Page 121 - The Origins of the United Arab Emirates_Neat

Establishment of the Air-Route 97

incut of an Arab route in July 1931.In September 1931 the
India Office decided to start negotiating for concessions, and consulted
the Air Ministry on possible landing places. With the aim ol keeping
the route approximately parallel with the Bushi re-Li ngah-Jask line,
it was decided that it should run by way of Kuwait, Bahrain
and a place on the Trucial Coast. The RAF had already established
a landing ground in Kuwait, and a landing area in Bahrain was
also available, but there remained the most important question
of where on the Trucial Coast an airport could be established
and a rest-house built for the overnight accommodation of passengers,
fhe arrangements for the night-stop, which the plans envisaged
as being on the Trucial Coast, thus became imperative for the
continuation of the civil air-route; in view of the deadline on
use of the Iranian route, there was little time to spare, and the
political and RAF authorities worked closely together to find a
suitable location and then reach an agreement with the ruler con­
cerned.
In December 1931, after the RAF had eliminated Umm al-Qaiwain
as a possibility, Ras al-Khaimah and Dubai were examined and
both considered suitable. In both places, however, Biscoc encountered
great opposition and was unable to reach the point where even
a preliminary agreement could be drawn up. In the ease of Ras
al-Khaimah, it was not so much the ruler, who had already experi­
enced the penalties of resistance, as the notables and, more ominously,
the Shihuh tribe, who opposed the granting of further facilities.20
Biscoc realised the intensity of the opposition, and, deciding not
to aggravate it, turned instead to Dubai. He visited the shaykhdom
in the latter part of December 1931, but was unable to see the
ruler, who was severely ill at the time. The Resident waited for
Shaykh Sa‘id to recover, and during his stay a wave of agitation
against Sa‘id began, strengthened by rumours that he was about
to enter into secret engagements with the British. Aware of its
commercial potential, Sa‘id was genuinely interested in the establish­
ment of an airport, but he realised that the opposition, led by
his cousin Mani‘ bin Rashid, was too powerful to ignore. He asked
Biscoc for time to consider the matter, and in February 1932
he was forced to admit that he had been unable to obtain the
necessary agreement from his family. For a while Biscoe was at
a loss; in view of the determined local opposition, and the risk
) this posed for the security of an airport at Ras al-Khaimah or
Dubai, he was reluctant to force an agreement on either Sultan
or Sa‘id.
The turning-point came in March 1932, when Shaykh Sultan
bin Saqr of Sharjah, who had closely followed the events in Dubai
and Ras al-Khaimah wrote to the Residency Agent and said that