Page 159 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

156 Arabia, the Gulf and the West

of his leading ministers, they have been trained in the Soviet Union. Many of

the men he has appointed have proved themselves highly adept at personal
aggrandisement, administrative as well as financial. There is virtually not a
minister in the Omani government who is not engaged in commercial
activities, or who does not exploit his ministerial office for private gain. It is the
same, of course, in all the states of Arabia: indeed, the whole point of holding
office is everywhere acknowledged to be the pursuit of personal profit. So

entrenched are the merchants and entrepreneurs in the Omani administration
that the form of government is a veritable plutocracy.
As the power of the ministers and other nominees has increased, so that of
the sultan has been eroded. In the past, as we have seen, the political balance in
Oman was held by the great tribal and territorial chieftains, by the religious
establishment (the ulama and qadis), and by the sultanate as the ruling institu­

tion. The revolts of the 1950s and their suppression largely destroyed the
power of the great chieftains, while the withering away of the imamate move­
ment sapped the authority of the ulama. Today the more prominent tribal
leaders are themselves entrepreneurs, exploiting the opportunities for enrich­
ment thrown up by oil wealth, while the ulama have mostly gone to ground,
their influence diminished by the material benefits that affluence has conferred

upon the people. The sultanate and the imamate are the only political institu­
tions that Oman has ever known. The imamate is in eclipse, and whether it will
ever re-emerge it is impossible to foretell. Only the sultanate remains, and its
authority, as already remarked, has declined appreciably, under both Saiyid
Said and Saiyid Qabus. There is no alternative political institution in sight, nor
is one likely to evolve from the oligarchical clique that now surrounds the

sultan.
On his accession Qabus ibn Said made a limited effort to broaden the basis of
government when he agreed to welcome back to Muscat from voluntary exile
his uncle, Tariq ibn Taimur. Tariq was a man of considerable intelligence and
spirit, with a pronounced cosmopolitan outlook. His mother was Turkish, he
had been educated in Germany and his wife was German. At the time of the
imamate revolt he had shown courage and resource as a military commander.
He had also displayed political sagacity in the skilful way in which he dealt with

the defeated rebel tribal leaders, and in his efforts to persuade Said ibn Taimur
to move his capital to Nizwa, so as to be seen by his subjects to be sultan in, as
well as of, Oman. Saiyid Said, of course, did not take the advice, and this an
other political and personal disagreements with his half-brother led anq to
absent himself from Oman for the better part of a decade. When he returne

after Said’s deposition Qabus appointed him prime minister, without per aps
understanding the implications of such a constitutional innovation. a™l
powers and responsibilities were undefined, though time was to prove t at
did not extend to control over the state budget or even access to t e treas
Hampered by a lack of direction from the sultan, and impeded y t e ac 1