Page 58 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

The Retreat from the Gulf 53

responsibility for the defence of the shaikhdoms against external aggression
devolved upon the British government as a consequence of the relationship it
had established with the shaikhdoms through the trucial system and subse­
quent engagements. Though unsanctioned by treaty, the commitment existed,
and its existence was never denied. It was embodied only once in a formal
undertaking, in 1952, when for reasons of local politics which need not detain
us here a promise of protection was given to the ruler of Fujairah, the only one
of the seven Trucial Shaikhdoms which did not lie within the Gulf proper but
faced upon the Gulf of Oman.
Kuwait was the sole shaikhdom along the Arabian shore of the Gulf whose
frontiers had been the subject of international agreement and definition, and
the defence of these frontiers by Britain was covered by the assurance of
protection given in the agreement of November 1914. With the discovery and
exploitation of Kuwait’s great reserves of oil in later years, the shaikhdom
rapidly outgrew its status as a British-protected principality, and in 1961 the
agreements of 1899 and 1914 were terminated by mutual consent. Kuwait
became wholly independent, and the only vestige of her former treaty relation­
ship that remained was a provision in the instrument of abrogation which
required Britain to give friendly consideration to any future request for aid
from the shaikhdom. Kuwait’s wealth, the size of her population and the
international recognition accorded her all made her transition to independence
untroubled as well as inevitable. The transition was aided also by the fact that
Kuwait had never been included in the trucial system, nor had her relationship
with Britain been as intimate or as long-standing as that of Bahrain and the
Trucial Shaikhdoms. So far as Kuwait was concerned, therefore, Britain was
under no active obligation in January 1968, as a consequence either of past
undertakings or of established policy, to protect the shaikhdom against exter­
nal aggression. It was a different case with the Trucial Shaikhdoms, Qatar and
Bahrain, and it was the question of their continued protection that lay at the
heart of the inquiry from the rulers of Dubai, Bahrain and Qatar in January
1968 whether or not Britain’s military withdrawal from the Gulf also implied
the dismantling of the existing treaty structure.
An answer of sorts was given the following month when the Foreign Office
suggested to these rulers that they should combine with the other lower Gulf
rulers in a federation which would make the passage to independence easier,
and at the same time afford them some measure of mutual protection. Despite
the all-too-recent and unhappy example of the Federation of South Arabia, the
rulers of Bahrain, Qatar and the Trucial Shaikhdoms signed an agreement on
27 February 1968 to establish a Federation of Arab Emirates. (The change of
designation from ‘shaikhdoms’ to ‘emirates’ was presumably intended to
olster their morale and endow the embryonic federation with a little more
consequence.) The agreement, which was supposed to take effect on 30 March
1968, was as yet nothing more than a hesitant statement of intent, a restrained