Page 75 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

72 Arabia, the Gulf and the West

to decide upon the location of the frontier between Saudi Arabia and Abu
Dhabi, and to determine the question of sovereignty over the Buraimi oasis and
its environs, which were defined as the area contained within a circle having as
its centre Buraimi village and its radius a line from there to the terminal point of
Saudi Arabia’s 1949 claim (see map p. 70). In reaching its conclusions the tri­

bunal was to take into account not only legal arguments and historical facts but
also the traditional loyalties of the tribes in the disputed regions and the exercise
of jurisdiction over them. Certain conditions were to be observed by both sides
while the tribunal went about its work, and it was in the framing of these

conditions that the Foreign Office repeated its previous errors of judgement by
conceding more than it need have done. Thus, in exchange for the withdrawal
of the Saudi force from Buraimi (where it had no right to be in the first place)
the Foreign Office undertook to keep the Trucial Oman Levies out of the
disputed areas, where they had every legal right to be. The immediate effect of

this concession was partially to compromise Abu Dhabi’s rights of sovereignty
over its own territory. But the Foreign Office went even further in compromis­
ing these rights, and IPC’s concessionary rights with them, by concurring in
the retention of the ban on oil exploration in the disputed areas first conceded
to the Amir Faisal in 1951. However, under pressure from IPC, it confined the

area covered by the ban to the Buraimi circle and a strip of territory to the
westward, some 240 miles long and seventeen miles wide, north of latitude
230 N.
While the arbitration was in progress the two sides also agreed to abstain
both from interference in the lives of the inhabitants of the disputed areas,

and from any activities which might prejudice the conduct of a just and
impartial arbitration. A small police force, made up of fifteen men from each
side, was stationed in the Buraimi oasis to help keep order there. As soon as
the Saudi police detachment arrived in August 1954, it picked up and carried

on the work of bribery and subversion that the previous occupying force had
been engaged in since 1952. Large sums of money, running into millions of
rupees, were disbursed to the various shaikhs and tribesmen, and equally
large supplies of arms and ammunition were smuggled in and distributed to
the surrounding tribes with the object of provoking a ‘spontaneous’ uprising

in favour of Saudi Arabia. On several occasions the money and arms were
brought from Saudi Arabia in the aircraft which the Saudis were permitted to
use for the supply of the police detachment. By far the Saudis’ boldest move,
however, was that made in August 1955, when they tried to persuade the A u

Dhabi governor in the oasis, Zayid ibn Sultan, the brother of the ruler, to
throw in his lot with Saudi Arabia in return for a promise of 400 million
rupees, to be paid out of the proceeds of any oil subsequently found in t e

disputed areas. rhe
The Saudi operation at Buraimi was controlled by the governor 01 rias ,
Amir Saud ibn Jiluwi, and directed by the Saudi deputy foreign minister,