Page 164 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

Tribal Rebellion, Marxist Revolution 161

has been able to govern without force of arms: to ensure the reliability of his
armed forces is nothing more than mere prudence. Qabus can trust his British
officers, who have served him gallantly and well. They are known to the

Omanis and their presence in the country is not resented as an imposition. The
time for placing the armed forces of Oman under full Omani control will come
when the basis of sultanate government in Oman has been broadened, and
when there are sufficient qualified and experienced Omani officers of proven
loyalty and ability to take command. The last thing that the people of Oman

need is a Colonel Qaddafi.

What the future holds for Oman is Oman’s secret. The conventional wisdom
has it that its long isolation is now ended, that wealth and the influx of new
ideas - of nationalism, socialism and the like - will set in train an irreversible
transformation of its social, political and religious institutions, so that in due
course it will become indistinguishable from the rest of the Arab world. Such
predictions are mostly made by Westerners unfamiliar with Omani life and
history, who are themselves addicted to change and novelty, and who are

inclined to project their own restlessness upon those they affect to study.
Whether the Omanis will yield to the ‘contagion of the world’s slow stain’ it is
far too early to tell. It is even more difficult to determine how they would react
to the radical and revolutionary notions in vogue in some Arab circles. The
Omanis have their own conception of how men should arrange their lives, their

own theological preoccupations, their own bones of political contention. They
also have a tranquil pride which sets them apart from the Arabs of the Gulf and
which derives from their long history and the distinctive civilization they
developed. It would be surprising if the arid prolixities of nationalist or Marxist
dogma were to hold much appeal for them. Be this as it may, however, the
Omanis will probably not be spared the attentions of would-be ‘liberators’ bent
upon imposing a regime of more ‘progressive’ complexion upon them in the
years ahead.

What are the chances of such a regime’s succeeding in Oman? For guidance,
presumably, we should look to South Yemen, where the Marxist-Leninist
National Front has been entrenched since 1967. Its accession to power, it will
be recalled, was due in large measure to the civil war in the Yemen, to the
presence of an Egyptian expeditionary force in that country, and to the
smuggling of arms and money to the NLF which that presence facilitated.

Above all the NLF’s triumph was made possible by the British government’s
betrayal of its treaty responsibilities for Aden and the protectorates, and its
nerveless relinquishment of power to the terrorists. None of these conditions
obtains in Oman today. There is no movement there comparable in size or
strength to the NLF, nor is the British government in a position to hand over

sovereign power to such a movement. Ironically enough, what is possibly of
more relevance to the political future of both South Yemen and Oman than