
disarmed further by the reflection that the harsh condition of the Omanis lives
heretofore makes their current, and what is probably fated to be short-lived,
plunge into prodigality all too understandable.
Wealth has altered the political structure of the country to some degree,
though how far-reaching the changes may be has yet to be seen. Oman is stil

governed much as it has always been governed: by the disbursement of douceurs
to the tribal and territorial magnates whose goodwill the sultan feels it necess
ary to solicit, or by the intimidation of those whom it is impractica e
unnecessary to court. The expansion and modernization of the arme orces,

and more particularly of the police, has made the work of intimidation mu _
easier. With the steady and growing movement of tribesmen from e up
country districts to the towns, especially the Musca t-Matrah comp ex,
police have assumed a central and vital place in the administration o•
country. It is they who will be the sultan’s and the state’s firs* “ne ° revenues.

civil commotion follows the decline and eventual cessation of th