Page 140 - The Origins of the United Arab Emirates_Neat

I «»(> The Origins of the United Arab Emirates

Political Agent in Bahrain, went to Dubai in June to negotiate
a live-year agreement. He discovered that Sa‘id was under consider­
able pressure, particularly from his wife, to press for more than
1000 rupees a month. Alter lengthy discussions and strong persuasion
by Weight man, on (> June Sa‘id signed an agreement under which
he was to be paid 940 rupees a month, plus 500 rupees a month
as a personal subsidy, and a landing charge of 5 rupees for every
aeroplane.81
This was the last of the air agreements. Within the space of
a few years, and using all the resources available to them, the
Political Resident and his subsidiaries, plus naval and RAF officers,
had ensured that the Coast would be a regular halting place on
the route to and from India, for both military and civil aircraft.
Besides providing petrol stores and a seaplane-alighting area for
the RAF, the Coast provided bases for Imperial Airways, at Sharjah
for land aircraft and at Dubai for flying-boats. The services included:
at Sharjah, an airport one and a half miles from the town, with
a fully marked landing ground, accommodation for passengers, a
petrol and oil store, and a barbed-wire enclosure housing an RAF
bomb store; in Kalba, an emergency landing ground for Imperial
Airways; in Abu Dhabi, an RAF petrol store and a landing ground;
in Dubai, an alighting area for flying-boats; in Ras al-Khaimah,
an RAF seaplane-alighting area, an RAF fuel barge moored in
the creek, and an emergency landing ground just outside the town.
The efficient and orderly manner by which provision of the facilities
required on the Coast for the operation of the air-route was ensured
was probably the best argument that could be supplied for the
official British policy of maintaining the status quo. ‘There is only
one test of a policy and that is its success or failure. Judged
by this test our policy on the Trucial Coast . . . however hand-to-
I mouth and peculiar it may appear . . . emerges with flying colours.’62