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INNIiR OMAN AND ZU BAR All 247
stale to do tilings on its territory which, if done without such consent, would
constitute an unlawful intervention,
he, nevertheless, concedes that
this view yielded ... to an acknowledgement that the principle of self-
determination entitled the people of a territory to replace their government
—if necessary, by forcible and even technically unconstitutional means—
free of interference from outside states.1
Owing to the lack of agreement among authorities and the prevail­
ing uncertainties as to the true nature of the rebellion in Oman in
1957, it is very difficult to express a firm view as to the legal propriety
of the military assistance rendered by the United Kingdom to the
Sultan at that time. However, it appears that a new light has been
shed on this question after the publication in 1965 of the United
Nations' sponsored Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Oman. In
that part of the report dealing with the legal propriety of British inter­
vention in the armed conflict between the Imam and the Sultan of
Muscat, the Committee says that it is not convinced by the British
argument that ‘the putting down of a rebellion by a lawful authority
is no violation of human rights’. In the Committee's view, the British
statements have placed the emphasis ‘on the necessity of maintaining
a government in power rather than on ensuring that basic human
rights arc not infringed’. Then the Committee states its conclusions
as follows:
The action taken by the United Kingdom was extreme and difficult to
justify. It feels that some kind of negotiations along the lines of those in
1920 might have been more appropriate particularly in the early stages
before . . . 1955.2

THE ZUBARAH DISPUTE
The Zubarah question is, in reality, a claim by the Shaikh of Bahrain
to ownership of a piece of land on the northern coast of the peninsula
of Qatar. At present, Zubarah forms an integral part of Qatar and is
in fact under the administration of the Ruler of Qatar.
The nature of the Shaikh of Bahrain’s claim to Zubarah is historical;
he claims it because it was the ancestral home of his family, Al-
Khalifah, before their conquest of Bahrain in 1783.3 The Shaikh of
Bahrain has never relinquished his claim to Zubarah which remains
today the main source of dissension between the two ruling families
of Bahrain and Qatar. It appears that during the nineteenth century,
1 Lauterpacht, E., The Times, op. cit.
2 Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Oman, op. cit., pp. 215-16.
3 See Bahrain Government, Annual Report, March 1937-February 1938, p. 25;
Belgrave, Sir Charles, Personal Column: Autobiography (1960), p. 153. And sec
above, chapter 1.