Page 93 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

90 Arabia, the Gulf and the West

maritime peace in perpetuity in 1853 it was accepted without question Time
and again in the years that followed the commitment to protect the shaikhdoms
from seaborne attack was fully admitted - most pertinently in the present

context in the instructions given to the senior British naval officer on the Gulf
station in November 1928 to resist, by force if necessary, any move by the
Persians to occupy the Greater Tunb.
The mood in Whitehall in 1971, however, was very different. Towards the
end of January Sir William Luce set off on his rounds once more - to Jiddah
Bahrain, the Trucial Shaikhdoms, Qatar, Muscat, Kuwait and Tehran. The

message he bore was that British troops would be out of the Gulf by the end of
the year, by which time the British government expected that all the outstand­
ing problems attendant upon Britain’s withdrawal, whether concerning the
formation of the U A E or affecting the federation’s relations with the other Gulf
states, would have been solved. There was more hope than faith in the

soundness of the prophecy. The negotiations for a federation of the nine
shaikhdoms were foundering. Bahrain and Qatar, for their own separate and
sometimes identical reasons (which have been described earlier), were growing
increasingly reluctant to enter into a union with the seven Trucial Shaikhdoms.
Abu Dhabi and Dubai, the leading shaikhdoms of the seven, were themselves
at odds over old dynastic feuds, territorial disputes and political rivalry

between their rulers. The shaikh of Ras al-Khaimah, Saqr ibn Muhammad
Al Qasimi, who saw himself as a man of destiny, the Bonaparte of the Trucial
Coast, openly expressed his disdain for the federation, which to him was a mere
device to promote the ascendancy of Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Circumstances,
however, enjoined caution. He needed the crumbs that fell from the two oil

shaikhdoms’ tables, as well as their support in opposing the shah’s claim to the
Tunbs. His distant cousin, the shaikh of Sharjah, Khalid ibn Muhammad Al
Qasimi, likewise needed what aid the federation might give him in retaining his
hold on Abu Musa. A mild and unpretentious man, Shaikh Khalid was on good
terms with his two wealthy neighbours and more likely to persuade them to
side with him against the shah than was his truculent cousin to the north. At the

same time, however, Shaikh Rashid of Dubai, who was as much an astute
merchant as he was an able tribal chieftain, was very loath to tread on the shah s
toes, since 60 per cent of the shaikhdom’s profitable entrepot trade was with

the Persian shore.
The manoeuvring and bickering among the rulers was viewed with mount­
ing irritation by the Foreign Office. So far as the permanent officials were
concerned, the date for Britain’s departure from the Gulf had been fixed, an
they did not want that departure delayed by protracted deliberations among
the shaikhs to resolve each and every dispute that divided them. When uce
returned from his tour of the Gulf in February and reported the misgivings an

apprehensions the rulers had expressed to him, the Foreign O ce ismiss
them as mere quibbles, an excuse for prevarication. What was nee e , it wa