Page 163 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

i6o Arabia, the Gulf and the West

country, for reasons largely, but not wholly, of self-interest. Her most recent
contribution to these ends has been to help Qabus oust his father and defeat the
rebellion in Dhufar. It will possibly be the last time Britain will intervene
politically or militarily in Oman. Her interests have become narrower and her

capacity to deploy military forces anywhere east of Suez minimal. When Qabus
visited London in July 1976 he was told that the RAF would be relinquishing
its facilities at Salalah, and its lease of the airfield on Masirah island, by 31
March 1977. Britain’s residual military role in Oman is confined to the
secondment of officers and n.c.o.s to the SAF (in addition to the ex-officers
recruited on contract by the Omani government) and the sale of aircraft, arms
and related equipment to the Omani government.

Saiyid Qabus has a considerable liking for ways and things British, and has
been anxious to retain the services of British regular and contract officers for
his armed forces. They and the other foreign officers in the SAF - mainly
Pakistanis and Jordanians — are both a guarantee of the army’s continued
loyalty to him and a barrier to its possible transformation into a political

instrument, as has happened with armies in most other Arab countries. Most
outside observers interpret Saiyid Qabus’s preference for foreigners in his
service as evidence both of his distrust of his own subjects and of his unwilling­
ness to face the realities of the present age. Much the same kind of criticism, of
course, was directed against his father during his lifetime, especially for
continuing to look towards the Indian sub-continent for inspiration, instead of
heeding, as his critics urged he should, the cries of the nationalist muezzins in

Cairo and Damascus. So, too, with his son, who is gratuitously advised by his
distant critics to replace the British officers in the senior ranks of his armed
forces by native, and preferably youthful, Omanis. Such a change, so the
critics assert, is inevitable: Saiyid Qabus should yield gracefully and take his
chances that the army thereafter will not try to dethrone him.

The assertion raises the immediate question - why should he? It is neither
novel nor exceptional for an Arab or Muslim ruler to employ foreigners in his
army. The practice has gone on for centuries, and the examples of it are legion,
one of the best known of modern times being the army of Mehemet Ali of
Egypt, which included in its ranks Albanians, Frenchmen, Algerians,
Englishmen, Turks and Scots - one of whom, Thomas Keith, was for a time
governor of Madina. As for the realities of the present age, these include such
bizarre spectacles as the deployment of Cuban troops in Angola, Ethiopia and

South Arabia. There is more than a suggestion of ideological cant in the prim
reproaches directed at an Arab ruler of conservative stripe for retaining Bntis
officers in his service, while the assistance lent by Russians, Cubans and ast
Germans to uphold an odious Marxist-Leninist dictatorship in Aden is passe
over in silence. For Qabus ibn Said the issue at stake is not the fashiona e

defeatism of the West but his own ability to survive and to govern his peop e
according to their established ways. No ruler of Oman throughout its istory