Oman, Culture and Diplomacy 9780748674619

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Oman, Culture and Diplomacy

OMAN, CULTURE AND DIPLOMACY

2

Jeremy Jones and Nicholas Ridout

© Jeremy Jones and Nicholas Ridout, 2012 Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh, EH8 9LF www.euppublishing.com Typeset in Sabon by Oxford Publishing Services and printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 4295 3 (hardback) The right of Jeremy Jones and Nicholas Ridout to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Contents

Map 1 Oman in the Indian Ocean Map 2 Oman in the Gulf Introduction

vi vii 1

PART I 1 A Cosmopolitan Nation 2 A Culture of Diplomacy PART II Introduction to Part II 3 Muscat and Mysore: Between the Empire and the Republic 4 Diplomacy and ‘Piracy’: 1797–1819 5 An Englishman in Oman 6 Moving to Zanzibar 7 Zanzibar, Britain, the USA and the Slave Trade

13 39 71

79 91 101 111 123

PART III Introduction to Part III

145

8 9 10 11

Dealing with Iran: A Delicate Balance Managing During the Cold War Neighbours in Arabia The Key Strategic Ally: Oman and the United States 12 Working Towards Peace: Oman and the Middle East Process 13 Oman, Cosmopolitanism and ‘Globalisation’

153 183 197

Acknowledgements Bibliography Index

273 275 287

211 231 251

Map 1 Oman in the Indian Ocean

Map 2 Oman in the Gulf

In memory of Wilfrid Knapp

Introduction

On the southeast corner of the Arabian Peninsula, bordered by the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean, lies a country that rarely makes international news headlines, even though its strategic location, at the Strait of Hormuz – through which it is estimated around 40 per cent of the world’s oil imports pass – confers upon it some considerable significance. This country is Oman and, just across the Strait of Hormuz, lies Iran, a neighbour with a long history as a major regional power and one that, over the last thirty years, has experienced strained and sometimes sharply hostile relations with some of the most powerful nations in the world, including, of course, the United States of America. The United States places great importance upon the security of the Gulf oil supply, and the possibility that Iranian actions might imperil this security has been a major factor in American policy in the region ever since the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Over the same period, Oman has developed an important strategic partnership with the United States while continuing to maintain good relations with Iran – relations that date back centuries, rooted in shared geography and culture. The fact that Oman so rarely features in the global news – in an era in which crisis and conflict tend to be at the heart of the media’s focus – is itself worthy of some reflection. In Oman, where a culture of politeness still governs everyday life and interaction, where deference to another is a source of honour and pride, there is little room for selfpromotion. The increased privatisation occurring over the last forty years, has, of course, occasioned the adoption of advertising in the business realm, but the fact remains that publicity – most particularly when it relates to an individual – remains slightly incongruous with the Omani way. It is not merely cultural humility, however, that lies beneath Oman’s position beneath the radar, so to speak, of world media, or even outside the awareness of the average European or American citizen. Nor is it simply because of Oman’s modest size, or its rank as the 41st most peaceful country among 153 in the world,

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consistently among the best in its region, according to the 2011 Global 1 Peace Index. Rather, it is because of the quality of Oman’s contribution to a rather fragile situation. Simply stated, the explosive potential of Iran’s position at the mouth of the Gulf, in the context of its fraught relationship with the United States, has not yet sparked a newsworthy conflagration. Naturally, this would seem to be a source of some satisfaction, not only to Omani diplomats, but to Omani citizens and residents more generally. The consequences of tension and conflict around the Strait of Hormuz could be very damaging indeed, placing Oman right at the centre of highly destructive and unpredictable forces and events. Keeping out of the headlines – that is, maintaining a quiet stability – is in the clear and pressing national interest, enabling Omanis simply to go about their lives. But Oman will be quick to shun any attention to its role in this balance, and fittingly so, given its culture of politeness. But more than that, it is perhaps operationally necessary to downplay such a role in order to retain the ability to continue working in this manner. In international relations, a middleman is a confidant, of sorts; no person or group of people or nation, for that matter, will trust a confidant who publicises his work. It is perhaps paradoxical, and even risky, then, that this book should draw attention to its subject matter – the nature and practice of Omani diplomacy – when its very practitioners prefer not to do so. There are several reasons we have embarked on such a project. We hope to contribute something to the understanding of all three of the words in this book’s title: Oman, culture, diplomacy. More than that, however, we want to explore the ways in which an understanding of each might enhance and be enhanced by an understanding of the others, and it is in the bringing together of material and ideas usually treated as separate and more or less unrelated fields, that we aim to offer something distinctive to the reader. There exists a modest but growing literature on the history of Oman, from John C. Wilkinson’s work on the imamate, to accounts of the sultanate’s twentieth-century development by scholars such as John E. Peterson, Marc Valeri, Carol J. Riphenburg, Uzi Rabi and Calvin H. Allen. Few accounts of contemporary Oman can avoid engaging with questions of foreign policy, and all these authors, as well as a number of others, have done so. There is, additionally, a body of literature that looks directly at Oman’s international relations, most notably Joseph A. Kechichian’s 1995 survey. There is also valuable research conducted on an anthropological basis, from Fredrik Barth and Unni Wikan’s work from the late 1960s and early 1970s, to the more recent

Introduction 2

3

contributions of Mandana Limbert. In the preparation of this book, we have drawn upon this work, as well as other scholarship; to these syntheses by others, we have added our own personal and professional associations with Oman and Omanis, gathered over a period of over thirty years. Our relationship with Oman has afforded us, we think, a somewhat unique perspective, straddling worlds as native outsiders, but with intimate access to Omani life. The insights of numerous Omani diplomats, scholars, teachers, officials, private citizens and residents have enriched our understanding of the Omani landscape: nonetheless, we continue to suffer the limitations of our own cultural perspective as foreign observers. In seeking to draw these various perspectives into one book, we have proceeded from the twin premises that the understanding of foreign policy and diplomatic activity can be enhanced by a consideration of the culture in which it develops, and that, in turn, it may be possible to understand something of a culture by studying the way it conducts its diplomacy. So, while this is primarily a book about diplomacy and foreign policy – with the primary aim of elucidating Omani foreign policy in the present day – it is also a book that seeks to offer new insight into Omani culture and society, as a consequence of the attention it pays to Omani diplomacy. Modern Omani diplomacy displays a number of consistent and distinctive characteristics – in addition to its preference for discretion – many of which we shall trace to the history of interactions of Oman’s people internally, and also externally, with other peoples throughout the world. We have derived these characteristics from comprehensive consideration of a range of sources. These include documents directly related to the development of foreign policy, such as the research papers of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; our own and others’ analyses of the conduct of Omani foreign policy; as well as conversation with Omani diplomats and their interlocutors. In some cases, therefore, these aspects have previously been more or less articulated as official policy. Others, however, have been more implicit; we are undertaking to put these ‘guiding principles’ into new words. Among the key characteristics of Omani diplomacy we have identified are: (1) a tendency to focus on enduring geopolitical considerations (hence the priority given to maintaining good relations with Iran); (2) to abstain from ideological or sectarian conflict (which, as we shall see, arises in part from Oman’s unique religious heritage); (3) to work towards achieving consensus (consistent with social and political practices in other spheres); (4) to emphasise tolerance for the customs and

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practices of foreigners (a function of a long history of cosmopolitan interaction). With some reflection, these definitions map nicely onto the ‘principles’ of Omani foreign policy explicitly stated on the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs: Oman’s foreign policy is based on four principles: • The development and maintenance of good relations with all Oman’s neighbours. • An outward looking and internationalist outlook, as befits Oman’s geographic location and longstanding maritime traditions. • A pragmatic approach to bilateral relations, emphasising underlying geostrategic realities rather than temporary ideological positions. • The search for security and stability through cooperation and peace, 3 rather than conflict.

In our effort to account for these characteristics or principles of modern Oman’s diplomacy and foreign policy we have organised this book in three parts, each of which differs in scope, scale and approach. Part I forms an attempt to develop background understanding of those aspects of the history and culture of Oman which, we will argue, have shaped the development of today’s distinctive foreign policy. Chapter 1 situates Oman within the culture of what we are calling ‘Indian Ocean cosmopolitanism’, while Chapter 2 explores aspects of Omani social and cultural life, which, within the wider framework of cosmopolitanism, we argue, make a significant contribution to the way in which Omanis today think and practise diplomacy. Here we will attempt to synthesise material and ideas from a range of sources and disciplinary perspectives: we are not ourselves anthropologists, archaeologists, religious scholars or Indian Ocean historians, but we seek to combine some of the fruits of our own personal and professional associations with Oman with the insights of those offering more scholarly approaches. Our aim will be to indicate certain continuities without insisting upon the persistence of an unchanged and unchanging ‘tradition’, and also to suggest that these continuities shape the practice of diplomacy by constituting what Pierre Bourdieu 4 has called a ‘habitus’. By this, Bourdieu refers to an ensemble of deeply habituated behaviours and attitudes embodied, rather than actively or consciously promoted, by its participants. A ‘habitus’ might be best understood as the expression of an accumulated cultural history, materialised in an approach to living in the present. It is our suggestion that the relationship between Oman, its culture and its diplomacy is more than simply an abstract analytical observation: it is

Introduction

5

a network of connections that are felt, sensed and understood in the daily and professional life of the Omani diplomat. If the first part of the book ranges widely across long historical periods, the second seeks to establish a rather narrower focus, largely limiting its consideration of key characteristics of Omani diplomacy to a period of around fifty years, from the accession of Sayyid Sultan bin Ahmad to power in Muscat in 1792, to the historic voyage of Sayyid Said’s ship, the Sultanah, to New York in 1840, with a few glances backwards and forwards along the way. While Part II moves in a more or less chronological sequence through the events at its focus, it makes no claim to represent a comprehensive history of Oman’s foreign relations in the period. Its aim is to identify in the interplay of international relations during this formative period some of the ways in which the culture teased out in Part I may help us understand the conduct of more formalised Omani diplomacy as an expression of that culture. A secondary aim is to show how some of the challenges for more recent Omani foreign policy were either already present or starting to take shape during this period. In both these contexts – the relationship between diplomacy and culture, and the shaping of contemporary foreign policy – we will find that the conduct of relationships with Oman’s neighbours is a central and enduring feature. While Part I seeks a broad overview, therefore, Part II strives for a bit more intimacy. We have opted for a format that essentially presents a snapshot series of events and encounters, in hope that it will most helpfully illuminate more contemporary concerns, along with certain consistencies occurring across time in the approach to diplomacy of the Al bu Saidi rulers of Oman. This is not an unconscious consistency: those involved in the formulation and execution of foreign policy in Oman today, from Sultan Qaboos himself to senior government officials in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and elsewhere, work with a very strong sense that they are continuing and contributing to a tradition. This should become evident throughout. The approach changes again in Part III of the book, which considers the conduct of Oman’s foreign policy in the last forty years or so, roughly coinciding with the period of Oman’s modern development following the accession to power of Sultan Qaboos in 1970. There remains no ambition, however, to offer a comprehensive history of Oman’s diplomacy in this period, nor an exhaustive account of the many relations developed since Oman’s admission to the United Nations in 1970. Our aim, rather, in a series of chapters that focus

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primarily on Oman’s relations either with other countries (such as Iran and the United States), or within global and regional contexts, processes and climates (the Gulf, the cold war, the peace process and globalisation), is to work towards an understanding of Omani diplomacy as it is manifested in the modern era, but ever-underpinned by the key themes identified in Parts I and II. These, you will recall, include the prioritisation of neighbours, attention to long-duration concerns, the search for consensus and inclusion, the maintenance of a cosmopolitan perspective and the mobilisation of culture itself in the service of diplomacy. Although, as we have already suggested, the interaction between culture and diplomacy may be understood best in terms of a ‘habitus’ rather than an ideology or a policy, that is not to say there does not exist a high degree of consciousness associated with what we are calling a characteristic Omani diplomatic mode. A number of conversations, formal and informal, have indicated a desire to situate contemporary practice as part of a longstanding way of doing things; this desire motivates decisions, plans and programmes in certain ways, on both macroscopic and microscopic levels. In Oman, there exists a general contemporary awareness that historical experiences and cultural preferences have shaped the way in which national interests are identified and international relations maintained. Like most Omanis, Oman’s diplomats and policymakers tend to conceptualise their work in relation to a sense of continuity and tradition. A range of research papers and other documents in the possession of Oman’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which has graciously granted us access, reveals that responses to both particular issues and general situations strongly reflect this attitude. Far less common is its public articulation, attributable to a number of factors: partly, as discussed, because of the tendency towards discretion that characterises the Omani public sphere; partly because diplomats tend to focus on practice, rather than on extended theorisation; partly because published discussion of Omani foreign policy has been largely the preserve of either American or European observers, rather than Omanis. We neither wish, nor could we hope, to make up for any of these factors. We can, however, point to a rare public articulation of the Omani approach to diplomacy, by the diplomat who is now Secretary-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Sayyid Badr bin Hamad Al bu Saidi, in which he identifies opportunities available to diplomats of a small nation such as Oman, in contributing to international relations in ways outside the spotlight: ‘In the space between the big states, the major

Introduction

7

powers, both regional and global, we have room for manoeuvre that the big states themselves do not enjoy. We can operate without attracting too much attention, conduct diplomacy discreetly and 5 quietly.’ Badr bin Hamad goes on to identify four specific areas in which this ‘room for manoeuvre’ could be used to general advantage, or where the experience of being a small nation has the potential to shape policy in constructive ways. The first, to which we have alluded and which will remain a theme throughout this book, is the ability to prioritise ‘good neighbour relations’. The second, which might seem to follow from the first, is the space it affords participation in regional associations and the benefit derived through solidarity and cooperation. This may sometimes mean that the interests of the association as a whole, in Oman’s case the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) for example, rather than any individual member, must be placed first, sometimes at the expense of individual interests; Oman has, indeed, on several occasions seen some of its most important initiatives within the GCC come to little or nothing. Nonetheless, it is characteristic of Oman’s approach that such frustration does not lead to threats of non-cooperation. It can, however, create difficult political situations, particularly in reporting policy positions in the international media. For example, very recently, the dispatch of troops from Saudi Arabia and the UAE to cooperate with the Bahraini security forces in March 2011 was widely reported as a GCC operation, thus potentially implicating Oman at a time when the Omani government was taking a distinctly different approach to dealing with popular protest from that adopted by its Bahraini counterpart, while experiencing an unusual degree of international media attention. Maintaining a ‘good neighbour’ policy and preserving the solidarity of regional associations are priorities that are not without their tensions and difficulties, even if they can sometimes sound a little like diplomatic versions of motherhood and apple pie. The third and fourth aspects outlined by Badr bin Hamad’s conception of ‘small nations’ diplomacy effectively extend the principles underpinning the ‘good neighbour’ policy into a global setting. We may see, then, the emphasis placed here on the ‘rule of law in the space 6 of international relations’ as a further development of the small nation’s particular experience of interdependence, and as an indication of the value, to those without the ‘might’ of a major power, of a strong system grounded in ‘right’. Oman’s enthusiasm for the work of the United Nations and its preference for the extension of multilateral and

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rule-based decision-making within the international community reflects this emphasis. The final and related area concerns the role of ‘ethics’ in international relations. This does not seem to constitute the sort of ambition for an ‘ethical foreign policy’ proclaimed by the incoming UK government in 1997, but rather a suggestion that nations that stand a little to one side of the dominant international culture and the supposedly ‘universal values’ enshrined in its conventions and procedures may have something additional to contribute ‘because the particularities of our experience make available to the wider inter7 national community a certain diversity of perspective’. Indeed, it is almost as though this reference to ‘ethics’ expresses a desire that the dominant international culture might adopt a more ‘ethical’ position in relation to the diversity of global cultures and temper any drive to universalism with an increasing attention to the particular. Something of this attitude may also be detected, as we shall see, in the interactions between Oman and the USA on issues related to human rights, where Omani diplomats invited their American interlocutors to consider the extent to which the specific historical circumstances in which the Universal Declaration was drafted might mean that it expressed a culturally specific conception of what should constitute universal values. Throughout this book, then, we wish to be attentive to the interplay between aspects of a dominant international culture that are sometimes (rightly or wrongly) assumed to be universal and features of the global landscape that are more readily understood as culturally specific. By focusing on aspects of culture that are not normally considered to contribute to the practice of diplomacy or the formulation of foreign policy, we hope to offer an account of Omani diplomacy that complements, rather than recapitulates, the insights offered by works of political science and international relations. In so doing, we also hope that the study of Oman diplomacy and some of its distinctive characteristics may enrich our understanding of what diplomacy might include and achieve. Notes 01 The Global Peace Index, which measures twenty-three indicators ranging from levels of militarisation to internal strife, incarceration and murder rates, placed Oman 41st internationally, out of 153 countries, in 2011. Recent years have seen Oman ranked at 23 of 149 (2010); 21 of 144 (2009); and 25 of 140 (2008). The drop in 2011 is due to general unrest in the region, termed the ‘Arab Spring’. See Vision of Humanity, Global

Introduction

02

03 04 05 06 07

9

Peace Index 2011, http://www.visionofhumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/ 2011/05/2011-GPI-Results-Report-Final.pdf, accessed 21 July 2011. John C. Wilkinson, The Imamate Tradition of Oman, John E. Peterson, Oman in the Twentieth Century, Marc Valeri, Oman: Politics and Society in the Qaboos State, Carol J. Riphenburg, Oman: Political Development in a Changing World, Calvin H. Allen, Oman: The Modernization of the Sultanate, Joseph A. Kechichian, Oman and the World: The Emergence of an Independent Foreign Policy, Fredrik Barth, Sohar: Culture and Society in an Omani Town, Unni Wikan, Behind the Veil in Arabia: Women in Oman, Mandana Limbert, In the Time of Oil: Piety, Memory and Social Life in an Omani Town. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ‘Foreign Policy’, http://mofa.gov.om/mofanew/ index.asp?id=1, last accessed 5 July 2011. Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice. Badr bin Hamad Al bu Saidi, ‘Small States’ Diplomacy’, p. 354. Ibid., p. 355. Ibid., p. 356.

1 A Cosmopolitan Nation

1 WHAT IS OMAN?

To say that modern Oman possesses what we have called a ‘continuous history’ is not to claim that the contemporary state – the Sultanate of Oman – has an uninterrupted history as a single social, political and geographical entity. It is, instead, to propose that, from today’s perspective, it is possible to trace key features of the modern state, its people and its interactions with the world, back to specific antecedents and to suggest that today’s Omanis draw upon these antecedents to fashion their own social and political lives. To take perhaps the most obvious, but also the most remote example, in terms of the length of historical time concerned, it is clear that the frankincense trade upon which the ancient city of Sumhuram built its prosperity is part of modern Oman’s history, because of the importance of frankincense today in a range of different social and ceremonial situations, even though Sumhuram never formed part of a political entity to which we could give the name of Oman. Sumhuram, which lies at Khor Rori in the Dhofar region of the modern Sultanate of Oman, just east of Salalah, is currently undergoing excavation and has recently been opened to visitors. It is the first south Arabian port city dating back to the period Alessandra Avanzini 1 calls ‘the formative years of maritime trade’ in the region. In considering Sumhuram as an example of what we might call Omani prehistory, it is important to recognise that the city might not even properly be thought of as belonging fully to its own geographical location, let alone a city inhabited by ‘Omanis’. Instead, as Avanzini explains, Sumhuram was a relatively remote outpost of Hadrami 2 political power. Recent archaeological work suggests that the city was founded in the third century BC and that while it did not form a primary part of the maritime trade routes linking Arabia to Rome, it was a key port for trade between eastern Arabia, the Gulf and the 3 civilisations of the Indus Valley. Alexander Sedov suggests that

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Sumhuram – which scholarship generally concurs is the port referred 4 to in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea as Moscha Limen, and which lay around 500 nautical miles from the other main Hadrami port, Qani – was established specifically in order to facilitate sea trade to the east (with Qani performing a similar function for trade to the west, 5 with Rome and its empire). According to Avanzini, it is useful to think of Sumhuram in terms of what Karl Polanyi called ‘ports of trade’, established in order to facilitate long-distance trade, staffed mainly by state administrators, largely excluding the ‘local’ population among whom it is established outside the city walls, and affirming its political relations with the central state power by way of religious observance (a temple to the principal Hadrami deity has been excavated at 6 Sumhuram). Might it not, then, be more appropriate to think of Sumhuram as forming part of the long history of the Hadramaut, the role of Hadramis in the commerce of the Indian Ocean and, ultimately, the prehistory, not of Oman, but of Yemen? Of course it is both, and more. For no one event or situation in the remote past can be made to serve as cause or origin for a single line of historical development. Neither Omani history nor Yemeni history existed at the time of Sumhuram, which only becomes part of such histories once they come to be written and may therefore come to play a significant role in both. The excavation of Sumhuram in recent years, undertaken with the support of the Omani government, is itself a further phase in the writing of those histories and one that brings the ancient city into a new relationship with modern Oman. In making your own history you choose your ancestors. As modern Oman seeks to develop its character as a cosmopolitan society and nation, it makes sense of both the past and the present to devote resources to exploring and understanding Sumhuram; the ancient frankincense trade (in which Sumhuram was clearly a significant player) and the wider tradition of maritime commerce in the Indian Ocean region are a material part of how Omanis understand their history and identity. One might say that the material activity of excavation and the subsequent development of Sumhuram as a visitor attraction are among the ways in which modern Oman is becoming the author of a history of which Sumhuram is definitively a part. But it is not simply through the deliberate actions of a modern government – its support for archaeological projects and the publication and dissemination of their findings – but also through the way Omani participants in such projects relate affectively to the artefacts

A Cosmopolitan Nation

15

uncovered, that a sense of the ancient frankincense trade as part of Omani culture may be retrieved. Serge Cleuziou and Maurizio Tosi, in their discussion of a sandstone incense burner discovered at Ras al-Jinz, noting that the burner was instantly recognisable as similar to those in use today, also observe that it was handled by Omani workers 7 at the site with ‘the formal gesturing of the tradition’. An object over four thousand years old activates the everyday gestures of the present. This striking instance of an embodied historical continuity is just one piece of evidence to support Cleuziou and Tosi in their argument that their study of the ‘general cultural situation’ based on the archaeological record stretching back to the end of the third millennium BC (Period III at Ras al-Jinz is 2300–2200 BC) from which the sandstone incense burner was dated, may be used to suggest that the ‘formation’ of at least some ‘core elements’ of the ‘traditional Arabian way of life’, including the everyday use of incense, can be traced to this 8 period. The significance of this claim, for our present purposes, is that it allows us to trace, through the gestures of the Omani workers at the archaeological site of Ras al-Jinz, a genealogy for Omani cosmopolitanism as a necessary (although by no means inevitable) consequence of enduring geographical or environmental factors. As Cleuziou and Tosi argue, ‘in a region of very discontinuous food resources like the Arabian peninsula, mobility and consolidated forms of exchange were essential adaptive responses to ensure greater stability of the subsistence 9 flow’. The evidence from the Ras al-Jinz excavations suggests that this mobility and exchange had extended into ‘increasing interactions with 10 regions across the Indian Ocean’ and that frankincense was ‘part of the broad spectrum of local resources that could be involved in foreign 11 trade’. Trade, and all the interaction with foreign cultures that it entails, is therefore an enduring requirement for the inhabitants of the territory of present-day Oman. This being the case, it is not surprising that Oman’s present foreign policy tends to emphasise what we have earlier called longue durée geopolitical considerations. Indeed, as several commentators have noted, oil may be said to some extent to have taken the place of frankincense as the lead commodity through which a global trade network is generated to meet Oman’s continuing subsistence needs. The ‘gestures’ of the Omani workers at the Ras alJinz excavations establish a trans-historical material connection between a past in which frankincense was a key driver for the development of a complex society and a contemporary moment in which the practice of archaeology (by a team led by French and Italian

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researchers) forms part of a global system of historical and cultural understanding. Cleuziou and Tosi also point out that the increased regional interaction from around 2300 BC demonstrated by the archaeological record of Ras al-Jinz may be attributable to a decisive improvement in ship-building technology, apparently made possible by the development of trade with Indian locations, whence better wood could be obtained (although they acknowledge that it may also have been due 12 to better use of locally available wood). In any case, with the bitumen needed to make boats watertight coming from Mesopotamia, it is still clear that the expansion of trade contacts was being utilised to facilitate further trade contacts even in this early period. We will argue throughout this book that Omani diplomacy continues to be shaped and informed by a very strong and culturally embedded sense that interaction with the world beyond Oman is vital to its very survival, and that the value placed upon such interaction may therefore be viewed as a kind of cultural constant, even in those periods of Omani history when actual interaction has been limited. Therefore, both the use of frankincense as part of everyday life – including in everyday diplomatic interactions in the modern period – and the idea of modern Omani people as maritime traders, connected to both the East and the West by means of both terrestrial and maritime trade, may be understood as historical legacies, acquired by and assimilated into an understanding of what constitutes and characterises the modern nation. That the ancient frankincense trade both predates the formation of a state named Oman, and stands to one side (the south side) of the territory that initially constituted the state that became Oman, in no way invalidates an understanding of that trade, its cities, and even aspects of its mentality as having contributed substantially to the character of the modern Sultanate. It is for this reason that, unlike John C. Wilkinson, we choose to include, within this account of the historical conditions under which a characteristic Omani approach to diplomacy took shape, the influence of the culture of modern Oman’s southern region, Dhofar. Wilkinson, whose primary concern, in The Imamate Tradition of Oman, was to trace the influence of the then underdeveloped history of the ‘tradition of the interior’ on the modern state (more often understood in relation to the coastal regions, and to Muscat), chose to omit Dhofar from his 13 work on the grounds that it represents ‘a very different culture’. Where Wilkinson, writing nearly a quarter of a century ago, sees the identity of the modern nation shaped primarily by the specific qualities

A Cosmopolitan Nation

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of two interrelated socio-political entities (Muscat and Oman), we see it in terms of three (Muscat, Oman, Dhofar) or more – once a range of other enduring zones of interaction (with the Indian subcontinent and coastal East Africa, for example) are taken into account. John Peterson, who shares our interest in emphasising the extent of difference (or diversity) within the political unity that is modern Oman, follows Wilkinson, to a certain extent, in that he stresses different patterns of external engagement for northern Oman and for Dhofar. Oman, writes Peterson, ‘has looked to India and Africa, as well as to the Gulf, while Dhofar’s relations have been closest with the Mahra and Hadramaut regions of what is now Yemen, and have included trade with East Africa. As a consequence, Dhofar is nearly as distinct 14 culturally from northern Oman as it is geographically.’ For the purposes of this book, however, it is essential that Dhofar, its history and culture, be understood as one among many elements that have led to the modern Sultanate of Oman being as it is, precisely because it is different. That is to say already that Oman, as we know it today, is shaped by the influences of a number of Wilkinson’s ‘different culture[s]’. It is part of our purpose to explore the consequences, for Omani diplomacy, of Oman’s being made of ‘different cultures’: we suggest, therefore, that an appreciation of the difference of cultures, and a practical engagement with the social challenges that arise from this basic reality, are part of what makes modern Omani diplomacy function in the way it does. As will become clear, the process by which these different cultures began to converge decisively towards the modern state formation has involved a long and not always smooth negotiation, which might itself be understood as a kind of diplomacy. Sultan Qaboos’s decision, on coming to power in 1970, to change the name of the country from the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman to the Sultanate of Oman may be seen now as a crucial symbolic step. On the one hand, it seemed to invite a revised understanding of the traditional coast–interior dichotomy as a relationship of symbiosis and reciprocity rather than separation and tension. On the other, it anticipated the reconciliation of the Oman–Dhofar conflict and the gradual and peaceful incorporation of Dhofar – including its people, its culture and its history – into the modern state. In considering the diplomacy of Oman, and seeking to understand how Omani diplomats of the modern period conduct their nation’s foreign policy, it is perhaps worth keeping in mind the idea that key features of the modern Omani state may be understood as the direct consequences of diplomacy itself.

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The recent process of convergence between the ‘different cultures’ we have suggested constitute the modern Omani nation is described by Marc Valeri as one seeking to establish ‘a timeless Omani national 15 identity’. Following the influential models of nation formation articulated by Benedict Anderson (‘imagined community’) and Eric Hobsbawm (‘invented tradition’), Valeri argues that the state after 1970 was energetically engaged in making a nation. He points to a range of measures that contributed to this process, which included universal standardised teaching in Arabic; the wearing of the dishdasha and kumma; promotion of a ‘generic’ Islam; and the ‘staging’ of national heritage. These various strategies of national legitimisation in fact have a range of consequences. While Valeri is right to note that such external signs of ‘belonging’ as dress serve to accentuate difference between nationals and non-nationals, this is by no means a straightforward matter. After all, many of the differences within Omani culture and society are between nationals; national dress may 16 be worn by citizens of Baluchi, Lawati or Zanzibari origin as much as by citizens whose origins lie in the Dakhliyah or Dhofar, and elements of national dress, particularly the mattar worn by men, display numerous regional variations. While dress may accentuate differences between nationals and non-nationals, and thus, as Valeri argues, contribute to the material constitution of an apparently coherent national community, it does not privilege any particular identity among those who are understood to form part of this differentiated community, while repetition with difference works against uniformity. By the same token, the encouragement of a non-sectarian or ecumenical Islam might be seen as detaching religion from a specifically ‘national’ conception, a very different approach from that sometimes advocated by those who emphasise an Ibadi identity. The coherence of the national community can only be achieved by accommodating difference, or, to put it even less strongly, by abstaining from emphasising the more exclusive ideas and signs of Omani nationality. Valeri’s criticism of the Omani school history curriculum – that it moves rapidly from the period of Oman’s nineteenth-century ‘empire’ to the so-called ‘renaissance’ of the 1970s, and thereby obscures a 17 period of ‘political troubles and actual division’ – might equally well be re-purposed to suggest that the ‘national community’ it seeks to produce is one in which seagoing openness is valued over isolation and internal preoccupations. While some aspects of the ‘staging’ of national heritage, such as the rehabilitation of its ancient forts, would seem to emphasise a static and closed Omani history, others, including

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the literal restaging of voyages either real or imagined (such as Tim Severin’s The Sindbad Voyage, in which a reconstructed ship was sailed from Oman to Canton, and the more recent Jewel of Muscat in which a further reconstruction made the voyage from Muscat to Singapore), tend to emphasise a version of nation that at least suggests porosity and fluidity of identities in its identification of the idea of ‘Oman’ with a tradition of seafaring and intercultural connection. Indeed, Valeri makes a related observation about the composition of what he calls ‘Omanity’, noting that ‘Oman’s modern national unity is not weakened by infra-national belonging feelings … one could even consider that belonging to the nation benefits from the existence of local identities, which work to root the nation’s legitimacy in the eyes 18 of the individuals.’ Oman is frequently, perhaps even routinely, spoken of as a Gulf state. This is a relatively modern category, reinforced in contemporary political thought by Oman’s membership of the Gulf Cooperation Council. Although the Gulf, and interactions with its people, has always been a significant aspect of Omani life and therefore a geographical factor to which Omani diplomacy must always attend, Oman’s geographical location also makes it part of an Indian Ocean region, which, it may be argued, has shaped Oman’s interaction with the world more profoundly than its Gulf identity. The Strait of Hormuz, and Oman’s position across the strait from Iran, has become a matter of acute geopolitical concern and the focus for much diplomacy in the modern period, most particularly once the Gulf states became major oil exporters and the Strait of Hormuz the key transit route for all tankers. However, for centuries before this it was not the strait itself but Oman’s participation in a far-flung network of cultural, economic, religious and social contacts around the islands and the coasts of the Indian Ocean that contributed most to the development of Omani identity. It is one of the central claims of this book that Omani diplomacy derives some of its underlying characteristics and its approach to human interaction from this long history of cosmopolitanism. In understanding Oman’s diplomacy in the modern period – that is from the beginning of the Al bu Saidi era – there is much to be gained from considering the extent to which the Al bu Saidi have been able to maintain and develop aspects of this outward-looking Indian Ocean aspect of the Omani experience, while also bringing the northern interior and the south (Dhofar) into a complementary relationship with this coastal form of life. The process has been gradual, uneven, and has experienced setbacks and periods during

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which neither territorial integrity nor external engagement have seemed possible. But the present state of affairs – in which Oman has known a period of genuine stability and prosperity – owes much to the capacity of the government to sustain and nurture the relationship between the different elements that now constitute the nation. Oman’s diplomatic and economic engagement, in the last decade or so, with the cultures and people who live across and around the Indian Ocean, suggests a growing recognition of the Indian Ocean dimension of Omani experience. That is why the next part of this chapter now turns to consider the long history of that dimension, to see how it may have contributed to the shaping of Oman’s modern diplomacy and global outlook, both of which might be defined in relation to the concept of ‘cosmopolitanism’. INDIAN OCEAN ‘COSMOPOLITANISM’

The emergence of the Indian Ocean as a distinctive region in world affairs can be traced back, using the records of archaeological investigations (primarily conducted in the twentieth century), to about five thousand years ago. One of most eminent historians of the region, Michael Pearson, affirms that the civilisations of Mesopotamia (the civilisation that developed around and between the lower reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is modern Iraq) and the Indus Valley (the first major civilisation of southern Asia, which grew up around the Indus river) began the routine use of the Indian Ocean ‘as a 19 highway … as early as 3000 BCE’. Pearson also notes, making an important distinction from earlier accounts, which tended to focus on the transit of luxury goods, that in addition to this ‘long-distance, glamorous, trade’, there was also a ‘coastal trade … far more 20 important … all around the margins of the Indian Ocean’. This coastal trade, in which everyday essentials were traded between different locations on the Indian Ocean littoral, has only recently begun to become part of the archaeological record, as techniques for identifying the origins of such ordinary remains as shells and wood have become available: ‘unrecorded, coastal trade was also present, indeed most of the time was far more important than the long-distance trade which is 21 privileged in almost all records.’ Indeed, there were also other kinds of interchange taking place, both as a result of and distinct from trade as such: Pearson presents an account of the ‘ocean acting as a transmitter for disease, religion, tourists, goods, information, not just 22 pepper and cotton cloths’.

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Pearson also notes that the archaeological record demonstrates a distinct revival in all such trade in the mid-first century AD, when the most famous contemporaneous account of the region’s trade, the account of a Greek sailor and geographer whose text is now known to 23 scholars as the Periplus, was written. As a result of this text and its widespread dissemination, the maritime traffic of the Indian Ocean came to be understood, in subsequent European accounts, as the result of Greek and then Roman incursions into previously uncharted territory. It is now clear that this was not the case at all, and that the Greeks and the Romans entered a maritime space that had already been thoroughly explored and populated by the people of its own littoral, from Oman to India and beyond (as we have already seen in our consideration, above, of the evidence from Sumhuram and Ras alJinz). Pearson furthermore notes that trading activities in the Gulf were already ‘well integrated into Indian Ocean trade by this time, 24 continuing or reviving connections dating back three millennia’. Although trade leaves the clearest traces of exchange between the peoples and cultures of the Indian Ocean, by depositing its remains in material ways, which archaeologists can scrutinise and interpret thousands of years later, Pearson emphasises the patterns and conventions of social interaction that develop among the people – the agents of trade both by land and by sea. Trade, he says, requires a ‘lubricant’ and is ‘as much a matter of social engineering as of com25 munications technology’. Pearson’s focus on trade as a broader process is vital for our understanding of the influence of Oman’s participation in this pattern of trade and exchange across the Indian Ocean upon its diplomacy because it makes the connection between the rather abstract notion of goods crisscrossing the ocean and the human dimension of this activity. It reminds us that the people involved, whether they are the traders or sailors themselves, or simply the inhabitants of the Indian Ocean littoral where these traders and sailors drop anchor, will have developed, over many centuries, traditions of social interaction that it makes sense to call diplomacy. The ‘social engineering’ to which Pearson refers, then, involves adaptations in local cultures to facilitate interactions with strangers; it involves developing the ability to translate between different languages; to tolerate everyday behaviours and religious practices that are different from one’s own; to invent formal procedures and mechanisms (such as currency, local agents) that assist in making trade possible. For Pearson, as for other scholars of the region, port towns and cities are crucial locations for the development

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of these skills and processes, and it is in these port towns and cities that a kind of cosmopolitanism therefore develops. Among the various port towns and cities that participated in the development of this Indian Ocean cosmopolitanism over the long period of the first eight or nine hundred years of the Common Era were Julfar, Hormuz, Qalhat, Sohar, Sur and Sumhuram. Each of these locations therefore served, at one time or another, as a kind of transmission point for the skills and techniques of Indian Ocean cosmopolitanism, sharing in, and sometimes even distributing into their hinterlands, attitudes and values that transcended local chauvinism. As Pearson notes of such locations: ‘littoral society is much more cosmopolitan than are parochial inland people for, at the great ports which constitute the nodes of the littoral, traders and travellers from all over the ocean, and 26 far beyond, were to be found.’ For this reason, if for no other, those who lived or spent time in such ports – and Oman and Omanis have known many of them over the years – developed the skills that are nowadays often characterised as ‘diplomatic’. Pearson is one of a number of historians who have done much to open up the field of research into the cultures of the Indian Ocean, a movement that has led in general to the displacement of a Euro-centric history of the region. These scholars have adopted for the study of the Indian Ocean (perhaps with a touch of irony) the model employed by French historian Fernand Braudel in his study of the Mediterranean as a space in which a distinctive set of interconnecting civilisations came 27 into being. Sugata Bose, in acknowledging his own debt to one of the most influential of these historians, K. N. Chaudhuri, notes, however, that Chaudhuri’s approach repeats some of Braudel’s limitations. Where Braudel ‘failed to acknowledge the historical actors on the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean, the limitations of Chaudhuri’s perspective become apparent in the marginalization of 28 Africa’, writes Bose. Chaudhuri’s claim that ‘the indigenous African communities appear to have been structured by a historical logic separate and independent from the rest of the Indian Ocean’ may be challenged from an Omani perspective in which the circulation of people, goods and ideas in the Indian Ocean region very clearly passes through, shapes and is shaped by the East African coast, which, in 29 turn, is hardly completely detached from the interior. Part of the way through this period of interaction across the Indian Ocean (in what Abdul Sheriff – a Zanzibari historian whose work represents an implicit challenge to Chaudhuri’s exclusion of Africa 30 from these circuits – refers to as the period of ‘dhow culture’) a major

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new factor contributed to the intensification of unity within this region well beyond the realm of trade and exchange. The emergence, first in Arabia, and then across the whole of the Indian Ocean region, of Islam as the dominant religion was of enormous significance. This meant that a large share of the regional trade was now handled by Muslims, and therefore that Muslim attitudes to money, the rights and dignity of the person, hospitality, trade, profit and everyday social life became deeply integrated into the conduct of trade itself. There also developed a sense of commonality, in which populations of very diverse initial cultures came to share a common religious understanding. The success of Islam in the region was not the result of the imposition of a new culture and religion on top of older ones, but rather a complex process of adaptation and assimilation, leading to a sense of religious community in which central principles were shared but local cultural differences respected and retained. Pearson regards the spread of Islam in the region as a process of acceptance rather than conversion, and also as a substantial reinforcement of the region’s cosmopolitan character: The cosmopolitan, international, aspect of Islam has often been cited as a prime motivation for conversion. Coastal people especially find their indigenous beliefs, localised and very specific, to be inadequate as their world expands. When they are exposed to a universal faith (in the case of the East African coast Islam was represented in their foreign business partners), the attraction is obvious, and can be widely seen all over the 31 Indian Ocean world at this time.

The spread of Islam – a religion in which writing is pre-eminent – also involved the spread of scholarship and other kinds of advanced learning across the Indian Ocean region. The famous Arab traveller Ibn Battuta not only saw himself as a travelling scholar, offering wisdom and expertise to merchants and rulers wherever he went, but also reported on the presence and movements of other such scholars, performing a range of functions beyond what might be assumed, namely the spreading of the new religion. One example from Ibn Battuta’s own account of particular relevance to this study is his observation that during the time he spent in Malabar (the west coast of southern India) the qadi and preacher was from Oman. Here, then we have an early example of a potential Omani diplomat, taking advantage of the cosmopolitan space of the Indian Ocean to establish a livelihood for himself in a distant location whose people were ready not simply to accept him as a resident, but to turn to him for guidance,

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judgement and conciliation, and where his skills in this area, allied to his knowledge of the new and widely practised religion, have given him authority and legitimacy. In addition, we might speculate that the positions of men such as this Omani may also be attributable to one of Islam’s other major effects: the spread of Arabic in both spoken and written languages. This facilitated the development of various kinds of lingua franca, in which some rudimentary or creolised Arabic could enable speakers of different local languages to communicate effectively with one another. This meant that whereas in earlier times it might have been the speaker of many languages or the expert translator who will have been a vital element in the region’s ‘lubricant’, in this latter period it is perhaps the speaker of Arabic who enjoys such privilege. Here again it is worth considering to what extent this may have fostered the development of diplomatic skills among the Arabs travelling the region, among whom the ancestors of today’s Omanis were clearly prominent. The spread of Arabic was not simply a matter of language, but also of the technical skills that Arab culture had developed: for someone such as the noted navigator (often held to have been an Omani) Ibn Majid, it was these skills that mattered most, and that could be shared with people from other cultures by both practice and instruction. The teaching and sharing of skills in navigation and map-making was an important element in social interaction between the people of the Indian Ocean during the early Islamic period, and it demonstrates quite clearly one aspect of these interactions that we will treat at a little more length in the concluding part of this introduction: the extent to which the culture of the Indian Ocean – the dhow culture, or cosmopolitanism – flourished on the basis of cooperation and a widespread toleration of difference. The spread of Islam also brought one final and enormously important dimension to travel in the region: the hajj. The new religion more or less made a kind of cosmopolitanism a religious obligation: believers were encouraged to think of themselves as part of a community that extended far beyond their own shores and they were also enjoined, wherever possible, actually to leave those shores, at least once in a lifetime, to make the pilgrimage to Mecca. These roles and the social techniques and behaviours necessary for accomplishing them successfully have become, we suggest, significant factors in the development of Omani culture. The skills developed by agents, navigators, judges, scribes, merchants and others through their multiple interactions with counterparts, clients, customers and all manner of other travellers in the Indian Ocean region may be under-

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stood as constituting significant ‘cultural capital’ for their possessors. Thus, for Omanis shaped by this history – whether they participate directly in the cosmopolitan exchanges of the Indian Ocean region or simply acquire some of its codes and values by association – qualities such as the capacity to function across languages, to tolerate difference and to mediate between different modes of understanding the world all take on real value. Cultural capital promises social and economic success: it may readily be inferred that the development of such skills should become widely desirable and that the effort to develop these ‘diplomatic’ skills should become part and parcel of routine processes of socialisation in Oman. This might not have happened had Oman’s involvement in the Indian Ocean been limited to those who voyaged out. But, as we shall see, the extent and duration of the presence in Oman of a range of groups and communities from other points along the Indian Ocean littoral – Sindhis, Gujaratis, Baluchis and others – from the fifteenth century to the present has meant that Omanis who have ventured no further than their own souq will have participated in some measure in this cosmopolitan circuit of exchange in which a certain aptitude for everyday ‘diplomacy’ will have proven valuable. COSMOPOLITAN OMAN

In Oman, as in so many countries around the Indian Ocean littoral, the interaction between the diverse peoples of the Indian Ocean region has for several centuries been part of daily life, not merely on the ocean or in far-flung quarters of the world, but as part of the fabric of life on shore, too. This feature of Omani social life – which Fredrik 32 Barth would call its ‘cultural pluralism’ – significantly predates the period of European colonial intervention in the Indian Ocean. This means that it takes shape at a moment before a distinctively European understanding of race and ethnicity took hold in the region. It would be naïve to suggest that relations between the diverse participants in this plural culture were invariably harmonious and that the introduction of European theories and practices of racial categorisation can be blamed for all subsequent conflicts and hierarchies associated with cultural difference. Nonetheless, it is important to understand the nature of this culture without applying to it the racial categories developed by the colonial powers. There is of course a copious literature exploring how these categories emerged from European scientific thought, how they became the basis for the development of anthropology and how they legitimated practices of subordination and

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separation based on notions of racial identity. To make a very simple historical summary in order to gain some purchase on how difference may have been understood differently in a pre-colonial Indian Ocean culture like Oman’s, we might say that it was understood in terms of social roles and relationships, rather than, as it was in the later colonial discourse and practice, in terms of identity. The European colonial understanding of difference came to rest on a form of biological determinism, in which such features as skin colour defined who you were, and in which everyone was to be classified in a supposedly scientific system. We shall see later in the book how this understanding of racial identity would have a significant impact on life in Zanzibar, as the British administration sought to reorganise social and political life in line with its own clear-cut categories rather than the much more fluid arrangements and understandings that had shaped social interactions among Zanzibar’s diverse population. One way of conceptualising understandings of difference that are not based on the concept of racial identity has been to think in terms of what a number of recent scholars of postcolonial cultures have called ‘hybridity’. This idea builds on the earlier critique of theories of difference based on race and ethnicity developed by anthropologists 34 such as Claude Lévi-Strauss and Fredrik Barth, who had shown that identities that had come to be regarded over the preceding hundred and fifty years as ‘natural’ and readily observable from such factors as 35 skin colour were in fact culturally produced. Rather than there being a biological basis for differences between people, as European ‘race theory’ had once proposed, these differences were explained as the results of interactions between people. Identity was the complex result of all kinds of factors, all of which were social and cultural rather than biological, such as language, residence, religion and work. In his account of social relations in Sohar in 1970, Fredrik Barth sees individual identities as shaped by these factors, rather than by skin colour or other biologically based conceptions of ethnicity, and notes that, as a result, identities are always seen as multiple (for example, one can be a Sunni, have an Arab father, be born in Zanzibar and be a 36 fisherman). The idea of hybridity takes this idea further, suggesting that who one is is primarily determined by whom one interacts with, rather than by any inherent and permanent characteristics one might possess: a hybrid identity, then, as Ien Ang understands it, consists ‘of exchanges, crossings, and mutual entanglements’ and also, and this is particularly important, ‘it necessarily implies a softening of the boundaries between “peoples”: the encounters between them are as

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constitutive of who they are as the proceedings within.’ Ang sees this kind of cultural hybridity as characteristic of most contemporary societies and, although we should not make the ahistorical leap to suggest that pre-colonial Indian Ocean cosmopolitanism, in Oman or anywhere else, has returned, unchanged, with the close of the colonial era, there is certainly some meaningful continuity between the Oman of today and the Oman of the pre-colonial period as regards issues of ‘cultural pluralism’. There is a general consensus that the history of Indian residence in Oman can be traced back to the fifteenth century. In his detailed account of Muscat’s Indian merchant community, Calvin H. Allen, Jr, notes that the British traveller Samuel Miles reports having come across the ruins of a fifteenth-century Hindu temple at Qalhat, which had been at that time the most important Omani port. Allen supports his general claim for permanent Indian residence in Oman from the fifteenth century onwards by reference to the record left by the Portuguese coloniser Afonso de Albuquerque of Hindu Gujarati merchants fleeing an Omani town in 1507 shortly before the Portuguese seized it. It appears that Hindu merchants, mainly from Gujarat, then became important economic partners in the Portuguese efforts to establish a monopoly over Indian Ocean/Gulf maritime trade. Allen, whose main focus is Muscat, notes that it was after the Portuguese lost control of Hormuz in the early part of the seventeenth century that the 38 Gujarati merchant community in Muscat started to develop. According to Allen, the first significant group of Indian merchants in Muscat were those who had carried merchandise across the Indian Ocean on Portuguese ships and had started to establish warehouses and trade stations during the period of Portuguese administration. Allen credits the oral traditions of the merchant community encountered during his research with the claim that the first to settle in 39 40 Muscat – the so-called ‘Banyans’ – were Bhatias from Sind. Members of the Bhatia community, who had been key commercial advisers to the Portuguese in Muscat, were also eventually to assist in their expulsion from Oman by the Ya’ariba (the rulers of Oman at that time) in 1650, after which they enjoyed considerable privileges, including exemption from poll tax and permission to build a temple, which Allen suggests may well have been built before 1700. It appears that this temple was one of two that were demolished in the 1970s as part of the redevelopment of Muscat. The Sindhi Bhatias ‘continued to prosper’, writes Allen, in spite of the internal struggle that resulted in the establishment of the Al bu Saidi dynasty: Allen cites the well-

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known account of a visit to Muscat by Carsten Niebuhr, in which the Danish explorer reports that the ‘Banians’ are more numerous in Muscat than in any other Muslim city, that they are permitted to observe their own laws (by which he appears to mean religious customs) including the worship of their own idols (presumably in the temple or temples established for this as well as in their own homes), and the 41 right to cremate their dead (a practice that is haram for Muslims). A shift occurred in the composition of the ‘Banyan’ community in Muscat during the nineteenth century as the port of origin of the earliest merchants – Thattha – fell into economic decline at around the same time as a new commercial policy aimed at securing an Omani commercial monopoly was launched by Hamad bin Said in Muscat. Hamad’s policy involved the establishment of direct trading contacts with ports in Afghanistan, thereby cutting out the Sindhi middlemen. The Sindhis were gradually replaced, therefore, by Bhatias from Kutch, whose own ruler, Godji II, actively promoted Kutchi shipbuilding, and whose business, being in shipping itself rather than middleman entrepreneurship, meant that they were not in direct competition with the native Omanis. Kutchi merchants established a flourishing commercial presence in Muscat during the nineteenth century: it was this community that J. R. Wellsted described in 1836 as comprising ‘the principal merchants’ of Muscat and which had, by the 1870s, come to 42 replace the Al bu Saidi as the ‘paramount economic power’ in Oman. Of course, at this time the Al bu Saidi were concentrating their own economic interests in Zanzibar, and in later years the Al bu Saidi role as political and administrative leaders came to overtake their former role as leading merchants. It might even be suggested that it is in part due to the Al bu Saidi’s own historical experience of mercantile life, and the relatively laissez-faire approach to the regulation of commerce adopted by the more successful rulers of the dynasty, that the Al bu Saidi themselves have permitted, and even encouraged, the growth of commercial and economic interests at some distance from the seat of political power. This typically tolerant approach to commercial interests operating outside or alongside political power was by no means universally shared in the region during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (as we shall see, below, in Part II, it was this approach that gave Muscat under the Al bu Saidi a commercial advantage in the region), nor was it necessarily embraced by all Omanis. The short-lived imamate rule over Muscat under Azzan bin Qays (1868–71) posed a serious threat to the Bhatia merchants: the new government sought to regulate social

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and economic life in keeping with a conservative interpretation of Islam and, among other things, instituted a ban on the use of musical instruments, a measure that seriously impeded Hindu religious practices, dependent as they are on the frequent use of percussion instruments such as bells in daily puja. Consequently, the Hindu population of Muscat fell rapidly in this short period. This decline was short-lived and, from the late nineteenth century to the present day, Hindu merchants of Indian origin have continued to play an important role in the Omani economy and have ensured that commercial and cultural links between Oman and India have continued to develop. We shall see later, in Part II, that Indian merchants were key players in the development of Omani rule in Zanzibar under Sayyid Said in the early nineteenth century. Sultan Said bin Taimur – who like a number of other Omanis was educated at Mayo College in Ajmer, Rajasthan – developed a strong commercial relationship between his government and a number of leading Indian merchants. Perhaps the clearest legacy of this relationship today is the continued success of Khimji Ramdas, an Omani–Indian company whose senior director, Kanaksi Khimji (grandson of the company’s father, who came to Oman from Mandvi in Kutch around 1870), has the title of ‘sheikh’ (as the de facto ‘leader’ of the country’s Hindu community). In addition to companies such as Khimji Ramdas, a significant role in the Omani economy is played by a later generation of immigrants who have taken leading roles in both private-sector commerce and the civil service. This means that a significant number of Indians resident in Muscat are well-educated professionals, with their own very cosmopolitan perspectives and a long-term interest in the stability and prosperity of the country. In this respect – even if they remain Indian nationals and not Omani citizens – they are very much part of Omani society and are recognised as such by colleagues and fellow professionals. However, while the cosmopolitan Omani culture we have been describing in this chapter may be both the result and the condition of possibility for the presence and success of this group, there are aspects of Omani culture that also work against their fullest integration. It remains the case that much Omani social life revolves around family: many Omani professionals working in Muscat – in many cases with and alongside their Indian colleagues – have families in their town or village of birth, to which they frequently return at weekends; or, even if their families are largely settled in Muscat itself, Omanis in general still tend to organise their social lives (in which visiting family members is a widely observed customary obligation)

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around their family relations. This means that Indian and Omani Arab colleagues have few opportunities for social interaction beyond the work environment. Furthermore, while one of the primary ways in which middle-class professionals in many Western societies develop social networks is through the school-based activities of their children, here again, opportunities for social interaction between resident Indians and Omani Arabs – in this case those professionals who might otherwise be contributing to the development of a more integrated, multicultural middle class – are limited by the separate education their children receive. There are Indian schools that function separately from those organised by Oman’s Ministry of Education, and most children of Indian parents attend these, if they are not already in higher education, which they are often taking abroad (in the United States, for example). Today, according to India’s embassy in Muscat, Indian nationals resident in Oman number around 550,000, making them the largest 43 expatriate community in the sultanate. A portion of this figure is relatively transient, employed on short-term contracts, usually for manual or service labour, at the end of which rights of residence expire and workers must leave the country. Others are leading figures in the private sector or work in professions such as accounting and journalism, or as shopkeepers and small businesspeople. By far the largest number of the most recent and shifting Indian population in Oman come from Kerala (which means many are Christian speakers of Malayalam, rather than Hindus or Muslims, who were prominent among earlier generations of Indian residents in Oman). In addition to two Hindu temples in Muscat, there are seven Christian churches. This latest phase in the history of the Indian presence in Oman may date to the early 1970s when the economic development of the sultanate, supported by the commercial exploitation of oil, made the country an attractive destination for labour migrants, whereas, as we shall discuss further below, in previous decades, particularly the 1950s and 1960s, Omanis themselves had been labour migrants, mostly in the oilproducing countries of the Gulf, but also in Indian cities such as Bombay. Differentiated modes of handling difference may also be observed in the cases of some of the other groups of people regularly identified as distinct or partly distinct communities within Oman, and whose presence testifies to further dimensions of contemporary Oman’s Indian Ocean legacy. These include three groups, all of whom, unlike the Bhatias discussed above, are Muslims who therefore share a sense of

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religious identity with most other Omanis (and who, it might be argued, are among the specific targets or beneficiaries of the ecumenism promoted as part of what Valeri calls the Omani ‘national 44 ideology’). These are the Zanzibari, Baluchi and Lawati citizens of Oman, each of whose histories of engagement with and participation in the modern Omani nation add further complexity to the internal cultural differences negotiated as part of everyday life in the sultanate. The Zanzibari or Swahili Omanis are the result of successive waves of migration from Oman itself to Zanzibar (and, if we keep this category broad, to other East African locations), starting in the seventeenth century. Omanis who participated in the last of these migrations, which took place mainly in the 1920s, are often distinguished from earlier phases, because, rather than becoming a landowning élite, as had previous migrants, they were largely people from the Dakhliyah, of modest means, seeking employment or trade as labourers and shopkeepers. Many left Zanzibar in 1964, at the time of the nationalist revolution, but by no means all ‘returned’ to Oman (indeed many had never even seen Oman); large numbers took up temporary residence either on the East African mainland, or in other Arab countries in the Gulf or beyond. It was not until the accession of Sultan Qaboos in 1970 that a major influx of Zanzibaris entered modern Oman. They were to play a crucial role in the development of the state administration: many were skilled and literate, and rose to positions of considerable power and influence in the new national 45 government and civil service. Baluchis have been resident in Oman for several hundred years. Their origins lie in Baluchistan, a territory that currently straddles the border between Iran and Pakistan, and their initial connection with Oman is generally understood to be due to the role of Gwadar, the primary Baluchi port city, in Oman’s Indian Ocean trade. Unlike the Gujaratis who came to Oman as merchants and traders, the Baluchi contributed to the commercial networks of Indian Ocean cosmopolitanism rather less directly, although still significantly, as soldiers. This tradition extended into the modern period, with Baluchis featuring prominently in the development of Oman’s armed forces both before and after 1970. Many Baluchi have marked their participation in Omani society by taking ‘al-Baluchi’ as a form of tribal name, while others will continue to insist that they are not part of the tribal system of Oman. A similar phenomenon may be observed among the Lawati, a Muslim (and Shia) community generally believed to have similar regional

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origins to those of the Kutchi Bhatias, although some Lawatis, apparently responding to a sense that a distinctively ‘Arab’ genealogy confers greater social status, have claimed ancestry originating in the Omani interior. What is clear is that, like the Baluchi, the Lawati have been present in Oman for several generations, and although they tended to mark their distinct identity by maintaining a largely exclusive urban community in Muttrah (in an area of the city that started to allow non-Lawati residents only after 1970), they have participated intensively in the commercial life of Oman, as well as, most recently, entering the political arena, too, which non-Muslim Omanis of Indian origin have not yet done. It is clear that some Omanis perceive the presence of ‘Indians’ in general as detrimental to their own job prospects, and that this perception seems to have given rise to a certain amount of anti-‘Indian’ sentiment during the 2011 protests in Oman. The Indian-owned Lulu Hypermarket in Sohar suffered fire damage and looting on 28 February 2011. As with so many such reactions, there was little logic to it: Indian and other expatriate workers have historically taken jobs in Oman for which there are not enough qualified Omani professionals (this applies to the professional and technical positions held by expatriates in both the private sector and government), or, in the case of unskilled labourers, jobs that few Omanis of the present generation would consider acceptable. Many of the older generation, especially those who were themselves labour migrants before 1970, seem to have a more realistic understanding of the job market than do those who have grown up without any experience of the hardship involved in life in Oman in the 1970s and before, and who have developed a strong sense of personal entitlement that can sometimes express itself as an Omani national chauvinism. Managing the expectations produced by this sense of entitlement, and the social tensions to which they may sometimes give rise, might therefore be seen as a challenge to Oman’s culture of diplomacy, as well as a problem of economic management. We might regard the ability to see beyond the circumstances of one’s own life, or one’s own particular historical, social and cultural situation, as one of the features of a cosmopolitan sensibility, and that of a diplomat. With that in mind we have suggested, first, that the longstanding interaction between Omanis and a wide range of foreign ‘others’, driven by the economic requirements of a society that has never enjoyed self-sufficiency, has contributed to the development over many centuries of a culture whose participants generally understand the value of such interactions, and develop the skills needed to make

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them work well. We have also argued that the experience of living in a society shaped by a number of differences (of language, origin and religion) contributes further to an Omani sensibility that respects difference without making difference itself a major issue (this will be addressed again, and more fully, in Chapter 2). A third factor, which we would suggest adds another dimension to this culture of diplomacy, has been the experience, shared by many of the generation of Omanis who were young adults in the period immediately before 1970, of labour migration. The extent of labour migration from Oman to other locations in the Gulf, especially in the post-Second World War period in which commercial exploitation of oil was beginning, means that many of the people who made significant personal contributions to Oman’s post1970 development were able to do so precisely because of the experience they had gained simply by making their livings outside Oman. Many senior government officials in the post-1970 period have direct experience working abroad, most frequently in the oil industry, in retail or other service employment (such as driving taxis). One story that vividly illustrates the effects of outward labour migration in the mid-twentieth century for Omani diplomacy is that of a young Dhofari. In Dhofar he found himself without work or any other means of making a living and decided that his only option was to seek work beyond Oman. In the first instance this involved travelling to Muscat to request a passport. At the time this was a journey that could really only be undertaken by sea (a land journey through the desert was far more perilous than the sea passage). After a difficult voyage from Salalah he arrived in Muscat only to be refused a passport, so he was obliged to return to Dhofar. Here he learned that the sheikh of the Mahra was issuing passports that were said to be accepted at the Saudi border. The Mahra are a group mainly resident in the region bordering Yemen, who speak their own south Arabian language (in two distinct dialects), and who were at that time living largely beyond the control of the Omani government (this was during that period of the reign of Sultan Said bin Taimur during which the sultan was mainly resident in Salalah, while administrative functions such as the issuing of passports were still handled in Muscat). The young Dhofari successfully acquired a Mahri passport and gained admission to Saudi Arabia, where he worked as a fruit vendor before falling foul of regional politics. The Saudi government’s readiness to accept Mahri passports for entry into the kingdom seems to have arisen in the context of their involvement in Yemeni politics, with the Mahri viewed as making a useful

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contribution to the advance of Saudi interests. However, while the young Dhofari was working his fruit stand, deteriorating Saudi– Yemeni relations resulted in a policy that all those possessing Mahri passports were now counted as Yemenis and were forced to leave the country. After a spell in Bahrain, he managed to return to Saudi Arabia and started to work for an American oil company. An American colleague who befriended him there encouraged him to think of emigrating to the United States and in due course he took this advice, arriving, like so many before him, in New York. On the quayside he started to ask around to find out where he might find fellow Arabic speakers, and was soon directed to a neighbourhood where there were other Omanis, who did as so many immigrant communities do, and fixed him up with accommodation and ultimately helped him find work. Eventually, he managed to set up his own business, running a restaurant near the United Nations building in Manhattan. When Sultan Qaboos took power in 1970, he was one of many Omanis who had left the country who answered the call to return home and participate in the project of national development. Although he did not have the advantages of an extensive education, normally a prerequisite for working as a diplomat, his cosmopolitan experience led to his being taken on in the newly formed Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he worked his way up to the rank of Ambassador, eventually ending his career in government service as one the sultanate’s permanent representatives to the United Nations. We have discussed, in very general terms, in this section, the key characteristics of what we have called Indian Ocean cosmopolitanism, a culture in which the predecessors of today’s Omanis were active and prominent participants. We have suggested that this history has left an important legacy in the mentalities of the people who continue to inhabit the Indian Ocean region, and that this legacy is discernible in the life of Oman today, and thus shapes, to some extent, the way in which Omanis view the outside world and their relations with it. This cosmopolitanism appears to have developed and maintained itself over a period of about one thousand years. The historian K. N. Chaudhuri has developed a convincing historical account of this set of interactions between the various civilisations of the region in this longue durée. Chaudhuri argues that during this time trade (and other contacts) developed within the supporting framework of both tacit and formal agreements on mutual advantage and good treatment. That is to say, cosmopolitanism was sustained by the practice of what it makes

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perfect sense to call diplomacy. It was not diplomacy conducted on a state-to-state basis, but rather a diplomacy that flourished at the micro political level, case by case, relation by relation, underpinned by principles we might reasonably call international cooperation and the rule of law. The fundamental components of this ‘rule of law’, or what some other scholars have called the principle of the mare liberum (the freedom of the sea), comprised, suggests Chaudhuri, the establishment of extensive networks of mutual protection, well-established conventions in commercial contracts, the effective neutrality of port cities, the priority placed by local rulers on treating merchants with kindness and hospitality, and the absence of any dominant sea power. Chaudhuri and others who have contributed to this powerful new account of Indian Ocean history tend to the view that this state of affairs came to an end once European colonial powers (British, Dutch and French) had asserted their distinctly different economic and political regimes in the region, from the middle of the eighteenth century. Sugata Bose, who, as we have seen earlier, follows in Chaudhuri’s footsteps while encouraging the inclusion of East Africa in the world (or ‘interregional arena’) that Chaudhuri describes, also departs from Chaudhuri (and also Pearson and a range of other influential historians of the Indian Ocean) on this point, to speculate whether this is too clean a division, and to ask if there might be more continuity between this supposedly vanished cosmopolitanism and the society and cultures of later periods (and the present day) than Chaudhuri’s account would allow. In Part II of this book we will begin our examination of the regional and international activities of Oman under Al bu Saidi rule at precisely the moment at which this definitive change is said to have been consolidated. In analysing Oman’s interactions with both ‘neighbours’ who had been part of the Indian Ocean ‘arena’ for centuries and ‘strangers’ like the British, we shall be particularly interested in considering the interplay between the economic, social and diplomatic practices associated with the pre-colonial period, and those that took shape in the context of European colonial activity in the region. In the final chapter of the book we shall return once more to this question, to see to what extent aspects of the earlier practices may be relevant to both the analysis and the practice of Omani diplomacy in the age of globalisation.

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Notes 01 Alessandra Avanzini, ‘Notes for a History of Sumhuram’, p. 9. 02 In this period one of the major regional powers was the Kingdom of the Hadramaut, with its centre in the valley of the same name, which now lies in the southern part of modern Yemen. 03 Ibid., pp. 609–41. 04 Paolo Costa notes that this identification remains the subject of debate. See Paolo M. Costa, ‘Il Ruolo dell’Arabia’, p. 436. 05 Alexander V. Sedov, ‘Sea-Trade of the Hadramaut Kingdom’. 06 Avanzini, ‘Notes for a History of Sumhuram’. 07 S. Cleuziou and M. Tosi, ‘Evidence for the Use of Aromatics’, p. 62. 08 Ibid., p. 62. 09 Ibid., p. 58. 10 Ibid., p. 69. 11 Ibid., p. 59. 12 Ibid., p. 69. 13 John C. Wilkinson, The Imamate Tradition of Oman, p. 1. 14 John E. Peterson, ‘Oman’s Diverse Society’, p. 254. 15 Marc Valeri, Oman: Politics and Society, p. 119. 16 Further discussion of these groups within Omani society will follow below (in brief, Baluchis trace their origins to Baluchistan; Lawatis trace theirs variously, but most persuasively to India, and are Shia; and Zanzibaris are Omani citizens who identify, through birth or long-term residence, with Zanzibar). 17 See Valeri, Oman: Politics and Society, pp. 140–7. 18 Ibid., p. 249. 19 Michael Pearson, The Indian Ocean, p. 50. 20 Ibid., pp. 50–1. 21 Ibid., p. 51. 22 Ibid., p. 10. 23 W. H. Schoff (tr. and ed.), The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. 24 Pearson, The Indian Ocean, p. 51. 25 Ibid., p. 29. 26 Ibid., p. 39. 27 See Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II. 28 Sugata Bose, A Hundred Horizons, p. 11. 29 K. N. Chaudhuri, Asia Before Europe, Economy and Civilisation of the Indian Ocean from the Rise of Islam to 1750, cited in Bose, p. 11. 30 See, particularly, Abdul Sheriff, Dhow Cultures and the Indian Ocean: Cosmopolitanism, Commerce and Islam. 31 Pearson, The Indian Ocean, p. 76. 32 Fredrik Barth, Sohar, pp. 81–93 and 244–54. 33 See, for example, Nancy Stepan, The Idea of Race in Science: Great Britain 1800–1960.

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34 In 1952 Lévi-Strauss published a pamphlet for UNESCO entitled ‘Race and History’. In 1969 Barth published an influential essay as the ‘Introduction’ to Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture. 35 The idea that identity could be understood in terms of race only started to take shape in European thought towards the end of the eighteenth century, until which time the word ‘race’ referred to human beings as a whole rather than to supposedly separate human ‘races’. See Roxann Wheeler, The Complexion of Race. 36 Barth, Sohar. 37 Ien Ang, ‘Together-in-Difference: Beyond Diaspora, Into Hybridity’, p. 146. 38 Calvin H. Allen, Jr, ‘The Indian Merchant Community of Masqat’, p. 39. 39 This term, derived from a Gujarati word referring to a trading caste, is used in Oman to refer generally to Hindu merchants. 40 Allen, ‘The Indian Merchant Community’, p. 40. 41 Ibid., p. 41. See also Carsten Niebuhr, Travels through Arabia and Other Countries of the East, p. 116. 42 Allen, ‘The Indian Merchant Community’, p. 39. 43 Embassy of India, ‘Indian Community in Oman’, http://www.indemboman.org/Indian_community_Oman.asp, accessed 2 April 2011. 44 Valeri, Oman: Politics and Society, p. 120. 45 For an examination of some of the complexities of the social identity and experience of those who ‘returned’ from Zanzibar, see Mandana Limbert, In the Time of Oil, and Marc Valeri, ‘Nation-Building and Communities in Oman Since 1970’. Both Limbert and Valeri share an understanding of identity as constructed and relational. Limbert discusses the Arab tradition of patrilineal genealogy as an alternative mode of self-identification to race or ethnicity. Valeri affirms that ‘group solidarities, whether based on “primordial ties” (like tribes, clans or ethnic groups) or not, are sociopolitical constructions; their structure and relevance depend on the context in which they evolve and the multiple actors they interact with’. See p. 480.

2 A Culture of Diplomacy

1 In this chapter our focus shifts from Oman’s interactions with other cultures of the Indian Ocean to a consideration of how a culture of diplomacy has taken shape within Oman itself. The two are, of course, intimately related to one another: that is one of the claims that this chapter seeks to substantiate. Many accounts of foreign relations and international affairs concentrate on the processes of making policies, on evaluating the success or failure of those policies, and on government responses to international crises, such as war, revolution, terrorism and the like. Some accounts pay more attention than others to the role of individuals – the kings, presidents, generals and sometimes even senior diplomats – who are often held to be the main makers and executors of policy. This, however, is a book about a broader culture of diplomacy, and seeks to understand diplomacy as an activity, practised by particular human beings, each of whom are necessarily shaped and influenced by the particular circumstances of their upbringing, education and social values. So, while overall this book will naturally focus primarily upon topics such as the making and implementation of policy, the conduct of Oman’s foreign relations, and those who make and implement them – it also seeks to offer an account of how Omani diplomacy may be understood as a practice, as a kind of social activity that cannot be separated altogether from other social activities. We are therefore interested in understanding to what extent Oman’s modern diplomatic practice might have a distinctively Omani character, without, of course succumbing to such essentialism as ‘national character’. In this chapter, therefore, we focus on aspects of everyday life in Oman that have contributed to the development of this distinctively Omani approach to diplomacy. What we propose here is that enduring and developing features of Omani social life have shaped the ways in which Omanis tend to interact with one another, avoid and solve conflicts and share resources, and that these, in turn, inform the ways

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in which Omanis, as diplomats, approach problems in the sphere of international relations. In effect, we propose that the specific circumstances in which Omani social life has taken shape, over centuries, has created what we might tentatively call a culture of diplomacy: a culture in which a great deal of care and thought is devoted to managing social relations through the avoidance of conflict and the pursuit of shared interests through dialogue and collective decision-making. The key features of Omani social life that contribute to the formation of this culture of diplomacy may be identified as follows: traditions of tolerance and non-sectarianism characteristic of Islam in Oman; the well-documented prevalence of politeness as a social virtue; the enduring presence of diverse urban centres as sites for social, economic and cultural exchange and the concomitant preponderance of hadari culture; the longstanding use of the falaj system for managing scarce water resources; traditional methods for political conciliation based upon the principle of shura. All these, we suggest, are contributing factors, not just to the character of Omani social life today – where they are widely observable even by the casual visitor – but also, and crucially, to the cultural formation, values and habits of Oman’s official diplomats. As we have already seen, Oman’s participation in the cosmopolitanism of the Indian Ocean has played its part in shaping what the anthropologist Fredrik Barth has called, writing specifically of life in 1 the Omani port town of Sohar, ‘cultural pluralism’. By using this term Barth seeks to emphasise the fact that social life in Oman is not merely characterised by the fact that ‘a number of cultures coexist’ but also by ‘the sense that every person participates in several, though far from all, 2 of these cultures’; that Omanis enjoy ‘plural memberships’. As we have seen in the previous chapter, this characteristic of Omani society is perhaps more immediately apparent in the coastal regions, such as the Batinah, where Sohar is located, and especially in those towns and cities involved in the greatest interaction with the Indian Ocean beyond Oman’s shores. As John C. Wilkinson observes: The people of Oman … have always needed to develop outside their own land if they are to rise above the lowest economic levels. Almost to exist, therefore, they have traditionally operated overseas, albeit with varying degrees of influence, and this in turn has meant tolerating a different regime in their trade base at home. So the international port has always been a cosmopolitan centre with resident foreign communities … generally quite 3 freely practising their religions and observing their customs.

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But the idea of a country readily divisible into an outward-looking and pluralist coast and an inward-looking and monocultural interior is somewhat misleading. A combination of factors, from recent labour migration from Oman, to the longevity of diverse communities in Omani life, means that the key elements of this cultural pluralism are present well beyond the obvious coastal locations. Hence, it should have come as no surprise that, while taking lunch with an eminent Omani historian at his home in al-Mudayrib in the Sharqiyah region, we were addressed in French by an elderly Omani gentleman, who offered his thoughts on the relative merits of British and Belgian colonialism, based on his experience of having lived and worked in Burundi. What appears to be valued, in this instance of social interaction, is the capacity to function in a cosmopolitan way: to be able to speak other languages (and perhaps, teasingly, to test whether your interlocutor can too); to demonstrate knowledge of other cultures and places; and to be interested in talking about the history and culture of others and their engagement with Oman. What is not so much at stake is identity: although the obvious differences in culture between this Omani and myself were perhaps in play (again perhaps teasingly, in that in the comparison between British and Belgian colonialism it is the British who come off worse), the conversation depended upon a mutual assumption of a shared capacity to move between cultures. One might suggest that for this Omani our presence is not primarily that of ‘British people’ and therefore the bearers of a different ‘identity’, but rather that of other participants in a cosmopolitan society with whom conversation of a cosmopolitan character may be entertained. We have noted already that since 1970 the process through which an Omani national identity has been constructed (through education, investment in heritage and so forth) has tended to downplay difference as such, in order to emphasise, as Mandana Limbert puts it, ‘the nation’s Arab genealogy’ with the result that ‘transnational connections’ with other Arab countries, particularly those of the peninsula, tend to take precedence over the Indian Ocean in general, and, in the 4 context of Limbert’s discussion, East Africa in particular. This broadly ideological process does not function in a vacuum. The conception of national unity encouraged by the state since 1970 resonates within Omani culture in a powerful way, not just because of an active attachment to the ‘Arab’ identity upon which this conception to some extent depends (although this is a factor), but also because of two tendencies in Omani social life that work against the accentuation of

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difference, even while acknowledging its presence. We may perhaps consider these tendencies to efface difference in relation to the encounter between two distinct approaches to diversity – that of the pre-colonial Indian Ocean in which difference is relational and that of the colonial period in which a nineteenth-century idea of difference as absolute became part of regional discourse and practice. What we can observe in Omani social practice today demonstrates substantial elements of continuity with or survival of attitudes and behaviour from an earlier period. The first of these tendencies is that Islam in Oman exhibits a strong commitment to anti-sectarianism. This might seem surprising, given that Oman is distinctive in the Muslim world as the only country in which Ibadism is predominant, a fact that might be thought to give rise to an assertion of Ibadi identity over and against Sunni or Shia identities. But, as the history of the Ibadis shows, Ibadism lives a logic of the ‘neither-nor’. That is to say that, in addition to being today ‘neither’ Sunni ‘nor’ ‘Shia’, Ibadism in the first place distinguished itself from the Kharijite movement, which opposed the establishment of a dynastic caliphate by being ‘neither’ for the establishment of the dynastic succession ‘nor’ willing to force the division of the Muslim community by taking up arms against it. Thus, the ecumenical or ‘generic’ Islam that Marc Valeri notes is taught in Omani schools is not simply a contemporary expedient. It builds upon a historical tendency within Omani Islam towards ecumenism. While not all Ibadis, at every moment in Omani history, have resisted the temptation to emphasise religious difference and to insist upon the specificity of Omani Ibadism, many, both in the past and today, prefer to think and speak of Ibadism as the ‘madhab that is not a madhab’ – the school or sect that is not one. The common practice in Oman, in which Ibadis and Sunnis readily pray in one another’s mosques, is indicative of a culture in which difference is known and understood but not made a matter of public discourse. This relationship between what is known and acknowledged and what is spoken and made public is the second observable feature of Omani social life with which the discourse of national unity has resonated strongly. It is what Fredrik Barth calls a ‘praxis of tact’ arising from an ‘ideology of politeness’ and clearly related, for Barth, to the experience and sustenance of ‘cultural pluralism’. He offers two examples of behaviours in which tact and politeness involve nonrecognition of difference by means of suppression of one’s own identity: one is the habit of multilingual Omanis (of whom, of course,

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there are many) choosing to address interlocutors in the other’s mother tongue rather than their own; another is the practice among many non-Shia Omanis of greeting Shia acquaintances ‘with the hand-on5 heart greeting used between Shia coreligionists’. In both these examples two things are in play: in addition to being behaviours that efface difference even in the act of acknowledging it (I know you are different from me, in language or in religion, but I am going to behave as best I can as though I am the same as you), they are practices in which the sensibilities of the other are privileged over those of the self, and as contributions to Omani cultural pluralism. As Barth writes, ‘A cultural pluralism based on tolerance – such as has eventuated in Sohar – does not insist on the perpetuation of differences, it merely allows them; and a praxis of tact accommodates such differences as exist by underplaying them or ignoring them in interaction, not by enshrining 6 them in personal ritual.’ This may account, at least in part, for the widespread reluctance among Omanis to engage in public discussion of social and cultural difference, especially questions of religious difference. Thus, the ideology of politeness – the second factor to discourage the emphasis on difference – tends to obscure aspects of the first: the nature of Islam in Oman. So, although it may transgress against the ideology of politeness, some consideration of the specifics of Omani Islam, including the particular emphasis imparted by Ibadism, will be helpful in understanding aspects of Omani social and political practice, including diplomacy. The next two sections of this chapter will address, in turn, the nature of Islam in Oman, and the role of politeness in the conduct of social relations. The chapter will then continue with two further sections in which some of the principles involved in both Omani Islam and the culture of tact and politeness are seen in the very practical settings of, first, water resource management; and second, the management of social life in a largely urban setting. The chapter concludes by seeking to draw all these threads together – Islam, politeness, water, urban social life – through the concept and practice of shura (consultation), to suggest how they might constitute a collective cultural resource for the conduct of Omani diplomacy. ISLAM IN OMAN

The previous chapter developed a picture of Omani participation in the cosmopolitan world of the Indian Ocean so as to emphasise those

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features of that world which, we suggest, may contribute to the way in which Omani diplomacy is understood and practised. We have traced some of these features across quite long periods of Omani history, suggesting, for example, that throughout its history Oman has needed to manage its relations with the world beyond its shores, simply in order to sustain itself. Without food subsistence, trade and all the interactions it necessitates become fundamental to life. While this may be considered a cause with discernible effects, many of the other features we have described have a more complex relationship to causality: there is no mechanism, we suggest, no ‘genetic’ code that guarantees that the skills and aptitudes acquired by, say, the mariners of the fifteenth century somehow live on in the Omanis of today. Instead, what happens is that Omanis in the present seek to understand themselves and organise their social interactions and behaviours in the light of what they know or believe about the past. Rather than imagining a history rolling constantly forward, it makes more sense, in this context, to think of a process of genealogical affiliation, conducted in the present, in which Omanis today select and adapt practices from the historical past – claiming them, as it were, as their inheritance. This is why to say, as does Marc Valeri, following the insights of Hobsbawm and Anderson, that the Omani community is to some extent ‘imagined’ and its tradition ‘invented’ is decidedly not to call into question its authenticity or to suggest that some other unimagined and un-invented reality should be summoned up to replace it. It is rather to emphasise the degree to which all communities and traditions are to some extent both imagined and invented, fashioned from the available materials (from archaeological artefacts to myths about historical events and figures) by those who make them. A community, a tradition, a historical legacy is not something that is simply ‘given’ to its participants and inheritors, but something to which they themselves contribute, both consciously and as a matter of policy – as in the selection of images of ancient maritime trade as a way of understanding Oman’s present-day involvement in globalisation (the Jewel of Muscat project) – or received and enacted more or less unconsciously as a matter of everyday life – as in the behaviours of politeness and the formulae for greetings. In this section we apply the same analytical principles to a consideration of the role of Islam in the development and practice of Omani diplomacy. Our analysis here falls into two general areas. In the first, we seek to show, in an account of early interactions between the people of Oman, including its rulers, religious leaders and

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representatives and those of the emerging central Islamic state, how the sharing of the new religion introduced a new element into relations between neighbouring states in what we now call the Middle East. We suggest – building on claims already articulated in Chapter 1 – that the effect of Islamic solidarity on relations between the countries of this region (and others, beyond it, too) persists to this day. In the second general area, we consider the contribution made by Ibadi thought and practice to the character of Omani interactions with others, by way of a largely political account of the emergence of Ibadism. We are concerned, then, in both these areas, not so much with questions of theology, religious law, beliefs and religious observances, but rather with how a set of political circumstances conditioned by the emergence and persistence of Islam in Oman and its regional setting may have shaped approaches to diplomatic practice. We are interested in the contribution of Islam to the formation of today’s culture of Omani diplomacy. We are most certainly not inclined to argue that Omani diplomacy or foreign policy has a specifically Islamic character, nor yet that the conduct of Omani diplomacy can be defined in terms of Ibadism. Indeed, while the influence of Ibadi political history and its related social practice may, as we will suggest, contribute something distinctive to Omani culture, and thus to its culture of diplomacy, that contribution is best seen as an abstention from the politics of sectarianism. The role of Ibadism in Omani diplomacy, therefore, may almost be conceptualised in terms of its absence from the scene. If Ibadism plays a role it is by insisting that it should not play a role. Historical accounts of the adoption of Islam in Oman point immediately to the practice of diplomacy. We read of delegations, ambassadors and consultations – indeed, diplomatic traffic – between the founders of the new religion in Medina and the people of Oman, which seems to have originated from the Omani side, rather than from the new Muslim political centre outward to Omani lands. Historians have recorded a number of such visits. Ibn Sa‘d, for example, refers to an Omani delegation visiting Mecca in 622 CE following the victory of 7 the Muslims over the Quraysh. Historian and geographer al-Ya‘qubi mentions two separate Omani delegations, from the tribes of Thumala and Hidan, leaving Oman in 622 CE and travelling to Mecca to meet the Prophet to request information on the new religion in order to 8 assist them in the decision to convert. Omani author al-Jahdhmi suggests that the leaders of a number of tribes were sent by the alJulanda rulers of Oman – Jaifar and Abid bin al-Julanda – to request 9 help for Omanis who wanted to learn more about the new religion.

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They may, however, have simply been travelling on behalf of their own tribes, since at that time Oman – like many other Arabian lands at the time – was far from being a centrally directed state, but was rather one in which tribal leaders continued to wield considerable power and exercise a degree of independence in dealings with external forces. Indeed, the Omani historian, Isam al-Rawas, writing on the basis of a late twentieth-century reading of ancient sources, in which he identifies some significant inconsistency, notes that these Omani delegations, like those from Yemen and northern Arabia, were ‘representatives of their 10 clans, or tribes’ rather than of Oman as a whole. So there may have been an element of intra-Omani diplomacy in the composition and action of these early delegations. Eventually, these delegations were reciprocated by the appointment, by the Prophet, of an ambassador to the Omanis, who carried a letter inviting them to convert to Islam. The Prophet’s ambassador to Oman, Amr bin al-As, first entered into discussions with just one of the two al-Julanda brothers, Abd, to whom he presented a letter from the Prophet inviting him to adopt the new religion and to encourage his people to do likewise. Clearly, one factor in the subsequent consultation between Abd and his brother Jaifar was political: the emerging new political and religious power in Mecca and Medina might make a useful ally in efforts to dislodge the Persian occupation of the Omani coast. The consultation process also involved dialogue with tribal leaders in the country, including the leaders of the Azd tribes, as well as with the Omani theologian Ka‘b bin Barsha al-Tahi, a Christian who, according to al-Salimi, had ‘read the books’, and therefore could be expected to offer some scholarly 11 insight into the emergence of this new religion and its Prophet. Eventually, the Omani rulers concluded that accepting the new religion would be in the best interests of their people and converted to Islam. John C. Wilkinson notes that the embrace of Islam by the Julanda did indeed lead to the eviction of the Persians from the Batinah coast, thereby expanding the scope of al-Julanda rule and securing a period 12 of political stability. The embrace of Islam in Oman was thus in part a matter of political decision, although, as al-Rawas points out, this does not imply any 13 lack of conviction regarding the new religion. It was an event that took place not in isolation but in the context of concrete political circumstances, as a matter of negotiation between neighbours, carried out in relation to other neighbours. With the further spread of Islam to other neighbouring peoples, including, eventually, the Persians, a new political order took shape in which diplomacy between its participants

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was no longer just a matter of relations between different political powers, but also a question of negotiations and alliances between members of the same religious community. New principles for interaction and new rationales for solidarity were in play, and new objectives – including, of course, the further spread of the new religion and the cultural and political power associated with it – were formed, and they shaped relations between the various participants in the new political-religious community. Historians record a series of diplomatic events, which we might take to characterise Omani participation in this new community in the years following the death of the Prophet. For instance, Ibn Sa‘d reports that following the death of the Prophet, Asad bin Yabr’ah al-Tahi, one of the leaders of the Tahiay tribe, went to Medina as part of an Omani tribal delegation to participate in the inauguration of the first Muslim caliph, Abu Bakr. Abu Bakr is reported to have met the group and discussed with them aspects of what we would now call Oman’s geostrategic position, in an early indication of the role Oman would play in the external 14 dimensions of the politics of the Arabian Peninsula. It is also reported that when Omani leaders learned about the death of the Prophet, Abd bin al-Julanda himself led a delegation of seventy Omani dignitaries, accompanied by the ambassador Amr bin al-As, to affirm Oman’s full support of the new Muslim leader Abu Bakr. While he was in Medina, Abd took the opportunity to request military support from the Islamic state for a military campaign against some Omani tribes, based in the important port city of Daba, who, in rejecting Islam, were also resisting the authority of the al-Julanda. In a significant indication of the growing alliance between the al-Julanda of Oman and the central state, Abu Bakr sent a force of Muslim troops, which confronted and defeated the forces mobilised in defence of Daba – thus, as in the earlier expulsion of the Persians from Sohar, further consolidating al15 Julanda rule over coastal Oman. In what might perhaps be understood as a reciprocal action, Omanis participated in other Muslim military actions against groups who were continuing to resist or reject Islam. For instance, Abd bin al-Julanda himself led the Muslim troops 16 against the al-Jafna tribe in Arabia. Oman’s political, military and cultural role in the affairs of the Islamic state developed further during the reign of the second Islamic caliph, ‘Umar bin al-Khattab, with Omani maritime expertise making a crucial contribution to its expansion. Under ‘Umar, the Islamic state expanded at an unprecedented rate, annexing the whole Sassanid Persian Empire and more than two-thirds of the Eastern Roman

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Empire. The role of Omanis in this process was very much an Indian Ocean affair. Historian al-Baladhiri reports that when the Caliph ‘Umar sent his commander Uthman bin Abi al-As to head a force of mainly Omani troops to conquer Sind, leaders of the Omani force convinced Uthman and the caliph – who were not accustomed to travelling by sea – that the use of the sea route was essential if they 17 were to have any chance of a successful mission. According to the Omani genealogist and historian al-Awtabi, Caliph ‘Umar, convinced of the value of a maritime dimension to Muslim conquest, ordered Uthman to ‘take the Omani troops from Julfar [now Ras al-Khaimah in the northern part of the UAE] to the southern part of the Persian Gulf, cross the sea and end the rebellious activities of the Persians 18 against the Islamic State’. It appears that some Omanis who participated in Muslim military actions against the Persians subsequently chose to live in newly conquered lands in Persia, particularly in Basra, which had already come under the control of Arab tribes, including the Azd. One of these new inhabitants of Basra was Ka‘b bin Sur from the Azd tribe of Oman, who was appointed by Caliph ‘Umar 19 as the first Muslim judge to serve in Basra. In the early years of the caliphate, then, we can see Omani rulers in alliance with their new coreligionists in Arabia successfully securing their interests in consolidating their control over key coastal regions, while also supporting the further extension of the power of the Muslim state in the peninsula. We can also see Oman’s geostrategic location and established history of maritime trade adding a new dimension to the military forces of the Muslim conquest, enabling the spread of Islam east across the Indian Ocean to the Indus Valley. Further, we see the beginnings of an Omani presence in formerly Persian Basra, which would shortly be the site for the emergence of the Ibadi movement and would come to play a significant role in successive Omani states. Rather than present an extended history of the movement, which can be read elsewhere, we will instead turn to those features of Ibadism that it may be fruitful to consider in relation to the development of 20 diplomatic practice in Oman. There are five that seem of particular relevance here: (1) anti-absolutism, (2) abstention from political violence, (3) tolerant anti-sectarianism, (4) the practice of ‘secrecy’ (kitman), and (5) the concept of wuquf (reservation). It is our suggestion that although these ideas and practices have their origins in the early history of Ibadism, they are broadly shared in such a way as to make them part of Omani culture, rather than being a set of beliefs and practices that are relevant only to Ibadis.

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Because of the origins of Ibadism among the Muhakkima – the groups that opposed Caliph Uthman bin Affan (644–56) and the succession of Muawiya in 661, whom they regarded as a tyrant – Ibadis align themselves explicitly against tyranny, or, in more contemporary terms, against the exercise of both absolute and illegitimate power (and, as a result, strict dynastic succession). In the Ibadi political tradition, the leader of the community – the imam – must be chosen by means of a process of consultation involving prominent members of the community, and their collective decision (which takes the form of a consensus rather than a majority vote) should also be approved by the wider community. In practice, the absence of formal mechanisms for establishing the views of the wider community usually meant that their probable views would be among the factors taken into consideration by the decision-making group. These principles extend across a range of processes: from the election of the imam – and since the death of Ahmad bin Said of the sultan too – to traditional leadership roles in local communities. Thus, shura (consultation) is truly enmeshed in many spheres of Omani life and, as a consequence, some degree of tension results between communitybased processes of political representation embedded in interpersonal relations of mutual dependency, on the one hand, and state-led processes of administration, such as in the appointment of walis and other public officials, on the other. In modern-day Oman, the development of such government institutions as Majlis Ash’Shura (Consultative Council) and Majlis A’Dowla (State Council) also require ongoing negotiations of this tension. We may therefore expect to see evidence in the practice of Omani diplomacy of an interplay between the use of interpersonal and social relations and the use of formal or institutional structures. Indeed, one might suggest that this interplay is precisely what characterises the work of diplomats more generally. Among the groups that emerged in opposition to the Umayyad succession, those that eventually became known as the Ibadis are generally regarded as having been ‘quietist’. That is to say that, unlike the Khawarij, they did not recognise an obligation to take up arms against an unjust ruler. Further, even today they are enjoined only to take up arms against those who take up arms against them. Among these quietist groups, it was and remains permitted to live among Muslims of different persuasions, rather than, as the Khawarij would insist, to treat them as idolators in a land of war (dar al-harb), enter into jihad (struggle) against them, and forbid marriage with or inheritance from them. In all these respects the early Ibadis saw themselves

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as adhering to established tradition, and the Khawarij as introducing innovations that the Ibadis regarded as errors. This is why Ibadis emphasise that they are not viewed as simply a subset of the Kharijite movement: the implications of Khariji thought and practice are predominantly viewed as sectarian, and working in the interests of conflict and division. Ibadi ‘quietism’ therefore extends from the abstention from violence into a more general attitude of tolerant anti-sectarianism. It is this that Omanis tend to insist upon, rather than upon the specific content of Ibadi thought or doctrine. This reticence, which works strongly against proselytising (Ibadis tend not to seek to convert), may also be considered as a cultural legacy of the early Ibadi practice of kitman – an idea or doctrine that appears to have been recommended by the man generally seen as the intellectual and religious founder of Ibadism, Jabir bin Zaid, who, according to alNami, developed four principal policies for the Ibadi community in Basra during its early years of opposition to the Umayyad caliphate: Firstly, to avoid any open clash with the authorities and to maintain friendly relations with the rulers. Secondly, not to isolate the members of the movement from the Muslim community (ummah). Thirdly, to continue teaching people Traditions and Futya [legal opinion] regardless of whether they were members of his movement or not. Fourthly, since Jabir was intent on maintaining the security of the movement by carrying out part of its activities in secret, and by keeping the members of the organisation unknown to the rulers, he took a strong attitude against those who 21 disclosed the names of the members to the ‘tyrants’.

The idea that it may be appropriate and even necessary to conceal one’s religious allegiance is of course antithetical to those forms of Islam that insist upon public affirmations of faith and belonging, or on projects aimed at converting non-believers. The idea of kitman may therefore be understood as providing further theological underpinnings for a religious practice that does not insist upon the rights or responsibilities of its adherents to promote their beliefs or to intervene politically on the basis of religious conviction. Kitman thus tends to reinforce the tolerant anti-sectarian qualities of Islam in Oman, as well as tendencies towards tact and discretion. Here again we can observe a convergence of religious tradition, social conduct and diplomatic practice. The concept of wuquf would seem to make a similar contribution, in that it designates a third condition or state of relation to others on the part of believers, in addition to those of walayah (love, fraternity,

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unity with other Muslims) and bara’a (excommunication). As al-Nami explains, ‘if a believer is not certain with regard to the deeds or faith of a person, he must abstain from passing judgement on him until he 22 becomes sure of these.’ Wuquf, then, constitutes a state of reservation: judgement is withheld, or reserved. One takes care to be in possession of the full facts before, for example, entering into relations of bara’a. The suspension of judgement encourages attitudes of tolerance, and mitigates strongly against fanaticism. The conviction, widely held among Omanis, that their religious practice is characterised by tolerance, moderation and a tactful non-sectarianism can clearly be traced to aspects of Ibadi thought, even though we would not wish to claim that contemporary social and political actions are governed by a conscious adherence to these values or ideas. Their influence may rather be attributed to the way that such ideas, carried out in everyday social interactions, constitute an embodied practice or a disposition towards others and the world. POLITENESS

Observing the way in which ideas find their realisation in embodied action is crucial, then, to developing an understanding of how everyday social interactions contribute to the practice of diplomacy. We have seen how political–theological concepts arising out of Ibadi thought can shape behaviours and attitudes and express themselves in action. The traffic also flows in the reverse direction, in that those behaviours and actions also constitute a kind of implicit theory of interpersonal relations that can inform the development of principles for the conduct of diplomacy and the formulation of foreign policy. In this section we explore further that distinctive feature of Omani social practice that Fredrik Barth has called ‘ideology of politeness’, in which tact and tolerance manifest themselves even more acutely in certain social graces, namely the practice of seeking to place the other before oneself, as well as the sense of personal honour attached to avoidance of public expression of disagreement, criticism or disapproval. For Barth, these ‘common [shared between Oman’s different communities] ideals of poise, grace and politeness play significant roles in muting 23 divisions and sustaining relationships’. For some Omanis such practices are both functional and aesthetic. As tolerance moves towards grace, it couples with a marked preference for immaculate self-presentation (how, amid the sand and dust of the desert that is never far away, even in the heart of Muscat, do Omani men keep their

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dishdashas so spotlessly white?); as a result, social interaction takes on decorative and playful features. One might even suggest that the ability to contrive ever more elaborate ways of performing one’s own modesty in relation to others constitutes a form of social and personal wit. We are in a waiting room at Salalah Airport before a flight back to Muscat. The flight number is called to begin boarding. We are travelling with a fairly senior government official and a member of a highly respected Omani family, and, even though we are already in a VIP waiting room at the airport, the three or four other passengers there immediately start to insist that our companion should precede them onto the plane. He demurs politely. They insist. There ensues a delicate choreography of persuasion after which our companion eventually gives way and allows himself to be thrust forward to board the plane first. Once we are all seated on the plane we remark upon this episode and our companion assures us that this was only a very brief and minor version of what can sometimes occur. He admits that he usually gives in sooner than many people, and says that he has witnessed at least one such episode in which the plane has taken off with men still on the ground trying to insist that someone else should go first. Indeed, few people who have spent any amount of time in Omani social settings – public or private, formal or informal – will not have witnessed similar events, involving a complex (and to the visitor only partly legible) set of conventions of relation and interaction regarding seniority, family and other sources of honour and privilege. On many such occasions these events will involve the man whom the consensus in the room designates most deserving of honour and respect resisting his companions’ efforts to place him in the most prestigious seat, until he is physically compelled – often pulled by the arm – and eventually succumbs to his place. We are invited to an event at the Sultan Qaboos Mosque in Muscat, part of a programme of cultural and intellectual presentations organised by the Sultan Qaboos Centre for Islamic Culture. We arrive at the mosque and on entering a kind of lobby find ourselves gracefully intercepted by an immaculately dressed gentleman who is welcoming guests to the event. To our surprise, having greeted us, he escorts us into an adjoining room, rather than into the hall in which the event itself is to take place, which turns out to be the room in which the most ‘important’ guests will be waiting before being ushered into the hall as the event begins. Our

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presence here is circumstantial; it seems to have nothing to do with who we actually are, but is due rather to the fact that the most gracious assumption to be made, in the circumstances, is that we are the kind of people who ought to be accommodated in this way. By the same token, of course, the only gracious response to such hospitality, on our part, is to accept. Thus, in this waiting room at the Grand Mosque, the ritual of etiquette and hospitality is again played out, as it is in any majlis or domestic space in which guests are received in Oman. Part of this ritual involves an elaborate exchange of greetings, as well, which is repeated with each new arrival. Such exchanges are particularly intricate in Oman and count among the features of Omani daily life that residents of other Gulf countries regard as examples of Oman’s old-fashioned character. While the younger generation, points out Peter Emery in his analysis of Omani greeting conventions, has generally adopted a ‘classicised’ Arabic in which informal interactions with one another tend ‘considerably to reduce the greeting’, even they, in formal situations, continue to participate fully in the elaborate ritual. Emery breaks this exchange down into four phases. The first consists in a summons (asalaamu ‘alaykum) and its standard reply (wa’aleykum salaam); the second, unidirectional (from the senior host to the visitor) health enquiries, which also elicit standard responses that are not really intended to convey answers or to take the questions as actual questions; the third phase involves what Emery calls ‘ritualised news enquiry’, again, in which no actual news is discussed; and the fourth is a final phase in which real news may be communicated. The first three phases may be concluded by the host with an invitation to the visitor to reverse the direction of the questions, so that all three phases are thus repeated in a sequence that can last about five 24 minutes. The importance of this non-referential greeting ritual, especially among Omani bedouin, is illustrated by way of the story told to us in Oman of a man travelling in the desert interior who encounters a bedouin, engages in greetings, and then continues on his way only to realise that he has failed to complete the sequence. He turns back in horror to see that his bedouin interlocutor has not moved an inch and is patiently waiting for him to return and complete the exchange. He walks back and asks, as expected, ‘What’s the news’? The bedouin replies, ‘There is no news’, and departs. Emery offers a preliminary attempt to account for the importance of even such ‘semantically empty’ interactions in terms of social relations:

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especially among nomadic people, the ritual itself allows each 25 respective party to evaluate the other’s ‘role relationships’; that is, to assess their status relative to one another, and therefore to work out how to behave should the encounter continue. In conversation with Omani acquaintances we have explored this proposition a little further, developing the idea that such formulae of politeness are of particular importance in a culture that has a strong interest in managing difference, in which the appearance of strangers is a frequent event and in which it is not always immediately apparent whether any given stranger may be a friend or a potential adversary. The development and maintenance of politeness formulae of this kind may thus be attributable to a particular combination, in Oman, of regular encounters with strangers from outside Oman and a history of tribal conflict within. Wariness and possible antagonism is carefully masked by an elaborate but formulaic courtesy that gives the parties the chance to assure each other of their identities while at the same time creating a formal space of interaction in which any latent tendency towards conflict can, if the parties tacitly agree to it, be suspended. Both of the episodes just described alongside our own encounter with the Omani Arabic greeting ritual constitute prime examples of what Barth has called Oman’s ‘ideology of politeness’. Building on Barth’s descriptions and analysis, we suggest that these social practices – negotiations of status and identity in terms of relation – constitute a distinctive mode of Omani diplomacy. Although Barth, as an anthropologist, is hesitant about developing a theory of historical causality from his study of ‘the present’, he is prepared to propose that the evidence ‘suggests the historical genesis of patterns of interactional and participatory competance [sic] that characterize the male residents 26 of Sohar’. It appears, then, that these practices, which are deeply rooted in the culture of everyday life, have indeed arisen from specific historical and geographical conditions. Perhaps these conditions include the convergence, within one cultural space, of a bedouin way of life in which social identifiers are few and unclear, and an urban cosmopolitanism in which differences of language, religion and ethnicity are under continual negotiation. THE FALAJ SYSTEM

Another particular condition that may contribute to the generation of the Omani culture of diplomacy is the reality of water scarcity; a matter of basic survival, throughout history it has necessitated the

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careful management of relations with others. Perhaps one of the most striking ways in which the specific geographical, economic and social conditions of Omani life may be seen to have shaped modern Omani sensibility, is through the falaj irrigation system. It is typical of Omani diplomacy not to regard any situation in terms of a zero-sum game. The object of a diplomatic negotiation, for an Omani diplomat, tends to be to find a solution that accommodates everyone, rather than to pursue a solution in which one side gains at the expense of another. The depth of this conviction, observable in foreign policy decisionmaking today, and in conversation with present-day Omani diplomats, can be attributable in part to the social attitudes formed by the demands of the falaj system, as well as to the insistence upon consensus wrapped up in the Omani understanding of shura. We shall see this preference for consensus in diplomacy in a number of modern examples of the conduct of Omani foreign policy in Part III of this book. The falaj system has been and remains a fundamental component of settlement and development in Oman. Falaj (plural: aflaj) is the Omani term for an underground canal, known more commonly in Arabic as a qanat, but taking different local names in the many locations where such canals have been used (ghayl or minyan in Yemen, for example; foggara and khettara in the Maghreb; kharez in Afghanistan, Central 27 Asia and Iran). The falaj takes the form of a gently sloping underground passage designed to allow water to flow from a well sunk into an aquifer above the land to a settlement that is going to use the water. When ground water seeps into the aquifer the force of gravity sends water through the canal so that it eventually emerges into a canal on the surface, which can be some miles from the source. Not only is a falaj an essential source of irrigation and land cultivation (it is estimated that aflaj supplied 70 per cent of the water used in Oman as recently as 1980), it is also a significant factor in defining and shaping 28 Oman’s socio-economic structure and community relations. The origins of the falaj system have been the object of some scholarly debate, but the general consensus is that they were first developed in Iran and were introduced to the region during the Iron Age, ‘as a result of the trans-location of skilled individuals capable of their construction, either through general migration or selected 29 recruitment’. The aflaj of Oman are widely believed, according to popular tradition, to have been built by the jinn of prophet Suleiman bin Daoud. Wilkinson draws on the prevalence of this myth to 30 support a theory that the falaj system is of Persian origin, which is

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also supported by archaeological evidence of Persian Achaemenid settlements in Oman. More relevant than the question of the origins of the system, however, at least for the present purposes, is the way in which the organisation of its use has shaped social interaction in Oman. Managing and utilising a valuable resource such as a falaj requires assets, organisation and cooperation. The method by which the system is structured is highly sophisticated. Administering the falaj system requires, to start with, technical skills to identify the location of the underground water (the aquifer), and subsequently to construct the canal and maintain it. Expertise in locating the ‘umm of the falaj (that is, its source) lies traditionally, even today, with the al-Awamer tribe from Qal‘it al-‘Awamer, in the town of Izki. But perhaps the aspect of managing the falaj system most central to a discussion of diplomacy relates to the distribution of water shares. Most aflaj are privately owned, and as private property they can be sold, leased or mortgaged. Each falaj has a wakil, that is, a legal agent or trustee, who is chosen by agreement among the locals. The sheikh of the area calls upon ‘ahl al-ra’i, or people of opinion, to consult them about electing a wakil. The criteria for selection include being mobile and available to travel, as well as being able to demonstrate a genuine commitment to the needs of the falaj. When the group agrees on choosing a wakil, the sheikh of the community then draws up on their behalf a formal letter to the court or to the Ministry of Awqaf and Religious Affairs, proposing the appointment, and subsequently granting the wakil power of attorney over the falaj. The mechanism of water distribution is made on the basis of al‘Athar, a measurement of time unit, in this case half an hour, measured by al-‘amud, a sundial, or at night by the stars. Another time unit is called al-Badda and it is equal to around twenty-four units of ‘Athar, equal to twelve hours. All users of the falaj water know when their turn falls due, and users are therefore able to arrive at the location of al-Suwar, a wooden device that diverts the flow of water from one channel to another, shortly before it is due to divert the flow of water to their mal, the term used in Oman for an area of cultivated land in private ownership. The amount of Badda or ‘Athar allocated to any individual or family depends on the size and water needs of their farm or dwelling. The wakil of the falaj keeps a record of the names of people benefiting from the falaj, how many units of ‘Athar or Badda each user has been allocated, and the details of any water trade that has

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taken place in the village or town. These details are stored in the falaj daftar, or falaj book. The trade in water can involve the selling, buying, mortgaging or ‘Stiq‘ad, also called Q‘ada, that is, leasing. Annual dates of Q‘ada, called Yom al-‘Stiq‘ad, the lease day, vary from one falaj to another. A local broker, known as al-Dallal, announces the date of the event, which usually falls on a Friday morning so that local people can be relied upon to be available to attend. The broker runs the annual event as a kind of auction in which bargaining and negotiation take place over price. The revenues of a local mal, wholly or partly, are donated to the falaj every year. Funds are maintained by a trustee for small-scale maintenance work or other falaj expenses that serve the community. One might think that water distribution would be a potential cause of conflict and dissatisfaction among users – and they are indeed the cause of major diplomatic disputes in the international community today (particularly in the Middle East) – especially in the absence of formal legal contracts governing rights and responsibilities. But contemporary falaj users agree that these practices are established tradition, and that people respect and adhere to them as strictly as they would were they governed by more formal legal means. The fact that this highly structured collectivist system has persisted throughout the modern period and continues to exist in the present suggests that it is internalised as a social practice and as characteristic of Omani culture. It is this internalisation that seems typical of the way in which such social practices enter into the sphere of political or diplomatic action; it also seems to account, at least in part, for the marked tendency of Omani diplomacy, even today, to seek agreement through conversation, reciprocity and mutual respect, as well as for a continued attachment in Omani society more generally, to selfregulating social reciprocity in tension with contractual administration on the part of the state. We shall see again, much later in this book, how today’s Omani diplomats actually refer directly to the falaj system as a basis for their approach to diplomatic activity. It is not just an unconscious influence on Omani diplomacy: it is clearly held up as a model for the kind of consensual, dialogue-based approach to foreign policy that characterises the work of Omanis in the field. It has also made possible the development in Oman of a predominantly urban culture, in which the interaction with one’s neighbours in relations of close proximity is considered an important social responsibility for everyone.

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HADAR SOCIALITY

When we write about urban culture in Oman, we refer not only to large cities – which are few and only of relatively recent origin – but rather to small towns, which constitute the principal form of organised dwelling in the country, and have done so for centuries. Towns of this kind are places that bring together people engaged in a range of activities: they tend to centre around markets and create opportunities for inhabitants (and visitors) to take part in complex interactions with one another, in order to preserve and develop their quality of life. In addition, many of Oman’s most significant towns are coastal, often port towns, and have therefore been the key nodes for the integration of Oman into wider circuits of exchange and interaction, especially those of the Indian Ocean discussed in Chapter 1. This is particularly important in Oman’s case, and in thinking about the relationship between the domestic culture of diplomacy and the application of diplomacy in a broader sphere. But, as we have already suggested, too much may be made of the coast–interior dichotomy, particularly when thinking about how practices of everyday life might contribute to Oman’s culture of diplomacy. For the pervasiveness of urban culture extends right through the towns and villages of the interior, allowing values that some have termed ‘coastal’ to permeate the culture more broadly. This longstanding and widespread urban culture has established the networks in which social practices we might associate with diplomacy – managing relations with others – have been and continue to be developed and maintained. An Omani bedouin from the interior defines the meaning of this urban culture thus: ‘Hadar people are civilisation; they are present in a land, they will never desert it’. The word hadar, also hadir, is used to refer to the inhabitants of the urban or semi-urban places described above – those who live along the coasts and in towns or villages near oases and rivers. The word ‘urban’ in the sense used here does not connote metropolitan life as we understand it in a modern sense (that is, as life in large cities), but rather a way of life based on permanent settlement, with all the complexities of social interaction that it entails. Hadari communities work in agriculture, fishing or trade. Hadara, in Arabic, means ‘to arrive’, and also ‘to arrive in a place’; al-Hadir refers to the community that arrives in an area with water and settles permanently there. Thus, al-Hadara implies a non-bedouin style of life, viewed by its participants as characterised by civility and refinement.

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It is possible that this polarity of distinction between the hadar and bedouins is related to the habitat. In a land that is predominantly arid or semi-arid, life revolves around water and, therefore, only two types of lifestyles are considered possible, either one that involves settlement near a water source, or one that is nomadic and in constant search for water and grazing. As a result, small-town, agricultural Oman, fishingvillage Oman and trading-city Oman all share a sense of cultural continuity, as hadar. This means, effectively, that even a small village conceives of its culture as the same as that of the city – as urban, refined and potentially cosmopolitan. In turn, we suggest, approaches to social interaction that assume at least a degree of cosmopolitan contact and potential are consistent to a surprising degree in widely differing Omani locations: an Omani diplomat is as likely to come from a small oasis town in the interior as from a major trading city like Sohar or Muscat, and to share similar hadar values. The spaces – both public and private – in which Omani society functions, and the nature of the networks through which social organisation in Oman is practised and understood, are also key factors in understanding the mentality and values associated with Omani diplomacy. We might summarise the characteristics of the mentality shaped by social spaces and social networks as one in which a high degree of importance is placed upon the preservation and cultivation of social relationships. This gives rise to a strong tendency to assume reciprocal responsibilities for the well-being of an extended group of people, and to value hospitality very highly. In the adaptation of traditional structures to modern conditions, it becomes increasingly important to imagine, facilitate and sustain connections and contacts in spite of the spatial and temporal disruptions associated with modern Omani life. This includes interesting adaptations of traditional patterns of family life and association to the demands of a modern economy in which business and professional activity has been increasingly focused around the capital city. The neighbourly sociality of hadar culture has come under some pressure, perhaps ironically but not surprisingly, from the nature of the latest phase of urbanisation in Oman, manifest in the disproportionate expansion of the capital area in Muscat relative to the rest of the country. Oman has witnessed major urban change in the period following the accession of Sultan Qaboos in 1970. Muscat has experienced this change more thoroughly and dramatically than any other Omani town or city, and the impact of the growth of Muscat on the social fabric of the country as a whole has been significant, to say

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the least. Historically, Muscat was a commercial port town with a main harbour and a cosmopolitan market centre in Muttrah, mainly inhabited by small communities of Indian merchants, Persians, as well as Omani Arabs, Lawatis and Baluchis. The capital city underwent significant urban development in the post-1970 era, primarily because of its role as the political and administrative centre of the Sultanate of Oman. Indeed, in the period prior to 1970, even the relatively limited political and administrative functions of government operated outside Muscat, as a result of Sultan Said bin Taimur’s preference for residing in Salalah. Although development has affected all areas of Oman, the pattern of urban and social development experienced in Muscat differs considerably from that in other cities. A key aspect of this change has been the choice made by a large number of Muscat’s Omani workforce to commute weekly to and from their home towns, which may be seen as expressing a marked preference for maintaining the networks of hadari sociality. The capital city’s central location within relatively easy reach of smaller towns and villages in the Batinah, the Sharqiyah and the Dakhliyah facilitates weekly travel to and from home towns where the families of many urban professionals continue to reside. Although economic factors may contribute in some cases to decisions to remain in home towns, the main motive appears socio-cultural, premised upon the maintenance of continuity in familial relations, primarily, but also of those with neighbours. Even among young professionals who set up home independently in Muscat, ties to home towns and family constitute a very important part of regular social life, and such young Omanis continue to take very seriously their responsibilities to the family network, even where weekly returns to the home town are no longer part of routine life. Such young Muscat-based professionals (and, indeed, professionals working further afield and abroad) continue to prioritise family commitments during holiday periods and religious festivals. This trend suggests that, despite the impact of this latest phase of Oman’s urbanisation and the economic demands of contemporary life, the social structure is largely perceived in terms of continuity with the past (including their own childhoods, in the case of today’s young professionals), and that the structure is still based on close-knit social connections, in which the family serves as the core unit for social interaction. The design of the Omani home offers further insight into the nature of Omani social life. There are some variations with regard to functions depending on the region, but Omani homes generally share

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one basic architecture. Houses on the Batinah coast, for example, often house boat and fishing equipment under structures built with date palm leaves. Most houses will have spaces for cattle – usually an annex or separate room, if the farm is in the vicinity of the house. Houses are generally either attached or lie within close proximity to each other. Most will not have windows overlooking alleyways, but indoor rooms will have windows overlooking the courtyard or the farm, preserving privacy for the household. The main entrance is usually small and opens up to a large courtyard where the majlis is located, a room usually furnished simply, tailored for formal visitors. ‘Majlis’ means ‘the place of sitting’; the majlis serves as the formal meeting venue. In most cases, formal visitors will be men. Local visitors may include women, and while male visitors will sit together in the majlis, women typically meet in one of the main rooms inside. In addition to the majlis, the house will likely include a kitchen, often located midway between the majlis and the private rooms of the house, allowing women to use the kitchen in privacy. A sitting room usually used by the women of the house will also serve as the meeting room for female visitors. A newly married son will either have an annex built or have his room reconditioned as a one- or two-bedroom flat, while the kitchen will be shared with the rest of the family. It is not unusual for many sons’ families to share one house and its kitchen with their parents. In the Dakhliyah region in particular, the household itself serves as the social space of the family, where daily activities and socialisation take place within the walls and courtyard of the spacious family house. In villages along the coast of al-Batinah, on the other hand, it is very common to find women and men gathering in groups outside the front door of a house to socialise, where privacy extends beyond the courtyard of the house to the territorial vicinity. Modern Omani detached houses found in Muscat, and also among the more affluent in other towns, typically consist of two storeys, and some feature the majlis as an annex to the courtyard. The design of the house therefore caters both to privacy for the family and as public space for social and family gatherings. The continued retention of this separation testifies both to the enduring importance of the family as a core social sphere, and to the priority placed upon providing hospitality for visitors and space for a form of public social interaction, which is seen as both part of and separate from the family sphere. In this respect, the conception of the public/private distinction is radically different from that familiar in modern Western societies: the distinction is at one and the same time

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less clear – public socialisation takes place within the walls of the private house or its extensions – and more clear – the fact of separation is inscribed within the very architectural form itself. Social interaction still relies, then, on family and relatives. Kinship ties are permanent, all the more so when they are limited to one geographical location. Marriage is seen as union between two kin groups rather than just two individuals. The idea of kinship relations as central to social interaction in Oman might suggest a society that is somewhat inward looking. However, the reverse is in fact the case. As in the case of the house, in which public and private spaces are adjacent to one another within the same building, and where, therefore, public social interaction with non-family members takes place inside the family home, the Omani family is an inclusive social form. Not only does the extended family still predominate over the kind of nuclear family now familiar in many Western societies, but also it is clear that Omanis readily think and speak of other people, even when they are unrelated, in kinship terms. This suggests an approach to social relations in which everyone is imagined to be interrelated. Far from being a closed and exclusive concept, the family turns out to be a model for wide networks of mutual support and reciprocal responsibilities. SHURA

The fifth and final feature of Oman’s culture of diplomacy to which we wish to draw attention is shura. In many ways it is the practice of shura that best expresses the combination of those cultural and historical features of Omani life that we have already discussed here. In shura – the practice of consultation that characterises social relations and decision-making both in everyday life and in the more specialised realms of politics and diplomacy – Islamic tradition, hadar sociality, cooperation in the management of water resources and the maintenance of harmonious social relations by way of an aesthetic ideology of politeness may be said to intertwine. Shura is therefore a principle through which the relationship between practices of everyday life and those of the political world of international relations and diplomacy may be understood. For, as we shall argue here, because shura contributes to decision-making processes taking place at the most local level (as we have seen, already, for example, in the discussion of falaj management) as well as to such matters as the Omani nation’s choice of ruler, it may be seen as a form of

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transmission, in which the conduct of élite political life remains geared, in unwritten but profoundly embodied ways, to the conduct of routine social interactions. The practice of shura is twice recommended in the Qur’an, and a wide range of modern and contemporary Muslim thinkers have argued that it should be taken as the basis for the conduct of social and political affairs by Muslims. In the latter part of the twentieth century considerable attention was paid to the extent to which the principle and practice of shura might be the basis for democratic politics in Muslim nations. As John L. Esposito and James P. Piscatori have noted, in a survey of such considerations: Muslim interpretations of democracy build on the well-established Quranic concept of shura (consultation), but place varying emphases on the extent to which ‘the people’ are able to exercise this duty. One school of thought argues that Islam is inherently democratic not only because of the principle of consultation, but also because of the concepts of ijtihad (independent 31 reasoning) and ijma’ (consensus).

In the particular context of Oman, where the influence of Ibadi thought and practice is so strong, ijtihad is held to be desirable, whereas in most countries where Sunni thought predominates, this is far less the case. Furthermore, while there are debates within Muslim thought over the precise meaning of the Qur’anic references to the practice, and thus over whether shura is mandatory, the legacy of Ibadism – which emphasises the selection of the imam by the community rather than predetermined succession – gives shura a distinctive political force and resonance. A leading Omani scholar of shura concludes, accordingly: Islam has made consultation mandatory in principle, but Muslims are not obliged to do just as the prophet did. Instead the principle of consultation is to be developed according to the specific circumstances of a given society. In brief: in the modern Islamic state, Shura must be practised and 32 developed.

The last point is perhaps crucial: not only is shura mandatory, but the principle of ijtihad requires that its application should not simply be a matter of reproducing the practices of the first Muslim community, but that, instead, the Muslim community of today should take shura as a principle, and actively develop its use in the modern political situation. The particular combination, then, of Ibadi political custom, prevailing attitudes to ijtihad and the deep social embeddedness of practices in which the principle of shura seems

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repeatedly to be realised, gives substance to a variety of arguments about the centrality of shura to Omani life. For Uzi Rabi, ‘the Ibadhis identified themselves, inter alia, as ahl al-shura (men of consultation) on the basis of the election principle that separated them from other Islamic sects’: this idea captures the sense that the principle lives in the 33 bodies of those who practise it. Recent writing on Oman’s political development, including our own, has tended, to varying degrees, to emphasise that shura does play a particularly significant role. Perhaps the most ambitious claims for shura are made by Hussein Ghubash, who argues that ‘Ibadi adherence to shura within the imama at times when other Muslim societies seemed to have let it lapse makes Oman’s the longest democratic 34 experience in the history of mankind.’ He resists, however, the temptation, seemingly implicit in such a claim, of a comparison with Western democracy, which ‘would be as demeaning, as it would be 35 anachronistic’. In this light, the use of the term ‘democratic’ seems to be trying to mean more than it means: Ghubash wants to claim Omani shura as ‘democratic’ while dissociating it from the very ‘democracy’ with which this term associates it. This claim seems to depend upon ‘Western democracy’ being understood as a subset of a broader category of ‘the democratic’, in which the practice of shura also figures. This is potentially fruitful, in that it seeks to detach the principle of democracy from its specific and presumably modern ‘Western’ form, and to insist on the local specificity and political legitimacy of other forms of political organisation. However, it has the unfortunate effect of seeming to make misleading claims about the nature of Omani politics, suggesting, at least on the face of it, that there is an unbroken tradition of ‘democratic’ political practice in Oman; that its political leadership has always derived its legitimacy from shura; and, by implication, that Oman already possesses a complete ‘democratic’ polity. As Sheikh Aflah al-Rawahy’s emphasis on practice and development clearly indicates, this is not the case: instead, shura is the principle according to which further political development, which may well be democratic in character, might take place. In our own earlier discussion of the role of shura in what we called Oman’s ‘democratic development’, we argued that because shura involves the pursuit of consensus (as Esposito and Piscatori had also noted), it actually offers a rather different model for political behaviour and decision-making from those available in most Western democratic polities. Consensus involves everyone in the consultation

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reaching agreement, rather than the views of a majority prevailing automatically. We suggested that this approach to decision making, which prevails in the home and the village as well as in the formal political institutions of the wilayat and the nation, is different from the more antagonistic approach managed within Western democracies, where it is possible, within the rules of the social and political game, to leave a consultative process agreeing to accept the view of the majority but reserving one’s right to disagree with the decision reached. In the Omani framework of shura the idea that a course of action might be followed if only a majority agree to it remains problematic: it will only be 36 the right course of action if it commands a full consensus.

In the context of the present discussion of Omani culture and its manifestation in diplomatic practice, two points need emphasis. The first is that this commitment to discussions in which all parties leave satisfied with the decision may be understood as foundational for Omani diplomatic practice, which, as we shall show in a variety of contexts throughout this book, never regards a diplomatic process as a zero-sum game. The objective of a diplomacy informed by shura is to achieve outcomes with which everyone is content, rather than solutions in which one party secures a victory at the expense of another. The second point – and it is, of course, related – is that this pursuit of consensus also tends towards the suppression of antagonism and dissent and the promotion of high levels of social cohesion. Indeed, shura might be understood as a kind of social adhesive, used not only to resolve disputes but also to sustain a sense of neighbourhood solidarity. In a local community it is customary to consult one’s neighbours extensively over all kinds of family or individual decisions, not simply to win approval (which may not be practically necessary, in any case), but rather to indicate the regard in which the feelings and opinions of one’s neighbour are held. When disputes occur there are long-established processes of mediation, some of which have been gradually formalised in government-run bodies but which have their origins and continue to be actualised today in the traditional sabla meetings. Sabla attendees frequently offer advice over how a conflict might be resolved, and work to contain disagreement. In recent years the government has facilitated the establishment of compromise and reconciliation committees in the different wilayats of Oman, drawing on these traditions of social conflict resolution. This adaptation of traditional social behaviours into semi-formal government structures is another example of the ongoing effort to

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reconcile social practice with administrative institutions. It might also be seen as a parallel to the way in which these behaviours have shaped the conduct of Omani diplomats. Coming from a culture in which conciliation and conflict resolution are part and parcel of everyday life, Omani diplomats enjoy a heritage that provides them with skills and experience of very direct relevance to their professional life. What Fredrik Barth has characterised as the ‘ideology of politeness’ we suggest might better be understood – in full recognition of its embodied and almost unconscious practice – as a diplomatic ‘habitus’. For Pierre Bourdieu, who developed the idea of ‘habitus’ in extensive sociological studies of subjects ranging from Algerian Berber communities to French academic life, ‘habitus’ is ‘embodied history, internalized as second nature and so forgotten as history – [it] is the 37 active presence of the whole past of which it is the product’. It is ‘what makes it possible to inhabit institutions, to appropriate them practically, and so to keep them in activity, continuously pulling them from the state of dead letters, reviving the sense deposited in them, but at the same time imposing the revisions and transformations that 38 reactivation entails’. So, for the Omani diplomat, whose everyday social behaviours are shaped by the conventions and aesthetics of politeness and by repeated participation in social activities designed to make life harmonious, a particular ‘habitus’ underpins their interactions and decisions. It is not simply a matter of consciously behaving in conformity with a set of beliefs or ideas, which is what the term ‘ideology’ tends to suggest. It is, instead, a way of being in the social world, not bound by the past – for Bourdieu ‘habitus’ both shapes and allows new experiences to reshape behaviour – but certainly carrying the sedimented history of years of social interaction into every new situation. It is this idea – that a whole set of attitudes (in the sense of values, preferences, even ideologies) might be carried in the ‘attitude’ (in the sense of the social bearing, posture, demeanour, speech) of an individual – that makes it possible to claim, as we do here, that a distinctive shared culture of diplomacy can develop, as ‘second nature’ to its various practitioners. Notes 01 02 03 04

Fredrik Barth, Sohar, pp. 81–93. Ibid., p. 85. John C. Wilkinson, The Imamate Tradition of Oman, p. 69. Mandana Limbert, In the Time of Oil, p. 135.

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Barth, Sohar, p. 99. Ibid., p. 254. Abu ‘Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Sa‘d, al-Tabaqat al-Kubra. Ahmad b. Abu Ya‘qub al-Ya‘qubi, Tarikh al-Ya‘qubi, p. 79. Zayd b. Suliman b. ‘Abdullah al-Jahdhmi, Hyat Oman al-Fikriya hta Nihayat al-Imama al-Ula 134 AH, p. 57. Isam al-Rawas, Oman in Early Islamic History, p. 38. Abdulrahman Al-Salimi, Tuhfat al-A’yan, p. 58. John C. Wilkinson, ‘Origins of the Omani State’, pp. 76–83. See al-Rawas, Oman in Early Islamic History, p. 41. Ibn Sa‘d, Al-Tabaqat al-Kubra, p. 351. Al-Salimi, Tuhfat al-A’yan, pp. 69–73. Sirhan b. Said al-Izkawi, Tarikh ‘Uman al-Muqtbas min Kitab Kashf alGhumma, p. 40. Abu al-‘Abbas Ahmad b. Yahya al-Baladhiri, Futuh al-Buldan, p. 607 Salama b. Muslim al-‘Awtabi, Kitab al-Ansab, p. 324. See al-Salimi, Tuhfat al-A’yan, p. 16. For accounts in English of the history of Ibadism, see, for example, John C. Wilkinson, Ibadism. Amr Khalifa al-Nami, Studies in Ibadhism, p. 45. Ibid., p. 169. Barth, Sohar, p. 7. Peter Emery, ‘Greeting, Congratulating, and Commiserating in Omani Arabic’, pp. 201–2. Ibid., p. 200. Barth, Sohar, p. 20. See Dale R. Lightfoot, ‘The Origin and Diffusion of Qanats’, p. 215. Ibid., p. 215. Ibid., p. 216. See John C. Wilkinson, Water and Tribal Settlement in South-East Arabia: A Study of the Aflaj of Oman. John L. Esposito and James P. Piscatori, ‘Democratization and Islam’, p. 434. Sheikh Aflah al-Rawahy, unpublished MS. Uzi Rabi, The Emergence of States in a Tribal Society: Oman under Said bin Taimur, p. 42. Hussein Ghubash, Oman: The Islamic Democratic Tradition, p. 6. Ibid., p. 7. Jeremy Jones and Nicholas Ridout, ‘Democratic Development in Oman’, pp. 378–9. Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, p. 56. Ibid., p. 57.

Introduction to Part II

If the preceding chapters have ranged widely across long historical periods, this second part of the book seeks to establish a rather closer focus, largely limiting its consideration of key characteristics of Omani diplomacy to a period of around fifty years, from the accession of Sayyid Sultan bin Ahmad to power in Muscat in 1792 to the historic voyage of Sayyid Said’s ship, the Sultanah, to New York in 1840, with a few glances both backwards and forwards in time along the way. The aim is to identify in the interplay of international relations in this formative period some of the ways in which the culture we have sought to describe in Part I of the book may help us understand the conduct of more contemporary Omani diplomacy as an expression of that culture. A secondary aim is to show how some of the challenges facing more recent Omani foreign policy were either already present or starting to take shape during this earlier period. In both these contexts – the relationship between diplomacy and culture, and the shaping of contemporary foreign policy – the conduct of relations with Oman’s neighbours is an important and central feature. In her recent study of daily life in the Omani town of Bahla, 1 Mandana Limbert notes the significance of the concept of ‘the neighbour’ to the town’s inhabitants, and within Omani culture more generally. The neighbour is someone, she says, to whom one has obligations, with whom it is recognised that there may be tensions, and with whom one should therefore take special care to maintain the best possible relations. She points out that this is not a category governed merely by social customs, such as the giving and receiving of visits and hospitality, but also a distinct legal category, the subject of frequently used Qur’anic references, and the topic of widely read theological advice. In considering the relationship between Omani culture and the practice of diplomacy by those brought up in this culture, it should perhaps come as little surprise that the objective of ‘goodneighbourliness’ features so prominently in the articulation of the core principles of Omani foreign policy.

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In a Ministry of Foreign Affairs series of briefing documents, which appear to have undergone a succession of annual revisions in the period between 1994 and 2004, and which may still be regarded as a good indication of underlying policy priorities, the first of four basic principles is stated as being ‘the development and maintenance of good relations with all Oman’s neighbours’. Reviewing its application in the recent conduct of foreign policy, the document notes that good neighbourliness has ‘allowed Oman continuously to improve its relations with all its neighbours since 1989, in spite of the often difficult challenges posed by the changes in the regional and international environment in that time’. Successes include the conclusion of negotiations regarding borders with both Saudi Arabia and Yemen, a role in promoting a measure of rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and facilitation of better relations between Yemen and other members of the GCC. But a more intriguing process is observable in this series of documents – the evolution of the concept ‘neighbour’ itself. As the sultanate develops the capacity to become increasingly outward looking during this period, the idea of ‘neighbour’ expands, as well, to include the sultanate’s relations, across the ocean, with India, and later, even those further afield. In respect of India, it is additionally noted that such relations are of particular importance in view of the fact that both India and its western neighbour, Pakistan, are now confirmed as possessing nuclear 2 weapons. What is discernable here is the expansion of the term ‘neighbour’ beyond relations of kinship, ethnicity, language or even political alliance. And, as we have seen, Omani culture has long recognised neighbours as a fact of life. As water scarcity has forged relationships of cooperation out of necessity, geopolitical realities determine that one must deal with the given circumstances of one’s neighbourhood: to fail to manage these relations would threaten the basis for both one’s own and one’s neighbours’ very existence. A key purpose of diplomacy is therefore to develop with one’s neighbours a modus vivendi based on mutual recognition of rights and obligations, which are then to be managed through modes of reciprocity which may be compared with, as well as accompanied by, visiting and hospitality. Oman’s relations with its neighbours have been complicated, especially since the eighteenth century, by a number of factors, among which was the arrival of a series of external powers in its ‘neighbourhood’ including the British, French and Americans. Their presence in the region, and their competition with one another, as well as their

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various efforts to engage politically and commercially with Oman, gradually transformed the nature of the ‘neighbourhood’. But this was not a unidirectional process: the arrival of Western powers and their pursuit of their interests did not involve a straightforward process in which Western practices and systems were superimposed upon existing ones. Instead, what took place was experimental in nature, involving misunderstandings, adjustments by all parties, negotiations and conflicts, in all of which the Omanis – like other longstanding neighbours – took initiatives and forced events just as much as did the colonial powers. A second and related factor, which increased the complexity of Oman’s regional relations at this time, was Oman’s own expansion in and through East Africa, an extension of its ‘neighbourhood’ in which the protection and development of commercial interests encourages the consolidation of a more settled political power. Rather than trying to consider Oman’s relations with each of its neighbours in turn and then, during the same period, with the new foreign powers active in the region, we shall attempt a slightly more complex approach that considers these relations in relation to one another: for, during this period, it seems most helpful to analyse the conduct of Omani diplomacy in terms of interactions between multiple parties. In the management of these complex relations in the period under consideration (late eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries) a consistent tendency emerges that has been identified by writers on contemporary Omani foreign policy such as Joseph Kechichian and Marc O’Reilly. Oman, they point out, has developed a capacity to maintain relations with multiple allies and partners, despite the fact that among these allies and partners are states in competition or 3 outright conflict with one another. Today, perhaps the clearest example of the sultanate’s ‘balancing’ posture is the way it manages to maintain good relations with both the United States and Iran, despite over thirty years of sometimes acute antagonism between these two states. The modern dimensions of Oman’s relationship with Iran will be discussed in some detail in Chapter 8 below. But, in the earlier period, which is the focus of this section, we shall see the groundwork – or the historical dimension – of what has since become modern policy, particularly regarding Iran. Not only is Iran a neighbour, and thus a permanent feature of the immediate policy horizon with which Oman has no choice but to interact, but we shall suggest that to an extent the foundations of the modern Omani state have been built upon a sustained attempt to live with or alongside Iran, rather than under its dominion. As we shall see, this approach forms part of a

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broader continuity in Oman’s perspective over a period of more than two hundred and fifty years. This continuity, we suggest, demonstrates an increasingly self-conscious and deliberate fashioning of an Omani attitude to relations with the wider world, shaped by the identification of a national interest with mercantile pragmatism. The consolidation of this attitude and its subsequent development towards a modern foreign policy is attributable, at least in part, to the continuity of Al bu Said leadership. In what remains of this introduction to Part II, then, we offer a brief and selective account of aspects of the first phase in the establishment of Al bu Said rule in Oman and its foundational role in the development of the modern state. Our aim here is to show that the emergence of the modern state is inseparable from the process of managing relations with Iran in particular and, by extension, that the modern state is therefore characterised by acute sensitivities to its regional neighbourhood and related commercial priorities. All the various stories of Ahmad bin Said’s rise to power assembled in Ibn Ruzayq’s history (the most significant nineteenth-century Omani narrative history) attest to the significance for Omani historiography of the modern state tracing its origins to a successful strategy for dealing with this powerful neighbour. Perhaps the lurid and possibly mythical story of the banquet-cum-slaughter at Barka, handed down to Ibn Ruzayq by his father and grandfather, may best be seen as a historiographical expression of the ambivalence of the Omani–Persian relationship. According to the story recounted in Ibn Ruzayq’s text, Ahmad bin Said invites the Persians to make an encampment at Barka, where he has established himself. There, he fêtes them publicly with ‘caldrons of meat’, ‘sweetmeats’, and provisions for their horses. To finance such lavish hospitality, Ahmad bin Said collects public funds, which elicits grumbling from those who see the largess distributed at their expense. The people of Barka complain among themselves that the Persians deserve death rather than such hospitality. Subsequently, Ahmad invites fifty of the leading Persians to a banquet and, while they are feasting with him in the fort, he sends out a message that anyone who holds a grudge against the Persians ‘may now take his revenge’. The ‘youth of Barka’ then attack the Persians, killing all but two hundred who cry for mercy and Ahmad bin Said commands the people to stop the killing. He provides a ship for the survivors bound for safety at Persian-held Bandar Abbas, but about ten miles out to sea, the Omani sailors steering the ship set it on fire and jump ship. They swim 4 to the safety of a nearby island, leaving the Persians to their fate.

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At one level the two central images of this narrative – hospitality that turns into massacre, and safe passage that turns into shipwreck – might be said to speak of shocking treachery. At another level, however, as metaphors for the nature of the Omani–Persian relationship, they speak of an ambivalence in which the Persians appear simultaneously as guests and as enemies. It is also significant that the narrative positions the leader, Ahmad bin Said, on the side of hospitality: it is he who commands that the Persians be lavishly entertained, who intervenes to stop the killing and orders the survivors be transported home. It is therefore not the leader but the ‘youth of Barka’ and the sailors who perform the killing of the enemies. Thus, the most vivid passage in the founding narrative of the Omani state makes the figure of the Persian guest/enemy central, and presents the founder of that state as a mediating figure in the encounter with the powerful neighbour. As this passage suggests, then, the very origins of the present Omani state may be associated with the need to manage neighbourly relations, and the priority placed on such relations could be said to characterise the subsequent rule of the Al bu Saidi. This does not mean that all relations with neighbours have invariably been marked by cooperation – far from it, as depicted by the narrative of Ahmad bin Said and the Persians – but rather that relations of cooperation take place within a framework in which the competing claims of different neighbours have to be carefully balanced. For a small nation, and even more so for a nascent nation-state such as that led by Ahmad bin Said, calculating the relative strengths of neighbours – who can often be far larger and more powerful – is crucial to long-term survival. As we shall see, even in its most expansive phases, the Omani state, in its various forms, has for many centuries conducted its diplomacy within a framework in which any interaction with a foreign party invariably has implications for future interactions with at least one, and often multiple, others. In many, if not all of these diplomatic interactions, issues of commercial development and advantage have been at the forefront of not only colonial policy, but also of Omani diplomacy. It is a priority frequently attributed to the rise of the Al bu Saidi as both one of the country’s leading merchant families, and also as the family entrusted with the task of governing. If Al bu Saidi diplomacy is nuanced and worth examining in detail, Ahmad bin Said seems the ideal figure to begin with. In her account of the Ya’rubi civil war and Ahmad bin Said’s rise to power, Patricia Risso points out that in 1740, shortly after he had led a failed attempt

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to expel the Persians from the city, Ahmad was reappointed wali of Sohar by the Persians themselves. It was ‘a feat’, observes Risso, ‘that 5 attests well to his diplomatic skill’. Indeed, it seems quite improbable, on the face of it, that anyone should have been able to do this. The historical record for this period only rarely allows us to see through the sequence of events to pick out the precise terms of negotiations that might have led to such an outcome. What it does permit, however – with all due caution in respect of the ideological interests at stake in the writing of such histories (Ibn Ruzayq’s history, for example, is strongly supportive of the Al bu Saidi) – is the tracking of twists and turns in allegiances, and an apparently volatile state of affairs in which a leading figure might be at the right hand of the ruler one day and in jail the next. Assuming, as seems only reasonable, that there is some logic to such twists and turns, such rises and falls, it might be suggested that all kinds of military actions, shows of maritime force and tactical jailings as well as seemingly improbable political reappointments are all elements in the grammar of the regional diplomacy of the period, and, crucially, that they need to be understood as part of diplomatic interaction, rather than as the results of diplomatic failure. Throughout Risso’s account, and in other historical narratives (including Ibn Ruzayq’s), Ahmad’s skill in securing alliances by a variety of means is emphasised – from military threats to political marriages – along with his exploitation of control of Muscat and its associated maritime trade, and his ability to play external powers (such as Persians, Ottomans and British) against one another. As Risso herself notes, this political and diplomatic activity – which was eventually to lay the foundation for Oman’s quasi-imperial expansion in the nineteenth century – took place at a time when major centres of power in the Islamic world (Safavid Persia, the Mughal Empire and the Ottoman Porte) were entering periods of decline. Of particular significance to a study of Oman are both Ottoman Basra and southern 6 Persia, which were becoming ‘less effective’ as regional players, thus creating political space for regional actors to work out new relations with one another and with the British, who were becoming increasingly important players in the region. As Risso and others since have shown, many of these relations were driven by commerce; the use of commercial relations as a medium for diplomacy in the interests of state-building therefore characterised Ahmad bin Said’s policy and that of many of his successors, as we shall see in the chapters that follow. Like Risso, M. Reda Bhacker identifies Ahmad bin Said’s com-

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mercial activities as crucial to his successful conduct of politics, both in his rise to power and in his subsequent development of the Omani state. While Bhacker acknowledges that Ahmad bin Said’s ‘military prowess’ clearly contributed to his election as Imam, it was more significant, he says, that ‘his influence and local support was derived from 7 and swelled as a result of his commercial activities’. Ahmad’s father had been a coffee merchant, trading in a commodity in which Omani merchants were at this time gaining ground, such that by mid-century, as Risso reports, the East India Company in Basra attributed a 8 ‘significant proportion’ of Mokha’s coffee exports to Omani traders. Ahmad’s first direct engagement with the Ya’rubi occurred when he was sent on a trade mission to Hasa, encountered Saif bin Sultan at Ruwi, and succeeded in developing a commercial relationship with the Ya’rubi ruler. In what must surely also be recognised as an act of commercial diplomacy, he further cemented this relationship by marrying a woman of the ruling family. Later, Bhacker argues, when Ahmad was leading Omani military resistance to the Persian invasion of 1743, it was the commercial influence of his family (to which he had obviously made a major contribution) that encouraged the traders of Muttrah and Muscat to join him at Barka and participate in his campaign. Following the defeat of the Persians and his own accession to power, Ahmad bin Said’s commercial perspective led him to establish in Muscat a kind of free port. This involved not only reductions in customs duties and the non-imposition of additional costs, but also the provision of free water and wood to visiting merchants, along with the extension of full religious liberty. Later, when he resisted proposals from European companies seeking to establish concessions at Muscat, such companies decried Ahmad’s policy as resistance to free trade (a common refrain among those seeking commercial advantage in a foreign location who come up against local obstacles). A more perceptive (or less-interested) interpretation might point to the level of trade even among non-Omani merchants, with no favoured concessionaires, encouraged by Ahmad’s policy. In particular, this ‘free trade’ policy, albeit without the name, permitted the substantial development of businesses owned and run by merchants of Indian origin, both Muslim and Hindu, in Muscat and Muttrah, communities still thriving today. It also extended to Persian merchants resident in Muscat, even at times when Oman and Persia were at war. In the five short chapters that follow, we explore how the emergent modern state established by Ahmad bin Said gradually consolidated its

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position through a series of interactions with neighbours and other powers engaged in the region. The fortunes of the Al bu Saidi state in this early stage of its development are uneven, characterised by periods of uncertainty and profoundly shaped by the need to adapt to a sometimes rapidly changing external environment. However, out of this complex set of interactions, with Iran, with neighbouring Arab powers, with African populations and élites and with the newly significant – for the region – political and economic powers of Great Britain and the United States, we can see the gradual consolidation of a set of attitudes and practices that will come to underpin the development of a modern foreign policy. Notes 01 Mandana Limbert, In the Time of Oil. See, in particular, Chapter 3: ‘In the Eye of the Neighbor, There is Fire: Hazards and Histories of Sociality’, pp. 46–81. 02 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Oman and the World, 1994–2004. Out of respect for the access granted to these still-classified documents, we shall not provide more detailed bibliographic information. 03 See Joseph Kechichian, Oman and The World. See also Marc O’Reilly, ‘Omanibalancing: Oman Confronts an Uncertain Future’, pp. 70–84; and Marc O’Reilly, ‘Oil Monarchies without Oil: Omani and Bahraini Security in a Post-Oil Era’, pp. 78–92. 04 Hamid ibn Muhammad ibn Ruzayq, History of the Imams and Seyyids of Oman, pp. 153–4. 05 Patricia Risso, Oman and Muscat: An Early Modern History, p. 41. 06 Ibid., p. xvi. 07 M. Reda Bhacker, Trade and Empire in Muscat and Zanzibar: Roots of British Domination, p. 15. 08 Risso, Oman and Muscat, p. 78.

3 Muscat and Mysore: Between the Empire and the Republic

1 In 1792 two Indian Ocean states found themselves separately involved in struggles with neighbours and rivals for the continuation and, their rulers clearly hoped, the extension of their political power. Both rulers were the sons of fathers who had established distinctive new foundations for the political power that their sons now sought to defend and expand. Both were Muslims, and enjoyed important relationships with powerful Hindu partners. Both understood the importance of maritime power in the Indian Ocean and sought to establish modern naval forces, and they both saw the extension of regional commerce, supported by naval power, as a key element in their political strategies. In 1792 both, to varying degrees and with very different outcomes, were having to come to terms with the competing ambitions of French and British power in India as well as the ocean over which the European powers needed to consolidate their control in order to secure the positions of imperial dominance they sought in India itself. The states were Muscat and Mysore, their leaders Sultan bin Ahmad Al bu Saidi and Tipu Sultan. Their differing experiences of this complex new situation in the Indian Ocean and their attempts to find common cause with one another are the focus around which this chapter’s account of Sultan bin Ahmad’s regional diplomacy is organised. MUSCAT

Sultan bin Ahmad looked to the sea to consolidate his power and, as we shall see, like Tipu Sultan in Mysore, in looking to maritime power, he would find himself entangled in a complex set of relationships with the French and the British, as well as with neighbours, including the Qawasim of Ras al-Khaimah and other lower Gulf cities on the Arabian side and the islands, and the Persians, who although in a

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period of relative political and economic decline, were still active 1 competitors for power and commercial opportunities. Persian influence in the lower Gulf had declined since the death of Nadir Shah in 1747 and the subsequent collapse of the short-lived 2 empire that his extensive military campaigns had established. But by the 1760s a tribal group led by Karim Khan Zand had succeeded in establishing a temporarily unified Iranian state with a capital in Shiraz, 3 allying himself with the local merchant classes there. There were sporadic clashes at sea between Omani and Persian forces following Imam Ahmad bin Said’s refusal to continue tribute payments to Karim Khan, which had been instituted by Nadir Shah. These clashes had escalated by 1773, when Karim Khan sought support from the British East India Company in Basra and Haidar Ali in Mysore for action against Muscat, neither of whom agreed to participate. However, Karim Khan then switched his attention towards Basra, which was at this time Oman’s key trade partner, presumably taking the view that control of Basra would become a powerful lever in a campaign to 4 subdue Muscat. Karim Khan took Basra in 1776 and sought to secure support from the rulers of Ras al-Khaimah and Hormuz for a maritime blockade of Muscat, encouraging them to seize and plunder any shipping destined for the Omani port. It seems that Qawasim attacks on Omani shipping did indeed intensify at this point, even though it is not clear whether this was as a result of Karim Khan’s requests or simply attributable to existing Qawasim hostility towards Muscat. In 1779 Karim Khan Zand died and his brother, Sadiq Khan, who succeeded him, concluded a peace treaty with the Ottomans and withdrew Persian forces from Basra in order to concentrate his efforts on resisting the expansion of Qajar power in Iran itself. Imam Ahmad bin Said continued to face limits to his maritime operations (as well as domestic opposition) and it was during the period immediately following the Persian withdrawal from Basra that a French privateer 5 (or ‘pirate’) seized one of his ships, the Salihi, and received the effective support of the French governor of the Île de France (Mauritius) in refusing to pay restitution. As we shall soon see, the issue of the Salihi would continue to play a part in French–Omani relations for some time. As Sultan bin Ahmad came to power in Muscat no single power (not the Omanis, the Qawasim or the Persians, nor yet the gathering colonial forces of Britain and France) could claim a dominant position in the lower Gulf and, perhaps crucially, no one could command both sides of the Strait of Hormuz, a position that would afford its

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possessor considerable power over all commercial shipping. The emergent Qajar rulers of Iran were still to complete the extension of their central control over Iranian territory, and continued to share power with a number of regional tribal confederations, including those 6 around Shiraz. Local trade began to desert the Persian ports in favour 7 of Muscat as a result of this political instability. In 1794 Sultan bin Ahmad felt able to move decisively against the Bani Ma’in whose sheikh possessed the rights to farm the revenues of Bandar Abbas, and succeeded in taking control of both Qishm and Hormuz and acquiring the lease on Bandar Abbas. That he was prepared to make substantial annual payments (MT$ 15,000) to the Qajar ruler to maintain the Bandar Abbas revenue farm is perhaps indicative of more than just an 8 opportunistic approach. Indeed, given that his political power in Oman rested upon his control of Muscat and that he continued to face rivalries from his brothers, Qais in Sohar and Said in Rustaq (who still held the title of Imam), his interests would clearly lie in making the most of Muscat’s strengths as a power base, and these evidently lay in maritime commerce. M. Reda Bhacker further suggests that Sultan bin Ahmad’s interest in Bandar Abbas also reflected a desire to prevent ‘the resurgence of competing commercial activity from another port in the vicinity, which would have detracted from the burgeoning role of 9 Muscat’. MYSORE

In Mysore, Tipu Sultan had succeeded his father, Haidar Ali upon his death in 1782, inheriting a state fashioned since 1760 out of an alliance between Haidar Ali’s own military power – which he developed into the most advanced modern non-European army in India at the time – the official framework of the Mughal political system, and the court of the local Hindu hereditary raja. Haidar Ali had expanded Mysore’s possessions to include key ports on the Malabar coast. He also faced military opposition from a comparatively new arrival in India, the British, with whom he had secured a treaty on his own terms after forcing them into a retreat to Madras in 1769, and against whom he later led a broadbased alliance of Marathas, forces of the Nizam of Hyderabad and French troops in a further war, which was not concluded until two years after his own death, when a further agreement was reached in which neither side could be said to have 10 obtained the upper hand. Haidar Ali had turned, as early as 1775, to the main European rivals to the British, the French, in the hope that

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their rivalry might persuade them to make a military alliance with him against the British, but was initially disappointed that, despite assurances of such support, French forces did not eventually join him 11 in his military campaign in the Carnatic in 1780. At the time of the first Anglo–Mysore War (1767–9) the British and the French had only recently concluded a peace treaty at the end of the Seven Years War, a conflict in which the two competing colonial powers confronted one another, not only across the territory of Europe, but also in distant global locations from the Lawrence River in Quebec to the River Hooghly in Bengal. British successes in India included the capture of Pondicherry (on the east coast) from the French (although this was returned to French control in the peace treaty) as well as a significant victory over a French ally, Siraj ud Daulah, at the Battle of Plassey, a victory that effectively secured their control of Bengal and provided the basis for the development of British government in 12 Calcutta. The British victory at Plassey is widely regarded as marking a decisive moment after which circumstances (including the ambitions of rival powers such as Mysore and France) compelled the British to develop political and military strategies that would eventually lead to the establishment of empire. However, as Maya Jasanoff argues, it did not mean that the British–French struggle was at an end: Rather than put an end to Anglo–French imperial rivalry, then, or tip the scales definitively in Britain’s favor, the Seven Years War opened a new chapter in the history of both the British and French empires. It signified a turn toward territorial gain and, with it, direct rule over manifestly foreign subjects. It also, critically, marked a swing to the East as a site of imperial desire. From this point on, the history of British and French imperial rivalry 13 would unfold there, and in India in particular.

Perhaps even more significantly, as Jasanoff points out, British moves towards territorial gain and direct rule were responses to initiatives taken by other powers, including Mysore. From early in his rule Tipu Sultan embarked on a project of ambitious expansion, a kind of counterattack in the ongoing conflict with the British, which would involve establishing a network of external relations, even beyond the Indian Ocean. These relations would involve Muscat, where his father had already established commercial links, including a ‘factory’ or trading house whose activities Tipu Sultan was keen to revive and expand. The Omanis also main14 tained an agent at the Mysore port of Mangalore. In 1786 a cargo of

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pepper, sandalwood, cinnamon and textiles was sent for sale at Muscat in a fleet of three ships, in which an important diplomatic mission also travelled. The diplomatic representatives prepared a detailed report on Muscat’s trade, which included the fact that merchants from Mysore enjoyed preferential rates of duty – not only better than those enjoyed by other Indians, but better than those with Arabs, Persians or Europeans (who had already secured agreements for 15 5 per cent). The ultimate destination of the diplomatic mission was Basra, however, where Tipu Sultan sought to secure an agreement with the Ottomans for control of the port’s trade: the proposal was that Mysore would pay the Ottomans for the right to ‘farm’ the port and, presumably, make it a key node, along with Muscat, in a trade network in the Indian Ocean which would exclude rivals such as the British. These plans never came to fruition and, in 1792, just as the politics of Muscat turned in favour of Ahmad bin Sultan, Tipu Sultan suffered his first defeat against the British, after which he was forced to sign the Treaty of Seringapatam (Srirangapatnam), in which he ceded about half of his territorial possessions, some to the British, some to the Nizam of Hyderabad and some to the Marathas (note that both of the Indian regional powers to benefit from this treaty had fought alongside Haidar Ali and then Tipu Sultan in the Second Anglo–Mysore War, but this time had turned against their former ally, substantially 16 weakening his position). Significant among the territorial concessions to the British was the Malabar Coast with its ports at Calicut (Kozhikode) and Cannanore (Kannur). It was after 1792 that Tipu Sultan laid plans for the development of a new naval force, which were never realised, but which suggested that he continued to see the Indian Ocean and martime ascendancy as possible sources of sustaining and even expanding his power. INDIAN OCEAN POWERS

Sultan bin Ahmad’s sense of the possibilities of extending Muscat’s maritime commercial power, not only in the Gulf but substantially beyond, may be partly due to his particular relationship with Gwadar, where he had taken refuge during the struggles for power after the death of his father. In 1782 he had acquired this modest port – little more than a fishing village at the time – on the Makran coast of 17 Baluchistan from the local ruler Nasir Khan of Kalat. Once he had assumed control of Muscat, Sultan bin Ahmad appointed his son-inlaw Saif as his wali at Gwadar, ordered the construction of a fort

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there, and asked Saif to take the nearby port of Chahbahar. According to Beatrice Nicolini, these two Makran ports functioned as a secure base from which to conduct his maritime operations and build the network of coastal possessions that would facilitate the development 18 of his Muscat-based commercial power. In addition to consolidating his coastal possessions as sources of revenue and bases for extending his commercial networks it is also clear that Sultan bin Ahmad was responsible for a substantial enhancement of Muscat’s naval power. Patricia Risso uses the reports of British observers (one from 1800 by John Malcolm, the British Resident at Bushire, and one from 1802 by David Seton, who became the Resident in Muscat in 1801) to show that the Omani fleet at the turn of the century included nineteen large ships (of more than 400 tons) as well as at least one hundred smaller vessels, which, she argues, meant that it had more than doubled in size since 1775, with much of 19 that growth taking place since 1790. It is perhaps worth noting that some of the evidence to support this calculation includes reports prepared in 1786 for Tipu Sultan of Mysore: might Tipu Sultan’s ambitious naval plans drawn up after his defeat at Seringapatam in 1792 have owed something to the example provided by his Muscat trading partner? We do know that following Sultan bin Ahmad’s accession to power in Muscat the already ‘formidable’ trading links between Muscat and Mysore were enhanced by the development of an entrepôt trade in which, according to a report by the British Resident in Muscat (Seton), goods were brought to Muscat from ‘Surat, Bhavnagar, Bombay, the Malabar and Coromandel coasts, Makran, Sind, Punjab, Kutch, Bengal, Batavia and the Malay islands, East Africa and the Mascarene islands and of course the countries 20 bordering the Persian Gulf’. This commercial expansion is what led to the signature of a treaty between Muscat and the British in 1798, at least from an Omani perspective. Sultan bin Ahmad’s interests lay in securing further commercial advantages in India, particularly in the context of the extension of British control over trade in areas where he, too, wished to expand business. At the same time the British appear to have been motivated, at least in the first instance, by similar considerations of commercial competition: they threatened in 1796, for example, to end the free access enjoyed by Omani shipping to British ports in India. This sort of policy, in which British commercial interests were increasingly tied to territorial control, clearly arises out of the shift in British strategy in India after Plassey and in responses to the challenges

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of states such as Mysore. Thus, we may say that Mysore pressure on British interests was among the factors that encouraged the British to shift from a commercial stance at least partly consistent with the idea of a mare liberum, which had prevailed in the Indian Ocean before the colonial period – a kind of free trade – towards a more aggressively ‘protectionist’ stance designed to make territorial possessions the basis for excluding competitors from preferred markets. This British stance then also constitutes, in turn, a response to a commercial challenge in the shape of Muscat’s expanding networks of trade. To understand the interplay of forces in this way is to substitute for a narrative in which external colonial powers gradually subjugate passive and reactive local peoples a story in which those local people also possess agency, force events, take initiatives and call forth responses from the colonial powers. However, the British were soon to identify a further pressing reason to secure a treaty with Muscat: they were once again at war with France, feared that France might once again emerge as a rival for control of India, and needed to pre-empt any possibility that the French might strengthen their position through an alliance with the strategically important Omanis. By 1790 it seemed that the French might even have secured a position in Muscat, which the British had been seeking unsuccessfully since failed negotiations for an English 21 ‘factory’ or trading post in Muscat in 1659. French interest in Muscat had developed from around 1785 when the French consul in Basra, Jean-François Rousseau, began to contemplate establishing a mail packet route between Muscat and Basra, and Imam Said bin Ahmad had indicated his willingness to entertain the presence of a French Resident in Muscat. In the same correspondence he repeatedly requested compensation for the seizure of the Salihi. Some rather halfhearted (and in one case it seems entirely bogus) efforts were made by the French to respond to these requests – initiated by the Governor of the Île de France (Mauritius) rather than by Paris – including a visit to Muscat by the Comte de Mac-Némara, on which occasion a modest vessel was brought from the Île de France. In subsequent correspondence with Rousseau, Imam Said bin Ahmad noted that the vessel in question was not worth a quarter of the Salihi, let alone the 22 value of the cargo and the lives lost in its capture. On his return to the Île de France Mac-Némara found himself sharply at odds with both the government of the island and its soldiers. In late January of 1790 news had reached Port Louis (the capital) of the revolution in Paris. Enthusiasm for this political development led

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the governor of the island, Lieutenant-General Conway, to concede to revolutionary demands and to permit the establishment of an assembly and other constituent bodies to take over government of the island. Mac-Némara sought to act against this revolutionary development but letters were intercepted and Mac-Némara was arrested, questioned and apparently taken to prison for his own safety. On the way to prison he made an attempt to escape (he was still armed), but soldiers of the 23 107th and 108th regiments overpowered and killed him. The effects of the French Revolution were felt in other French colonial possessions too, of course, nowhere more powerfully than in Haiti, where the revolution, which unfolded from 1791 and in which slaves of African origin played a leading role, achieved independence from France in 1804. Closer to the Île de France, in 1797 Tipu Sultan’s Mysore witnessed the formation, by French residents and with the support of Tipu Sultan himself, of a Jacobin Club to promote the radical and egalitarian ideas of the latest phase of the revolution. By this time the Île de France had declared itself effectively independent from Paris, reversing Conway’s initial concessions to his prorevolutionary citizens, after the French National Assembly in Paris voted to abolish slavery (upon which, of course, the Île’s economy still depended). Nonetheless, the possibility that the ongoing competition between Britain and France for dominance in the Indian Ocean (which entered a new phase of armed conflict from 1792) might be further complicated by the development of egalitarian political ideas in India itself must have given an additional urgency to British efforts to thwart French political ambitions at all points. Therefore, when it became apparent to the British in 1796 that the French – who continued to enjoy fruitful trade relations with Omanis, especially on the East African coast – were planning to send a representative of the republic to Muscat, there was considerable concern. Among the British anxieties were that a French presence in Muscat would provide French ships with a base from which to attack Britain’s India trade and that it would assist in the further development of 24 Muscat–Mysore connections. The representative sent by Paris to Muscat never reached his destination, however: he was forewarned of British plans to seize him there and therefore cancelled his mission. In 1798 the situation became still more pressing for the British, as Napoleon Bonaparte (then the French Republic’s leading military commander) launched an invasion of Egypt, a mission that had as its ultimate objective a campaign to oust the British from India, with the support (among others) of Tipu Sultan of Mysore.

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It is clear from this turbulent global political context why both France and Britain should have been seeking an exclusive relationship with Muscat. Our question, however, is what lay behind Muscat’s decision to enter into a treaty relationship at this moment, and why it was the British rather than the French who were to be the beneficiaries? The signing of a treaty at this point seems to be entirely consistent with a general commercial and political strategy that appears to favour making pragmatic arrangements that will make trade and its expansion sustainable. The lease of Bandar Abbas and the exploitation of the grant of Gwadar may be seen as earlier examples of this policy in action. To sign a treaty with the British also made sense from a commercial point of view: Britain represented a much more significant trading operation than France, and its extensive territorial possessions had already given it the opportunity to threaten Muscat with the loss of important commercial privileges, as we have seen. Sayyid Sultan bin Ahmad and his commercial partners in Muscat – among whom many of the leading merchants were, of course, Indians – will quite reasonably have calculated that by giving the British the deal they clearly wanted so much they might not simply avoid the loss of commercial opportunities, but open the way to new ones. The treaty itself does not involve any specifically commercial provisions, other than Sayyid Sultan’s granting the British the right to establish a factory at Bandar Abbas (Gombroon). But there appear to have been some privileges – exemption from pilotage charges, for example – granted to Omani ships as a result, and Muscat may well have seen this treaty as the first step in a deepening commercial relationship. It also appears that in spite of the fact that three of the seven articles of the 1798 treaty involve anti-French undertakings on the part of Sayyid Sultan (to fire and expel his doctor, a Frenchman, to forbid French ships entering ‘the cove into which English vessels are admitted’, and to refuse the French any ‘place or seat to fix themselves’ 25 in any of his own territory), Sayyid Sultan still sought to maintain good relations with France, in a position that Patricia Risso describes 26 as ‘hedging his bets’. It would also appear that Omanis were providing assistance to the French of the Île de France, who, in alliance with Tipu Sultan, were seeking to hold off the British in a renewed military confrontation in the Indian Ocean. In 1799 both Sayyid Sultan bin Ahmad and Tipu Sultan had received letters from Napoleon Bonaparte pledging support for both of them if they would stand against the British. Soon Bonaparte’s position in Egypt was to weaken, however, and before the end of 1799 the British had moved decisively

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against Tipu Sultan of Mysore, infiltrating his fortress at Seringapatam. Tipu Sultan died in the defence of Seringapatam, an item of news that was added to a 1799 letter from Governor Duncan of Bombay to Sayyid Sultan in which the ratification of the 1798 treaty was confirmed. After these developments Sayyid Sultan seemed gradually to acquiesce rather less ambiguously in British demands to repudiate further French overtures, presumably because it was becoming clear that the British position was now by far the stronger of the two. By this time Sultan Sayyid was also facing new challenges, from both the Qawasim and the Wahhabis. These will be the principal topic of the next chapter. Sultan Sayyid clearly hoped that the British would be of direct assistance in his renewed military entanglements in the lower Gulf, understandably working on the assumption that the provisions of the 1798 treaty proclaimed his enemy to be the enemy of the British. Sayyid Sultan was to meet his death in a military operation on Qishm in 1804, for which he had sought, and had been refused, British assistance, under the terms of this treaty. Notes 01 For the sake of clarity we will reserve discussion of Omani–Qawasim hostilities for the following chapter, and concentrate here on the way in which the gradual assertion of Omani power drew Muscat into ever closer interactions with the French and the British colonial powers. 02 Nadir Shah had created a military force composed of a variety of tribal forces following the collapse of Safavid power in Iran. His campaigns had achieved the defeat of the Mughals and the capture of Delhi in the East, as well as territorial acquisitions on the Arabian Peninsula, including in Oman. It was residual garrisons of Nadir Shah’s army that were to cede control of Sohar and then Muscat to Ahmad bin Said. See Michael Axworthy, The Sword of Persia: Nader Shah from Tribal Warrior to Conquering Tyrant. For an account of his campaigns in Oman, specifically, see Laurence Lockhart, ‘Nadir Shah’s Campaigns in Oman, 1737–1744’. 03 Thomas Ricks, ‘Slaves and Slave Traders in the Persian Gulf, 18th and 19th Centuries: An Assessment’, p. 62. 04 Patricia Risso, Oman and Muscat, pp. 57–9. 05 The question of who counted as a ‘pirate’ and whose activities constituted legitimate commercial or military activity would be increasingly vexed in the decades around the turn of the century, with so many rival maritime forces operating in competition with one another in the congested waters of the lower Gulf.

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06 Thomas J. Barfield, ‘Turk, Persian, and Arab: Changing Relationships between Tribes and State in Iran and along Its Frontiers’, pp. 61–86. 07 Risso, Oman and Muscat, p. 100. 08 Robert Geran Landen, Oman since 1856: Disruptive Modernization in a Traditional Arab Society, p. 218. 09 M. Reda Bhacker, Trade and Empire. 10 Irfan Habib, ‘Introduction’, p. xxiii. 11 Mohhibul Hassan, ‘The French in the Second Anglo-Mysore War’, p. 35. 12 See Pradeep Barua, ‘Maritime Trade, Seapower and the Anglo-Mysore Wars, 1767–1799’, pp. 22–40. 13 Maya Jasanoff, Edge of Empire: Lives, Culture, and Conquest in the East, 1750–1850, p. 22. 14 Risso, Oman and Muscat, p. 103. 15 Ibid., p. 103. 16 Habib, ‘Introduction’, pp. xxxvii–xxxviii. 17 The terms of the acquisition were subsequently disputed. See Beatrice Nicolini, L’Oceano Indiano Occidentale, Scorci di Storia, pp. 99–101, 103. In the 1860s the Khan of Kalat would propose to the British government in India a joint effort to take Gwadar from the Omanis, which proposal the British declined. However, Gwadar would later be a source of concern for the British, whose efforts to make it a link in their telegraph system was part of a strategy designed to contain the threat of a Persianassisted Russian move on India. See Peter John Brobst, ‘Sir Fredric Goldsmid and the Containment of Persia, 1863–73’; and Soli Shavar, ‘Communications, Qajar Irredentism and the Strategies of British India: The Makran Coast Telegraph and British Policy of Containing Persia in the East (Baluchistan) – Part II’. 18 Nicolini, L’Oceano Indiano Occidentale, p. 101. 19 Risso, Oman and Muscat, pp. 171–2. 20 Seton to Bombay, 9 July 1802, cited in Bhacker, Trade and Empire, p. 33. 21 See Bhacker, Trade and Empire, p. 32. The term ‘English’ is used here in relation to the proposed ‘factory’ because it was not until 1707 that the ‘Acts of Union’ brought Britain into being through the parliamentary union of the kingdoms of England and Scotland. 22 See Risso, Oman and Muscat, pp. 141–2. 23 Charles Grant, Viscount de Vaux, The History of Mauritius, pp. 525–6. 24 Risso, Oman and Muscat, p. 145. 25 The 1798 qawlnama (treaty), in Risso, Oman and Muscat, Appendix II, pp. 218–19. 26 Risso, Oman and Muscat, p. 149.

4 Diplomacy and ‘Piracy’: 1797–1819

1 Over a period of two decades around the turn of the nineteenth century, Omani diplomacy, or, one might even say Omani politics tout court, was dominated by a complex struggle for economic and political power in the lower Gulf. The key players in this struggle were three of Oman’s neighbours: the Qawasim of Ras al-Khaimah and associated small city-states; the Wahhabis from the Najd; and, inevitably, the Persians, though their presence was less central in this period than in others. Added to these neighbouring forces was an increasingly powerful external presence exerting itself in the form of the British government of India. The challenge for Omani leaders, then, was quite simply to hold onto their core commercial and political centres (Muscat, in particular) in order to maintain the state in the face of multiple challenges to its very existence. During this short period, fortunes ebbed and flowed remarkably rapidly. The death of Sayyid Sultan in 1804 came at a moment when it seemed that Omani power and influence – based on maritime commerce backed by a strong naval force – had been effectively secured and consolidated. Yet, in the years following his death, internal struggles among those who sought to succeed him, coupled with the intensification of Wahhabi expansion from their capital in Diriya, plus challenges to Omani power from the Qawasim of Ras alKhaimah, threatened to bring about the complete dissolution of the Omani state. The eventual success of his son, Sayyid Said, in resisting this multifaceted threat would lay the foundations for a subsequent and more long-lasting consolidation of Omani power in the Gulf and beyond. Crucial to this success would be Sayyid Said’s decision to seek and eventually establish a viable alliance with the British, setting in place a diplomatic relationship that would be of primary importance for over a hundred and fifty years. Before embarking upon a fuller account of the events during the period in question (1797–1819), let us first summarise the emergence

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of the two newly challenging neighbours – the Qawasim and the Wahhabis – and seek to describe the nature of the challenge they represented to Omani diplomacy at the start of the period. The name ‘Qawasim’, which was applied by the British (mainly in the form ‘Joasmees’) to most of the coastal tribes of the southern Gulf, is the family name of the rulers of two present-day emirates, Ras al-Khaimah and Sharjah. Leaders of the Qawasim had established Ras al-Khaimah effectively as an independent city-state by the mid-eighteenth century, a development that parallels the establishment of the Omani state by Ahmad bin Said. Their power was based on regional trade, built up by means of a substantial merchant fleet and the possession of ports on islands such as Qishm, or on the Persian shore, such as Lingah. Inevitably, this brought them into competition with others seeking to make a living from trade in the same ports and waters, including the Omanis, with whom low-level maritime conflict was more or less a 1 permanent feature during the second half of the eighteenth century. Conflict and attacks on Omani shipping by the Qawasim started to spill over into attacks on British ships, including, in 1797, an armed confrontation with a fourteen-gun British cruiser. Thus, as the British were starting to expand their presence in the lower Gulf, the Qawasim emerged as a threat to British interests while continuing to pose commercial and political challenges to the Omanis as well. To the shared problem of the Qawasim came an additional complication in Wahhabism, which had begun as a reform movement within Islam led by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. In the year 1740, Muhammad entered into a political alliance with the powerful Saud family to establish an emirate in the Najd, the central highlands of the Arabian Peninsula; he ruled Najd from Diriya (the home city of Mohammed bin Saud, now a ruin in the north of the present-day Saudi 2 Arabian capital, Riyadh). The alliance was hugely successful and led to expansion campaigns throughout the Najd, conquering Qatar and parts of the east coast of the peninsula (in 1788), pressing against the borders of the Hejaz and Yemen (eventually taking the Hejaz in 1806 and seizing Hodeida in Yemen in 1808), and penetrating into Oman from 1800 onwards. In 1803 and 1805 respectively, Saudi–Wahhabi forces captured Mecca and Medina and took control of parts of present-day Iraq, Syria and Palestine. Pascal Ménoret notes that at its height, from 1808 to 1810, this first Saudi–Wahhabi state ‘had an empire more extensive than present-day 3 Saudi Arabia’. Wahhabism, he suggests, could be viewed as an early form of Arab nationalism that defined itself against the Islam of the

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Ottoman Empire, as well as a movement with religious appeal based on a call for a return to Islam’s original character, insistence on its monotheism and the transcendent power of God, and repudiation of 4 innovations introduced after the time of the Prophet. Renewed emphasis on the Arab origins of Islam, along with implicit condemnation of contemporary rulers, would become the basis of Wahhabism’s political campaign against supposedly illegitimate rulers such as the Ottomans and Persians, but also against fellow Arabs whose religious beliefs and political affiliations rendered them ‘infidels’ according to Wahhabi interpretation. Oman’s Ibadi rulers fell among the targets of Wahhabi hostility. And, with an alliance on the way between the Wahhabis of the Najd and the Qawasim of Ras alKhaimah, at the start of the nineteenth century the Al bu Saidi rulers and the state they had started to build found themselves in a precarious position. Oman’s relations with the Qawasim of Ras al-Khaimah in this period are therefore characterised by political rivalry and commercial competition. The two were of course linked: commercial advantage was in part gained politically (and militarily) by territorial expansion in the immediate neighbourhood, and also by the acquisition of port assets beyond it, enabling access to markets and the establishment of regular patterns of trade, while commercial success, conversely, assisted in the consolidation of political legitimacy. At the time of the first major confrontation between the Qawasim and the British in 1797, the Omanis, under the leadership of Sayyid Sultan, seemed to have the upper hand. Several key ports came under Omani control – such as Laft in Qishm and Khasab in Musandam – which had very recently been Qasimi possessions. By 1801, when the Omanis briefly gained control of Bahrain, they had established trading posts on both sides of the Gulf and secured trade agreements with partners in Sind, Batavia, Abyssinia and Shiraz. As in the time of Imam Ahmad, low 5 import duties levied at Muscat remained an influential factor. Omani expansion under Sayyid Sultan was seen by the Qawasim as a threat to their interests and a constraint upon their commercial activities, especially on the seas. Hostile activities intensified, it seems, 6 as the Qawasim sought to respond. The British decried Qawasim attacks as piracy and launched two full-scale military campaigns in response, in 1809 and 1819 respectively. This question of ‘piracy’ has been taken up by recent scholars, sparking debate over certain conventional interpretations of history. Sultan bin Mohammed alQasimi (the ruler of Sharjah), for example, drawing on material from

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the Bombay archives, has sought to repudiate British accounts that portray his forebears as engaged in the lawless and illegitimate practice. He argues instead that the Qawasim conducted themselves within the legitimate parameters of a city-state at war with encroaching political rivals; furthermore, he says, some of the incidents called piracy by the British and attributed to the Qawasim, and for which British military reprisals were taken, had actually been perpetrated by the Omanis. In a book almost contemporaneous with al-Qasimi’s, Patricia Risso confirms that ‘from the Qasimi point of view, this alleged piracy was really tactical maritime warfare and a legitimate source of revenue. Under the wing of the Wahhabis, who as Muslim rulers demanded one-fifth of all booty, Qasimi attacks increased and became less 7 discriminate.’ Al-Qasimi also argues, however, that the Wahhabis cannot be held responsible, and that those actions that are in fact fairly attributed to the Qawasim might best be understood as forms of protest against unfair conditions in which they found themselves, as a result of both Omani expansion and British hostility. Charles Davies, however, would suggest that al-Qasimi is too generous. Assessing the question some ten years after al-Qasimi’s attempt at historical revision, he acknowledges the role of commercial constraints in motivating Qasimi maritime action against Omani and British shipping, but discounts the idea that it was either merely commercial or an autonomous act of political protest: Worsening commercial prospects for Ras al-Khaimah in the late eighteenth century may originally have made these activities more likely and the trend once established was if anything somewhat ironically reinforced by the added obstacles she encountered during these years [the British anti-piracy activities]. An indeterminate sense of frustration, shortage and lack of access to markets, as well as a desire to defend her maritime interests, could all at times have played some part in these events, but they do not explain them. Simple commercial rivalry and any theory that these activities constituted a 8 protest against impediments to Ras al-Khaima’s trade can be discounted.

Unlike al-Qasimi, Davies concludes that the intervention of the Wahhabis – who, as Risso noted, were taking one-fifth of all booty seized – was in fact decisive. ‘The multifarious impact and influence of Wahhabism and the Saudi state, not wholly mundane, was the prime special cause of Qasimi maritime depredations, especially those of 9 1808–19, lending them their unusual extent and character.’ Wahhabi promotion of Qasimi attacks on Muscat shipping seems to

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have begun around the summer of 1803. Campaigning from a ‘forward and permanent base’ at Buraimi established in 1800, the Wahhabis reached Ras al-Khaimah shortly thereafter and sought to 10 make it a base for an invasion of the Batinah. Hawley suggests that ‘the precise relationship between Wahhabis and Qawasim has not been 11 fully established’, but there is fairly wide agreement among scholars of this period that from 1803 the Qasimi rulers of Ras al-Khaimah were under de facto Wahhabi overlordship. Furthermore, it appears that the Wahhabis were encouraging the Qawasim to escalate attacks on Muscat, even though, Davies points out, the Omani blockade of Ras al-Khaimah and the death of the Wahhabi leader Abd al-Aziz in October 1803 seem to have persuaded the Wahhabis to allow the 12 Qawasim to ‘reach an interim peace with Muscat’. Bhacker’s reading of the archive evidence shows that the British at least believed that the Qawasim were under specific instructions from the Wahhabis to seize all vessels belonging to ‘heretics, renegades or unbelievers’, which, according to Wahhabi dogma, would have included both non-Muslims 13 and non-Wahhabi Muslims, as well. The unexpected death of Sayyid Sultan in a minor military incident near Qishm in mid-November 1804 radically changed the situation. It not only sparked renewed activity from tribes such as the Bani Ma’in (who were effectively allies of the Qawasim) and their capture of Qishm, Hormuz and Bandar Abbas from Muscat, and further attacks on Muscat ships plying Gulf routes between Muscat and Basra, but also plunged the Omani élite into a period of internecine struggle, in which Sayyid Sultan’s nephew Badr bin Saif, based initially in Muscat, sought and gained the support of the new Wahhabi leader, Su’ud, for a struggle against his uncle, Qais bin Ahmad, based in Sohar. The struggle for control of Muscat also involved the Qawasim. For instance, when Qais marched on Muscat in 1806, a Qawasim force, encouraged by Badr, attacked its rear and seized both Diba and Khor Fakkan. An event in January 1806 once more illustrated the complexity of the relationship between the Qawasim and internal Omani struggles. An Omani Basra fleet was returning down the Gulf when a substantial part of it, owned by Qawasim merchants from Sur, put in at Ras al-Khaimah and took captive another part of the fleet owned by a rival Suri group, the Janaba, who at the time enjoyed the support of Muscat. The Qawasim seized merchandise and turned over its ships and crew to Ras al-Khaimah. In response, back in Sur, the Janaba seized Qasimi wives and children, provoking an unsuccessful rescue mission launched by Ras 14 al-Khaimah in 1807.

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By this time events in Muscat had taken another dramatic turn. The assassination of Badr led to the assumption of power by Sayyid Sultan’s sixteen-year-old son, Said, with the backing of Badr’s former rival, Qais, in Sohar. But even this ostensible peace was fragile and Said found himself in a vulnerable position. His cousin Badr had paid tribute to his erstwhile allies, the Wahhabis, and Said found himself obliged to do the same. Furthermore, the Wahhabis accused Said of conspiring towards Badr’s assassination and, while he denied involvement, they continued to hold Omani territory and threatened to seize more. In addition to the Wahhabi challenge, Said faced the Qawasim who continued to hold Omani territory beyond Sohar. There was one force from which the new ruler in Muscat urgently needed recognition in order to secure his position both internally and against external threats: the British. But, while the British regarded both the Wahhabis and Qawasim as inimical to their own interests as well, and while an alliance with the new ruler – particularly given his weakness – would seemingly have served the political and commercial interests they had sought (and failed to secure) since 1646, the British withheld formal recognition of Sayyid Said as ruler of Oman for over a 15 year. Bhacker suggests ‘it was precisely because of the precarious situation in which Said found himself’ that the British remained at a distance, wary of involving themselves in an uncertain political 16 struggle in which they risked backing the wrong side. Eventually, the British decided to engage with Sayyid Said: an act that appears to have been motivated, at least in part, by the threat posed by the French. Sayyid Said had turned to the French in 1807, signing a treaty ‘of perpetual peace’ in June of that year and granting 17 them a consulate in Muscat. It is not possible to say whether Sayyid Said saw the French as a genuinely viable alternative ally or simply sought to play the one against the other. In any case, the mere prospect of French advances in the region seemed enough to sway the British to think again. No sooner had Sayyid Said signed the treaty with the French than British anxiety was exacerbated by news of Napoleon Bonaparte signing the Finkenstein Treaty with Persia, accompanied by intelligence that he was also seeking diplomatic agreements with both 18 the Wahhabis and the Ottomans. David Seton was duly dispatched as a British envoy to Muscat. Upon his arrival in Muscat in January 1809, Seton was confronted by some worrying revelations: while Wahhabi preachers were proselytising in the streets, Sayyid Said was seeking to negotiate with the Wahhabi leadership for the return of the port of Shinas (seized by Sultan bin Saqr of Ras al-Khaimah

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following a failed attempt by Sayyid Said and Qais bin Ahmad to drive the Qawasim out of the region north of Sohar). More alarmingly, the Wahhabis were demanding, in return, Omani participation in joint Wahhabi–Qawasim attacks on Basra, as well as on British merchant 19 fleets in the Indian Ocean. As in the case of his overtures to the French – which may or may not have been calculated to stir the British to action – the extent to which Sayyid Said might have exploited the apparent weakness of his position is unclear. Regardless, in these early interactions with the British, Sayyid Said’s weakness became a kind of diplomatic asset for the Omani ruler. Nonetheless, even at this stage, British interest and support appears to have remained limited or even fickle. On the basis that it would enable him to regain control of Khor Fakkan and Shinas, the British enlisted Sayyid Said’s help in the first of two expeditions against the Qawasim in Ras al-Khaimah in 1809, only to back out of confrontations when Wahhabi forces intervened; subsequently, they refused to send support when a joint Wahhabi–Qawasim force launched a full-scale war against Sayyid Said following his participation in the British offensive. All Sayyid Said seemed to have gained from the alliance was the return of some ‘supposedly 20 recaptured property’. Meanwhile, the British struck a deal with the Wahhabis to stay out of inter-Muslim affairs as long as the Wahhabis refrained from attacking British shipping in the Gulf. Confronted by Sayyid Said in 1810, the British responded that he should accede to whatever peace terms might be offered by the Wahhabis. Sayyid Said turned back to the French, presumably on the basis of the 1807 treaty, only to receive from the French envoy the advice not only to make 21 peace with the Wahhabis, but to convert. In somewhat dire straits when an attack was launched on Sumayil by a coalition between Mohammed al-Jabri – erstwhile ally, turned opponent in 1807 – and the Wahhabi commander Mutlaq al-Mutairi, Sayyid Said sought Persian assistance, which was given, and successfully repelled the attack on Sumayil. But, after a military defeat and an accord between the Wahhabi emir, Saud, and Persian leadership in Shiraz, Persian 22 support again fell away. Bhacker represents this as an absolute low point for Sayyid Said; Davies, by comparison, while noting that he was ‘weak and hard-pressed by the Wahhabis on land’, suggests that operations at sea had started to meet with some success. By 1813, Davies points out, Sayyid Said had regained Khor Fakkan and Diba, and in the three years that followed he was somehow strong enough to 23 launch blockades of Ras al-Khaimah.

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Perhaps some of Sayyid Said’s success arose from a series of events in Oman and beyond marking a decline in Wahhabi power. Muscat witnessed the death of Wahhabi commander Mutlaq al-Mutairi. Meanwhile, armies of Egyptians launched anti-Wahhabi campaigns, invading the peninsula from the east from 1811. Under the leadership of Ibrahim Pasha, the Egyptians would defeat the Wahhabis and sack 24 their capital at Diriya in 1818. Wahhabi fighters who managed to escape the Egyptian assault found their way to Ras al-Khaimah, leading Sayyid Said to propose a joint expedition with Ibrahim Pasha to attack Ras al-Khaimah, an idea that by 1819 had also struck the British. But, by the time a British envoy to Ibrahim Pasha passed through Muscat, Sayyid Said thought better of it and he reportedly advised the British to abandon the idea. Nevertheless, the Wahhabi grip on Buraimi eventually loosened and, by 1819, Ras al-Khaimah had fallen to Muscat. After a series of struggles, including an unsuccessful blockade attempt by the Omanis in November 1819, the British – assisted by Omani land forces and three ships – finally achieved a decisive defeat of the Qawasim at Ras 25 al-Khaimah. But again, British assurances that Ras al-Khaimah would subsequently come under Muscat’s control were dashed, yet another letdown that Bhacker considers a political and commercial disaster for Sayyid Said, who had ‘lost to the British just about all the 26 possessions that his father had once controlled in the Gulf’. Viewing the events over the period of more than fifteen years, however, during which the very survival of an independent Muscat had been at stake, lessens the sense of complete failure. For, although Oman’s position in 1820 was by no means secure and would require considerable further consolidation, Sayyid Said had succeeded, not without some good fortune, in maintaining Oman’s territorial integrity. He had done so in the face of challenges of all shapes and sizes, diplomatic and military alike, with and against a range of actors of varied statuses – some agents of imperial powers, others barely even state actors. Among these groups, all forms of motives, interests and incentives must have existed, some of which, particularly among nonstate actors, would likely have been short-sighted and immediate, probably involving private deals in commodities, rights and privileges. How best to engage diplomatically in these situations would probably have been a bit of a guessing game, in which Sayyid Said would have had to play, while simultaneously thinking long-term. What Sayyid Said seems to have been doing over this period is therefore twofold: on the one hand, he appears to have sought (repeatedly yet unsuccessfully)

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to forge an alliance with the power (the British) whose intentions and interests seemed clearest, and which seemed to offer the best chance of long-term stability, but without requiring the surrender of sovereignty or the repudiation of distinctive aspects of cultural identity, including – in the face of Wahhabism – religious tolerance; on the other hand, he seems to have been attempting to put in place systems and networks of his own, independent of the larger power or its opinion, in order to build up a stable state that even larger powers, such as the British, would have to acknowledge. For this, of course, he had to pursue a large and reliable revenue base, especially in a region where food subsistence is more or less impossible. Thus, the period that began with rival trade-based city-states struggling for the means to secure their own survival ends with Sayyid Said developing ambitions that might require a larger revenue base even than that which would be provided by an unchallenged maritime hegemony in the lower Gulf. As we shall see, this should serve to set the stage for the development of more extensive commercial activity along the Swahili Coast, and eventually, even to the development of a new political system there. Notes 01 See Donald Hawley, The Trucial States, pp. 90–6. 02 Diriya was destroyed at the order of Ibrahim Pasha, who led the Ottoman forces against the Wahhabis in 1818. 03 Pascal Ménoret, The Saudi Enigma: A History, p. 49. 04 Ibid., pp. 44–7. 05 Bhacker, Trade and Empire, p. 29. 06 A number of historians regard the Qawasim sea attacks as a deliberate response to the constraints placed by increasing Omani influence, and to a general climate in which Oman was gaining prominence through partnerships and alliances with, among others, the British. See, for example, Mohammed Morsy Abdullah, ‘The First Sa’udi Dynasty and Oman, 1795–1818’; see also Robert Geran Landen, Oman since 1856. 07 Patricia Risso, Oman and Muscat, p. 173. 08 Charles E. Davies, The Blood-Red Arab Flag: An Investigation into Qasimi Piracy 1797–1820, p. 242. 09 Ibid., p. 251. In addition, in The Trucial States drawing on material from J. G. Lorimer, Donald Hawley notes that the Qawasim themselves claimed at the time, in ‘protestations’ to the British in Bombay, that they ‘were instigated to piracy by the Wahhabi emir’. See Hawley, p. 97. 10 Davies, Blood-Red Arab Flag, p. 181. 11 Hawley, The Trucial States, p. 97.

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Ibid., p. 181. Bhacker, Trade and Empire, p. 58. See Davies, Blood-Red Arab Flag, p. 184. Bhacker, Trade and Empire, p. 53. Ibid., p. 55. Calvin H. Allen, ‘The State of Masqat’, p. 121. Bhacker, Trade and Empire, pp. 55–6. In the Finkenstein Treaty, France acknowledged the legitimacy of Persia’s claim to Georgia and promised French arms and military training for the Persians. Persia, in turn, undertook to declare war on Britain, to expel agents of the East India Company from its territory, to gather a force to march on the British at Kandahar, and to allow the French army free passage across Persian territory as part of a land expedition against British India. See also Iradj Amini, ‘Napoleon and Persia’, p. 113. Bhacker, Trade and Empire, p. 59. Davies, Blood-Red Arab Flag, p. 190. Bhacker, Trade and Empire, p. 62. Ibid., p. 62. Davies, Blood-Red Arab Flag, p. 193. See Madawi al-Rasheed, A History of Saudi Arabia, p. 23. See also Ménoret, Saudi Enigma, p. 49; and Davies, Blood-Red Arab Flag, p. 204. Bhacker, Trade and Empire, p. 91. Ibid., p. 92.

5 An Englishman in Oman

1 In the aftermath of the British intervention against the Qawasim ‘pirates’ of Ras al-Khaimah, Sayyid Said collaborated further with the British in 1820 in an operation to quell a rebellion against his rule on the part of the Bani Bu Ali, a tribe resident in the Sharqiyah region of Oman who had adopted Wahhabism. At the end of the previous year – 1819 – the British had launched a second military expedition against Ras al-Khaimah, the port city state from which the most prominent Qasimi ‘pirates’ had been operating. After subjecting the city of Ras alKhaimah to a bombardment from the sea, and taking the fortress at Dhaya, the British accepted the surrender of the Qawasim and, in January 1820, secured the agreement of a range of local sheikhs to a General Treaty. As Charles E. Davies explains, this treaty institutionalised a much more enduring British presence in the Gulf, and led to the Perpetual Treaty of 1853 and the subsequent formation of the Trucial States: Drawn up between Britain and the newly ‘pacificated’ or ‘friendly’ Arabs, that is the Qawasim with their neighbours and associates, the smaller independent Arab chiefs of the Gulf, it bound these latter to abstain from piracy. But it also made Britain co-guarantor of their adherence to its terms. Thus, henceforward, with her now unrivalled ascendancy in India, Britain was to have a permanent role in the region, that of policing the 1 waters of the Gulf.

When members of the Bani Bu Ali seized and plundered a few ships later in 1820 – an action which Davies suggests would normally never have provoked a response from the British (none of the ships in question were theirs) – the British reacted as though this ‘police’ role now extended to the land as well as the waters of the Gulf. The officer in charge of the British garrison at Qishm, Captain T. Perronet Thompson, assembled six companies of Indian troops and joined an expedition dispatched by Sayyid Said from Muscat to attack the Bani Bu Ali. Outnumbered by the Bani Bu Ali, Thompson’s force was

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heavily defeated with massive loss of life. In the account given by 2 James Wellsted, whose narrative of his travels in Oman will form the basis for this chapter, Thompson, acting ‘under an impression that some portion of the tribe had engaged in extensive acts of piracy’, first sent a messenger to the Bani Bu Ali who suffered ‘a violent rebuff’ (his pilot and interpreter were murdered), in response to which action Thompson ordered military reprisals. In January 1821 the government of Bombay sent a much larger force, under the command of Sir Lionel Smith, which defeated the Bani Bu Ali, taking their sheikh to Bombay as a prisoner, where he was held for two years before being returned ‘with presents and with money to rebuild their town’, according to 3 Wellsted. The writings of James Wellsted offer some of the most illuminating accounts of interactions between the British and the Omanis during the reign of Sayyid Said. Before his visit to Oman Wellsted had worked as a marine surveyor for the East India Company, and had briefly called at Muscat in 1833, en route to the Gulf having surveyed the southern coast of Arabia. In 1835 he was sent to Oman, presumably as part of the East India Company’s general ambition to establish a presence in southern Arabia as a way of protecting its sea 4 routes and establishing coal depots. Wellsted himself maintains considerable discretion in his text regarding the official purpose of his travels, which he generally presents as though they were an act of disinterested exploration. A closer reading of both his diaries and his actions, however, reveals a number of political and diplomatic dimensions, including interest in gaining access to the interior of Oman at a time when it was once again facing incursions from the Wahhabis; reaching as far as the Najd (where the Wahhabi movement was founded) and Buraimi (an area of tensions and a base for Wahhabi incursions); and engaging somewhat intimately with the Bani Bu Ali. The moves of Sayyid Said in this relationship, as reported by Wellsted, seem to indicate, furthermore, not only that he apprehended but to an extent complied with Wellsted’s unspoken agenda. Despite a disappointing betrayal by the British at Ras al-Khaimah, Wellsted’s visit some fifteen years later provided an excellent new opportunity to develop a stronger relationship with the British, which would be of value on at least three fronts. First, it offered the prospect of further military and political cooperation in efforts to contain the spread of Wahhabism, which continued to threaten Sayyid Said’s political power. Second, at a time when the East India Company was

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developing a greater presence in Arabia and the Gulf, stronger ties with the British represented commercial opportunity. Third, as the Omani state depended largely upon its merchant navy, Sayyid Said naturally shared the British interest in securing shipping in the southern Gulf. As Wellsted’s visit followed the conclusion of an agreement between the East India Company and the Qawasim in which the so-called ‘pirates’ of Ras al-Khaimah agreed to end their attacks on British shipping, the Omani fleet could benefit, by extension, from a closer alliance with the British. It is also during this period that a new issue appears to emerge. ‘Our 5 present political relations with this Prince [Sayyid Said]’, writes Wellsted, could be critical in relation to Russia. According to Wellsted, the Russian border lay 120 miles from the source of the Euphrates, and recent surveys of the river and the Gulf had shown it was technically possible for an army to sail down the Euphrates and through the Gulf, constituting a military threat to the British in India. While others had argued that, even if able to navigate the river and the Gulf, the Russians would not manage to assemble a fleet capable of transporting a large enough force (he suggests 20,000 men) to India, Wellsted expresses concern that Sayyid Said’s navy, combined with his merchant fleet, might serve the Russian purpose: What is there then to prevent his squadron from forming a junction at some preconcerted period with the Russians at Basrah? This might be effected long before our naval force in India could be got together, or even if well arranged, almost before intelligence of such event could be conveyed 6 to head quarters.

Omani assistance, Wellsted suggests, ‘would for some period give 7 [the Russians] naval superiority in the Indian seas’ and he therefore advocates a formal military alliance with the Omanis and Sayyid Said. He appears troubled by earlier British refusals to come to Sayyid Said’s aid when requested, and by the dismissal of a treaty that the East India Company seems to have regarded as merely ‘an Eastern 8 compliment’. Sayyid Said’s Oman, Wellsted writes, is ‘one of their oldest and most faithful of allies’, which has been able to preserve its integrity against incursions both by land and by sea, by the Wahhabis and the ‘Johasmi pirates’ respectively, who, he says, are ‘in intimate connexion’. Without proper British support, Sayyid Said might be forced to cede control of Muscat, which would then fall under the control of ‘most troublesome neighbours’. Wellsted therefore concludes:

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I think it can therefore admit of no doubt that the wisest, most politic and most just line of action, which we can pursue in reference to this prince, would be to make our naval force, as with the native princes, in a measure subsidiary to his own, by which, without incurring any additional expense, we should at all times have a powerful armament at our command, in a 9 quarter where it may prove of such vital importance.

Wellsted may well be using the spectre of a joint Russian–Omani military fleet advancing on British India as a scare tactic in order to advance a policy that has more immediate local and practical ends, such as securing Oman as a permanent ally against its own regional adversaries and further pacifying the southern Gulf at a time when the 10 company is keen to develop its presence there. But his writings seem to reveal a deeper motivation, a real desire to shore up ties as a result of prolonged exposure to and discussions with the Omani ruler. His account conveys an effort to convince the British readership – primarily Wellsted’s superiors in the East India Company, who will presumably have read his reports before their publication – of Sayyid Said’s nobility and sincerity. While acknowledging the Omani ruler’s conduct as, naturally enough, motivated by political considerations, Wellsted never attributes to him specific, inflexible objectives, and only notes such considerations in order to place them ‘on one side’ to better highlight ‘the truly noble character that he 11 bears’. Wellsted’s elucidation, furthermore, of the diplomatic meaning behind Sayyid Said’s gift, in 1834, of a ‘magnificent seventyfour’ (a seventy-four-gun battleship), may represent an attempt to 12 translate for the company a symbolic act it has not fully appreciated. Wellsted insists that the Omani ruler had presented the British with the warship as a token of his interest in ‘allying himself more closely with us’; he is therefore confident that a proposal of the kind he has 13 outlined would be readily accepted by him. What is particularly significant here is that, if Wellsted is right, Sayyid Said has extended this gift despite the British rebuff to his earlier request for assistance; in this light, the action takes on greater significance as perhaps one in a series of diplomatic transactions designed to move the two parties towards a deeper alliance. It is possible that Sayyid Said may even have interpreted the British betrayal in diplomatic terms as just one transaction in this process, a tacit request for some expression of his (Sayyid Said’s) commitment, before they would make any further commitment to him. But Wellsted also seems to begin an implicit remonstration of sorts. Beyond the fact that he feels compelled to clarify perceptions for his

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superiors and advocate an alternative style of engagement, his use of the term ‘most just’ in describing this new style bears the connotation that the British modus operandi to this point has not been entirely just. Not only had the British refused to assist Sayyid Said, treating what the Omanis viewed as a diplomatic commitment as a mere formality, which could in reality be ignored, they had also treated him unjustly in regards to the issue of slavery. In exchange for an end to the slave trade, writes Wellsted, ‘to Spain, a Christian government, we gave two hundred thousand pounds … 14 and remitted some millions of their debt.’ To Muscat, however, where the exchange brought 60,000 dollars annually, British demands apparently stipulated that the trade should be stopped by ‘gratuitously 15 abandoning the whole’. Wellsted’s sense, not shared by everyone in the East India Company, that relations should be conducted on a fair and more or less equal basis rather than on the basis of some assumed superiority, exhibits a sort of ambassadorial mentality, which, while probably part of his character to begin with, was also undoubtedly shaped by close encounters with the Omanis. Wellsted was welcomed to Muscat by Sayyid Said on 22 November 1835, already aware, he writes, of Sayyid Said’s ‘characteristic liberality’ and delighted by the sincerity with which the Omani ruler expresses a desire to assist him in pursuit of ‘the objects of my proposed journey’. While these aims remain unnamed, his discreet account of the conversation implies, at least in part, an interest in the Sharqiyah and the Bani Bu Ali. Wellsted is informed that there is just one road leading south, and so ‘it was arranged’ that he should travel by sea to Sur and proceed inland from there to meet the Bani Bu Ali, before going on to the Jebel Akhdar and thence, via Diriya into the Najd, his ultimate destination. The day following the consultations, Wellsted receives ‘a fine Najd horse’ along with assurances that letters have been sent out to all the relevant ‘chieftains’ requesting, in the name of Sayyid Said, that the traveller be given all the assistance he needs. It is perhaps not coincidental. If the gift of the ‘magnificent seventy four’ expressed a willingness to enter into naval alliance, perhaps the ‘fine Najd horse’ could indicate a sort of correlative agreement on land, in the interest of containing the Wahhabi threat. These anecdotes can serve to illustrate a central point in this discourse on Omani diplomacy – how the practice of elaborate but sincere courtesy (there need be no contradiction between these two qualities) allows for the discreet communication of interests and positions without having to state them directly. The transactions here

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described may be seen as implication of support, as should the appearance of a letter from Sayyid Said to Wellsted, which the latter receives in Sur before departing for Balad Bani Bu Ali, expressing satisfaction and promising continued assistance. What is emerging here, therefore, could perhaps be best described as the diplomatic practice of saying that which is not said. Gift-giving is but one way to do this, of course; Wellsted’s polite discretion constitutes another. In restraining himself from attributing any explicitly political objectives to Sayyid Said – and, indeed, only presenting his own political objectives much later in the book (rather than, as might have been expected, in his account of his first meeting with Sayyid Said) – Wellsted participates in this culture in his own way. To interpret his ‘non-statements’, therefore, it is necessary to consider Wellsted’s audience and context. Writing for a dual audience, both specialist and general (his East India Company superiors and the wider British public), he essentially takes upon himself the role of informal ‘ambassador’ for Oman. And keeping in mind a broader historical context in which the spread of Wahhabism is a pressing concern, it is precisely Wahhabism with which the Omani style should be contrasted when, for example, he writes that Sayyid Said’s government is characterised by ‘absence of all oppressive imposts, all arbitrary punishments, by his affording marked attention to the merchants of any nation who come to reside in Maskat, and by the 16 general toleration which extended to all persuasions’. But here again, Wellsted never spells it out; and in not making such explicit distinctions he is, once again, adopting the same kind of diplomacy as his Omani interlocutors. Among Wellsted’s unstated motives for visiting the Bani Bu Ali may have been an interest in gathering intelligence about a group from which something might usefully be learned about the ongoing Wahhabi challenge. Sayyid Said, meanwhile, may have seen Wellsted’s visit to the Bani Bu Ali as a kind of message itself. In very visibly – almost demonstratively – assisting Wellsted in his journey, Sayyid Said effectively communicated to the Bani Bu Ali that the Muscat–British partnership remained intact. At the same time, however, employing the device of peaceful visit and drawing on obligations to hospitality, he underlined the virtues of peaceful coexistence to be contrasted, implicitly of course, with previous experience of violent confrontation. Interestingly, and perhaps unexpectedly, Wellsted finds the Bani Bu Ali extraordinarily generous in their own hospitality. He writes at some length of the pleasure he takes in their company. To his delight,

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they appear to bear the British no ill will for losses suffered at the hands of Thompson and Smith; furthermore, though they reportedly detest his effective protector, Sayyid Said, the relationship proves essentially immaterial: ‘all, however, in the confidence I had shown in 17 thus throwing myself amidst them, was forgotten.’ Here again, in considering Wellsted’s reasons for writing, we encounter an effort to reassure his audience and to promote a policy of peaceful interaction rather than confrontation. Even more significant to this study of Omani diplomacy is the continuity Wellsted observes between the ‘general toleration’ with which he characterises Sayyid Said’s rule in Muscat (and which we have called typical of Omani culture more broadly) and the attitudes of the Bani Bu Ali. Here we have a group of people we might expect to be more closed, inhospitable or intolerant based on their categorical affiliation with Wahhabism; these expectations are thwarted. Wellsted’s pleasing interactions with the Bani Bu Ali in Oman make us revisit our own preconceptions about those who identify with Wahhabism. His companions express interest in hearing about his own religious beliefs and Wellsted is unable to resist passing comment on ‘some of their least defensible doctrines’, yet he finds these Omanis not hostile or judgemental, but in fact even more tolerant of religious difference than he himself is. ‘They evinced so little prejudice or fanaticism on these points that I regretted having done so, and to make amends, most willingly subscribed to the opinion of one of their old men, that either faith was best adapted for the country and people who 18 practised it.’ Wellsted’s notion of why one might adhere to Wahhabism is thus renovated to include perhaps political, rather than strictly religious, reasons. In Oman, he finds, Wahhabism seems compatible enough when still responsive to deep-rooted Omani values, including tolerance and respect. What develops, then, is an entirely different sort of picture of Oman as a nation. Rather than conceiving of Oman along categorical lines – here specifically in terms of religious communities or sectarian division – Wellsted discovers a pluralist nation that can accommodate Wahhabism (or any form of difference) as long as Wahhabism (or any difference) can adopt Omani tolerance. Consequently, Wellsted must revisit his notion of what constitutes a threat to Oman. With such positive encounters with Omani Wahhabis within, his understanding of ‘threats’ to the order is transferred to antagonists from the outside, to those who seek destruction of the present political order, and those who disregard the values that have

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become a part of the cultural fabric. Willingly, if not completely deliberately, Wellsted becomes a kind of Omani diplomat. Before his British audience, he describes a country that seems defined not necessarily by borders, ethnicity or other categorical designation, but by a set of values that seem to characterise it. And, appealing to an amount of shared appreciation among his readership for, perhaps particularly, forgiveness and tolerance, he seems to advocate among the British a kind of policy towards Oman grounded in these very principles. Notes 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

11 12

Charles E. Davies, Blood-Red Arab Flag, p. 9. James Wellsted, Travels in Arabia, Vol. 1, Oman and Nakab El Hajar. Wellsted, Oman and Nakab El Hajar, p. 59. See Hilal al-Hajri, British Travel Writing on Oman: Orientalism Reappraised, p. 145. Wellsted, Oman and Nakab El Hajar, p. 400. Ibid., p. 401. Ibid., p. 402. Ibid., p. 403. Ibid., pp. 403–4. The idea that Russia might pose a threat to British control of India had been circulating for some time, and control over the Persian Gulf was considered, particularly by John Malcolm from 1799, an excellent defence against this threat. The capture of Kharg Island was viewed as vital to the implementation of such a strategy. An attempt to seize it in 1808 failed; subsequent anti-Russian efforts included an attempt to establish a sort of buffer alliance with the Persians. After these too failed, finally, in 1838 (the year Wellsted’s book was published), in a new offensive the British captured Kharg Island. See M. A. Yapp, ‘British Perceptions of the Russian Threat to India’. Wellsted, Oman and Nakab El Hajar, p. 6. Gerald S. Graham’s account of the difficulties associated with this gift suggests that British authorities were aware that accepting the warship could be construed as an affirmative response to a suggestion of military alliance, and that this, indeed, is why they initially sought not to accept it. See Gerald S. Graham, Great Britain in the Indian Ocean: A Study of Maritime Enterprise, 1810–1850, pp. 169–72. Graham also discusses related complications associated with the gifts sent by Sayyid Said to President Van Buren of the United States in 1840, which we will address in Chapter 7.

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13 Wellsted, Oman and Nakab El Hajar, p. 404. See also Thomas A. Breslin, Beyond Pain: The Role of Pleasure and Culture in the Making of Foreign Affairs, p. 113. 14 Ibid., p. 388. Wellsted is presumably referring to the Moresby Treaty of 1822, in which the Omanis agreed not to transport slaves by sea. 15 Ibid., p. 388. 16 Ibid., p. 7. 17 Ibid., p. 60. 18 Ibid., p. 62.

6 Moving to Zanzibar

1 In 1832 Sayyid Said transferred his seat of government on a permanent basis from Muscat to Zanzibar. This move followed a period in which the Omani ruler had been gradually developing stronger commercial and political institutions and relations along the East African coast, where, as we shall see, Omanis had long been a significant commercial presence. In some historical accounts, the move to Zanzibar is presented as part of a strategy in which the Omani élite, under Sayyid Said, systematically set about building a regional empire with its head1 quarters in Zanzibar. Some of the less nuanced versions of this story suffer from a kind of teleology, according to which, because such an ‘empire’ eventually came into being, it must have been intended and 2 planned in advance. Several historians addressing the history of Zanzibar in the nineteenth century suggest, without attributing to him any overarching imperial design, that Sayyid Said was able to launch this strategy because he had consolidated a strong political position for himself by 1820. One of these is Randall Pouwels, who attributes the success of Sayyid Said, ‘an extremely capable ruler and a dangerous intriguer’, in part to agreements ‘forged with the British’ so that, consequently, Britain acted out of an interest in ‘sustaining the Busaidi 3 position at Muscat’. But, as we have seen, even as late as 1820 with the subjugation of Ras al-Khaimah complete, British support was still rather dubious and Sayyid Said’s position far from ‘secure’. In contrast to Pouwels, M. Reda Bhacker categorically rejects the idea that Sayyid Said ‘was out to establish an Omani “empire” in the 4 western Indian Ocean’, and, furthermore, that he was able to make 5 this move because he enjoyed ‘a position of strength in Oman’. In doing so, Bhacker implicitly queries three points that we shall pick up on: (1) that Sayyid Said enjoyed a secure political position; (2) that he enjoyed complicit support from Britain; and (3) that Sayyid Said sought to create an ‘empire’ as the term is generally understood.

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Regarding the idea that Sayyid Said’s Oman had reached a point of decisive security, Bhacker begins by acknowledging that Sayyid Said enjoyed some new freedom of action in relation to East Africa as early as 1813 because of the diminution of Wahhabi threat at the hand of Egyptian incursions. He was able, for instance, to direct his attention to the Lamu Archipelago in present-day Kenya and to respond, albeit unsuccessfully in the end, to delegations from the towns of Lamu and Pate seeking protection from feared reprisals from the Mazrui, whom 6 they had recently defeated at a battle south of Lamu. At this point, Bhacker goes so far as to attribute the glimmer of a design to Sayyid Said, noting that, having ‘visited Zanzibar as a boy of about eleven years of age in 1802’, the Omani ruler ‘must have realised the great potential of the ever growing commercial network of East Africa 7 converging increasingly upon Zanzibar’. But, within seven years, by 1820, it seems the balance had shifted and the ruler was once again facing continual challenges to his authority at home, as well as threats of Wahhabi revival following the withdrawal of Egyptian forces from the Najd after 1824, the period right around the time of the definitive move to Zanzibar. Thus, while the glimmer of commercial potential was likely still in play, ‘continuing political turmoil’ and the general weakness of Sayyid Said’s position in the Gulf may have developed as more significant factors driving the Omani move towards Zanzibar. In contrast, then, to the notion that Sayyid Said sought to expand from a successful base in Muscat it may be that, as Calvin Allen writes, the move was perhaps driven more because ‘Masqat’s Gulf policy had 8 failed, not only politically, but also economically’. Bhacker further undermines the notion that Sayyid Said enjoyed British support, a view also traceable in the account of Abdul Sheriff, even though Sheriff is one of the historians Bhacker cites – along with Pouwels and Coupland – as subscribing to the idea that Sayyid Said’s move to Zanzibar was part of a conscious design to establish an ‘empire’. Sheriff certainly does not support the view that the move was undertaken with the active support of the British, but rather that the British position was at best ambiguous: for while the British did demonstrate an interest in Oman’s independence from ‘either French 9 or Wahhabi control’ (not independence as such, we would qualify), the absence of any reference to an Omani role in the Persian Gulf in the General Treaty of 1820 – which effectively gave Britain a policing role in the Gulf – ‘confirmed the depths to which the Omani state had 10 sunk by 1820’. Sheriff refers, for example, to the status of Mombasa. When Pemba was captured by the Omanis in 1823, the Mazrui ruler

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of Mombasa appealed to the British for assistance, and his request was answered by a captain in the Royal Navy, W. F. Owen, who issued a declaration affirming Mombasa’s independence under Mazrui rule and under British protection. Here again, anxieties about French commercial and political competition in the region appear to have been a dominant factor influencing British action over and above any loyalty to the Omanis under Sayyid Said. Eventually, Owen’s declaration of a British Protectorate was declared an unauthorised 11 action, and was withdrawn in 1826 by the Bombay government, which recommended to the Mazrui that they reach an accommodation with the Omanis (rather as it had recommended the Omanis should do when faced with the Wahhabi threat); still, the fragility of British loyalty had already been made relatively apparent. To attempt a brief synthesis, then, of the Omani position after 1820, we might say that Sayyid Said found himself, by the General Treaty of 1820, excluded from an area of Omani commercial activity (the lower Gulf, its islands and ports) that had been the basis for the economic viability of the Omani state for a considerable time, but that, at the same time, he had secured a measure of territorial integrity and political control from his capital in Muscat. Bhacker notes that although he ‘had no “imperial” plans in the strict sense, it is true nevertheless that by the late 1820s he had grown much in stature and confidence’, and it may have been on the basis of increasing political confidence that Sayyid Said made attempts to take Bahrain (albeit 12 unsuccessfully) in 1828 and Dhofar (successfully) in 1829. With increasing political capital but lacking the revenue base to underpin it, perhaps Zanzibar emerged as a solution to a sort of economic crisis. In making this suggestion we seek also to establish a more general point about Omani diplomacy: that the Zanzibar solution exemplifies an aspect visible in numerous other situations, as well; that is to say that in addition to being non-ideological and pragmatic, undergirded by a certain embodied culture of cosmopolitanism and tolerance, Omani policy is perhaps most readily manifested through the pursuit of commercial interests. This last point suggests an entirely different conception of the nature of Omani involvement along the East African coast that is opposed to, say, the style of European expansion, bringing us to a third point, namely that in considering the question of Oman’s expansion the very term ‘empire’ must be reconceived. If ‘empire’ is understood conventionally, as systematic imposition of central political control over peoples and territories, then it is misleading to speak of an

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Omani ‘empire’ in East Africa, whether arrived at deliberately or not. Only if ‘empire’ is considered as a complex network of political interactions and relations of power – often shared and devolved – in the service of commercial interests, might it make sense to speak of such an ‘empire’ in this case. It was not until the arrival of European colonial powers, says Sugata Bose, that conventional ‘empire’ really developed. Up to this point, the region was better described as a ‘concept of layered and shared sovereignty that had characterized Indian and Indian Ocean politics of the pre-colonial era’. The new powers brought with them a notion of ‘unitary sovereignty’, based on precise correspondence between 13 political authority and delineated territory, and the centralising tendencies of this notion gradually transformed the nature of sovereignty throughout the Indian Ocean region. It was only logical, then, that attempts at territorial control would extend beyond land to the sea as well. Bose suggests that the concept of ‘claims to the seas’ was a further innovation in the region and one that would directly lead to clashes between European maritime forces and those they came to define as ‘pirates’, in a process that Lakshmi Subramanian – upon whose work Bose relies – has called ‘the con14 struction of piracy’. This, of course, hearkens back to the earlier discussion of British operations against the Qawasim leading up to the General Treaty, in which both the fact and the definition of ‘piracy’ were products of radically different and culturally determined understandings of the relationship between autonomy and sovereignty. For, as Bose notes, the suppression of what the British called ‘piracy’ was a key step leading, via the ‘Treaty of Perpetual Peace’ of 1853, to the more complete subjugation declared by Lord Curzon on his 1903 visit to the Gulf, ‘whereby the British government became your overlords and protectors and you have relations 15 with no other Power’. This, articulated by Curzon, is empire in its colonial form. In its pre-colonial form (to which, we suggest, the Omani organisation of political relations in East Africa broadly conforms) the ‘empire’ is and remains a by-product of mercantile capitalism and does not develop its own autonomous political logic. It is a means, rather than an end. Omani diplomacy, then, in this period, may best be understood as the development of those political relationships, alliances and institutional structures that might best serve the commercial interests of its merchant class, of whom the Omani ruler was the leader, but by no means the only powerful

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member, rather than as a process of empire-building. To express these political relations of this capitalist arrangement in the simplest possible terms, in relation to Zanzibar we might say that in the period from 1820 to 1856 we witness the development and consolidation of a sub-system of Indian Ocean cosmopolitanism in which Omani merchants, Gujarati financiers and Swahili traders combine to interact with the escalating consumer demands of Western modernity through the exploitation of African slave labour. So, if the Zanzibar solution is to some extent forced upon Sayyid Said because of the constraints placed on Omani political authority and commercial opportunities in the Gulf, what were the conditions at Zanzibar at the time that might have encouraged the Omanis effectively to make it their capital in 1832? As we shall see, the Swahili Coast of East Africa in general, and Zanzibar in particular, represented an attractive opportunity for the Omanis for a range of reasons, some of them longstanding (a sustained culture of participation in the same networks of Indian Ocean coastal trade in which the Omanis had long been prominent), and some of much more recent origin (such as the Western demand for products, including ivory, to which the Swahili Coast provided access). Since the eighth century, towns based on specialisation in commercial activities had started to develop along the East African coastline and, by the thirteenth century, several had established themselves as powerful city-states – Kilwa and Mombasa being perhaps the most prominent – handling trade at the intersection of routes to the Red Sea, 16 the central African interior, the northwest of India and the Gulf. As we have seen of the Indian Ocean region more generally, Islam served as a unifying factor. Along the Swahili coast, notes Jonathon Glassman, Islam would shape the way in which the coastal peoples in particular understood themselves and conceptualised relations with others. ‘More than their shared language or their shared urban and maritime orientation, the Swahili-speakers’ shared faith induced a sense that they differed crucially from the people of the coastal 17 hinterland.’ A resulting effect was a tendency among the Swahili to attribute social and political prestige with claims of origin closer to the Middle Eastern heartlands of Islam. According to Glassman, this preference may have combined with a pre-Islamic tradition that held ruling élites to be descendants of foreign-born conquerors, contributing to the development of a widely held myth that the Swahili themselves

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originated somewhere other than the East African coast (as well, of course, as reflecting the racist assumptions on the part of some European observers that indigenous Africans would not have constructed such impressive urban civilisations as that of, say, Kilwa): Islam and commerce, then, combined on the Swahili coast to foster a world view that assigned prestige to all things connected to the distant Islamic heartland. Those values were expressed most strikingly in the practice of the coast’s leading families of claiming ancestral origins in various parts of the Middle East. In the central portion of the coast, including Zanzibar, 18 such claims often referred to the Persian town of Shiraz.

Omanis had participated in the commerce of the Swahili city-states, and, from at least as early as the seventeenth century, had settled on the coast, where they will have benefited from the cultural prestige associated with their Arab Muslim identity. Following their expulsion of the Portuguese from Muscat in 1650, Oman’s Ya’ariba rulers continued to contest the Portuguese presence in East Africa (the Portuguese had gained control of Kilwa in 1505), and were subsequently invited by local rulers to assist them in driving the Portuguese from their remaining East African settlements. The Omanis successfully captured the Portuguese Fort Jesus at Mombasa in 1698, which the Portuguese briefly regained in 1727, before withdrawing in the following year to Mozambique, leaving key Swahili locations – Pemba, Zanzibar, Kilwa, Mombasa – under governors appointed by 19 the Omani Ya’ariba. In addition to this political presence there were also Arabs of Omani origin – most notably the Mazrui – who had migrated to the Swahili coast before the Ya’ariba intervention. The Mazrui had made Mombasa their base, and gradually began to establish a measure of autonomy from the Ya’ariba, such that, when the Ya’ariba in Oman were overthrown by Ahmad bin Said in 1740, 20 the Mazrui of Mombasa refused to acknowledge his authority. Military and political struggles over the key Swahili coast cities continued throughout the reign of Ahmad bin Said and beyond (as we have seen, Sayyid Said is to be found seeking to wrest Mombasa from the Mazrui in 1823). But, as Glassman notes, the Omanis were generally regarded as preferable to the Portuguese by the people of the coastal cities because they were ‘more politic than their predecessors’ and because, ‘as long-time participants in the old non-centralised Indian Ocean trade networks, the Omanis did not seek to impose the kind of mercantilist monopolies that had proved self-defeating to the 21 Portuguese’.

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By the time Ahmad bin Said rose to power in Oman, the island of Zanzibar had already been, for some time, a key location in the network of Indian Ocean trade. Its favourable location, directly in the path of the Indian Ocean monsoon, meant that Indian merchants had made it a preferred destination for probably at least one hundred years 22 before the rise of Ahmad bin Said. The Omanis, motivated by an interest in developing sources of commercial revenue as we have discussed, effectively followed the money, identifying Zanzibar as a strategic central outpost. The roots of a relationship with Zanzibar were therefore likely to have been well in place when Sayyid Said took control and faced, as we have discussed, the range of political and economic challenges at the hand of changing circumstances within Oman, the Gulf and the Indian Ocean region more broadly. In order to meet these needs, the idea of physically relocating to Zanzibar may have been suggested to Sayyid Said by a Bhattia merchant named Shivji Topan. We will recall that an Indian merchant community was already thriving in Muscat; the Shivji Topan family, which had started business at the port of Mandvi in Kutch, had traded first with Zanzibar and subsequently with Muscat, where they had become key partners of the Al bu Saidi, supplying the Muscat-based Omanis with ships and weapons. It is said that it was on a ship owned by the Shivji Topan family that Sayyid Said travelled to Zanzibar and that, after establishing his court there in 23 1832, he appointed Jairam Shivji customs master. Trading partnerships with Gujaratis such as Shivji Topan and Gopal Bhimani had become particularly important to Muscat largely because they operated outside the British zone of control in western India. The Indians therefore shared with the Omanis an interest in 24 developing trade outside the networks the British now dominated. Patricia Risso suggests that, encouraged by existing partnerships with Indian merchants, the move to Zanzibar was profoundly if not almost exclusively commercial. No attempt was made to incorporate Zanzibar into the imamate (recall that Ahmad bin Said had been elected imam), nor to convert any of its inhabitants to the Omani practice of Ibadism. ‘Their concern was the stability necessary for 25 commerce, achieved with minimal interference and obligation.’ Furthermore, in the early years of Omani rule at Zanzibar, government involved power-sharing with most of the prominent ‘Shirazi’ landowning élite, called the mwinyi mkuu. In even earlier years, the Al bu Saidi had patronised this local leader to extend his authority across most of the island. Under Sayyid Said, the mwinyi mkuu

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would be given additional responsibility, extracting corvée labour and collecting taxes from his subjects, for example. Relationships, with the Shirazi patricians and the Gujarat financiers, for example, were clearly central to the development of the Omani project in Zanzibar; another relationship worth observing was that between Al bu Saidi rulers and religious scholars. Among the many who migrated from Oman to Zanzibar during this period were some leading Ibadi scholars, including Nasir bin Ja’id al-Kharusi, whose father had once been a prominent Ibadi opponent of Imam Ahmad, but who had himself become an Al bu Saidi ally and a particularly close confidant of Sayyid Said, in whose arms he is said to have died in 1847. In addition to al-Kharusi, other prominent scholars came to Zanzibar, not only from Oman, but also from Yemen. Some were Ibadi and others were not. They occupied prominent positions in Sayyid Said’s court, some serving formally as judges, others working as advisers, envoys and consultants, or as mosque imams and schoolteachers. Amal Ghazal shows that their participation in the government of Zanzibar was facilitated by religious tolerance (which extended to non-Muslims as well as to non-Ibadis), and that the incorporation of such thinkers and scholars allowed for the development of an educated and literate state bureaucracy, precisely what the 26 commercial polity needed to administer its affairs. Randall Pouwels identifies the development of Sayyid Said’s rule in Zanzibar as part of a process of ‘secularisation’ characterised by a ‘separation’ of religion and politics since the rise of the Al bu Saidi (Ahmad being the only Al bu Saidi ruler to seek and achieve election as 27 imam). Given the points just outlined, his argument warrants deeper thought. While Sayyid Said actively incorporated religious clerics into the state bureaucracy, the nature of the relationship between religious and political power altered significantly: those of educated religious backgrounds were entrusted with governmental duties, but not given de facto political power because of their religious positions. They were asked to use their education and formation in service of the state. It may help to think of the development not as a ‘separation’ but rather a reorganisation, with secularising consequences that may have simultaneously recognised the value of religious leadership in society, and sought to place limits upon it, to prevent it from being corrupted by ambitions to power. For Ghazal the incorporation of religious scholars into an administrative bureaucracy is of particular significance because it makes possible the development of a scholarly renaissance (nahda) in religious thought in Zanzibar during the nineteenth century, in which

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the city became a ‘flourishing center of scholarly activism’. Participating in a network of scholarship that extended throughout the Arab world, the intellectual élite of Zanzibar developed in quite a cosmopolitan context; they would also come to be politicised in response to the intensification of colonial power. As host to this polyglot community enabling scholarly dialogue, Zanzibar played its role in Omani diplomacy. It is no coincidence, then, that when the inheritors of this nineteenth-century intellectual tradition would return to Muscat to participate in Oman’s renewed engagement with the world after 1970, their contribution and the phenomenon as a whole would frequently be called ‘nahda’ in contemporary Omani government literature. In the chapter that follows we shall see how the development of commerce in Zanzibar drew the Omanis into new relationships that would require Omani diplomacy to evolve further. In 1833, just a year after Sayyid Said’s move to Zanzibar, an entirely new economic player would appear on the scene in the form of the United States, initially attracted to Zanzibar in order to meet rising demand for ivory for the production of consumer goods. The following years would also be characterised by a deepening relationship with Britain, with a number of longer-term ramifications. One would involve the transformation of the Zanzibari economy, as a result of the changing role of slavery within it. A second would be the more definitive assertion of British colonial power, following the death of Sayyid Said in 1856, leading in turn to the separation of Zanzibar from Oman, under the terms of the Canning Award of 1861, and in 1890, to the establishment of Zanzibar as a British Protectorate. Notes 01 Calvin H. Allen, Jr, for example, attributes to a series of Al bu Saidi rulers an ambition to establish such an ‘empire’. ‘Once established in Masqat, Hamad and his successors adopted an aggressive military and political policy in the Arabian Gulf (1785–1820) and then East Africa (1820–1829) which was designed to create a commercial empire centred on Masqat’. See Calvin H. Allen, ‘The State of Masqat’, p. 117. 02 Such accounts tend to come from early scholars such as Sir Reginald Coupland (East Africa and its Invaders, from the Earliest Times to the Death of Seyyid Said in 1856) and William Harold Ingrams (Zanzibar: Its History and Its People) who, as Sheriff (Slaves, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar) argues, adopted approaches to historical analysis in which the actions of ‘great men’ appear to determine events.

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Randall L. Pouwels, Horn and Crescent, p. 99. Bhacker, Trade and Empire, p. 97. Ibid., p. 92. Ibid., p. 82. Ibid., pp. 82–3. Allen, p. 123. Sheriff, Dhow Cultures, p. 24. Even this relatively narrow interpretation of the extent of British support for Muscat may be generous: after all, we will recall that in 1810 the British had recommended to Sayyid Said that he should accede to Wahhabi demands, which would effectively have ended Omani independence. Ibid., p. 24. Of course the ‘unauthorised’ nature of the declaration may have been a technicality upon which the Bombay government chose to rely when it sought to transfer its support to the Omanis. Bhacker, Trade and Empire, p. 98. Bose, A Hundred Horizons, p. 43. Lakshmi Subramanian, ‘Of Pirates and Potentates: Maritime Jurisdiction and the Construction of Piracy in the Indian Ocean’. Curzon, cited in Bose, p. 48. For an account of the earliest interactions between Oman and East Africa, see John C. Wilkinson, ‘Oman and East Africa: New Light on Early Kilwan History from the Omani Sources’. Jonathon Glassman, War of Words, War of Stones, p. 24. Ibid., p. 25. This is why the Swahili élite came to be known as the Shirazi, even though any claims to Shirazi origin should be seen in terms of ‘fictive’ kinship rather than any traceable genealogy. We are using Zanzibar to refer to the main island of the archipelago, of which Pemba is also part, because this is common metonymic usage in most of the literature, although it is more correctly known by its actual name of Unguja. See Risso, Oman and Muscat, pp. 119–20. Glassman, War of Words, p. 27. Gujarati merchants are believed to have engaged with East African trade since the thirteenth century and to have been active in East African ports since at least the seventeenth century. See Makrand Mehta, ‘Gujarati Business Communities in East Africa’, p. 1739. See Bhacker, Trade and Empire, p. 92, for the account of the role of Shivji Topan ships and arms, and also Gijsbert Oonk, ‘Gujarati Business Communities in East Africa’, 2081, fn. 7, for the idea that Shivji Topan may have suggested the move. Credit for making this suggestion is also to be attributed to members of another Gujarati merchant family, Gopal Bhimani, a member of which was customs master in Muscat from 1804. See Bhacker, Trade and Empire, p. 72.

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24 Bhacker, Trade and Empire, p. 71. 25 Risso, Oman and Muscat, p. 128. 26 Amal Ghazal, ‘Islam and Arabism in Zanzibar’. Written as a Ph.D. thesis, this has subsequently been revised and published as Islamic Reform and Arab Nationalism: Expanding the Crescent from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean (1880s–1930s). The detail about the role of religious scholars in Sayyid Said’s administration of Zanzibar, however, does not appear in the revised publication. 27 Pouwels, Horn and Crescent, pp. 125–6. 28 Ghazal, ‘Islam and Arabism’, p. 54.

7 Zanzibar, Britain, the USA and the Slave Trade

1 The decades after the transfer of Sayyid Said’s government and commercial centre from Muscat to Zanzibar would witness a new era of Omani diplomacy. In these years, efforts to extend and enhance the operations of this successful merchant capitalist city-state would meet with ever more powerful economic and political forces, which were to draw Zanzibar into an increasingly global structure of Western industrial and consumer capitalism. In this section, which focuses on the years from roughly 1820 to 1861, we will discuss first the conduct of relations with the British – with whom Sayyid Said’s father, Sultan bin Ahmad, had signed a first treaty in 1798 – and then with the Americans, with whom Sayyid Said signed a commercial treaty in 1833. While commercial interaction with the Americans may not have contributed as directly as that with the British to the general transformation of Omani social and political relationships in Zanzibar (and thus, to some extent, with Muscat and the rest of Oman), nonetheless, the engagement with the United States was part of this broader process of integration into a modern global capitalist system, which required a certain adjustment in the conduct of politics and the practice of diplomacy. But the adjustment should not be seen as total dissolution of an earlier way of life through its absorption in a new system. Rather, in a style we would call typically Omani, this transformation would occur through a measured process of negotiation and adaptation. This period, which is bookended by the signing of the Moresby Treaty limiting the slave trade in 1822, and the British decision in 1861 to declare Muscat and Zanzibar separate political entities, is marked by certain key changes. Principal among these were the transformation of Zanzibar’s economy to the plantation model against a backdrop of ongoing negotiation with the British over the question of slavery, the development of a new commercial relationship with the rising power of the United States, and gradual increasing assertion of

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British legal and political power over administration of Zanzibar (and also, though to a much lesser extent, the rest of Oman). In this and the following section, we will trace these developments in order to show how new encounters in the region effected a broader shift in general: this was from a social, economic and political system based largely on relations of personal authority, dependency and reciprocity – which we have called typical of the pre-colonial Indian Ocean interregional arena – to one governed more predominantly by impersonal relations of contract and governance. It is a shift that we will suggest reflects a broader transition throughout the region, attributable largely to European colonial influence and, in particular, to the introduction not only of new government structures, but concepts of sovereignty on which they were based and which differed radically from those that preceded them. The British government had been involved in a campaign to end the slave trade since 1807. This involvement followed the passage of the first British anti-slavery legislation, entitled ‘An Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade’, which ruled that from 1 May 1807, ‘the African Slave Trade, and all manner of dealing and trading in the Purchase, Sale, Barter, or Transfer of Slaves, or of Persons intended to be sold, transferred, used, or dealt with as Slaves, practiced [sic] or carried on, in, at, to or from any Part of the Coast or Countries of Africa, shall be, and the same is hereby utterly abolished, prohibited, and declared to 1 be unlawful.’ As a British law, technically the act only applied to British subjects or to trade taking place within the British Empire; nonetheless, in the second decade of the nineteenth century, representatives of the British government and the British government in India increasingly sought to extend its application throughout the Indian Ocean region. Their efforts were substantially aided by Britain’s increasing naval superiority and political control in the western Indian Ocean, achieved partly as a result of gaining control of former French possessions such as Mauritius (captured in 1810, and retained by treaty with France in 1814). By the 1820s, it would have appeared that the British were well on their way to achieving the act’s objectives. Into this context stepped Captain Fairfax Moresby. Visiting Zanzibar in 1821, he took direct action against slave traffic through Zanzibar, seizing ships suspected of carrying slaves, and composed a letter to Sayyid Said asking for his support in bringing the trade to an end. The request, however, was unauthorised. Upon its disclosure, the British governor of Mauritius took it upon himself to write to Sayyid Said to explain Moresby’s actions, which he admitted amounted to a

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violation of Sayyid Said’s sovereignty. Nonetheless, Moresby travelled again to Zanzibar in 1822 to negotiate a treaty. Apparently, with no 2 great hesitation, Sayyid Said consented. Why would Sayyid Said have offered such little resistance to the end of an industry that constituted such a major part of his economy? The motivations behind his decision to focus economic and political efforts on the development of Zanzibar after 1820, considered in Chapter 6, may shed some insight here. Although he did not appear to be deliberately launching an empire-building strategy from a secure position of domestic strength, neither was Sayyid Said’s position in 1820 as weak as it was just a few years earlier. He will certainly have needed to make some calculations about the nature of British power in the region, which we can now see was probably entering a decisive new phase. That a new epoch was beginning would not, of course, have been obvious at the time, nor could Sayyid Said have imagined the extent to which British control in the region would eventually assert itself: control which would be articulated in the clearest possible terms when, on a visit to Kuwait in 1903, the British Viceroy of India Lord Curzon would instruct assembled Gulf leaders that ‘the influence of the British government 3 must remain supreme’. Nonetheless, Sayyid Said may well have viewed the General Treaty, which the British signed with the Qawasim in 1820, as an important indication of the likely direction of events, especially in two respects. First of all the treaty itself could be regarded as an indication that the British, at least, saw their presence in the region as a long-term commitment. Pragmatism therefore compelled Sayyid Said to consider a range of responses that acknowledged the reality of the British presence and sought to accommodate Omani–Zanzibari interests within this reality. Attempts at resistance would not have benefited his economy, for, with the British such a strong presence throughout the entire region, non-compliance would at least isolate Zanzibar from the entire network. Or worse: in the General Treaty, Article Nine contained a reference to the slave trade that effectively defined it as a form of piracy. ‘The carrying off of slaves, men, women or children, from the coasts of Africa or elsewhere, and the transporting of them in vessels is plunder and piracy, and the friendly Arabs shall do nothing of this 4 nature.’ Sayyid Said had seen and participated in British action against what they deemed to be piracy (including the Thompson and Smith land operations against the Bani Bu Ali in Oman). He had observed

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Moresby’s 1821 actions – however illegitimate they were later declared – against slave traders from Zanzibar. Non-compliance with British interests in the slave trade might not merely have lost Sayyid Said a potential ally, but it was entirely possible, he could see from experience, that Britain might actually become a military threat. The resulting Moresby Treaty stipulated that the Omani government must seize and punish captain and crew – as pirates – aboard vessels found to be carrying slaves to ‘any port outside His Highness’s dominions’. Applied to all movements east of a line drawn from Cape Delgado to Diu Head on the western coast of India, the treaty thus presumably exempted trade from Zanzibar into the Gulf itself; it also prohibited any sale of slaves to Christians. According to Abdul Sheriff, Sayyid Said complained that the loss of income arising from signing the treaty was as much as MT$ 50,000 a year, a sum Sheriff suspects may have been exaggerated to begin with, and that Sayyid Said is reported to have increased in subsequent years ‘in the hope of precluding further demands of that nature and to extract the 5 maximum concession in return’. Regardless, the hit absorbed by Zanzibar’s economy was significant. Additional articles would be added to the treaty in 1839, specifying a ‘permission to seize and confiscate any vessels the property of His Highness or of His subjects carrying on the slave trade, excepting only such as are engaged in the transport of slaves from one part to another of his own dominions in 6 Africa’, in 1845, largely reaffirming the British right to search and, in 1850, providing British access to Omani territory to destroy slavetrading facilities. Edward Keene suggests that the British use of treaties in relation to the slave trade would contribute to the establishment of an international hierarchy securing a dominant position for Britain. Perhaps more intriguingly, he compares the Vienna Declaration of 1815, agreements between the British, Portuguese and Spanish in 1817, and the Moresby Treaty of 1822 – ‘the first specifically antislave trade treaty with a Muslim power’ – with its subsequent agreements, in order to note a distinctive shift in the way Britain dealt with its various interlocutors. ‘The single most important distinguishing feature of these antislave trade treaties, in comparison with those agreed with European and American powers, was the gradual disappearance of the 7 principles of reciprocity and equal respect.’ While the 1822 and 1839 treaties contain language in which the signatories are framed as equal and contracting partners, Keene claims that by 1845 the situation had changed and Sayyid Said was acting ‘in deference to the wishes of Her

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Majesty and of the British nation and in furtherance of the dictates of 8 humanity’, for by 1850, Sayyid Said himself writes, ‘we and all belonging to us, even our countries, are at the disposal of Her Majesty.’ For Keene this move away from reciprocity signifies Sayyid Said’s ‘almost complete decline … from a sovereign ruler with his own rights in the law of nations and a jealously guarded jurisdiction, to an 9 inferior entity who acts in deference to the wishes of another state’. Keene may have a valid point to the extent that the accommodation of British policy was a cause for concern, perhaps for Sayyid Said himself, but certainly for some of his fellow Omanis (or even, indeed, his Indian merchant associates) in Zanzibar. As James Wellsted points out in his elucidation of Sayyid Said’s position in his 1838 Travels in Arabia, the Omani ruler had been treated unfavourably compared with the Spanish, who had received substantial financial compensation for concluding an anti-slavery treaty, whereas Sayyid Said had received none. Statements by the British consul in Zanzibar, Atkins Hamerton, testify to the delicacy of the issue as well. Hamerton appears reluctant to push Sayyid Said any further on the subject, explaining to his superiors, ‘it is best not to agitate this slave question in Zanzibar as the natives do not understand it.’ Particularly because of an 1850 concession to the British of the right to pursue suspected slavers within his own areas of maritime sovereignty, Hamerton expounds, Sayyid Said has won ‘the contempt and hatred of all his people, even to the 10 members of his own family’. But both Keene’s present-day analysis and Hamerton’s at the time deserve a little further scrutiny, as both may be missing something central about Sayyid Said’s own agency in relation to this whole issue. If intended to apply generally to Sayyid Said’s political position, Keene’s conclusion that the treaties have effectively reduced him to a puppet at best seems exaggerated in that nothing in the formal relationship, nor yet in the realities of everyday social and political life, suggest that he had been stripped of all sovereign rights. Conversely, it might be argued that it was precisely to preserve those sovereign rights – which he will, in any case, have viewed somewhat differently from the contract-minded British – that Sayyid Said made concessions to an increasingly powerful external player, which he calculated to be an enduring presence. Further, the phraseology in which Sayyid Said appears to affirm that he is completely at the ‘disposal of Her Majesty’ may simply be an instance of rhetorical self-abnegation, which, as we have seen, could be part of the Omani ‘ideology of politeness’. It resembles in this respect the terms in which Sayyid Barghash signed the

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1873 treaty: ‘the poor, the unworthy Barghash bin Said bin Sultan’. These cultural factors play a significant role in the semantics of such treaties and, therefore, what Keene may be missing is that the language cannot be taken at face value, as directly indexical of the real power relations between the parties involved. Hamerton’s portrayal of a weakened ruler suffering the antagonism of his own people may be contingent upon a cultural misunderstanding of another sort, in relation to the very nature of government. As Norman Bennett notes, Hamerton himself recognised at the time that Sayyid Said’s ‘orders to his people are or are not obeyed by them just 12 as it suits their interests to do so’. This suggests that, perhaps because of the nature of decision-making among the Zanzibari élite in Zanzibar, many of those close to Sayyid Said may not have considered themselves bound by the terms of a treaty he has signed, nor may Sayyid Said (himself a product of this more fluid mode of government) expect them to act as if they were. Bennett suggests that the general opinion of leading Omanis was that their sovereign was ‘a necessary figure, particularly for dealing with foreign peoples and nations; he 13 was first among a group of equals’. The job of the sovereign, then, in this situation, would be to manage external diplomacy, and ideally in a way that interfered as little as possible with everyday business and social and political relations. Hamerton’s notion of a sovereign, coloured by the deployment of British naval resources in the Atlantic as well as the Indian Ocean, and all in the name of their monarch, may therefore fail to grasp that the ‘sovereign’ in this case is not quite the absolute ruler of the Western imagination, whose every word is his subjects’ command. A similar tendency to interpret sovereignty in an ‘absolutist’ form such as that identified in Hamerton may also contribute to Keene’s rather black-and-white conclusions, which fail to treat diplomatic texts such as treaties and letters as part of a complex network of communications, rather than transparent windows onto reality. For while these documents in the archive may be all that remain, we know they are not all that transpired. Bennett looks beneath the surface and emerges with a picture of the Omani ruler that, unlike Hamerton’s or Keene’s, shows him far from being in a state of ‘almost complete decline’ by the time of the 1850 agreement. To the contrary, Bennett goes so far as to suggest that in the period between 1845 and his death in 1856, Sayyid Said in fact ‘profited from his role against the slave trade without 14 actually aiding the British in any significant manner’. If Sayyid Said ‘profited’ politically, as Bennett suggests, from his

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acquiescence in limitations to the slave trade, it is also clear that both he and Zanzibar’s economy also ‘profited’ in a more literal, economic sense. For the change seems to have sparked a complete transformation in the Zanzibar trade economy, from one premised largely upon the exchange of slaves, to one reliant upon – not the trade in persons but – their labour, more locally and directly. Two commodities came to dominate Zanzibar’s economy: the first was ivory, the second was cloves. Slaves had long been essential to the lucrative ivory trade, which expanded rapidly in the late eighteenth century and into the nineteenth; they worked primarily as porters on caravan routes bringing ivory from the African mainland to ports of the coast, including Zanzibar. The development of clove agriculture in Zanzibar would generate a new demand for slave labour but change the nature of that labour, as well. To this point, treaties on the slave trade limited and sought to abolish the exchange, rather than the ownership, of slaves. Thus, the ivory trade was able to continue, dependent as it was on a local trade and slave labour rather than the international slave trade. The development of clove agriculture, then, may have further diverted the flow of slaves from the international market into a local labour market. Whether the development of clove agriculture was a deliberate response to increasing restrictions on the slave trade is not clear. Norman Bennett attributes a belief in a causal relationship to Abdul Sheriff but suggests that Frederick Cooper’s alternative explanation is ‘more reasonable’: ‘the Arabs, faced with the normal uncertainties of international commerce, had opted for a potentially safer investment of their resources, a decision doubtless strengthened by their existing familiarity 15 with the cultivation of another tree crop, that of the date palm.’ The problem with Cooper’s argument, however, as represented here by Bennett, is that it attributes the decision to invest in the supposedly ‘safer’ practice of clove agriculture to an Omani élite whose wealth and political position is almost entirely due to their success in ‘international commerce’, which, however ‘uncertain’ it might be, had a track record of over a hundred years among the Al bu Saidi alone, let alone the longer tradition of which their activities form part. By the same token, the Al bu Saidi and their largely commercial associates (and rivals) in Zanzibar, by virtue of being primarily traders, would not have possessed the skills in date palm cultivation that might have encouraged a diversification into cloves, nor would the Indian merchants who will also have contributed to the formulation of economic policy (or, as we might more accurately term it, commercial

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decisions). In any case it is hard to see how clove agriculture eliminates the ‘uncertainties of international commerce’, since Zanzibar’s cloves were all grown for export. So where does that leave us? In the book developed from his earlier dissertation, published some nine years after Bennett’s work, Sheriff seems to respond to Bennett and underscore the link between the collapse of the slave trade and the rise of plantation agriculture. He writes: ‘the collapse … posed a grave crisis for the mercantile classes 16 operating along the East African coast’; a letter from Sayyid Said to his agent in Bombay links the rise of agriculture directly to this crisis: ‘In consequence of the abolition of the slave trade the collections [revenue] of Zanzibar have been diminished; it has therefore been 17 deemed necessary to make plantations of sugar cane in the islands’. Sheriff also argues that the ‘Omani merchant class’ who introduced clove agriculture to Zanzibar were familiar with fellow merchants from ‘the Mascarenes’ (former French possessions in the Indian Ocean, such as Réunion and Mauritius, where the slave trade had also been outlawed following capture by the British in 1810), from whom they had learned that ‘if slaves could not be imported, the product of their labour could. They witnessed in those islands the employment of slave 18 labour for the production not only of sugar but also of cloves.’ It was from the Mascarenes, in fact, that cloves were first introduced into Zanzibar, some time before Sayyid Said’s first visit in 1828. If the seeds had arrived via French traders, nonetheless, a large plot of land would have been required to grow them; a Zanzibari account credits Saleh bin Haramil al-Abri, a land-holding member of the Omani merchant élite, with their first cultivation. His holdings included a plantation at Mtoni, where Sayyid Said would later have his residence on Zanzibar built. A modest export of cloves from Zanzibar is already visible in Bombay trade records as early as 1823–4. Sheriff therefore concludes that while Sayyid Said may not have personally introduced clove production to the islands, he would have been fully aware of its potential – even if he was also exploring the possibility of sugar cane – and that his arrival would have given the clove 19 ‘bandwagon … a most royal push’. A main thread in the transformation of the Zanzibar economy in the three decades after 1820, then, is that it came to be based upon the labour of slaves rather than their sale. In other words, the integration of Zanzibar into the new capitalist world economy was accompanied, even facilitated, by a shift in the understanding of the relationship between the slave and the commodity. Whereas once the slave himself

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was the commodity, according to the new system, it was the labour power of the slave that would become the commodity; just as elsewhere in industrial capitalism it would be the labour power, or output, of the wage labourer that would produce surplus value, and thus commercial profit. There is perhaps a historical irony here, in that the response in Zanzibar to British efforts to limit the slave trade may have actually encouraged or at least hastened the development of a slave economy that rather more closely resembled the kind of slavery prevalent in the Americas – which had most animated the abolitionist movement – than it did the form of slavery that had been part of Omani life for centuries. This shift is perhaps yet another example of the transformation of societies of the Indian Ocean from networks of personalised dependency and subjection, exhibiting various kinds of fluidity, into systems ordered according to the demands of an increasingly industrial capitalism. As Frederick Cooper notes in his study of slavery in African history: On the coast of East Africa, plantation slavery evolved in the nineteenth century out of a more diffuse form of slavery. The Arabs of Oman, who built Zanzibar’s clove plantations, owned many slaves back in their homeland, including servants, concubines, soldiers, artisans, and town labourers. The generalized subordination of slave to owner was more important than specific economic roles. But the growing Indian Ocean commercial system created an infrastructure linking fertile regions of the East African coast with sources of slaves deep in the interior and with markets in India, Arabia, Southeast Asia, and Europe. By the 1840s Zanzibar’s plantations – large even by American standards – were becoming the dominant agricultural unit, and slave labour became 20 increasingly regimented.

In Arab Muslim societies such as Oman, slaves had performed a range of functions by no means limited to manual labour. They would typically have been understood as members of a household, without legal rights of full citizens, but often entrusted with positions of effective social and political power within those households. This is not to claim any moral superiority for one form of slavery over another, but rather to emphasise that the two forms existed in entirely different social structures, and that it is the transformation of one such structure into another that Cooper sees taking place in Zanzibar, as a result of clove agriculture and its increasing economic dominance. The transformation is not complete, however. Cooper points out:

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Nevertheless, agricultural development did not turn Zanzibar into Jamaica. Above all, the absence of a strong state and class unity among slave-holders meant that plantations became a new kind of socio-political unit as well as an economic one. The power of slave-holders still depended more on control over inferiors than control over institutions, but the slave, if still a personal 21 follower, had now become a labourer working under plantation discipline.

The economic shift from trading in slaves to deploying slave labour in the service of a new export trade would contribute to significant change in the nature of social and political relations, as well. The introduction of large-scale plantation would establish a more dualistic notion of owner–slave relationships and be accompanied by other developments, more or less explicitly pursued by the British, which sought to strengthen clear-cut legal relations based on European notions of the functions of the state and sovereignty. One attempt sought to force Zanzibar’s Indian merchant community to become British subjects, even though many had been born in Zanzibar and nearly all traced their origins to areas in India outside formal British 22 control. A later development, pursued once British control had been formally enshrined in the post-1890 Protectorate, included a campaign to wrest endowments made for religious and charitable purposes – waqf – from private family jurisdiction, and to have all waqf placed 23 under British administrative control. Both of these processes tended to weaken the bonds of more personal socio-political relations among different sectors of Zanzibari society, replacing them with more distilled ‘notions of social order that were both modern and 24 capitalist’. ZANZIBAR, THE AMERICANS AND THE IVORY TRADE

The most decisive contribution of ivory to the transformation of Zanzibar’s economy and society in the mid-nineteenth century was that it would become the basis for the establishment of commercial and diplomatic relations between the Omanis and the traders and leaders of a newly independent former British colony, the United States of America. The ivory trade itself was not new at all: it was mentioned as far back as the first century CE by the Periplus, in association with the East African port of Rhapta. The precise location of Rhapta has not been established, but there is a consensus that it was probably located somewhere on the stretch of coast between Mombasa and Cape Delgado, with some speculation that it may have been at or very near the prominent city-state Kilwa. In a tenth-century account of

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travels along the East African coast with Omani sailors, Arab historian al-Masūdī refers to a significant ivory trade conducted via Oman to 25 both India and China. By the end of the sixteenth century, at which time the Portuguese dominated the coast, Muslim traders excluded by the Portuguese from Zimbabwean gold were primarily responsible 26 for developing the ivory trade at Kilwa. Since Kilwa would fall increasingly under the influence of Zanzibar in the early decades of the nineteenth century, it was eventually Zanzibar that would benefit most substantially from the increase in demand for ivory. The rise in demand was fuelled at least in part by a breakthrough on the other side of the world. In 1799, in the United States of America, Deacon Phineas Pratt was awarded a patent for a device that would mechanise the manufacture of ivory combs. Ivory imported from East Africa via ports such as Salem in Massachusetts would provide the raw material for the establishment of factories in two Connecticut river towns, Deep River and Ivoryton. Their operations would transform the world ivory market, making ivory manufactures – previously available only as hand-carved items to a wealthy élite – available as luxury items for a growing middle-class mass market. In addition to combs, ivory came to be used in billiard balls and piano keys – objects of middle-class leisure – making the two Connecticut companies (Pratt, Read & Co. in Deep River, and Comstock, Cheney & Co. in Ivoryton) the world’s leading manufacturers in ivory, and ivory itself, as John 27 Frederick Walker has put it, ‘the plastic of its age’. The development of relations between the Omanis of Zanzibar and the United States of America would differ from that between the Omanis and the British in two important ways. First, the relationship between Omanis and Americans was at the outset primarily if not exclusively commercial, while the British presence in the Gulf might be better understood as a political strategy designed in part to defend its Indian possessions from challenges from rival powers such as France and Russia. Commercial prioritisation may even have influenced conscious suppression of potentially political perspectives among certain Americans, as several involved in Zanzibar’s ivory trade were leading abolitionists at home, involved in political debates at a time 28 when the State of Connecticut had not yet outlawed slavery. Second, the relationship was one formed primarily between merchant Americans and Zanzibar, rather than one of a more bilateral nature, say, between Oman as a whole and the United States government. Unlike the British who had powerful incentives to play a leading role in the politics of the Gulf and the western Indian Ocean, the

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nineteenth-century United States of America had virtually no significant national interests, beyond the commercial concerns of its merchants and traders, to establish or secure, and nothing as yet resembling an empire, in the region. It made sense, then, that initial encounters were more purely focused on trade, and on a much smaller scale. It was not long, however, before discussions of something largerscale and more formal began to crop up. The possibility of a commercial treaty between the Omanis and the United States of America was initially proposed by New Hampshire merchant Edmund D. Roberts, who had for some years tried to trade with Zanzibar but had faced certain obstacles in the form of high transaction costs imposed by Sayyid Said’s officials. Finding himself in Zanzibar in 1828, at the same time as Sayyid Said, Roberts took the opportunity to raise the costs as an issue with the Omani ruler. Sayyid Said’s response to Roberts suggested that such problems might readily be resolved if the United States were to sign a commercial treaty with him as, he said, the English had done. Roberts returned to the United States, and in January 1832, received a commission from the US State Department to conclude ‘Commercial Treaties’ with both Siam and ‘the Sultan of 29 Muscat’. The treaty, signed in Muscat on 23 September 1833 and ratified by the United States President and Senate in June 1834, was Zanzibar’s first international trade agreement, and, for the United States, only the second agreement with an Arab country after a 1787 trade treaty with Morocco. It gave Americans the right to carry out their trade on favourable terms equivalent to those enjoyed by the British. A previous duty of 7.5 per cent on both imports and exports was replaced by an attractive 5 per cent. In addition, pilotage charges, to which Americans had formerly been subject, were now waived. By contrast, Roberts reported, charges levied by the Portuguese in Mozambique amounted 30 to 24 per cent. He communicated satisfaction with the conclusion of the treaty and the opportunities it would afford American commercial interests, adding to the Secretary of State that he and his colleagues had been treated with generous hospitality throughout their stay in Muscat. A year later, to the very day, of the signing of the 1833 treaty, Roberts’s ship, the Peacock, sailing from Zanzibar, ran aground near the island of Masirah off the coast of Oman, where it was ‘beset by numerous piratical vessels … using every stratagem to plunder us, their numbers hourly accumulating for the purpose no doubt to destroy us,

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& make prize of the ship’. Roberts eluded the ‘pirates’ in a twenty-foot boat and made his way to Muscat to beg the assistance of Sayyid Said. In response, Sayyid Said organised a successful rescue mission involving operations by both land and sea and even offered – in the event that the Peacock was too badly damaged to make the Atlantic crossing – ‘a Sloop of War’ to take its crew back to the United States, 31 and a second to permit Roberts to complete his mission to Bombay. While in Muscat, Roberts took the opportunity to complete an ‘exchange of ratifications’ of the treaty agreed a year previously, which had the effect of advancing relations to a deeper bilateral level. Under the terms of this treaty, Sayyid Said’s subjects would benefit from ‘most favoured nation’ status when assessed for duty at American ports. It was also agreed that American consuls with diplomatic immunity should be appointed in Zanzibar and Oman, and that their duties would include dealing with trade issues and civil jurisdiction. The first American consul in Zanzibar, taking office in 1837, was Richard P. Waters of the Salem, Massachusetts firm of Bertram and Shepard. Like other American representatives at the time, Waters was not what we would now call a ‘career diplomat’, but rather a freelance merchant, seeking, as he himself writes, to ‘acquire a necessary portion 32 of riches’ while working far from home. He gradually established a close commercial relationship with Jairam Shivji, Sayyid Said’s customs master in Zanzibar, through whose house Waters was 33 conducting 90 per cent of his business by 1840. Waters’s commercial activities would cause the British considerable concern, threatened as they were by the emergence of the Americans. His letters and journals make apparent his own hostility towards British rivals such as Robert Norsworthy (of whom, Waters writes, ‘I do not condescend to 34 speak’); they also reveal tensions with local merchants whom Waters may have suspected of harbouring pro-British loyalties. Both the British and the Americans working in Zanzibar at this time believed that there were pro-British and pro-American factions within Sayyid Said’s administration. But, in addition to British sympathisers, Waters may have butted heads even with his own countrymen who resented what they saw as monopolistic advantages arising from his position as consul and his relationship with Jairam Shivji. But Waters’s correspondence may introduce a new dimension to the discussion about the nature of American interaction, especially compared with that of Britain. We have generalised that the nature of the Omani–American relationship in Zanzibar was commercial rather

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than political, free of attempts to interfere significantly in the conduct of Sayyid Said’s policy other than on purely commercial issues; however, there is some evidence to suggest that the American approach to religion was more inclined to proselytisation. As Waters writes of his conversations with Zanzibari Muslims about their faith: This people remind me of those spoken of in Holy Writ. ‘They honor me (saith the Lord) with the lip, while their hearts are far from me’. I often talk with them on the interest of the Soul, and they most always reply by saying – ‘Our book (the Koran) speaks all the same as yours (the Bible) and we pray plenty’. … I tell them, yes it is true, you pray often with the lip, but your hearts are destitute of the true spirit of prayer I fear. … They seem to 35 listen with interest, and say, ‘all I speak is very good’.

Recalling James Wellsted’s account of his dialogue with the Bani Bu Ali presents an interesting foil to the words of Waters. Whereas Wellsted had acknowledged in the Omanis a more tolerant party, no such recognition is apparent in Waters. To the contrary, Waters’s account conveys a rather self-righteous tone, and while we cannot generalise from this single example, it may be worth having at the back of our minds as we move on to consider evolving US involvement in the region. The next phase of the Omani–American relationship inaugurated a new era in the reach of Oman, with broader implications than merely the strengthening of US ties. First of all, the outward shift that occurred as Oman began deploying ships across the Atlantic represented a significant landmark in terms of Omani agency. It would constitute an attempt to put a key aspect of Zanzibar’s external trade into Omani, rather than Western, hands, for the ability to send ships abroad under Omani command would allow Omanis and their partners in Zanzibar to influence terms of trade more directly than if they continued only to receive ships. Secondly, this shift meant that Omani and Zanzibari tastes would more profoundly shape the international market. With their own trade missions to the USA, Omanis could specify in advance the kind of consumer goods they were interested in acquiring, which would impact on the development of a substantial market for the consumer goods of Western capitalist modernity. This, in turn, would contribute to the further incorporation of Zanzibar into the world system taking shape in the mid-nineteenth century. By the late 1830s, Richard P. Waters had achieved a dominant, perhaps even monopolistic, position in US–Zanzibar trade, and the majority of American ships calling at Zanzibar came from his home

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town of Salem, Massachusetts. But, in 1839 a new group of players appeared on the scene. Representatives of the New York firm Scoville and Britton arrived in Zanzibar, presenting the opportunity to develop trade with New York, and Sayyid Said appears to have taken advantage of this visit to discuss the possibility with Edgar Botsford of Scoville and Britton, who was eager to encourage it. The New Yorkers departed from Zanzibar for Bombay and it appears that, around this time, Sayyid Said was developing plans for a trade mission to the United States, for a few months later he shared plans of this nature with Waters. Waters’s own time in Zanzibar was coming to an end and it was initially agreed that Waters would travel back to the United States aboard Sayyid Said’s ship – the Sultanah – the very same ship Sayyid Said had dispatched to rescue Edmund Roberts’s Peacock in 1834. From a diplomatic perspective, it seems likely that this choice of ship was symbolic, not least because the mission, while primarily commercial in character, had the additional purpose of establishing appropriate relations with the government of the United States. The Sultanah already bore positive connotations, recalling an instance of demonstrated friendship and goodwill on behalf of Sayyid Said towards the Americans. And, while carrying goods for trade, the Sultanah would also bear letters and gifts for US President Martin Van Buren, care of Sayyid Said’s personal envoy Ahmad bin Na’aman. The first Omani ship to sail to the United States arrived in New 36 York on 30 April 1840. The gifts it bore were to prove somewhat problematic, however, not unlike the gift of the ‘magnificent seventyfour’ made to the British Royal Navy in 1834. The Sultan’s envoy, Ahmad bin Na’aman, presented to the New York firm Barclay and Livingston (which had replaced Scoville and Britton as agents for Oman when the latter went bankrupt) ‘two fine Najd stud horses, a string of pearls, two separate large, pear-shaped pearls, some 120 assorted brilliants (totalling 18.25 karats), a small gold bar, a silk Persian carpet, a jar of attar of roses, some rosewater, six cashmere 37 shawls and a beautiful gold-mounted sword’. Responsible for the sale of the Zanzibari goods and for conducting correspondence with the US government on behalf of Ahmad bin Na’aman, Barclay and Livingston duly wrote to the President informing him of the gifts and forwarding Sayyid Said’s letters. Secretary of State John Forsyth responded to Barclay and Livingston, pointing out that the Constitution of the United States did not permit the President to accept gifts. What, then, was to be done with them?

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In his study of the 1840 mission, Hermann Frederick Eilts posits that Ahmad bin Na’aman first suggested that he would simply take them back with him on the Sultanah’s return, but presumably realised that this might not be practical, particularly in the case of the horses, and subsequently changed his position, writing that since he planned to remain in the United States for about a month, he ‘hoped that during this period he might be authorized to turn over the gifts to a 38 duly delegated representative’. It is not quite clear why Ahmad bin Na’aman’s original plan would have been ‘patently impractical’, as Eilts suggests: after all, if the horses had survived one crossing of the Atlantic there is nothing to suggest that they might not manage a second. Instead, Ahmad bin Na’aman may have been playing a special kind of diplomatic ‘hardball’ with the Americans, insisting, in a style consistent with Omani courtesy, that the gifts must be accepted. He may even have interpreted the President’s protestations as itself a form of diplomatic courtesy, one that would eventually lead to gracious acquiescence to the inevitability of the gifts. In any case, the whole issue became the topic of a series of debates in the United States Congress, probably heightened because 1840 was an election year in which President Van Buren was seeking re-election. Among those insisting on utmost constitutional propriety was former President John Quincy Adams, now a congressman for Massachusetts. A resolution arose proposing that such gifts could be accepted provided it was done not personally but on behalf of the US citizenry, and so long as they were subsequently disposed of, with the proceeds from their sale divided between two charitable institutions in Washington, DC. Adams held out; eventually, his opposition was defeated on the floor of the House, and the resolution was passed, but not before it was amended to restore an earlier provision that the proceeds should be deposited with the US Treasury. While most of the gifts appear to have been sold off, the pearls would eventually find their way into the collection of the Smithsonian Institution, after its establishment in 1848. President Van Buren reciprocated with an array of gifts delivered to the Sultanah for the return voyage, which included two of the largest mirrors manufactured in the United States, a chandelier and a range of firearms. The White House may well have been advised in its choice of gifts by the New York agents, who will have derived a sense of Zanzibari taste in assisting Ahmad bin Na’aman make purchases on behalf of members of Zanzibar’s élite (such as Sayyid Said himself, his son Sayyid Khalid, Said bin Khalfan and another unnamed Zanzibari merchant). Jeremy Prestholdt has categorised these commodities as

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‘special consumer objects, such as chandeliers, cases of pineapple and orange syrup. Confectionery almonds, glass plates, watches, shotguns, 39 lamps, and mirrors, for some of Zanzibar’s wealthiest residents.’ Their commission, he claims, provides evidence of a developing consumer society in Zanzibar. Not long after the voyage of the Sultanah to New York, Prestholdt points out, Sayyid Said dispatched a number of missions from Zanzibar with similar objectives: In the years that followed the Sultana’s voyage, Seyyid Said would send several vessels to London and Marseilles – one with a cargo totalling 100,000 Maria Theresa thalers, or about twice that of the average cargo leaving Zanzibar on a European vessel – and these would return with an 40 assortment of consumer goods for local sale.

The consequences in Zanzibar of the expanding consumer market – mainly in luxury items without utilitarian function, but rather ‘destined for the social realm of display and public communication’ – would 41 be more than merely economic. An emerging materialism would transform social and political relations too, as the use of consumer luxuries such as chandeliers, mirrors and, Prestholdt notes, portraiture, became characteristic of Zanzibar’s cosmopolitan élite. Items would acquire symbolic value because of who obtained and displayed them, changing the character of Zanzibari cosmopolitanism itself, aligning it more closely with the kind of cosmopolitanism taking shape in some leading commercial cities of the industrial West than with the type of Indian Ocean cosmopolitanism of Zanzibar’s days past. But this does not mean, Prestholdt points out, that East African consumers were passive recipients of a system first determined in the West. It is not that the goods and values of Western capitalist modernity were exported from the ‘core’ to the ‘periphery’ of this emergent global system, but rather that, as interlocutors, East African consumers, too, contributed to the shape of the more modern global economy. This is witnessed in part by the agency of East African consumers, along with the power exercised by regional leaders and traders, including Sayyid Said, to underscore the fact that, as Prestholdt articulates: ‘the shape of world markets has not been determined by Western interests alone but has, instead, been defined by a matrix of shifting accommodation and, lest we forget, in the 42 dynamics of non-Western exchanges.’ The firearms, however, were another matter. Just as we may suppose that Sayyid Said intended his gift of a seventy-four-gun warship to the British as, in part, an invitation to join him in a

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maritime military partnership, we may also imagine that Sayyid Said might have interpreted the gift of firearms as indicating some interest on the part of the United States in cooperating with his military power, if by no other means than by becoming a good source of modern weapons. Notes 01 An Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 25 March 1807, http:// www.pdavis.nl/Legis_06.htm, last accessed 29 June 2011. 02 Norman Robert Bennett, A History of the Arab State of Zanzibar, pp. 19–20. 03 Cited in Hussein M. Albaharna, The Legal Status of the Arab Gulf States: A Study of their Treaty Relations and their International Problems, p. 6. 04 See Hawley, The Trucial States, p. 129. 05 Abdul Sheriff, Slaves, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar, p. 47. 06 Cited in Edward Keene, ‘A Case Study’, p. 324. 07 Ibid., p. 324. 08 Ibid., p. 325. 09 Ibid., pp. 325–6. 10 Norman Robert Bennett, Arab versus European, p. 22. 11 Treaty between Her Majesty and the Sultan of Zanzibar for the Suppression of the Slave Trade, 30 June 1873, http://www.pdavis.nl/ FrereTreaty.htm, last accessed 3 May 2011. 12 Hamerton, cited in Bennett, A History, p. 51. 13 Bennett, Arab versus European, p. 22. 14 Bennett, A History, p. 51. 15 Ibid., p. 25. Bennett is here relying upon the unpublished dissertations of both Sheriff and Cooper. Sheriff’s dissertation research would later form the basis for the book Slaves, Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar, published nine years after Bennett’s A History, in which Sheriff would make the same general claim as in his original research. 16 Sheriff, Slaves, p. 48. 17 Ibid., p. 48. 18 Ibid., pp. 48–9. 19 Ibid., p. 50. 20 Frederick Cooper, ‘The Problem of Slavery in African Studies’, p. 112. 21 Ibid., p. 112. 22 See Sheriff, Slaves, pp. 202–8, and Bhacker, Trade and Empire, pp. 172–4. 23 Norbert Oberauer, ‘“Fantastic Charities”’, pp. 315–70. 24 Ibid., p. 316. 25 See R. W. Beachey, ‘The East African Ivory Trade in the Nineteenth Century’, p. 269.

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26 Edward A. Alpers, Ivory and Slaves in Central East Africa, p. 46. For a more recent overview of the impact of the ivory trade on regional economies and ecology across an extended historical duration, see N. Thomas Håkansson, ‘The Human Ecology of World Systems in East Africa’. 27 John Frederick Walker, Ivory’s Ghosts, p. 89. 28 See Donald L. Malcarne, ‘Ivoryton, Connecticut’. See also Anne Farrow, Joel Lang and Jenifer Frank, Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged and Profited from Slavery, pp. 195–213. 29 ‘Edmund Roberts to Louis McLane, Washington May 14, 1834’, in Norman R. Bennett and George E. Brooks, Jr, New England Merchants, p. 156. 30 See Philip E. Northway, ‘Salem and the Zanzibar-East African Trade’, p. 139. 31 ‘Edmund Roberts to John Forsyth, Bombay, October 23, 1835’, in Bennett and Brooks, Jr, New England Merchants, pp. 160–1. Forsyth had replaced McLane as Secretary of State. 32 ‘The Journals of Richard P. Waters, 1836–1844’, in Bennett and Brooks, Jr, New England Merchants, p. 201. 33 Bhacker, Trade and Empire, p. 159. 34 ‘Richard P. Waters to William C. Waters, Zanzibar, December 17, 1839’, in Bennett and Brooks, Jr, New England Merchants, p. 223. 35 ‘The Journals of Richard P. Waters’, in Bennett and Brooks, Jr, New England Merchants, p. 198. 36 The most detailed account of this mission, upon which most subsequent accounts rely, is Hermann Frederick Eilts, ‘Ahmad bin Na’aman’s Mission to the United States in 1840, the Voyage of Al-Sultanah to New York City’. 37 Ibid., p. 255. 38 Ibid., p. 256. 39 Jeremy Prestholdt, ‘Mirroring Modernity’, p. 171. 40 Ibid., p. 171. 41 Ibid., p. 172. 42 Jeremy Prestholdt, ‘On the Global Repercussions’, p. 759.

Introduction to Part III

This third and final section of this book is largely about the diplomacy of the contemporary Sultanate of Oman. It is here that the range of interests, principles and cultural preferences that constitute the ‘habitus’ of Omani diplomacy have taken the modern form of a national foreign policy. The ‘emergence’ of this ‘independent’ foreign policy was the subject of Joseph Kechichian’s 1995 study, which remains at the time of writing the most substantial and detailed con1 sideration of the subject. Our work seeks to complement this in two principal ways, beyond simply bringing it at least partially up to date. The first lies in our attempt to detect connections between the foreign policy of the sultanate and the cosmopolitan culture of diplomacy we have described in Part I, and which we have seen manifest in practice in the accounts of nineteenth-century interactions in Part II. Our claim is that an understanding of the social foundations and cultural dimensions of the practice of diplomacy enriches the kind of analysis that can be generated in works of political science and international relations. This is, of course, the kind of claim often made on behalf of ‘constructivism’ in international relations theory, which seeks to admit some of the messiness or contingency of human action (what we might call its cultural embeddedness) into accounts of foreign policy positions and decisions that are more generally understood, in ‘realist’ terms, as the products of rational calculations of interest. In the particular case of Oman, we suggest that the ‘habitus’ of Omani diplomats – among whom we would include Sultan Qaboos himself, as an unusually powerful influence over the direction of Omani foreign policy – contributes significantly to the way in which foreign policy is conceived and carried out. Key aspects of this foreign policy, noted by many observers, such as its pragmatism, its preference for a discreet low profile and its tendency to maintain all possible relations and channels of communication are, of course, shaped by the particular circumstances in which the modern sultanate has found itself, as we shall see in the chapters that follow. But, we argue, they are also

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expressive of those social and cultural values explored in Chapters 1 and 2 and structured by the ways in which Omani history and Omani understandings of that history are embodied and internalised as natural by those who participate in modern Oman’s relations with other nations and people. The second aspect of our work, which we suggest complements existing scholarship such as Kechichian’s, is a perspective shaped by the particular conditions of our own access to sources of information. In short, our account of Oman’s diplomacy is substantially informed by conversations with Omani diplomats and materials shared with us by Oman’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and seeks to enrich the historical record already taking shape through work such as Kechichian’s by conveying some of the underlying modes of thought and intention communicated by our engagement with this human and textual archive. Much of the material remains confidential, but none of it suggests that the existing understanding of the main characteristics of Omani foreign policy is in any way inaccurate. Instead, the material we have been able to examine, and the conversations we have enjoyed over many years with Omani diplomats, tend to substantiate such accounts while adding dimensions and details. Perhaps inevitably, the detail that emerges from material held in Oman, either in the paper archive or in the repertoire of human memory, tends to produce a picture in which the Oman-specific aspects of policies and decisions come into sharper relief when compared with analyses in which Oman is regarded, for example, as just one among a number of Arab Gulf states. This detail is of particular significance, we think, in relation to the triangle produced by Oman’s relationships with Iran and the USA, and in our consideration of Oman’s role in the Middle East peace process. But, it is significant across the board, especially when it is brought into relation with our exploration of the culture of diplomacy in which current Omani foreign policy is made and developed. Our aim is not, therefore, a comprehensive survey of Oman’s modern foreign policy, but rather a selective series of accounts of significant aspects of that policy and its implementation. The historical frame of this section is, broadly speaking, the period since the 1970 accession to power of Sultan Qaboos, although some consideration of earlier developments is necessary. Because the book as a whole is not a ‘history’ and does not seek to offer an uninterrupted narrative of events, this means that there is a significant leap forward in time from the moment at which the previous part of the book left off, with the death of Sayyid Said in 1856, to the accession of Sultan Qaboos. A

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brief account of a few key features of that intervening period is therefore in order. But perhaps more importantly, and in order to do justice to some significant recent contributions to the history of Oman, it needs to be emphasised that this ‘leap’ from the mid-nineteenth century to what is often understood as the foundational event of modern Oman (the ‘coup’ of 1970) is not intended to reinforce the familiar and misleading idea that 1970 marked an absolute rupture, nor yet a sudden return to the world of international relations after a period of absolute isolation. This narrative, which is at least to some extent encouraged in an Omani public discourse that routinely speaks of the national ‘renaissance’, obscures precisely those elements of continuity in Omani society that our analysis has sought to emphasise for an understanding of diplomacy. By setting up a black-and-white distinction in which an age of misguided isolation under Sultan Said bin Taimur is brought to an abrupt end by the ‘coup’ of 1970, this narrative fails to account either for important aspects of Sultan Said bin Taimur’s approach to questions of diplomacy and international relations, or for the significant ways in which the foreign policy pursued by his successor represents continuity rather than radical change. The death of Sayyid Said in 1856 eventually led to the separation of Zanzibar from Oman itself, under the terms of the Canning Award of 1861, with his sons Sayyid Thuwaini and Sayyid Majid being made sultans of Muscat and Oman and of Zanzibar respectively. While Zanzibar continued for some time as a prosperous and cosmopolitan society, the long-term effect of the separation was to interrupt the reciprocal flows of people, goods and ideas between Zanzibar and Muscat, gradually reducing the extent to which Oman itself participated in the cosmopolitanism that had characterised the preceding period. Uzi Rabi suggests that the success of Zanzibar in the first part of the nineteenth century was in fact largely responsible for the establishment of a coast–interior division (between Muscat and 2 Oman, sultanate and imamate). In the latter part of the century, then, this tension between these two polarities came to dominate politics, with Muscat seeking to maintain its outward engagement and consolidate its power on the basis of its external relationships, while the imamate sought to consolidate political and social authority through an appeal to a more autochthonous conception of Omani tradition. This all took place as the British asserted ever greater political authority in the region. This configuration of forces meant that through the first half of the twentieth century the key diplomatic

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task of the Sultan of Muscat and Oman would be to retain British support (military and economic) in order to prevail against the political challenge of the imamate in the interior, while simultaneously seeking to resist the imposition of ‘a British version of the state’ upon 3 the sultanate, and thereby to retain Oman’s effective independence. A typically ‘Omani’ arrangement provided the legal framework within which this political contest was conducted: the Treaty of Seeb of 1920, which set out the formal basis for the relationship between the Muscat-based sultanate and the tribes of the interior associated with the imamate, appears to have been written in such a way that neither side would feel that the other had gained a decisive political advantage, and that each side retained a measure of autonomy and protection against undue interference from the other. This agreement was between Sultan Taimur bin Faisal and the leading sheikhs of the interior, and was subsequently ratified by the imam, Muhammad bin Abdullah al-Khalili. It was to be the basis for relations between the sultanate and the imamate until the 1950s, when Sultan Taimur’s son, Sultan Said bin Taimur (who had succeeded his father in 1932), would seek to bring the interior under the full political authority of the sultanate in a single state. This move towards a unitary state in the second half of the twentieth century was foreshadowed by earlier developments under Sultan Said bin Taimur. On taking power he sought to centralise his own administration and strengthen its capacity to function independently of British political control, while continuing to benefit from British political and military support. Thus, in at least two specific respects his approach to government echoed that of his predecessors more than a hundred years earlier: like Sayyid Said bin Sultan in 1820, he obtained British military assistance to secure the compliance of the recalcitrant Bani Bu Ali in the Sharqiyah, and also like Sayyid Said bin Sultan, he brought Indian colleagues into the heart of his administration, as part of his bid to develop an autonomous administrative structure to his government. As far as external diplomacy was concerned, however, the economic and political situation gave him very little scope for action. The country was in debt and revenues (both from trade and from taxation) had dwindled substantially. Sultan Said’s own power was further compromised by the terms of his accession. Although he created the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs as part of his administrative reorganisation, and entrusted the position to his uncle Sayyid Shihab bin Faisal in 1939, Sayyid Shihab also had a wide range of other responsibilities (widely

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regarded as the sultan’s deputy), and when he relinquished the position in 1945, it remained vacant until Sultan Said appointed a British official (Basil Woods-Ballard). To some extent, then, Britain represented a kind of horizon for foreign policy, with Omani diplomacy functioning mainly in the triangular space of Britain– sultanate–imamate. After the Second World War a range of factors, some internal and others associated with the changing international environment, brought the delicate coexistence between sultanate and imamate under renewed pressure, which would lead eventually to the Jebel Akhdar War of 1955–9. This conflict has been explored in great detail by participants and historians: in briefest summary, therefore, following the death of Imam al-Khalili the new imamate leadership, drawing military, political and financial support from Saudi Arabia, sought to resist Sultan Said’s efforts to bring the interior under the full political control of Muscat, and waged an insurgency, based on and around the Jebel Akhdar, in the name of an independent imamate. With substantial military assistance from the British, the Sultan’s Armed Forces defeated the insurgency. Its political consequences continued to be a challenge to the emergence of the modern Omani state for some years subsequently, as Arab nationalist support for imamate independence brought what was to become known as ‘the Oman question’ to the United Nations. We bring this introduction to a close, then, with a brief attempt to capture the peculiar alignment of local, regional and international forces that created the field in which contemporary Omani diplomacy would have to take shape. With the end of the Second World War the major European colonial powers, including Great Britain, gradually started to withdraw from their colonial possessions. British involvement in Oman had always been largely a function of British rule in India, and when that came to an end in 1947, much of the rationale for the British presence in Oman was removed. However, the process of postcolonial withdrawal coincided with a global realignment of politics along cold war lines. As we shall see in more detail in Chapter 9 below, many nationalist movements in those parts of the world that had been subject to colonial rule naturally identified, politically, with the Soviet Union and the socialist bloc, which seemed to offer the best hope of coordinated opposition to the retreating colonial powers, such as Britain and France, which were cold war opponents of the Soviet Union. This meant that the significance of British involvement in the Middle East in general, and in the Gulf in particular, changed: no longer was it a

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question of protecting colonial possessions; instead, it became a matter of securing strategic positions against the potential threat of Soviet expansionism, to be achieved, many believed, through the overthrow of pro-Western governments in the region and their replacement by socialist regimes to be formed by the local nationalist movements. The revival of oil exploration in the region also had a decisive impact, most pertinently from an Omani perspective by way of the activities of Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) (a mainly British company granted exclusive exploration rights by Sultan Said in 1937) and Aramco (initially an affiliate of the Californian Standard Oil in partnership with the government of Saudi Arabia). Thus, in the 1950s, as Saudi Arabia and Aramco seek to maximise their potential reserves by laying claim to territory at the Buraimi oasis whose inhabitants traditionally owe loyalty to either the Sultan of Oman or the Sheikh of Abu Dhabi, the Sultan of Oman, supported by the British and PDO, is seeking to establish definitive control over the Omani interior. At the same time, the imamate in the Omani interior is securing not only Saudi support (motivated by territorial considerations familiar from the period of Wahhabi expansion and now sharpened by the lure of oil) but also political backing from anticolonial Arab nationalist governments, including those of Egypt and Iraq. It is this that leads to the incongruous role played, in the 1960s, by Arab nationalists and international socialists in bringing ‘the Oman question’ to the United Nations: secular, republican socialists, viewing Oman ideologically, as part of the pro-Western and colonial camp, find themselves promoting the interests of a political movement (the imamate) deeply rooted in religion and traditional tribal hierarchy. Oman’s position, as it enters a new phase of national development following the first oil exports in 1967, is thus both complex and anomalous. Unlike many emerging nations of this period it has no need of a nationalist or independence movement: while British influence has been extensive, Oman’s long-term independence has never actually been surrendered. The history of Arab nationalist support, first for the imamate and, subsequently, as we shall see in Chapter 9 below, for the Dhofari insurgency, means that Oman’s relations with Arab neighbours, while increasingly harmonious from 1970 onwards, will never have been based on an unquestioned sense of ethnic solidarity. At the same time, the rise of the Dhofar insurgency and the support it receives after the establishment of a socialist (and eventually Soviet-backed) state in South Yemen in 1967 places Oman suddenly at a cold war front line. The challenge for Omani diplomacy, then, at the

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time of Sultan Qaboos bin Said’s accession in 1970, is formidable: to secure territorial integrity against external and internal challenges while simultaneously negotiating an entry into a postcolonial regional environment, many of whose key players are active supporters of the most powerful threats to that very territorial integrity. This is a challenge that had already taken definitive shape by the mid-1950s, and that Sultan Said bin Taimur sought to address by using his relations with the British to help him secure the unification of his state. As the challenge acquires increasingly complex regional and international dimensions in the 1960s, and as oil exports assume a potentially dominant position in the Omani economy, circumstances clearly demand that the next phase of Omani development should involve a decisive reassertion of an outward-looking foreign policy, fully under Omani direction. The development and implementation of that policy is the central subject of the chapters that follow. Notes 01 Kechichian, Oman and the World. 02 Uzi Rabi, Emergence of States, p. 27. Rabi’s book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of Oman in the twentieth century in its reassessment of the role and policies of Sultan Said bin Taimur. 03 Ibid., p. 215.

8 Dealing with Iran: A Delicate Balance

1 Iran has already appeared on numerous occasions in this book, as neighbours are wont to do, nearly always present – visible and audible – but such a permanent feature that it sometimes does not draw a great deal of attention to itself. We have seen how Oman’s system of falaj irrigation likely has its origins in Persian qanats and that for hundreds of years territory on both shores of the Gulf has been inhabited by both Arabs and Persians; we know that Persian occupation of territory that now forms part of Oman once extended up into the Jebel Akhdar, where, it is said, ‘many of them … liked the place so much … that they 1 settled … and their descendants live there still.’ The Persians have featured in our text as an occupying power, first of all in the period immediately preceding the arrival of Islam in Oman, and much later, as residual post-Safavid-era forces expelled by Imam Ahmad bin Said. The ebb and flow of Iranian political fortunes has created opportunities and challenges for the development of Omani political and commercial interests in the lower Gulf, as well as further east in Makran. As Fred Halliday observes, Arab–Persian relations in the Gulf have often, and often quite wrongly, been described in terms of enduring ‘hostility’; this is an idea frequently used by ‘nationalists’ and others to characterise contemporary relations in terms of ‘timeless cultural forces’. Such characterisations, Halliday writes, are ‘questionable: for all the conflicts and conquests, and insults and divergences, there has been at least as much to unite and bring together the Arabs and Iranians as there has to divide them’. Here he points to certain features of Indian Ocean cosmopolitanism, which we have identified as enduring features of Oman’s international relations and diplomacy; it is therefore worth recalling that Iran, too, has been part of this Indian Ocean culture, in which ‘language, religion, pilgrimage, migration, 2 trade have tied the regions of both peoples together for all of history’. Halliday goes on to argue that many of the differences that appear to

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divide Arabs and Iranians from one another today are products of both political choices (where it has served specific interests to highlight them as sources of conflict and competition) and misperceptions, and that many of these have arisen from the nature of modern-state formation in the Gulf, in which ideas of homogeneity (ethnic, linguistic and religious) have tended to prevail against more pluralist conceptions. As we shall see, Oman’s relationship with Iran appears far too pragmatic to allow for the kind of default antagonisms produced by the misperceptions Halliday describes. Nor is this pragmatism new to the modern era: after all, as we have seen, only a few years after Imam Ahmad had forced a Persian withdrawal from Oman, and even at times when Oman and Persia were engaged in armed confrontation, Persian merchants were living and working in Muscat. In this chapter we examine Oman’s relations with Iran, focusing on three main issues: first, the way in which Oman managed its relations with Iran following the accession of Sultan Qaboos in 1970; second, how these relations endured and developed through the tumultuous period inaugurated by the Iranian Revolution of 1979 (and which continued through the Iran–Iraq war of 1980–8, to the death of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989); and third, how Omani diplomacy has sought to balance its relationship with Iran alongside its strategic alliance with the United States. Relations with Iran were clearly a priority for Omani diplomacy in the context of Oman’s efforts to gain diplomatic recognition for the Sultanate of Oman following the accession of Sultan Qaboos in 1970. In later years, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs research paper, upon which much of this chapter’s analysis of the thinking behind Omani policy is based, reveals that Iranian relations appear to have been the 3 subject of close policy analysis in the late 1980s. This is hardly surprising, given the impact upon the region, and indeed upon the world, of the revolution of 1979. When Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran on 1 February 1979, following the flight of the Shah, to establish the Islamic Republic of Iran, there were still Iranian military personnel on Omani soil. These had recently participated in anti-insurgency operations alongside the 4 Sultan’s Armed Forces in the southern province of Dhofar. This is just one way in which to express the suddenness and the scale of the challenge to Omani diplomacy posed by the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Another would be to note that this transformation in one of the country’s closest and most powerful neighbours began only a few years

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after Sultan Qaboos’s accession to power began the process whereby Oman started to engage as a modern nation in the international arena. Yet another would be to reveal that only nine years earlier, the entirety of Oman’s foreign relations had been handled by a single member of the palace staff in Salalah. The Iranian Revolution represented enough of a crisis for a world superpower – the United States – more than five thousand miles away. What must it have looked like from Oman, so much smaller, and directly across the Gulf from Iran? While Oman faced a critical situation as a result of this radical transformation in the political landscape of its powerful neighbour, it possessed one key advantage. For Oman, Iran has always been a permanent reality and its political vicissitudes have been viewed in the longue durée. What matters about Iran would continue to matter regardless of any change in its form of government. Revolution or no revolution, Iran was still Iran: it had key underlying interests arising from its location and historical formation. And geography is geography: the Strait of Hormuz would outlast all governments. Underlying Oman’s approach to the Iranian Revolution, then, was a recognition that not everything would change, and a determination to maintain the same basic attitude towards the relationship, irrespective of the change of government. We shall see that this basic position underpins Omani policy towards Iran and the conduct of its diplomacy both with Iran itself and in discussions with others concerning Iran. 1970–89

By the time of the Iranian Revolution, Oman under Sultan Qaboos had already demonstrated that it was prepared to work diplomatically according to this basic understanding of its relationship with Iran. Indeed, developing a viable working relationship with Iran was clearly one of the most pressing diplomatic priorities for Sultan Qaboos, following his accession in 1970. As Olivier Da Lage points out, Sultan Qaboos was quicker than other leaders in the region to take account of ‘a decisive factor: the British withdrawal from East of Suez from 5 December 1971’, and he recognised, adds Joseph Kechichian, that ‘Iran was indeed the most powerful country in the area’ and that regional security would be dependent upon security cooperation 6 between the regional states. According to Kechichian, Qaboos saw a border agreement with Iran as a prerequisite of such cooperation. Clearly, the British withdrawal from the Gulf made the question of regional security more pressing than ever before. The pursuit of a

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genuine regional security arrangement at least to some degree independent of relations with non-regional powers (particularly the Soviet Union and the United States) has been a feature of Omani diplomacy throughout the Qaboos era. It is a perspective that appears to have been shaped by the particular regional circumstances in which Qaboos came to power. The relationship between Oman and Iran was based on shared strategic concerns – above all the Strait of Hormuz – and it had survived considerable political turmoil in the past. Oman had always recognised that Iran was too powerful a regional power to be excluded from regional security arrangements, and that no regional security agreement would ever be fully operative without Iranian participation. That this was fact, regardless of the passing political changes in Iran, would inform Oman’s pragmatic policy towards and relationship with its neighbour across the water. Sultan Qaboos chose to make Iran his second foreign visit as head of state, when he attended the Persepolis Festival in October 1971. The context of this visit brought additional complications: this festival, organised by the Shah to commemorate the 2,500th anniversary of the Persian Empire, was understandably viewed with some hostility in the Arab world. Not only did this event appear to involve a renewed assertion of old Persian power in the region, suggesting a revival of old ambitions to reduce or eclipse Arab identity and culture in the Gulf, but also, in affirming the importance of a pre-Islamic heritage, the festival seemed to imply repudiation of a predominantly Muslim social and cultural identity in favour of a combination of Persian revivalism and Western modernisation on the part of the Iranian government. In spite of these apparent cultural and political obstacles, Omani diplomacy – prioritising long-term questions of regional security over shorter-term political difficulties – still seems to have placed the development of its relationship with Iran at the heart of its approach to regional relations. In November 1971, Oman’s diplomatic engagement with Iran faced its first, and perhaps its defining, challenge. Iranian naval forces landed on Greater Tunb, Lesser Tunb and Abu Musa, islands that lie just west of the Strait of Hormuz – the Tunbs within the sea lanes along which shipping passes and Abu Musa, a little south of them, nearer to the Arabian coast. These islands had been the source of controversy between Iran and the group of emirates that were at that point on the verge of forming the UAE. Iran had initially objected outright to the union, issuing a statement in January 1968 expressing concern that the proposed federation could perpetuate anti-Iranian policy, and

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announcing that it would not tolerate such ‘historical injustice’. Thereafter, Iran became more accommodating to the proposed federation but continued to maintain territorial claims to all three islands. Throughout the summer of 1971 the Shah repeatedly reasserted Iran’s claim, insisting that security considerations required that Iran control the islands since they commanded the entrance to the Gulf. Two days before the UAE formally came into existence, agreement was reached between Iran and Sharjah, the emirate that claimed ownership of Abu Musa. Issued on 29 November 1971, the agreement divided the island into two sectors – one to be occupied by Iran, the other by Sharjah. Oil revenues and fishing rights were to be shared and a twelve-mile territorial limit around the island was agreed to by both sides. Neither side, however, recognised the sovereignty claim of the other. It was on the basis of this Iran–Sharjah agreement that Iranian personnel occupied parts of the island on the morning of 30 November. Despite British mediation efforts, no agreement was reached on the Tunbs, and Iran occupied them by force on that same morning. Fighting ensued: four Arab policemen (from the Ras alKhaimah force) and three Iranian soldiers were killed. This episode will have done little to reassure the states on the Arabian side of the Gulf of Iran’s intentions, making the context for an Omani diplomatic initiative towards Iran all the more difficult. At a meeting of the UN Security Council, called by Arab members of the UN, and to which representatives of the UAE, Kuwait, Iraq and Iran were invited as non-voting participants, the occupation of all three islands was fiercely condemned. The Iraqi representative called Iran’s occupation of the islands ‘a blatant aggression against all Arab people everywhere’ and Iraq subsequently broke off diplomatic relations with Iran (and with the UK, which was widely suspected of having colluded 8 in the Iranian action). To follow Iraq in breaking off relations would have directly contradicted the entire purpose of Omani diplomacy at this time, which was to secure the state by means of establishing formal and proper relations with all relevant parties (a policy that would later develop into the characteristic Omani stance in which an alternative should always be found to breaking off relations). At the same time, however, Oman was of course seeking to develop appropriate relations with its Arab neighbours, in the Gulf and beyond, and failing to join the chorus of Arab complaint could have been regarded as indicative of a less than enthusiastic embrace of the prevailing principles of Arab solidarity. Of particular concern was Oman’s relationship with the

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emerging federation of the UAE, which was complicated by the lack of clarity over the borders between the new federation and Oman; by the existence of interlocking enclaves (of UAE territory with Oman and Omani territory within the UAE); and, perhaps most acutely, by uncertainty on the part of the ruler of Ras al-Khaimah – especially close to Oman traditionally – over whether or not to join the new federation. Oman’s position, described by Joseph Kechichian as communicating ‘displeasure’ but falling short of condemnation, 9 reflected Oman’s need to balance its response very carefully indeed. Later, in 1992, when tensions around these issues resumed and Iran effectively annexed Abu Musa, Oman again sought to balance its position, so as to avoid becoming embroiled in the dispute between Iran and the UAE over Abu Musa, and tried to draw a distinction between its position as a member of the GCC and its relations with Iran. A briefing document in the MFA archive suggests this approach: The current dispute between the UAE and Iran over Abu Musa and the Tunbs should not be allowed to impede the continuing development of Omani–Iranian relations. Oman should seek to draw a distinction between its position as a member of the GCC – in which it has inalienable obligations to defend the UAE – and its important bilateral relations with Iran, which should not be made contingent upon short term political difficulties. Therefore bilateral relations may be developed while continuing to offer complete support for the UAE’s position on the specific issue of the three islands. Since Oman is not a major military power, the UAE, if properly briefed on the distinction (between its GCC policy and its bilateral relations with Iran) Oman is making in the conduct of its Iran policy, is 10 unlikely to object.

This approach illustrates a key feature of Omani diplomacy from the 1970s onwards – a tendency to try to keep bilateral issues apart from one another and not to let bilateral difficulties encountered by Oman’s partners influence the conduct of its own relations with either party. It is a position that needs careful explanation in private, rather than public, and that risks attracting hostility from those who may view partisan solidarity as the basis for foreign policy (such as panArabists, Islamists or even some Americans). This may be why nuanced rationales for policy decisions rarely appear in public sources and can only occasionally be glimpsed in the archival record, in documents such as this. Having overcome the initial islands problem in 1971, at least for the time being, Oman and Iran were able to consolidate a new relationship with advantages for both parties. Sultan Qaboos and the Shah met in

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Tehran at the end of December and apparently reached agreement on a limited security pact. At the request of the Sultan, the Shah agreed to send Iranian troops to work alongside the Sultan’s Armed Forces fighting the communist-backed insurgency in Dhofar. At the same time the two countries established joint patrols of the Strait of Hormuz through naval cooperation, which was extended in 1973 to include joint inspection of shipping passing through the strait. In 1974 Oman and Iran concluded an agreement that effectively delineated their respective maritime borders. By 1975 it had become clear that military and diplomatic efforts to end the insurgency in Dhofar had been successful. When a new Iranian ambassador presented his credentials in Muscat in January 1976, Sultan Qaboos publicly thanked Iran for its support in the Dhofar conflict. Some observers feared that this arrangement might make Oman too dependent on the relationship with Iran, and that in achieving two key objectives – the border settlement and the end of the insurgency – Oman had risked too much, including, some feared, the permanent presence of Iranian troops on the Arabian Peninsula. These fears, however, proved unfounded: the relationship between the two countries, albeit one much smaller and less powerful, turned out to be of sufficient reciprocal value that both sides respected and sought to uphold it. All but a very few Iranian troops had left Oman by 1977; Iran showed no inclination to interfere in Omani affairs; naval cooperation developed; and further diplomatic exchanges continued at the highest level. Olivier Da Lage evaluates the outcome of Oman’s diplomatic engagement with Iran in the 1970s as follows: For Qaboos the exercise turned out a complete success: by means of an alliance with the Shah of Iran, the young monarch … had obtained the status of a privileged partner of one of the greatest regional powers of the time, forcing the others to revise their approach: this alliance allowed him to achieve victory against the rebellion and to stabilise his own domestic position; in concluding a border treaty with Tehran, Muscat indicated that 11 fixing its borders would be a priority in guaranteeing regional stability.

The priority placed by Oman on the fixing of its legal borders would remain a significant shaping factor in Omani diplomacy in the 1980s and 1990s. That Oman had achieved such an agreement with Iran before the Iranian Revolution contributed substantially to the confidence with which Omani diplomacy faced the regional upheaval that the revolution would set in motion. It seems safe to say that, by the time of the Iranian Revolution,

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Oman had developed a relationship of mutual value with Iran, which, above all reflecting joint responsibility for the Strait of Hormuz, was considerably closer than those between Iran and Oman’s neighbours on the Arabian side of the Gulf. This meant that the Iranian Revolution of 1979 was received rather differently in Oman than in some of its near neighbours – with considerably less apprehension. On the one hand, Oman enjoyed a relationship with Iran based on underlying mutual interests, which led Omani diplomats to take the view that the new regime would broadly respect the policy (towards Oman) of its predecessor. On the other hand, Omani diplomats still saw a primary threat to national security coming from the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY), and the imagined threat posed by Iran was accordingly less pressing. However, Oman was not immune to some of the anxieties experienced by its Arab neighbours. Omani diplomacy now needed to take into account a range of new problems, put into play by the Iranian Revolution, in a way that emphasised interests held in common between Oman and its Arab Gulf neighbours. Among the general concerns, shared to varying degrees by all the Arabian Gulf state governments at this time, were the following: that the new Iranian regime’s stated ambition to export the revolution could mean the revival of territorial claims in the Gulf; that the Iranian government might inspire, either actively or by example, a resurgence of Islamist opposition to present Arab Gulf governments; and that Shia citizens in the Arab Gulf states might be encouraged to adopt the revolutionary ideology of Khomeinism. For the reasons outlined, with the change in government the Arab states of the Gulf had reason to fear that Iran still harboured expansionist ambitions, and perhaps more than ever. While the Shah’s government had not been shy of asserting a specifically Persian identity and visibly affirming his country’s regional supremacy, his neighbours had at least accustomed themselves to this kind of rhetoric and recognised that, despite its stridency, it did not often lead to expansionist action. Underlying anxieties over Iranian ambitions in the region were reawakened, however, by the Iranian Revolution. The new regime was unpredictable: with no track record against which to judge the gap (or otherwise) between rhetoric and action, it seemed expedient to assume the worst. Furthermore, although articulated in new, pan-Islamic terms, the Iranian claim to regional pre-eminence or domination was very much part of the language of the first year of the revolution. Thus, longstanding regional fears were exacerbated by the way in which Ayatollah Khomeini and some of his key supporters

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spoke of the role of Iran and its revolution within the wider Islamic community. Principle 11 of the new Islamic republic’s constitution, for example, establishes that ‘the Islamic Republic of Iran is to base its overall policy on the coalition and unity of the Islamic nation. Furthermore, it should exert continuous effort until political, economic 12 and cultural unity is realised in the Islamic world.’ This ‘principle’ could readily be understood as conferring an obligation upon the Iranian leadership (and people) to work for the eradication of existing political structures (such as national boundaries and non-Islamic regimes) and toward the establishment of a single Islamic government on a global scale. The regime’s tendency to conceive of the world as divided into ‘oppressors’ and ‘oppressed’ also gave rise to rhetoric in which the governments associated with the ‘oppressors’, which included, at least for some of the advocates of global revolution, those of the Arab Gulf states, were to be targets for subversion and overthrown. The threat of Iranian expansionism in the Arab Gulf was most acutely felt in Bahrain, whose de facto independence following secession from Iranian domination in 1783 had not been formally acknowledged by successive Iranian governments. Husain M. Albaharna observes that ‘in connection with Persia, it is quite true to say that she has been since the beginning of this century [the twentieth], “relentlessly” asserting her claim to sovereignty over 13 Bahrain by means of diplomatic protests to the United Kingdom’. Bahrain’s perceived vulnerability to Iran on the basis of this territorial claim was of course intensified by the fact that the majority of Bahrain’s population was Shia. This factor had been adduced earlier in a 1955 book written in support of Iran’s claim to sovereignty, which failed, Albaharna suggests, to acknowledge that the Bahraini Shia were Arab rather than Persian by language and ethnicity. Although the idea that to be Shia meant to be Persian was manifestly unsustainable, and hardly seemed threatening to Bahraini sovereignty before the Iranian Revolution, the particular circumstances of 1979 and the years immediately thereafter contributed to increased anxiety in Bahrain. In effect, the claim made on behalf of ‘Persianness’ and imperial history pursued intermittently through the twentieth century by Iranian officials, though it was never fully acted upon, was now overlaid by the possibility of a claim based on sectarian affinity and revolutionary solidarity. The Islamic character and specifically Shiite identity of the new Iranian regime meant that the threat to Bahrain’s Sunni rulers now rested not just on the basis of old claims, but also upon

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contemporary political aspirations. It is an issue that has become explosive again in 2011, as the Bahraini government – under intense pressure from a protest movement – may seek to blame Iran for fomenting unrest. With Saudi troops on the island assisting the Bahraini government in its crackdown on dissent, there is a renewed risk that Iran and Saudi Arabia may be drawn into direct confrontation. In 1979, elements within Iran’s revolutionary regime saw, in the politically disenfranchised and economically disadvantaged Shia majority in Bahrain, potential allies in a campaign to extend the gains of the Islamic revolution and to increase political influence in the Gulf. Bahraini Shia had demonstrated in support of the Iranian Revolution in February 1979 and again in August. In September of the same year, Hojatolislam Hadi al-Mudarrisi (an exiled Iranian cleric) announced the formation of the Islamic Front for the Liberation of Bahrain (IFLB) – a group mainly composed of Bahraini Shia of Iranian origin – which maintained an active office in Tehran and from which it issued a range of revolutionary publications in the early 1980s. In 1981, on Bahrain’s National Day (16 December), a coup d’état was attempted against the ruling al-Khalifa, and the IFLB was accused of being responsible. Many of its members were subsequently tried and expelled from the country. The Bahraini government explicitly linked Iran to the attempt and withdrew its own ambassador from Tehran, asking for the Iranian ambassador in Manama to be withdrawn as well because of suspected 14 links with the IFLB. Events of this kind increased suspicion among Iran’s neighbours, ostensibly corroborating claims that Iran was actively seeking to export its revolution. As R. K. Ramazani observed, writing in early 1980: ‘despite repeated official denials by the revolutionary authorities, fears regarding the export of the Iranian Revolution continue to haunt Iran’s neighbours – conservative and 15 radical alike.’ Perhaps the most acute fears will have been felt in Saudi Arabia, where, although no outstanding territorial issues were in play – unlike in Bahrain – ideological, political and economic factors contributed to perhaps the most serious threat to the kingdom’s stability to date. The first shock, sometimes referred to as the ‘first intifada’, was the seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 1979. On 20 November 1979, a group of about three hundred men led by Juhayman al-Utaybi barricaded themselves inside the mosque with thousands of hostages. It was their apparent intent to consecrate one of their number – Muhammad al-Qahtani – as the Mahdi. Al-Utaybi and al-Qahtani were

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leaders of a radical breakaway faction of the Jamaa al-Salafiyya alMuhtasiba (JSM), a very conservative religious group active in Saudi Arabia from the mid-1960s. On 4 December 1979 the siege was finally broken by Saudi forces, supported by French special forces, and on 9 16 January 1980 sixty-three of the perpetrators were executed. The ‘second intifada’ took the form of a sustained uprising by the Shia in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. It began late in November 1979 as a result of government suppression of Shia celebrations of the festival of Ashura – which were banned at the time by Saudi law – in the predominantly Shia community of Sayhat, just outside Dammam. Clashes between demonstrators and the Saudi National Guard persisted across the region into the first months of 1980, but gradually mutated into clandestine activities, on the one hand, and some measure of negotiation towards better social con17 ditions with the government, on the other. The events in Iran throughout the preceding year had emboldened Shia community leaders: assertion of the right to public commemoration at Ashura was evidence of a community taking courage from the Iranian example. In doing so, the Saudi Shia were also following examples set by their Bahraini counterparts, whose public agitation had begun in earnest some months before the Ashura events in Saudi Arabia. However, local issues – political, social and economic – were also major influences behind the intifada. A group calling itself the Organisation for the Islamic Revolution in the Saudi Arabian Peninsula (OIR) issued literature giving three main reasons for the uprising: social deprivation; the absence of free speech and freedom of the press; and the Saudi regime’s negative attitude towards the Iranian Revolution. As Toby Craig-Jones concludes, following a detailed study of the event: The example of Iran was indeed influential, but the uprising in Saudi Arabia was not a derivative event. Although the symbolic power of Iran was central – images of Iran’s revolution such as images of Ayatollah Khomeini were common in Saudi Arabia – the 1979 uprising reflected the convergence of external factors with specifically local grievances and objectives. Despite it being tempting to say otherwise, the Saudi uprising constituted something more than a response to Khomeini’s call for the 18 region’s Shi’is to embrace and foster their own revolution.

For Saudi Arabia, the combination of the revolution itself along with the two ‘intifadas’ of 1979 and 1980 represented a fierce and even existential challenge. The revolution – and most particularly its leader, Ayatollah Khomeini – challenged both implicitly and explicitly

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Saudi claims to pre-eminence in the Islamic world. Based on the location of Mecca and Medina within the territory of the kingdom, these claims had been bolstered in recent years by the deployment of new-found oil wealth in support of Islamic causes around the world; they appeared weak, however, compared with the tumultuous change wrought by Khomeini and the degree of enthusiasm for the new republic’s rhetoric of global Islamic revolution. In effect, the rise of Khomeini, and with him, of a politically activist Shiism, forced Saudi Arabia into an increasingly ‘Sunni’ identity. Looking back, the general direction of the Saudi response to the events of 1979–80 appears to have profoundly shaped religious and political identifications in the region. The consolidation of Saudi Arabia as an explicitly Sunni power has served to define sectarian identity in the region in increasingly deterministic and politicised ways, and with highly negative consequences; just one example can be seen in the turmoil in Iraq following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003, linked largely to sectarian strife over issues of religious and political identity. Saudi Arabia’s retreat into an essentially defensive, conservative, Sunni and exclusivist position may well have been one of the most important features of the regional environment for the development of a range of ‘Sunni’ fundamentalisms, from the spread of the mutawwa in Saudi Arabia – and of similar official and unofficial ‘moral’ police in other Arab Gulf states – to still more damaging expressions of ultra-orthodoxy in the form of the Salafi movement. But even leaving aside specific manifestations of a defensive ‘Sunni’ conservatism, the effect of the Iranian Revolution and the Saudi reaction had deeper and more complex implications, which rippled throughout the Arab Gulf, including Oman, from the start of the 1980s. Visibility, in fact, was the hallmark of this phenomenon: as part of the defensive reflex, initiated in and by Saudi Arabia, the conduct of Gulf social life became characterised, increasingly, by pervasive outward and visible signs of piety. Oman, however – perhaps because its own concerns about subversion and territorial integrity were still dominated by a cold war perspective, sharpened by the recent experience of the Dhofar War – did not see Iran as a comprehensive threat of the kind feared by some of its neighbours. For Oman, the situation in Bahrain did not necessarily point to a master plan for regional or pan-Islamic domination by means of the export of revolution, but seemed rather the consequence of circumstances – some historic, others of more recent political character – that elements within the Iranian regime had

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sought to exploit. Nor could the upheavals in Saudi Arabia be attributed to direct Iranian interference, nor did they serve as evidence of a regional revolutionary programme emanating from Tehran. Subsequent analysis of the period immediately following the Iranian Revolution suggests very strongly that, although there were powerful forces associated with the revolutionary regime, which took literally and sought to enact the call for a unified Islamic state by means of exported revolution, there were also powerful counter forces. It seems that these counter forces – which we might broadly associate with the leadership of the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and, in particular, Ali Akbar Velayati, foreign minister at the time – had prevailed by the mid-1980s. As Shireen Hunter writes in 1988, in Iran there was no ‘Comintern’-like central organisation devoted to the promotion of global revolution: There is no evidence to support that at any time a grand strategy agreed upon by all the differing elements of the regime was designed for the export of revolution. Rather, the record seems to indicate that this aspect of Iran’s activities, like many other aspects of its political life, has been characterised by a great deal of parallel, and often contradictory, actions by a host of official and semi-official organisations and groups. Similarly, Iranian activities in regard to the export of revolution rather than following a strategic blueprint have been marked by what could be called tactical opportunism. Thus, Iran seems to have concentrated its efforts in areas where local 19 conditions have created opportunities for it to expand its influence.

Hunter’s analysis is consistent with what appears to have been the Omani view at the time: local conditions in Bahrain may have rendered the country vulnerable to increased Iranian influence; local conditions in Oman did not. Oman’s view of its relationship with Iran will have identified at least three key local aspects that militated strongly against any undesired increase in Iranian influence. First, there was no underlying territorial dispute between Oman and Iran that might provide the basis for provocation (the maritime border having been successfully demarcated and agreed in 1974). Second, Oman did not possess the vast income disparities between rich and poor as did some of its neighbouring states, including both Saudi Arabia and, to a lesser extent, Bahrain. As a result, in Oman there was no significant dispossessed group with which the rhetoric of the Iranian Revolution would resonate strongly on political or economic grounds. Third, Oman lacked the sectarian basis upon which an Iranian attempt to export revolution might have been made. The unique composition of

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Oman’s Islamic community – of neither Sunni nor Shia, but rather Ibadi, majority – operated as a check on sectarianism in general while also legitimating the sultan’s new style of rule, leaving Omani Shia (who were largely, as we have seen, urban and business oriented) no particular reason to look to Iran for political leadership. With the regime change in Tehran, therefore, the first priority for Omani diplomacy was to ensure that the relationship carefully nurtured following Sultan Qaboos’s first visit to Iran in 1971 would be sustainable under the new circumstances. Omani logic calculated that longue durée factors, such as shared interests based on geographic realities, would outweigh shorter-term political considerations, and Oman needed to know that the new Iranian regime shared such an assessment. In April 1979, a delegation from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Oman (PFLO) had visited Tehran, apparently to explore the possibility that the new revolutionary regime might reverse the Shah’s policy of support for the sultan and intervene to revive the Dhofari insurgency. The details of this meeting are not available: it is clear enough, however, that the PFLO delegation must have been disappointed by the Iranian response, since no Iranian support was forthcoming. In fact, the PFLO had already been comprehensively defeated and many of its key members and associates had renewed their commitment to the sultanate and its territorial integrity. If certain lingering elements within the PFLO believed that the new Iranian government shared the kind of ideological commitment that had earlier led to Chinese and Soviet support for the insurgency, they had misjudged the character of the revolution: the Islamic Republic of Iran was not reducible to an old cold war calculus; it positioned itself clearly in the ‘neither Washington nor Moscow’ camp; and its religious identity hardly suggested any prospect of sympathy with the leftist, Arab nationalist secularism of the PFLO. Perhaps the strongest possible indication of the extent to which the PFLO must have been living in the past was the fact that when Sultan Qaboos launched his first public diplomatic engagement with revolutionary Iran, in June 1979, he sent as his envoy a man who had been a member of the Dhofar Liberation Front in the 1960s. Yusuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah, whom Qaboos had appointed under-secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, received clear assurances from Khomeini himself that the new government would continue to work cooperatively with Oman on regional security, and that all existing agreements between the two countries still held. Iran, it seemed, shared Oman’s view of long-term realities.

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Oman’s minister for information told al-Watan, the Omani newspaper, as Yusuf bin Alawi returned to Muscat, that ‘we have close historical, religious and geographical links with Iran, and look forward keenly to the expansion of our relations and to making the region in 20 which we live together a safer place to live in’. Unlike some of its neighbours, which may have feared the new regime, Oman had a tenable relationship and stood ready to embrace a diplomatic role that could be useful, not only to Omani interests, but to all – even those without such good relations – who might wish to benefit from dialogue and cooperation. The distinctiveness of Oman’s position became clearer still in the 21 context of the 1980–8 war between Iran and Iraq. In the early stages of the conflict, a number of events seemed to indicate that Oman might follow its GCC partners in supporting Iraq. A senior Iraqi officer attended a meeting of high-ranking Gulf military officials organised by the Omani government and held in Muscat, and cautious moves towards dialogue with Iraq were made in June 1980. When an Iranian naval vessel strayed into Omani territorial waters in the Strait of Hormuz, guns were raised but not fired, and Iran subsequently apologised for the intrusion. Tensions were high: Oman’s undersecretary for foreign affairs, Yusuf bin Alawi, stressed, however, that Oman still felt the threat of a Soviet-backed invasion of Oman by PDRY to be more cause for concern to Oman than the outbreak of war between Iran and Iraq. He confirmed, furthermore, that Oman would not hesitate to work with anyone interested in restoring peace in the region. From that point onwards, Oman developed a position of careful neutrality. This approach to the problem, shared and elaborated by the UAE, differed from those adopted by other GCC states. Oman’s unwillingness to join Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in supporting Iraq against Iran, and its comparatively sanguine assessment of the threat posed by the war, stemmed from a variety of perceptions. First, it reflected Oman’s relations with Iraq, which were traditionally cautious in response to Iraqi ambitions in the region, influenced partly by Iraqi support for the PFLO in Dhofar. Secondly, Oman’s geographical location meant that it was further away from the epicentre of the conflict than, for example, Kuwait; neither its territory nor its infrastructure were subject to immediate threat. Oman’s own still-recent experiences of war in Dhofar made it reluctant to take action or positions likely to draw it towards further conflict. This example of cautious neutrality that seeks to refrain from

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interference has since become a foundation for well-established Omani diplomatic practice, which seeks consensus building rather than the kind of politics that involves taking sides and generally leads to increased polarisation. As a direct result of this position of neutrality, Omani shipping suffered no attacks from Iranian forces during the socalled tanker war: Kuwait, on the other hand, which openly backed Iraq, sustained major losses. The Omani navy was reported to be under strict instructions from Sultan Qaboos to keep well away from any Iranian gunboats engaged in attacks on tankers; Oman had no desire to complicate the conflict with any intervention of its own. A careful approach might also make Oman a possible mediator in the conflict, which could have positive consequences for the emerging nation, winning it the trust of Iran and perhaps a greater role in the region. 1989 AND AFTER

The sultanate’s recognition of the enduring nature of Oman–Iran ties, the significance of their geographical proximity and the two countries’ shared interests in the stability and security of the Gulf has underpinned Omani diplomacy in relation to Iran ever since. Once the Iran–Iraq war of 1980–8 came to an end, Oman’s assessment of the status and direction of its relations with Iran reached clear conclusions: ‘in the post-war Gulf, Oman and Iran’s shared security interest in the 22 Strait of Hormuz re-emerges as the central concern.’ This ‘shared interest’ also extended to a common concern about Iraq’s post-war ambitions to regional hegemony, a development that neither Oman nor Iran would welcome. From Oman’s perspective, improved relations with Iran could ‘counterbalance’ an increase in Iraqi 23 influence. Furthermore, the end of the war created conditions in which economic relations could once again be explored and developed. As the MFA assessed, ‘the increase in exchanges and discussions between Iran and Oman since the ceasefire in the Gulf War indicates that renewed and more substantial trade with Oman is part of Iran’s 24 projections for post-war economic reconstruction.’ Oman also clearly saw potential for developing a role as a mediator in the region, and also beyond. ‘As a comparatively small power Oman needs to maintain good relations with its more powerful neighbours and global powers, and is therefore in a position to become a potential 25 mediator.’ Although not explicitly spelled out at the time, it seems apparent in retrospect that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was

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thinking primarily about attempting to facilitate communications between Iran and other GCC states (most particularly Saudi Arabia), and also between Iran and the United States. The consistency of the Omani position may be seen most clearly in the way that Oman has balanced its relationship with Iran – its most vital neighbour – alongside its relationship with the United States – its most vital global ally. Following the death of Ayatollah Khomeini in June 1989, Iran entered a period of post-revolutionary consolidation, during which relations with the sultanate continued to develop along broadly positive lines. Also during this period there were several occasions when Iran seemed to be on the brink of making a breakthrough in relations with the United States and achieving a broader reconciliation with the West. Oman has consistently supported all moves towards such reconciliation and has made its diplomatic resources available to both the US and the Iranian governments in the hope that progress might be made. Since 1997, Omani diplomacy in relation to Iran has been shaped by three associated developments. The first has been a domestic political struggle between various representatives of a broadly reformist political alliance and more conservative elements in the regime that see themselves as devoted to the continuation of revolutionary principles. The second could be described as efforts by the reformist leaders to initiate a ‘dialogue between civilisations’ designed to promote mutual understanding between the Islamic world and the West. The third has been Iran’s development of a nuclear energy capacity, which has sparked fears – most notably in the USA – of Iranian ambitions towards a nuclear weapons capability. In all three situations, Oman has found itself continuing to operate between these two major powers: trying to explain Iran’s perspective to the United States and, to a lesser extent, to assist Iran in understanding the United States and its particular concerns. On 24 May 1997, Mohammed Khatami was unexpectedly elected President of Iran, inflicting an overwhelming defeat on the supposed front-runner, Majlis Speaker Nateq-Nuri. Khatami’s election represented a repudiation of religious conservatism and solid popular endorsement of an alternative. The composition of President Khatami’s government, announced in August and ratified in full by the Majlis, confirmed the new president’s progressive inclinations. The government was predominantly a government of technocrats, with key positions being given to men associated with the Servants of Construction, a formal grouping initially associated with Ali Akbar

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Hashemi Rafsanjani (and led by his brother) and which had backed Khatami’s presidential campaign. Khatami’s election was welcomed cautiously by the US government. During the course of 1997 a number of influential American foreignpolicy experts expressed concern over their government’s policy towards Iran, and urged the government to change its position. President Khatami’s election gave additional force to their arguments, in that it appeared to offer opportunity for a dialogue marked less by past animosities. At the very end of 1997, President Khatami announced his intention of speaking directly to the American people, a promise he made good at the very beginning of 1998, giving an interview to CNN, which was cautiously welcomed as an encouraging sign by US State Department officials. This was the atmosphere of relative optimism in which the US government sought Omani diplomatic assistance for a major initiative to open channels of communication with Iran in 1999. The US government had believed for some time that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRG) had been involved in the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia in 1996, in which nineteen American citizens had been killed. This had been a powerful reason for many in the administration to argue for continuing to isolate Iran, but, sensing that Khatami’s election had the potential to create a new situation, President Clinton chose to set aside the Khobar issue in order to explore the possibility of a political rapprochement. He wrote a onepage letter to President Khatami in which he indicated that the US government now possessed evidence of IRG involvement in the Khobar Towers bombing, but in the light of the fact that it took place before Khatami’s election, and in recognition of ‘positive steps’ he had already taken against a range of ‘international criminal activities’, he affirmed that the United States had ‘no hostile intentions towards the 26 Islamic Republic of Iran’. Clinton had this letter taken to Sultan Qaboos and Yusuf bin Alawi, with a request that it be delivered in person to President Khatami, and presented amid verbal assurances of Clinton’s respect for the Iranian leadership and his sincere interest in improved relations. Here, Omani diplomacy appears to be valuable to the United States, not simply because of Oman’s unique position as channel for communication, but also, it seems, because of Oman’s capacity to add an appropriate and credible diplomatic context to a message that might otherwise be misconstrued as a result of its terseness. Yusuf bin Alawi delivered the letter to President Khatami on 20 July 1999, and it

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appears to have been received with interest by the President and his advisers. A written response, which largely echoes the cool and formal tone of Clinton’s letter, was received in Washington in early September, apparently without additional verbal messages such as those conveyed to Tehran by Yusuf bin Alawi. This letter rejects American allegations of IRG involvement and makes counter accusations regarding American support for ‘terrorist elements’ – presumably the Mujahedin-e Khalq – who have committed ‘crimes against Iranian people’, but it also affirms that Iran ‘bears no hostile intentions 27 towards Americans’. It appears that having received this reply, which seems to have been viewed as negative (even though its echoes of Clinton’s phrasing might have been construed as indicating some interest in responding positively to the overtures made more explicit in Yusuf bin Alawi’s verbal messages), the US government made no further attempt to develop relations with Iran at this time. What is not clear is how the Iranian response was presented, and specifically whether any effort was made by President Khatami to add anything to the written text, as Clinton had done in asking Oman to represent the American position verbally. Meanwhile, on the Iranian side, obstacles to rapprochement were growing. The first signs of open confrontation between supporters of a more liberal view of society and traditional religious conservatives had become apparent as early as November 1997, with clashes in the holy city of Qom, which extended in the following year to Tehran. Khatami himself lost some support from his young and liberal electorate for his failure to protect students and newspapers from repressive measures taken against them by security forces. By 1999 it was clear that there was substantial opposition within the ruling establishment, and in particular the security apparatus, to the general direction of his policy, including any idea of weakening the Islamic republic’s anti-Western stance. Although he would secure re-election in 2001, much of the initial promise of his new government had already been tarnished, as it became evident that powers beyond the presidency – namely Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and the security forces – would limit his capacity to bring about change. While the early years of the Khatami presidency did not, in the end, bring about tangible rapprochement with the United States, whose leaders may have judged that Khatami’s reformism and accommodating stance would not last against hard-line opposition, there were positive developments between Iran and Saudi Arabia, which were potentially very welcome in the region. Oman hoped that such

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developments might also help oil the wheels of US–Iranian rapprochement by undermining a prevailing Western view of Gulf relations as essentially antagonistic – and thus a source of instability – and which could only be contained by a defensive American posture towards Iran. In the very long term, Oman viewed full rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran as having the potential to create conditions in which regional security could be managed without almost complete reliance on the contribution of the USA. Oman was already playing a pioneering role in preparing the way for such relationships through its security cooperation with Iran. In 1999, for example, Iranian observers witnessed Omani military manœuvres as part of this process. A more relaxed atmosphere encouraged by the improved Iran–Saudi ties meant that this would be seen as a positive contribution to the development of regional security rather than (as it might once have been seen, at least in Riyadh) as undermining existing structures. Khatami’s re-election in 2001 suggested that the opinion within the Iranian regime most hostile to any kind of rapprochement with the USA might see further decline. But Iran–USA relations suffered a setback in the wake of the 11 September terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. In the annual State of the Union Address to Congress on 29 January 2002, the new American President, George W. Bush, named three countries – Iran, Iraq and North Korea – an ‘axis of evil’; he claimed they colluded in the development of weapons of mass destruction and posed a major security threat to the United States and its national interests. The speech seemed to be setting out justification in advance for unilateral action against any of these three countries, none of which had a proven connection with the events of 11 September. The thawing climate opened by Khatami’s leadership became an opportunity missed: instead, the remarks would help usher in a renewed phase of mutual antagonism. The inclusion of Iran in the ‘axis of evil’ was particularly unfortunate and ill-judged. Iran had already played a significant and responsible role during the main period of the US attacks on Afghanistan immediately after 11 September. Iran had also long supported the Northern Alliance – as did the USA – and placed no obstacles, either material or political, in the way of the US-led action against the Taliban. This represented an opportunity for the United States government to recognise shared American–Iranian interests, on which some kind of, albeit limited, rapprochement might have been constructed. Instead, Iran was accused of harbouring al-Qaida suspects – a charge that failed to recognise not only the difficulty of managing

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flows of refugees across the Afghanistan–Iran border, but also pragmatic political interests. Furthermore, the inclusion of Iran as part of an ‘axis of evil’ bore implications that the US government would consider war against Iran a legitimate option. Interestingly, the initial Iranian response to US rhetoric was remarkably conciliatory. In fairly rapid succession, Iran first announced that it would stop allowing Gulbuddin Hekmatyar to run an office in Iran and then that it had arrested about a hundred and fifty members of al-Qaida. Hekmatyar was one of the key Afghan leaders excluded from the interim government formed with US support in December 2001. It had been feared that with Iran’s support, Hekmatyar might become a lever should Iran wish to undermine the Karzai government. Such fears were likely unfounded – after all, Iran had backed Ismail Khan of Herat who had remained outside the coalition, while it also retained strong links with the Tajik leaders of the Northern Alliance, who held key posts in the Karzai government. Iran was perfectly capable of exercising influence in Afghanistan without resorting to Hekmatyar, so this concession was probably rather more symbolic than actual. In the same way, the arrest of al-Qaida militants served Iranian interests as much as it did anyone’s. For Iran, al-Qaida represented a puritanical Sunni movement that threatened to destabilise both Central Asia and the Gulf. It therefore directly jeopardised Iran’s own interests, which lay in being able to maintain stable relations with stable neighbours – including Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan – and in exercising influence in different regional contexts by means of economic and military power. The idea that Iran supported or could support al-Qaida therefore seemed untenable and disproportionately belligerent; it would have disastrous ramifications. Iran’s initial conciliatory response to the ‘axis of evil’ rhetoric gradually gave way to an increase in popular anti-American sentiment, making it difficult if not impossible for an Iranian government to seek dialogue with the United States. By 2003, with the United States visibly moving towards a second war in Iraq, the political situation in Iran was polarising further. In this deeply divided polity some Iranians appeared prepared to back the conservative line, including many who may have once supported Khatami and the reformers; they had become disillusioned at the reformists’ failure to deliver any concrete results, and frustrated by the continued economic difficulties. On the other side, however, there still appeared to be a substantial body of opinion (and probably a substantial political majority) that favoured political change – particularly among the younger Iranian voters. The

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younger generation, many of whom would have been born after the 1979 revolution, had no profound allegiance to it and a powerful desire for political freedom and economic opportunities. But with the retreat and defeat of the reformists, who suffered a heavy defeat at the 2004 Majlis elections, this potentially powerful force within Iranian society now lacked any real representation (effective or otherwise) within the structures of the government. Into the vacuum created by the absence of cohesion within the ranks of those who favoured reform stepped Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a presidential candidate backed by the most conservative elements in the religious establishment and the most powerful elements in the country’s security apparatus. Thus, by 2005, with Ahmadinejad as president, Iran’s leadership had identified anti-American positions as powerful ideological assets in an increasingly assertive nationalist stance: one in which the acquisition of a nuclear weapons capability would gain symbolic value. AFTER 2003

This chapter concludes with an analysis of the state of the triangular relationship between Oman, Iran and the United States in the period since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. We have seen how the terrorist attacks of 2001, the response of the Bush administration, and the domestic situation in Iran leading to Ahmadinejad’s 2005 election all contributed to a further deterioration in relations between the USA and Iran. But it was another regional event – the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, and its aftermath – that may arguably be said to account most for the present situation, in which there seems to be little, if any, basis for meaningful discussion over the question of Iran’s nuclear programme. The key point here is that Iran’s nuclear programme, and the global concerns to which it has given rise, became a dominant issue in a regional environment determined to a large degree by events in Iraq, in which Iran grew to be not only more powerful than before, but also, simultaneously, more isolated. This unique combination has polarised and entrenched rhetorical positions and virtually suspended hopes of rapprochement in the near future. Let us begin then with Iraq. With the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime and the establishment of the US-appointed Governing Council in Baghdad, US power in the Gulf had been asserted with great force. Iraq was much weakened, and its prospects of re-emerging as a state with ambitions to a dominant position – either in the Gulf or in the Arab world more generally – were radically curtailed, at least in

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the short to medium term. In the Gulf, where the balance of power is often said to be shared among the three largest states – Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia – the effective removal of Iraq from this equilibrium almost inevitably tilted the balance in favour of Iran. Indeed, the counter forces released by the invasion were to have further and messier consequences, all of which would tend towards strengthening Iran’s regional position. The civil conflicts that ensued in Iraq – including a powerful resistance to US occupation – created a context in which Iraqi political movements that had enjoyed Iranian support in exile emerged as among the most powerful players in the post-Saddam transition and in which an increasingly sectarian approach to Iraqi politics took shape, encouraged to some extent by the way in which 28 the USA sought to apportion political power. A sectarian understanding of Iraqi politics was effectively institutionalised in the composition of the Iraqi Governing Council, selected by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) to oversee the transition from the rule of the CPA to the first interim Iraqi government. Its twenty-five members were chosen in order proportionately to reflect what the CPA took to be the ethnic and religious composition of Iraqi society. This meant that some members were selected because they were Sunni, and others (also Sunni) because they were Kurds, while others secured their positions because they were Shia or Christians. Such a system completely failed to account for the simple and obvious fact that identities are plural and relational rather than absolute and fixed (see Chapter 2), and that Iraqi politics need not be structured on sectarian lines. In its urge to be proportionate, the system also failed to account for the fact that women formed about half the Iraqi population (there were only three women in the twenty-five-member council). In an extensive analysis of the regional security challenges facing the Gulf Cooperation Council following the 2003 American invasion of Iraq, Joseph Kostiner contends that ‘GCC states approached the Shi’idominated government with suspicion and worried that Iraq might 29 eventually come under the influence of Iran’. Perceptions of this situation certainly would have varied, with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain much more inclined to take such concerns seriously. Even so, Kostiner notes, by 2006 ‘the understanding was that the danger of Shi’i terrorism or a Shi’i uprising in the Gulf was not imminent. Nonetheless, there was a sustained level of fear in the GCC that 30 sectarian conflict was a serious threat.’ There was much talk at the time of a ‘Shia crescent’ in which an increasingly powerful Iran, an Iraq under ‘Shia’ government and a resurgent Hezbollah in Lebanon

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could challenge the existing structure of power in the region, now understood by some as constituting a kind of ‘Sunni’ bloc. Oman sought to contest this sectarian understanding of regional politics in a manner that may be taken to reflect both its more relaxed view of Iran’s regional power and a specific tendency to stand aside from sectarian questions. In a talk given at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies in June 2007, Badr bin Hamad Al bu Saidi, then undersecretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, argued that the emphasis on sectarian identities in the construction of Iraq’s new political system had damaging consequences: In a political structure where positions of power are set aside for representatives of specific sects, it is inevitable, I think, that people who want to take these positions of power should emphasise their sectarian identity. They only need to win the support of their sectarian constituency in order to win power. Shia politicians don’t need Sunni supporters in order to win 31 power, and nor do Sunni politicians need the support of Shia people.

Such observations reflected an Omani perspective in which the idea of ‘Shia’ power represented neither an adequate understanding of the dynamics of regional relations, nor a meaningful threat against which it made sense to build alternatives. Therefore, as the United States sought to win regional consensus around a policy of isolating Iran, in order to force the Iranian government to submit its nuclear programme to international inspection and to demonstrate that it was not developing a weapons programme, Oman consistently expressed reservations. As John Shenna writes, in an article seeking to explore alternatives to the American approach: To the smaller Gulf states, the application of crippling sanctions on Iran would be almost as unwelcome as a military strike. Oman and the emirate of Dubai have forged strong trade ties with Iran since the end of the Iraq–Iran war, and Qatar has strong diplomatic links with the Islamic Republic. They regard accommodation with Iran as the key to their own prosperity and security and generally oppose Western efforts to further 32 isolate Iran.

Kostiner sees Oman’s position as reflecting the ‘constraints’ within which Omani foreign policy, and specifically its policy towards Iran, is formed. To some extent this is a reasonable analysis. All policy and diplomacy naturally operates within certain ‘constraints’: More than other GCC states, Oman felt constrained vis-à-vis Iran, and also vis-à-vis the US, its main defender and supplier of arms. Oman’s

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geography, of course, meant that it was the gatekeeper of the Strait of Hormuz. As such, its leaders felt they were responsible to keep the Strait open and to prevent impediments to commercial traffic. Yet, they were not ready to confront Iran in any way. For Oman, the best policy was to 33 continue its strategy of maintaining good trade relations with Iran.

However, Kostiner seems to understand this position as indicative of Omani weakness, observing that ‘in regard to Oman’s unwillingness to diplomatically confront Iran regarding its nuclear program, an American diplomat in Muscat observed that, because of geography, 34 Oman was terrified of a possible US strike on Iran’. The comments attributed to this ‘American diplomat’ appeared in an Agence France Presse piece by Christian Chaise, which reports on Oman’s distinctive position on the Iranian nuclear issue. Two diplomats are cited in this piece. One, ‘in Muscat’ but not identified as American, is reported as saying, ‘the problem (for Oman) would not be Iran having nuclear weapons, but a US strike. … If Iran were isolated, boycotted, that would affect Oman’s own relations with Iran.’ The other, whose nationality and location are not specified, says ‘some Gulf states worry a lot about Iran and its nuclear ambitions. … Oman is more relaxed, because it has always had a neutral policy.’ It is a Western observer, presumably not a diplomat, who suggests that ‘Omanis are sure that Iranians want to have nuclear weapons … but what scares them more is the prospect of American strikes because they see the region as already handicapped by a number of conflicts and can’t handle 35 another crisis’. Aside from the fact that these comments provide no basis for their claims that Omanis are ‘terrified’, or that ‘geography’ has anything to do with this supposed fear, they do shed light on a widely shared Omani view of relations with Iran. It is possible to extract from these statements three primary motivations wrapped into relations with Iran: a desire to maintain existing ties; a relatively relaxed attitude to Iranian ambitions based on a longstanding policy of neutrality (as exemplified during the Iran–Iraq war); and a more general desire to avoid further regional conflict. While some, such as Kostiner, might see Oman’s position as an ‘unwillingness to confront’ and ascribe this to some kind of weakness, the United States government has never expressed any such criticism, suggesting that Oman continues to be able to manage the apparent tensions implicit in its balanced stance. As Kenneth Katzman writes in a recent report for the US Congress, ‘US administrations have not tended to criticize Oman’s relatively close relations with Iran. … Oman’s leaders view possible

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military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities as potentially more destabilizing to the region than is Iran’s nuclear program or Iran’s policy that supports Shiite and some other hardline Islamist move36 ments.’ What this suggests indirectly is that the United States understands Oman’s position in some sense at least, and that perhaps it recognises that Oman is unlikely to participate in schemes that seek to build regional security by excluding Iran, of the kind being proposed, for example, in various extensions to the GCC. Speaking to GCC leaders in Manama, for instance, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates suggested that a GCC+2 formula (adding Egypt and Jordan) become a GCC+3, to incorporate Iraq. ‘Your interests and Iraq’s are aligned … in the necessity to limit Iranian influence and meddling nationally and 37 regionally – meddling that has already cost far too many lives.’ Oman would certainly not support such a development: its track record shows that it resists the idea that regional security needs to be organised to contain those it excludes. It was as critical of the Clinton administration’s ‘dual containment’ of Iran and Iraq, for example, as it is now of proposals that view Iran as the adversary against whose perceived threat a security system must be built. While Oman’s position on Iran differs sharply from that of the United States, however, this does not appear to undermine the Oman– US relationship in any significant way. In August 2009, Sultan Qaboos paid an official visit to Tehran, postponed from an initial date in June because of massive protests following President Ahmadinejad’s controversial re-election. Of course there was a risk that the visit, even if postponed, could have been interpreted as some kind of ‘endorsement’ of Ahmadinejad himself, but – perhaps because Oman can credibly point to an established practice of engaging constructively on the basis of long-term interests, rather than refusing engagement on the basis of short-term ideological considerations – there was no sign that the United States government viewed the Sultan’s visit to Iran with any alarm. Nor did the signing of a security pact, a year afterwards, appear to have caused any significant unease in American circles. One reason for this is that Oman’s relationship with Iran offers the United States a channel for communication that would not otherwise be possible, as the episode of the 1999 contacts demonstrates. A more recent example – and one demonstrating that, despite the still seemingly irreconcilable differences between Iran and the United States, all three parties in this triangular relationship gain from its existence – is the Omani role in securing the release of American Sarah

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Shourd, one of three Americans arrested and charged with espionage. Shourd and two others were arrested on suspicion of espionage while hiking on the Iranian side of the Iran–Iraq border in July 2009. In September 2010, Shourd was released on bail after Omani mediation. While the precise details of the arrangements agreed between the various parties have not been made public, it was widely and credibly reported at the time that Oman facilitated conversations leading to Shourd’s release; and, furthermore, that the deposit of the bail payment of $500,000 in a Muscat branch of the Iranian Bank Melli (which sanctions prohibit the United States from dealing with directly) had been overseen by Omani officials. Shourd’s release was an outcome desired by both the United States and Iranian governments, but something they were unable to accomplish without the particular contribution of Omani diplomacy. Oman’s contribution in this case was enabled by its distinctive position in maintaining good relations with both parties. It is one which, as the previous chapters have suggested, prioritises neighbourly relations, privileges the longue durée, and – as spelled out by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in its 1989 research paper – seeks to develop a diplomatic capacity for such mediations. Notes 01 James H. Morris, Sultan in Oman: Venture into the Middle East. Furthermore, in Travels in Arabia, James Wellsted reports on the village of Shirazi in the Jebel Akhdar; so-called, assumes a reviewer in The Athenaeum, for the wine that was made and drunk there – a name of course that comes from the southern Iranian city of Shiraz, itself famous for its wine. As we have seen, however, in the case of the Shirazi of Zanzibar, we should be careful of extrapolating too much from the use of this name; see The Athenaeum, Journal of English Literature, Science and the Fine Arts London (6 January 1838): 2. An alternative explanation to the speculation in The Athenaeum is that the village of Shirazi takes its name from the city of Shiraz because its inhabitants trace their origins to the Iranian city (as well, perhaps, as their wine-making tradition). 02 Fred Halliday, ‘Arabs and Persians: Beyond the Geopolitics of the Gulf’, pp. 3–4. 03 A number of the papers relied upon in this study are internal studies and therefore remain unofficial; and may occasionally contain classified information. Permission to view them was granted by the Government of Oman on the understanding that they would inform our broader study of Omani diplomacy. For this reason, in some cases we shall not provide

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05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

18 19 20 21

22 23 24 25 26

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direct quotations from or full citations for the material discussed. The paper mentioned here, however, can be cited as Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Sultanate of Oman, ‘Research Paper: Oman and Iran’, October 1989. Joseph A. Kechichian, Oman and the World, p. 101. Kechichian’s account of Oman–Iran relations from pp. 99–108 is a good summary. See also Eric Hooglund, ‘Iran and the Persian Gulf’, p. 158. Olivier Da Lage, ‘Stratégies Omanaises dans les Relations Internationales’, p. 104. Kechichian, Oman and the World, p. 99. Kourosh Ahmadi, Islands and International Politics in the Persian Gulf, p. 85. Hussein M. Albaharna, The Legal Status of the Arab Gulf States, p. 346. Kechichian, Oman and the World, p. 11. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ‘Oman and the World’. Da Lage, ‘Stratégies Omanaises’, pp. 104–5 (our translation). Shireen Hunter, ‘Iran and the Spread of Revolutionary Islam’, p. 736. Albaharna, Legal Status of the Arab Gulf States, p. 192. See Christin Marschall, Iran’s Persian Gulf Policy: From Khomeini to Khatami, p. 36. Rouhollah K. Ramazani, ‘Iran’s Revolution: Patterns, Problems and Prospects’, p. 457. See Joseph A. Kechichian, ‘Islamic Revivalism and Change in Saudi Arabia’, pp. 1–16. See Toby Craig-Jones, ‘Rebellion on the Saudi Periphery: Modernity, Marginalization and the Shi’a Uprising of 1979’, pp. 213–33, and Pascal Ménoret, The Saudi Enigma: A History, pp. 102–29. Craig-Jones, ‘Rebellion on the Saudi Periphery’, p. 215. Hunter, ‘Iran and the Spread’, p. 740. Al-Watan, 25 July 1980, cited in Kechichian, Oman and the World, p. 101. For a helpful account of Oman’s position during the war relative to those of other GCC states, see Dilip Hiro, The Longest War: The Iran–Iraq Military Conflict. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Oman and Iran, 1989. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. ‘Message to President Khatami from President Clinton’, Clinton Library; Clinton Presidential Records; Near Eastern Asian Affairs; Ken Pollack; OA/Box Number 2962; Folder: “Iran–U.S.”, accessed online at http:// www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB318/index.htm Iranian response to Clinton letter, Clinton Library; Clinton Presidential Records; Near Eastern Asian Affairs; Ken Pollack; OA/Box Number 2962;

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29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

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Folder: “Iran-U.S.”, accessed online at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/ NSAEBB/NSAEBB318/index.htm The two principal groups that enjoyed Iranian support in exile during Saddam Hussein’s rule in Iraq were the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and the Da’wa Party. In 2005 these two parties were prominent in the formation of the National Iraqi Alliance, a coalition of mainly Shia parties, which contested the parliamentary elections of January 2005 and December 2005, securing 48 per cent of the vote and 140 seats in January (which gave it a majority in the 275-seat National Assembly) and 41 per cent of the vote and 128 seats in December. In the 2010 parliamentary elections the Da’wa Party, whose leader Nouri alMaliki had served as prime minister since 2006, did not stand as part of a reconstituted alliance, now called the National Iraqi Alliance, which won 70 seats with an 18 per cent share of the vote. It is widely held that Nouri al-Maliki’s appointment to replace Ibrahim al-Jaafari, also of the Da’wa Party, was supported by the United States because he was seen as freer from Iranian influence than many of his colleagues. Joseph Kostiner, ‘The GCC States and the Security Challenges of the Twenty-First Century’, p. 27. Ibid., p. 24. Badr bin Hamad Al bu Saidi, ‘Untangling Politics and Religion in the Middle East’, 28 June 2007. John C. Shenna, ‘The Case against the Case against Iran: Regionalism as the West’s Last Frontier’, p. 352. Kostiner, ‘The GCC States’, p. 34. Ibid., p. 36. Christian Chaise, ‘Oman shows Solidarity with Iran in Nuclear Standoff: Analysis’, 27 May 2006. Kenneth Katzman, ‘Oman: Reform, Security and US Policy’, 10 August 2010. Robert M. Gates, ‘Manama Dialogue: Continuity and Commitment’, Manama, Bahrain, 3 December 2008.

9 Managing During the Cold War

1 This chapter is intended to examine how Omani diplomacy was shaped by the experience of the cold war. It seeks to reveal how a unique perspective on this global conflict and its regional implications developed in Oman in the period from the accession of Sultan Qaboos in 1970 through to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, contributing to the development of a distinctive foreign-policy position. We will suggest that while Oman was compelled to take full account of cold war factors – because of the Dhofar War and the role of the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY) in that conflict – it was also quick to recognise the nature and extent of the global change that took place from 1989. Oman was therefore unusually attuned to both the cold war itself, and to the reality of its ending. THE COLD WAR: AN OVERVIEW

From the end of the Second World War in 1945 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the cold war dominated world politics. Marked by the struggle for global ascendancy between the United States of America (USA) and the Soviet Union (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics: USSR), the cold war had multiple dimensions that involved conflicts in many parts of the world, even if its two main protagonists – the USA and the USSR – never actually engaged in direct conflict with each other. Both the USA and the USSR possessed nuclear weapons (the USA had used two nuclear bombs against Japan towards the end of the Second World War) and for much of the cold war period, each superpower had the capacity completely to destroy the other with nuclear weapons. This meant that governments and the military leaderships in both the USA and the Soviet Union knew that any direct conflict between them risked an escalation into a nuclear exchange, in which ‘mutually assured destruction’ was a distinct possibility. The doctrine arising from this state of affairs was widely known as

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‘deterrence’, because the possibility of ‘mutually assured destruction’ made the risks of direct conflict too high for either side to contemplate and thus deterred them from attacking one another directly. The two superpowers were therefore locked into a mutual antagonism, which never broke out into full-scale war. Instead, each built up its own system of global alliances, most particularly in Europe where the USA helped form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to defend Western Europe against the threat of Soviet invasion, while the Soviet Union formed the Warsaw Pact to secure Eastern Europe against the possibility of Western attack. Europe had been divided between an Eastern bloc, in which all states were under some degree of Soviet control, and a Western one, where most states were members of NATO and all effectively allies of the United States. Elsewhere in the world the divisions expressed themselves in a number of different ways, and the Soviet Union and the United States competed with one another to win allies. The Soviet Union was particularly keen to support new states emerging from the breakup of European empires (in Asia, Africa and South America), while the United States was keen to defend its own interests in these regions against what it saw as the spread of communism. This meant that although the cold war was ‘cold’ insofar as the two superpowers never actually engaged each other directly in a ‘hot’ war, it was ‘hot’ for many other countries and people. In Korea, for example, war between the pro-American South and the communist-backed North from 1950 to 1953 cost up to two million lives. From the 1950s to the end of the 1980s, a significant part of the cold war was played out in the context of decolonisation. As the major European colonial powers gradually withdrew (willingly or unwillingly) from their former possessions in Asia and Africa, the new, mainly nationalist political movements that assumed responsibility for leading the newly independent states often faced a strategic choice that expressed itself in cold war terms. In most cases, these states confronted enormous challenges in terms of economic development and urgently needed external support, often simply to retain their territorial integrity. In a world divided along cold war lines, their leaders therefore faced a choice between accepting the support of the West (and the USA) or that of the Soviet Union (either directly, or indirectly via one of its existing satellite states). Since many of the nationalist movements had themselves developed ideological frameworks inspired by socialism and saw themselves as the representatives of the oppressed classes – not to mention that a number

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of leading figures in the Asian and African nationalist movements had been educated in Moscow – there were strong political affinities that encouraged newly independent Asian and African nations to ally themselves with the Soviet Union. Incentives for Asian and African states to forge alliances with the United States and its allies in Western Europe were, by contrast, much weaker. While such alliances could provide economic and security support, they would, in many cases, have involved a de facto continuation of the previous colonial relationship, and a return to dependency upon the very same power that independence movements had fought to overthrow. In Asia, under the influence of Chinese communism (which was by no means always compatible or comfortable with the Soviet version), states such as Vietnam became prominent communist strongholds and posed such a threat to American interests in the region that the USA was drawn into a prolonged, ultimately unsuccessful war to contain the spread of communism in the region. In Africa, countries such as Angola benefited from Soviet support, which often included the presence of Cuban troops and technical specialists. Here, as in many parts of the world, the superpowers played out their antagonism by means of proxy forces: in Angola, Cubans and East Germans supported the government while Western powers channelled resources to the armed opposition. In southern Africa the situation was further complicated by the offer of refuge and political support made by socialist African nations (such as Angola, Namibia and Mozambique) to nationalist and anti-racist movements in the still quasi-colonial states of Rhodesia and South Africa. Similar patterns extended across the globe: perhaps the example with the greatest resonance in the Gulf was Nicaragua, where members of the US military and government, actively supporting anticommunist rebels (the Contras) against the Sandinista government, were prepared to go so far as to fund their campaign through covert arms sales to Iran. In the Middle East itself the situation was often not quite as clear cut or confrontational as in, say, Vietnam or Central America (where, in Cuba, for example, in 1962 the two superpowers seemed to come close to direct confrontation and a nuclear conflict seemed, at the time, quite likely). Nonetheless, the cold war did shape Middle Eastern regional alliances and political affiliations. The establishment of modern republics in place of monarchies as part of the postcolonial settlement following the end of the Second World War – most notably in Egypt, Syria and Iraq – created circumstances in which an emergent

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Arab socialism could reasonably look to the Soviet Union for support, and it did so. While Soviet support for these supposedly socialist states may have originated in ideological sympathy and residual commitment to the idea that socialism was an international movement, its interests in the Middle East were largely strategic, conceived in terms of rivalry with the United States. The supply of arms and aid to countries such as Syria and Iraq was intended to ensure a powerful buffer in the northern Middle East against the possibility of Western ambitions near the Soviet Union’s southern borders. Support for PDRY and Afghanistan was designed to counterbalance American alliances with Israel, Turkey, Iran (in the 1970s) and the Gulf monarchies. By the same token, the United States saw its alliances with Iran (until the revolution of 1979) and Turkey (which became the region’s only member of NATO) as crucial to the preservation of its own interests in the region, and its partnerships with the Gulf states – most particularly Saudi Arabia – as a vital means of protecting the supply of oil crucial to its continuing economic development. An additional dimension in the cold war disposition of alliances was the gradual increase in material as well as ideological support for Israel provided by the United States. Although reasons for the US government’s backing for Israel are many and complex, there is no doubt that during the cold war period Israel offered the United States a powerful military ally capable – with support – of counteracting a potentially pro-Soviet alliance of Arab states. From the 1970s onwards, with the growth and proliferation of armed Palestinian factions, some of them based in and funded by Syria (probably the most visibly pro-Soviet regional state), the conflict over Palestine effectively became a new front in the cold war. As we shall see, the failure of the conventional cold war pro-Soviet/rejectionist alliance to mobilise in defence of Iraq in 1990 was a clear regional demonstration that the cold war had ended. With Syria joining the US-led coalition and the Soviet Union in its final days also cooperating, it was only the PLO and Yemen which, without making any meaningful contribution to the Iraqi cause, would abstain from participating in the international effort to liberate Kuwait. Even before this decisive demonstration of the end of the cold war, however, the politics of the Middle East had interacted with the ideological and material dimensions of the East–West division of the world in a less than clear-cut way. Arab ‘socialism’, especially in its statist Ba’ath formation, turned out to be more a brand of military nationalism than it was ever a version of communism, Soviet or

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otherwise. The ideological appeal of Marxist thought was limited, attracting more adherents among an educated élite than among the population at large. Popular commitment to Islam almost certainly limited the capacity of the avowedly atheist view of the world espoused by Marxism to gain ground. So, while in some parts of the world – notably Southeast Asia and South America – the cold war involved clear ideological struggles between competing values of communism and capitalism, the cold war in the Middle East was much more a conflict of influence, position and strategy than a struggle over political issues as such. Only one country, in fact, in the Middle East region may be said to have had a communist government during the period. This was the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, and it was an immediate neighbour of the Sultanate of Oman. This meant that, in addition to negotiating the global and regional complexities of the cold war, Omani diplomacy also faced the very immediate and direct challenge of a hostile communist neighbouring state that actively supported a military insurgency against the Omani government. As a result, Oman’s perspective on both regional and global issues was more strongly shaped by the cold war than were those of many other countries in the region. Not only does this account for the importance Oman has historically attached to its alliance with the United States, and its emphasis on the value of security cooperation, but it also helps explain why issues of ethnic (Arab) and religious (Muslim) solidarity have consistently received less emphasis. A brief account of the emergence of PDRY and how it came to be the region’s only explicitly ‘communist’ country, along with the consequences this situation posed for Oman in the 1970s, will therefore help contextualise the develop1 ment of these distinctive characteristics of Omani diplomacy. YEMEN AND DHOFAR

The People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen was formed in what is now the southern part of the Republic of Yemen following the hasty withdrawal of the British in 1967, in the face of a sustained independence campaign by Yemeni nationalists fighting under the banner of the National Liberation Front (NLF). The nature of the postindependence state was shaped by a range of factors. Crucially, it attributed its primary identity to the anti-colonial, anti-imperialist struggle. British colonial control in South Yemen had extended much further than it had in other states of the peninsula: consequently,

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British involvement in Yemen was much more widely perceived as imperialist in nature, and opposition therefore adopted the techniques and rhetoric of a global anti-imperialist movement, for which the Soviet Union was an obvious source of ideological and material support. In addition, by the time South Yemen finally gained independence from Britain, Arab nationalists had established governments in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Algeria, and in the neighbouring Yemen Arab Republic to the north, but these had already started to look like inadequate responses to the postcolonial situation facing the new South Yemeni leadership. Furthermore, the catastrophic defeat of Arab forces under Egyptian leadership in the June 1967 war against Israel had seriously undermined the credibility of Nasserism, leading to a shift to the socialist left among Arab nationalist movements, including, of course, the Palestinians. More successful examples of antiimperialist movements with socialist or communist leanings, on the other hand, seemed to be benefiting from Soviet and Chinese material support, which further encouraged a leftward shift in the region more generally, and most decisively in the new South Yemeni state, at first called the People’s Republic of South Yemen (PRSY). It was for these reasons, then, that the National Liberation Front would come to identify most strongly with the more explicit anti-imperialist struggles waged by the socialist liberation movements of the late 1960s, and that it would eventually adopt its own version of this political line. The National Liberation Front, however, was itself divided from the outset. Upon independence, one faction favoured traditional nationalism and sought reconciliation with the Front for the Liberation of South Yemen (FLOSY), a conventional Nasserist movement the NLF had superseded during the struggle for independence. A second faction was becoming broadly Marxist in approach, emphasising the role of class in the political process, which both Nasser and the Ba’ath explicitly rejected. At independence, the nationalist rather than the Marxist faction controlled the NLF, and for the next two years a power struggle ensued between the nationalists and the leaders of the NLF’s left wing – Abd al-Fattah Ismail, Salem Rubayi Ali, Ali Nassir Muhammad and Ali Salem al-Bidh. The Fourth Congress of the NLF, held in March 1968, resulted in a landslide victory for the policies of the NLF left, providing for the establishment of new political institutions, reflecting distrust of British remnants and an intent to pursue a programme of revolutionary socialist transformation. From 1969, following a decisive seizure of power by the left known as the ‘Corrective Step’, the NLF took the country on an explicitly

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socialist path. The name of the country was changed in 1970 to the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY), drawing inspiration not only from China but, perhaps more significantly, from the Soviet Union, whose influence, while never as deep as many feared, was growing throughout the period. The NLF became a party after the Soviet model and gradually assumed full control of state operations. Socialist ideology came to dominate political decision-making, and ideological allegiances shaped foreign policy. In the end, the influence of the Soviet Union would, in particular, encourage the leaders of PDRY to take a relatively pragmatic approach in both foreign and domestic policy spheres, but first, in the early years, the international socialist ideology of PDRY would intersect with unrest in the Omani region of Dhofar, leading the PDRY government to actively support a revolutionary movement involved in armed struggle with the government of Oman. The Dhofar War began in the mid-1960s. During the 1950s the oil boom in the Gulf had precipitated substantial migrations from the Dhofar region to the newly wealthy Gulf states. Here Dhofaris (and other Omanis, too) came into contact with nationalists from other Arab countries (as well as with exiles associated with the Jebel Akhdar imamate movement), exposing them to a range of political ideas associated with Arab nationalism and socialism. Among the groups of organised nationalists was the Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM), which began life as a revolutionary pan-Arabist movement and gradually developed a socialist and anti-imperialist perspective. In 1962, Dhofari members of the ANM formed a new organisation, based in Dhofar itself, named the Dhofar Liberation Front (DLF), which sought the establishment of an independent Dhofari state. In its early years, the DLF enjoyed only very limited external support and focused on local activities including armed actions along the Salalah–Thumrait road and in towns such as Mirbat and Taqah. With the rise of the NLF, however, following the British withdrawal from Aden and South Yemen, close contacts between members of the DLF and leftists within the Yemeni NLF (who enjoyed strong support in the adjacent Hadramaut and Mahra regions) influenced a radicalisation of the DLF. At about the same time, a more general radicalisation was taking place within the ANM, following the break of the left with Nasser after the disaster of June 1967. At the DLF’s Second Congress, held in September 1968 in Hamrin, in central Dhofar, the DLF changed its name to the Popular Front for the Liberation of the Arabian Gulf (PFLOAG). This marked its shift from a narrowly local perspective to one that saw the struggle for Dhofari independence as part of a wider

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socialist struggle against Western imperialism in the Gulf and beyond, with which Oman, as a monarchy supported by the British, was clearly associated. A new twenty-five-member revolutionary council was established, to which only three of eighteen original members were reelected. PFLOAG explicitly identified the NLF victory in South Yemen as having ‘prepared the favourable conditions for a similar revolution’ and distributed Arab translations of writings by Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara, alongside texts from radical Palestinian groups. Uzi Rabi argues that this ‘turn towards ideology with a leftist hue was largely the result of dramatic changes that took 2 place in neighbouring South Yemen’. From the opposite side, according to John Peterson, the PDRY ‘stood firmly behind the [Dhofari] rebels in matters of ideology and logistics’, providing an ‘important 3 link between the Dhofari revolutionaries and the Communist world’. Thus, as well as drawing Dhofar, and with it, Oman, into the leftist, anti-imperialist struggle, the Dhofar conflict would also have the sudden and dramatic effect of placing Oman on the front line of the cold war. While it was intensely local, therefore, for about six or seven years, the Dhofar War could also be considered a partially ‘internationalised’ conflict. The DLF, and subsequently the PFLOAG, received both political and material backing from PDRY from as early as 1967 and from China from 1969. In 1970, a number of Soviet journalists visited Dhofar, and in 1971 a PFLOAG delegation went to Moscow. PFLOAG fighters received training in both the Soviet Union and China. When China downgraded its support for PDRY and the Dhofari rebels in 1973 (in the context of rapprochement with the Shah’s Iran, which was offering material support to the Sultan of Oman), the Soviet Union increased its aid. The situation was of course of grave concern to the United States, but the US government did not intervene directly, perhaps partly because of its terrible experience of intervention in Vietnam (from which it would finally withdraw, defeated by North Vietnamese communists, in 1975). Instead, in keeping with what came to be known as the Nixon doctrine (in which direct conflict would be replaced by war by proxy), the USA left more direct involvement to the British – who were, after all, already in place and working closely with the Sultan’s Armed Forces – and to other regional allies such as Iran and Jordan. The accession of Sultan Qaboos in 1970, however, led to a significant change in Oman’s social and political situation. One of the first priorities of the new sultan was to achieve peace, reconciliation

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and the unification of the country under its new name, the Sultanate of Oman. Sultan Qaboos was able to mobilise élite and popular support for both his rule and the conduct of a military and political campaign against PFLOAG. The Sultan’s Armed Forces, working in close collaboration with British forces, gradually eroded PFLOAG influence in the Dhofari jebel (mountains), securing popular support through a dedicated campaign of education and social provision for the people of the region. As PFLOAG felt its position weakening, it decided, in 1974, to limit its operations to Dhofar alone, abandoning its ambition to promote revolution elsewhere in the Gulf. This signalled the beginning of the end for the international dimension of the struggle and very nearly the end of the struggle in Dhofar, too. Omani forces were by this stage capable of striking against rebel facilities within PDRY, and by the end of the khareef (southeast monsoon, generally from June to early September) of 1975, they had more or less cleared the Dhofari jebel of active rebel units, many of which simply retreated across the border into PDRY. On 11 December 1975 Sultan Qaboos was able to announce that the Dhofar War was officially over. While the conflict in Dhofar had international, cold war dimensions – with global and regional players taking part to varying degrees – in the end, the victory of the Omani forces was secured on a local basis. It is generally understood that it was not the intervention of one side or another in the wider cold war (even if British forces made a significant contribution), but rather the Sultan’s ability to develop and secure popular support against the PFLOAG that would be the decisive factor in securing a settlement. But the conflict would leave the emerging Sultanate of Oman with a difficult legacy and a challenging neighbour. As we shall see in Chapter 10 below, Oman’s policy priority in its relationship with PDRY after 1975 would be to remove the bilateral relationship from its cold war framework, focusing instead on establishing peaceful relations and a secure border on the basis of neighbourhood relations, rather than ideological opposition. While Oman would seek to extricate its relationship with PDRY from cold war parameters, nevertheless, the experience of Dhofar would colour Omani diplomacy in the period 1970–89 enough to make cold war issues much more immediate than some of those preoccupying other states in the Middle East. As a result, having secured its territory against an insurgency that had placed Oman at the front line of cold war conflict, there was now, in the years after 1975, an opportunity and a strong incentive for the Sultanate of Oman to con-

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solidate its own position as an ally of the United States and, to do so, in particular, by way of military and security cooperation. AN EXPANDING ROLE FOR THE USA

In the wake of a war against communist-backed Dhofari rebels, the sultanate remained acutely conscious of threats to its security and stability, attributable, at least in part, to lingering elements of the cold war. Although the insurgency itself had been brought successfully to an end, territorial integrity restored, and full sovereignty established under the new title of the Sultanate of Oman, the government of the neighbouring People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen continued to express revolutionary ideology with support from communist backers (the Soviet Union continued at least rhetorical support for the PFLO through 1979, and sporadic incidents of armed attack by residual rebels occurred as late as 1980). Oman was accordingly wary about the possibility of destabilisation, either on the independent initiative of PDRY, or as part of some wider cold war movement in which PDRY might be used as a channel for subverting or challenging the broadly pro-Western states of the Arabian Peninsula. Oman’s experience of war in Dhofar, and particularly the internationalisation of that conflict as part of the cold war in the region, would have encouraged Oman to focus during this period on strengthening its relationship with the United States, and to prioritise within that relationship a structure for security cooperation. It was a policy reflected in the perception at that time – hinted at in internal MFA papers, and justified by events in the thirty years following – that the United States would assume an increasingly significant role in the region and its security, in the wake of British withdrawal from the Gulf. Relations between Oman and the United States had developed quite rapidly throughout the 1970s following the accession of Sultan Qaboos. The USA opened an embassy in Muscat in 1972 and, in 1973, Sayyid Faisal bin Ali was appointed Omani ambassador to the USA, opening Oman’s Washington embassy. The USA first expressed interest in making military use of the island of Masirah following departure by the British in 1973. Talks about this and associated issues appear to have taken place between US and Omani officials through the following year. When Sultan Qaboos visited Washington in 1975, he met President Ford, Secretary of State Kissinger, Secretary of Defense Schlesinger and William Colby, director of the CIA. It appears

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that during those meetings, an agreement in principle was reached exchanging American access to Masirah for the supply of an American missile defence system. The Facilities Agreement, officially concluded in June 1980, marked the end of a much longer process, transforming a pattern of informal permissions – which allowed US forces to use facilities on Omani territory – into a full and formal ten-year renewable arrangement. The agreement is most frequently understood as permitting American use of Masirah Island, which had previously hosted an airstrip and modest accommodations for the British Royal Air Force. But it also provided for the possible use, in the case of a significant Gulf emergency, of facilities at Khasab (Musandam), Thumrait (Dhofar) and Seeb (just outside Muscat). Naturally, strengthening military ties with the USA was a delicate issue to which Omani diplomacy remained highly sensitive. A predictably critical South Yemeni response to press reports of a facilities arrangement was by no means a lone voice criticising Oman’s rapprochement with the United States. Further criticism had been voiced in the Arab media following reports, in 1979, of the docking of an American reconnaissance and monitoring ship at Mina Sultan Qaboos, accompanied by claims that American C-141 cargo planes had used Masirah while flying supplies to its Indian Ocean carrier fleet. Allegations that the USA was maintaining a permanent presence in Oman were denied by Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Qais alZawawi in January 1980. It would have been vital, from an Omani perspective, that the American presence should remain low profile. Masirah, barely inhabited and a long way from other population centres, seemed to be ideal in this regard, as did Thumrait, isolated as it was on the desert side of the Dhofari jebel. It was also important that the terms of security cooperation did not amount to the provision of a permanent base. While it could be argued that the nature of the Facilities Agreement, even before its formalisation in 1980, might have implied the relatively permanent presence of technical support staff to maintain the airstrip and other facilities, it was in Oman’s wider diplomatic interest that a stronger US presence could be confidently and accurately presented as qualitatively different from an ongoing military presence of the type that some of Oman’s critics alleged. The terms would be best drawn up in the framework of a long-term security for both Oman and the region, coloured by cold war concerns. By the time the agreement had been reached, however, the Iranian

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Revolution had to some degree altered the context of the development of the US–Omani partnership, as we have already seen in Chapter 8. For most of the 1970s, Oman’s movement towards security cooperation and alliance with the United States would have been viewed with little or no concern by Tehran, as the Shah’s government had developed its own strong relationship with the United States; following the 1979 revolution, however, the new Iranian government would identify the United States as its principal antagonist in a new political conflict. The new government was likely to have viewed the Facilities Agreement with some concern: after all, Masirah, one of its key elements, lies less than four hundred miles from the Iranian coast. Indeed, the proximity of Masirah to mainland Iran would soon aggravate Iran–US relations when it would be used as a staging post for US Air Force C130 Hercules transporters during a disastrous attempt to rescue American hostages from the US embassy in Tehran. The situation would also, of course, have posed Oman a real diplomatic difficulty: for an agreement which, although public, was supposed to function discreetly, and in the interests of Gulf regional security, would be suddenly illuminated by a glare of publicity associated with a use of the facilities unanticipated by the Omani side. This last episode perhaps offers a helpful summary of the state of Omani diplomacy in the Gulf at the end of the 1970s. Oman was compelled to walk quite a fine line, delicately balancing a range of competing factors. Predominant among them, as discussed, were cold war concerns, which will only have been intensified by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. When Soviet tanks rolled into Afghanistan in December 1980, it appeared that the Soviet Union’s ambitions to reach the Indian Ocean and to assert its influence through the Middle East might have been achieved. Before long, however, it would become clear that the Soviet Union had made a disastrous overreach. Soviet forces soon found themselves engaged in a losing battle with wellarmed and well-motivated mujahedin (many of them funded and armed by the USA, through Pakistani channels). By the time Mikhail Gorbachev assumed power in Moscow in 1985, committed, inter alia, to a complete revision of Soviet foreign policy (as part of which diplomatic relations with Oman were established in September 1985), the Soviet presence in Afghanistan no longer constituted a cold war advantage to the Soviet Union or a threat to American interests in the Middle East. With recognition that the Soviet threat was fading rapidly, Oman was able to move towards the establishment of full diplomatic relations with not only the Soviet Union but also the PDRY

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in 1987, and subsequently to develop its neighbourly relations with the government in Aden. As far as the cold war was concerned, unintended consequences of the American response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan would have greater reverberations in the region than the initial Soviet threat had done. For in the post-cold war era, the mujahedin who had thwarted the Soviet invasion, with the support of the USA, would create the conditions for the emergence of both the Taliban and alQaida, against whom the USA and others continued to wage war in Afghanistan for many years. Over the long term, then, this would lead to a much more entrenched US role in the region than could have been foreseen, or probably desired, by any of the players involved. Nonetheless, the security relationship between Oman and the United States would by no means be incompatible, as we shall see in subsequent chapters, with Oman’s efforts to form a collective security arrangement with its neighbours on a regional level. The pursuit of such a collective regional agreement on security would characterise Omani policy from the mid-1970s onwards, gaining additional momentum in the aftermath of Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait. These issues, in the context of Oman’s relationships with its most immediate Gulf neighbours, will form the subject of the next chapter. Notes 01 Accounts of Oman’s foreign policy during the cold war may be found in Joseph A. Kechichian, Oman and the World; and John E. Peterson, Oman in the Twentieth Century. For accounts of the foreign policy of the PDRY and the Dhofar War, see Fred Halliday, Revolution and Foreign Policy: The Case of South Yemen 1967–1987; John E. Peterson, Oman’s Insurgencies: The Sultanate’s Struggle for Supremacy; and Uzi Rabi, Emergence of States. In compiling this chapter we have also consulted research papers from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including ‘Peoples Democratic Republic of Yemen’ (April 1990); and ‘Democratic Revolution in Europe: Analysis’ (October 1990). 02 Rabi, Emergence of States, p. 198. 03 Peterson, Oman in the Twentieth Century, pp. 192–3.

10 Neighbours in Arabia

1 The introduction to Part II of this book presented the concept of ‘neighbour’ as a core theme of Omani diplomacy, the definition of which has been constantly evolving alongside Oman’s foreign policy. ‘Neighbour’, Mandana Limbert has observed, is not merely a political term or a diplomatic category. It is these things, but it is also more, imbued with duties and obligations. While neighbourly relations can be based on all sorts of mutual interests, geographic location is perhaps one of the most concrete, immediate and inescapable. As the cold war wound down and the threat of radical Islam flared up following a revolution in Iran, concerns over regional instability only intensified. The shared threat, irrespective of geographic borders, precipitated some sort of collective action. This chapter shows how the states of the Arabian Peninsula chose to respond, and how Oman managed its relations with its vital and closest neighbours. THE GULF COOPERATION COUNCIL

As the 1980s drew to a close, the states of the Arabian Gulf all faced their own internal challenges. In Oman, a decade after the accession of Sultan Qaboos, a period of rapid economic and social development had begun. But the sultanate had only recently secured peace within its own borders with the defeat of the communist-backed insurgency in Dhofar, and its southern neighbour, the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, still posed a significant material threat: diplomatic relations did not yet exist; the border was not agreed; the threat of renewed interference in Oman’s internal affairs could not be ruled out. The institutionalisation of cooperative relations between Oman and its other neighbours therefore appeared highly desirable. Among a number of Arabian Gulf states, Oman found consensus that the wider regional environment contained threats and challenges better met collectively than alone.

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There was no shortage of challenges. The Iranian Revolution of 1979, for one, had replaced a pro-Western government with a radical Islamist regime that was not only avowedly anti-American but also ideologically hostile to the monarchies of the Arab Gulf. The revolution revived anxieties about Iranian territorial claims (to Bahrain and parts of the UAE for example), and also gave rise to new fears about the possibility of a new wave of radical Islamic political activity, inspired by the example of Iran. While some of these fears centred on the Shia populations of Bahrain and the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, who were believed to be particularly susceptible to radicalisation, the possibility of a similar movement among the non-Shia of the region was also a source of concern. The seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca in November 1979 (by Sunni extremists), and the almost simultaneous, though unrelated and mainly Shia, uprising in the Eastern Province had intensified these concerns, for Saudi Arabia in particular. Within a year the situation had become more complex and threatening. The Soviet Union had invaded and occupied Afghanistan, an action that not only raised the threat of cold war conflict close at hand, but that, even without any direct cold war conflict, had a destabilising effect on the region as a whole, intensifying and spreading Islamist political militancy. Perhaps most threatening of all, to those states about to form the GCC, was the outbreak of war between Iraq and Iran. In 1980, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein publicly tore up the 1975 agreement between his country and Iran over the waters of the Shatt al-Arab. Seeking to affirm Iraqi control over the head of the Gulf and to exploit the supposed weakness of a country in post-revolutionary turmoil, Saddam Hussein launched a full-scale military conflict with Iran. It would last for eight years. The Iran–Iraq war jeopardised the security of the entire region and threatened to destabilise its economy, as oil tankers in the Gulf could come under attack by one side or the other. The Arabian Gulf states recognised that the current crisis required a new level of security cooperation, but knew that any realistic agreement at the time would preclude participation of Iraq or Iran. Under these circumstances, Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates met in May 1981 to form the 1 six-member Gulf Cooperation Council. The most immediate issues confronting the GCC were first and foremost challenges to the security and political integrity of its six member states. Emphasis during the first period (1981–90) of the GCC’s existence would therefore focus on finding solutions to

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problems of regional security (including those posed by the Iraq–Iran War), resolving other more minor conflicts, achieving diplomatic breakthroughs (such as formal ties between Oman and PDRY) and developing internal security cooperation. Security cooperation would be dependent, however, upon the success of the political development of the GCC as an institution. Though the GCC would not move as far as some initially hoped within its first ten years, a number of factors would point to its integrity and efficacy as a regional political body. It did not seek to move rapidly and grandly towards a political integration inspired by pan-Arabism, and thereby avoided the fate of earlier experiments in Arab political cooperation, such as the UAR (1958–61), the South Arabian Federation (1959–67), the Maghreb Permanent Consultative Committee (1964–71) and the Confederation of Arab Republics (1972–5). This was partly because the political agendas of the leaders of the member states rarely extended beyond pragmatic considerations of self-preservation and the protection of the prosperity generated by oil exports, and partly because the immediate regional context in which the GCC was formed involved an obvious and pressing threat to security and stability in the form of the Iran–Iraq war. From the Omani point of view, the political achievement of the GCC was its most significant regional contribution – a perspective commensurate with a value placed on political structures and the proper dialogue that characterises Omani diplomacy. As a result, Oman would adopt a position relative to the GCC in which the failure to address Oman’s most pressing practical concerns (such as successive proposals for greater collective security cooperation) would not affect its commitment to the organisation itself, and to the political process it embodies. In an internal study that reviews their country’s membership of the GCC early in 1990, Omani diplomats expressed the view that political achievements were what would ultimately underpin security cooperation. Therefore, Oman hoped that the next decade – the 1990s – would witness a shift in this direction and realise some of the more ambitious plans for greater collective Gulf security. However, having survived the challenge of the Iran–Iraq war (not without some internal divisions, as we have already seen in Chapter 8, with Oman, in particular, dissenting from the general tendency to side with Iraq), the GCC was soon to discover that it was far from immune to external threats. Oman’s ambitions for greater collective security would face substantial obstacles.

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KUWAIT AND THE FIRST GULF WAR

During the 1980s, coordinated arrangements for the internal security of the GCC states had successfully contained efforts at destabilisation, and, perhaps most importantly, renewed confidence among all member states that stability is a real and practical possibility. At the same time, moves towards an integrated defence system (Peninsula Shield) established as a basic principle that each of the six states was committed to the territorial integrity and security of the other five. The sharing of intelligence and the conduct of joint military and naval exercises greatly enhanced the readiness of the GCC states to respond effectively to any military threat in the region. The level of political stability demonstrated by security cooperation was additionally compelling on an economic level, providing important evidence for prospective investors and trading partners outside the Gulf. But as the GCC approached the tenth anniversary of its foundation, these bonds 2 would be severely tested by Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. At the outset of the Gulf crisis, Kuwait actively discouraged GCC members from taking action, until it was too late for action to be effective. Kuwait had appeared to hope that it could resolve its dispute with Iraq on a bilateral basis, probably by way of concessions on oil. What ensued suggests that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq would not have accepted any concessions of this kind, in any case, and that invasion and occupation were primary intentions from the outset. And while the GCC had developed political coordination at a high level, and achieved considerable progress in cooperation on internal security, in the end it proved unable to act collectively to prevent the invasion of one of its own members. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait had revealed a fundamental problem in the imbalance of military might in the region. Diplomatic power, it appeared, had not been enough to avert the crisis without military backing. Had the GCC been able to physically intervene in a multilateral capacity, a far stronger diplomatic exercise of dissuasion and deterrence might have been possible. In the wake of the First Gulf War, reviewing the state of the GCC, Oman saw more clearly than ever that the GCC must develop a set of political mechanisms enabling a swift and unified response to a crisis. A small military force, deployed speedily and on the basis of clear mechanisms for collective decision-making, could be used to pre-empt and deter military action by larger powers, or at least to buy time until allied assistance were to arrive. Oman argued that had a GCC force been in place to resist the

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Iraqi invasion on 2 August 1990, it could have at least kept up a meaningful resistance until crucial US air support was in place, which would have taken less than twenty-four hours. It was clear, however, that in the absence of a collective military force built up over many years, the GCC would not be militarily viable on its own. The demographic reality, furthermore, was that it would never be fully self-sufficient: for even if the GCC acted in unity, the conglomerate of smaller states would not be strong enough to challenge or deter military actions by much larger regional powers, such as Iraq. As a result, Oman proposed that the GCC absorb any political ramifications and enter into wider military cooperation. The idea of cooperation with Egypt and Syria, as proposed in the Damascus Declaration, did not last long, partly, it seems, because the Saudi and Kuwaiti governments were worried about the potential social disruption due to the presence of troops from secular Arab regimes, but mainly because a continued dependency upon the United States seemed both easier and more reliable. With the realisation that the GCC would most likely be unable to secure itself entirely against external threats, all members eventually concluded that the best option on the table seemed to be to coordinate security arrangements with the United States. The realities of global power at the dawn of the 1990s, particularly in the light of the collapse of the Soviet Union, were such that nothing the GCC could put together would be capable of approaching the military might of the USA. American power had proven crucial in resolving the Gulf crisis in favour of the Arab and international coalition. Given that any threat to the territorial integrity of GCC states would, for global economic considerations, be regarded as a threat to the vital interests of the USA, in the event of another regional threat the USA would likely intervene again, with or without the explicit cooperation of the GCC or its individual member states. A cooperative US–GCC partnership based on mutual security interests therefore seemed logical. In order to retain an appropriate degree of political control, however, it benefited the GCC to take the initiative, for in the absence of an agreement, US action in the region again would weaken the GCC’s political credibility. The crisis of 1990–1 and its means of resolution had set a precedent for US intervention, and many of the critics of the US role in the Gulf had already claimed it represented an unacceptable concession (of sovereignty, independence and cultural integrity) on the part of the GCC, and by Saudi Arabia in particular. Allowing the USA

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a free hand in the Gulf by abstaining from any formal security arrangements had the potential to be extremely damaging. But it was not merely political capital that motivated the Gulf states towards an arrangement. The US modus operandi in the region had already proven somewhat troubling. US policy in the region tended to support one power against another, with problematic consequences: former US support for Iraq, as a counterweight to the supposed threat of Iran, may have contributed to conditions emboldening Iraq to invade Kuwait in 1990. What US policy perhaps failed to understand was that the reality of the power balance in the Gulf was so delicate that when one regional power – in this case, Iraq – becomes disproportionately powerful, it immediately constitutes a threat to the territorial integrity and sovereignty of others. To avoid this, Gulf policy, by contrast, hinged on equilibrium through mutual agreement. So while the GCC saw that US involvement in the region was more or less inevitable, it could not only win meaningful political influence in the region through security cooperation with the USA, but it could also draw on its own diplomatic and economic resources to encourage a more nuanced US approach. Looking further afield for security cooperation would not, however, lessen Oman’s prioritisation of the need to develop cooperative mechanisms to strengthen the GCC internally. In its review of the organisation following the First Gulf War, the sultanate advocated a policy of reciprocal obligation according to which each GCC member state would guarantee assistance and intervention should another come under threat and, equally, the state under threat would be obliged to request and accept such assistance from the others. If Kuwait had received collective GCC assistance, Oman considered in retrospect, the Iraqi invasion might have been averted. But, in this context of both regional and international involvement, two concepts emerged as crucially central, namely sovereignty and respect for international law. These, Oman would emphasise, were necessary safeguards to ensure the permanence and territorial integrity of small nations, affording legal protection in the face of expansionist claims, such as those that had been pursued by Iraq. The sultanate adopted the view that GCC members should do everything within their powers to ensure that the concept of sovereignty gained more widespread acceptance in regional politics and that it should form the basis of all bilateral and multilateral agreements. Indirectly, this position would have ramifications for any push towards pan-Arabism, for its trans-border goals were incompatible with the sovereign nation-state.

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Oman’s calls for an increased GCC security apparatus, however, would be frustrated in the early 1990s, failing to rally much support among the other GCC member states. It appeared that other states, relieved that the disaster of Iraq’s invasion had been reversed, were willing to rely upon existing structures, along with stronger US ties. The focus of the organisation would therefore take a decisive shift towards the economic sphere. At this point, the economic achievements of the GCC had been relatively limited. The imperative of developing collective security had been costly and time-consuming, leaving little scope for less pressing economic agreements. That said, without the stability afforded the member states by the political and security successes of the GCC, it is doubtful that the continued development maintained through the 1980s would have been possible. The specific objective of a completely free GCC-wide market had not been met by the early 1990s, and even the customs union, which came into effect in its first phase in 2003, to this day continues to fall short of the transnational free market once envisaged. It was, in any case, perhaps given too immediate a priority ahead of industrial development and diversification away from near total dependency on oil – an area in which future progress seemed most likely and, indeed, most pressing. From an Omani perspective, however, the slow pace of development was not necessarily a problem. Oman had remained anxious that the precipitate lowering of all trade barriers throughout the GCC might rekindle precisely the kind of nationalism the GCC was endeavouring to reduce. The seeming economic advantages of such an acceleration of the process might therefore have been outweighed by the political disadvantages, and that would, in turn, produce more of the economic problems that free inter-GCC trade aimed to eradicate in the first place. Consequently, throughout the 1990s, Oman would assume the stance that the GCC might best regard itself as an organisation for regional development rather than economic integration. It was a perspective that would ultimately lead to perhaps Oman’s most obvious divergence from the rest of the GCC – in the economic sphere – expressed in Oman’s 2007 announcement that it did not intend to adopt the proposed, single GCC currency (the UAE followed suit in 2009). With trade between GCC states at a very low level, making the development of a free market less urgent than it had been in the case of the European Union (where levels of internal trade are significantly higher), Oman favoured channelling resources towards coordinated, planned development on the whole, rather than on inter-GCC trade

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alone. Emphasis on joint projects and the exchange of information, for example, to streamline efforts and avoid duplication could assist states individually while also giving the region a broader push towards more comprehensive development. BILATERAL AND MULTILATERAL RELATIONS

Within the GCC, Oman places particular emphasis on the maintenance of excellent relations with its two closest neighbours, the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Oman and the UAE share common interests in security matters, and have a long history of social and cultural links; still, relations between the two have not always been as straightforward as these affinities might suggest. As recently as 2010, there have been tensions between Oman and the UAE arising from the discovery of a UAE spy network operating in Oman, an episode that several observers linked to differences in opinion between the two neighbours over the extent of the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear energy programme. We have seen already, in Chapter 8, over the issue of Abu Musa and the Tunbs, that Oman generally tries to prevent its good relations with Iran from interfering with its good relations with the UAE and the rest of the GCC. The UAE espionage incident suggests that not everyone in the UAE takes such a relaxed a view of this triangle. Relations with Saudi Arabia have remained an important priority. Both within the GCC and a wider regional context, Saudi Arabia is a powerful ally with which continued cooperation is essential. Saudi Arabia’s unique position in the Islamic world, as well as its economic and military power, mean that its foreign policy will frequently be motivated by a search for regional hegemony. This can bring it into direct competition with other regional states, particularly Iran. Since Oman’s fundamental interests are best served by the preservation of a complex balance of power in the Gulf, and extension of Saudi hegemony in the region would be unwelcome, Oman’s policy towards Saudi Arabia is designed to encourage restraint in Saudi policy. Therefore, it almost invariably involves a consideration of Saudi policy in respect of other, third, parties (such as Iran, Yemen, Jordan and other GCC states). This means that Omani diplomacy with respect to Saudi Arabia tends to focus on encouraging good relations between Saudi Arabia and other regional states. It has included, wherever possible, facilitating mutual respect and understanding between Saudi Arabia and Iran, while encouraging both sides to regard one another as acceptable and lasting components of a regional status quo. It has

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also involved discouraging Saudi activities that may influence the direction of political events in other neighbouring states, especially Yemen, and encouraging a tolerant attitude towards smaller GCC states, in general. Though not nearly as powerful or influential as Saudi Arabia, there is another neighbour in the Arabian Peninsula with which constructive relations are critical for Oman, if due to proximity above any other reason. Chapter 9 outlined some of the challenges posed within and by Yemen during the cold war period. In the years since, a number of these have transformed into new sources of tension, leading up to the present day. The Yemeni civil war of 1994 threatened stability on the peninsula and, as a result, generated tension within the GCC: Saudi Arabia, along with Bahrain, Kuwait and the UAE, discreetly urged support for the breakaway southern state – the Democratic Republic of Yemen (DRY) – presumably as a result of longstanding Saudi concerns that a unified Yemen might challenge its own hegemony in the peninsula. Oman, however, while sympathetic to some of the concerns expressed by the leadership of the breakaway DRY, also recognised the importance of international recognition for sovereignty and international borders (this had, after all, been a key issue just three years earlier, when the GCC had stood united in defence of Kuwaiti sovereignty and territorial integrity). Oman also calculated that the northern leadership in Sanaa would successfully defeat the breakaway southern forces (and that Saudi Arabia would refrain from any active intervention). The sultanate’s priority was therefore to preserve the gains achieved through the 1992 border agreement, and to prepare the way for a good post-conflict relationship with the government in Sanaa (as well as a role in resolving issues involving Sanaa and the defeated leadership of the Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP). This course of action also left Oman well positioned at the end of the civil war to assist in a gradual rapprochement between Yemen and Oman’s GCC partners. Since 1994 Yemen has continued to face acute economic and political difficulties. Significant parts of the country have been beyond the control of central government, and some of these areas appear to have been used for the training of militants associated with the alQaida network. During this period, therefore, Yemen has been a growing cause for concern in the United States, particularly following the bombing of the USS Cole, in the port of Aden in October 2000, in which seventeen American servicemen were killed and which was subsequently considered to have been the work of al-Qaida, less than a year before the attacks on New York. Since 2003, American financial

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and military aid to Yemen has increased substantially, with successive US administrations apparently convinced that this kind of support, combined with effective cooperation between the two governments on counterterrorism measures, is vital to regional and, indeed, international stability. In recent years, concerns have grown about the freedom enjoyed by supposed al-Qaida militants within Yemen, with fears that Yemen, with its central government further weakened by the need to combat a Zaidi/Houthi rebellion in the north of the country, might become the kind of ‘failed state’ in which terrorist organisations are able to establish themselves as both domestic political powers and threats to international security. These concerns intensified during 2011, in the context of popular protests against President Saleh’s rule. As a result, the GCC has taken an active role, seeking to mediate between the opposition and the president, and proposing a plan – at the time of writing, unsuccessful – for an orderly transition in which Saleh would step down in favour of a unity government. For Oman, as an immediate neighbour acutely aware of the extent to which events in Yemen can impact upon its own security and stability, the key priority in its diplomacy towards Yemen is to promote stability by any means at its disposal. Drawing Yemen into formal participation in GCC structures has therefore been a significant aim. Following the establishment of official bilateral relations between the two countries, Oman emerged as a leading advocate for Yemen–GCC cooperation. Some exploratory contacts between Oman, Yemen, Qatar and Iran appear to have taken place in the late 1990s, in which the potential for an alternative form of cooperation between these four neighbours was considered, but as far as we can tell, these talks never developed beyond very initial stages, and Oman has since emphasised the GCC path to securing a stable Yemen. From Oman’s perspective on the southeast corner of the Arabian Peninsula, the security and prosperity of the GCC and the region – and stability throughout the globe on the whole – hinged crucially on cooperation from Yemen to the west. And it had already prioritised this objective before the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 would give it added urgency. For Yemen, membership of the GCC would be a logical and helpful component of its evolving political position, as well as a vital element in a much-needed push for economic development. The inclusion of Yemen in a regional body could lend to it political credibility that could assist Yemen in making the break with its unstable past entirely definitive. It would seem to set Yemen on a stable path of cooperation and partnership with its neighbours. Not to mention that its economic

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development – a country with a population of over twelve million, representing the largest potential market in the Arabian Peninsula – could prove a valuable engine for future economic growth in the region, especially in the context of increasing regional economic integration. But the pragmatic dimensions to Yemeni membership did not necessarily outweigh complications. Saudi Arabia, for example, would consistently resist any move towards Yemeni membership. From the Saudi perspective, as a new and populous member country, Yemen had the potential to limit Saudi influence in the region as a whole and within the GCC in particular. Yemen, meanwhile, had adopted a maximalist stance requiring full membership at a stroke, and rejecting in turn the prospect of gradual accession. However, in recent years both Yemeni and Saudi positions have moderated, partly due to the mutual confidence arising from the Saudi–Yemeni border agreement of 2000, and partly due to the shared security challenges faced by both Saudi Arabia and Yemen after the 11 September terrorist attacks on the United States. From the Saudi perspective, the border agreement of 12 June 2000 constituted an obvious and essential prerequisite for any consideration of Yemeni admission to the GCC. Although the GCC has proved fully capable of maintaining unity in spite of outstanding border issues between some of its members (Bahrain and Qatar, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, to cite two examples where resolutions have only recently been achieved), the Saudi–Yemeni dispute was of a different order. It had been the source of direct and potentially dangerous military confrontations as recently as 1998, when the two sides clashed over the Red Sea island of al-Duwaima, and early 2000, when Saudi forces apparently occupied Jabal Jahfan, a mountain Yemen claimed lay seven kilometres inside its borders according to the 1934 Treaty of al-Tā’if. Clearly, the events of 11 September 2001 and the subsequent ‘war on terrorism’ also had a considerable impact on both Saudi and Yemeni perceptions of their common interests. For Yemen, the continued presence on its soil of militants almost certainly linked to, if not actually members of, al-Qaida represented a grave threat to its security and its national integrity. Although Yemen had already been cooperating with the American government in the investigation of the presumed al-Qaida suicide attack on the USS Cole in Aden, tensions with the USA over this issue remained substantial. After 11 September 2001 it was even suggested that the US government might take action against Yemen, or against terrorist targets in Yemen, with or without

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the Yemeni government’s cooperation. All the work to move Yemen towards a moderate stance, shared with its neighbours, could have been undone. This factor will certainly have encouraged Yemeni opinion in favour of seeking closer relationships with its neighbours, as a way of insulating itself against both the destabilising threat of terrorism, and the equally destabilising threat of US hostility. However, Omani diplomats recognised in November 2001 that President Saleh still held fast to the position that Yemeni membership should be achieved in a single move. It was therefore necessary to persuade the president that accepting a phased accession to membership was the only way in which all existing members could possibly agree to Yemen joining the GCC. As far as Saudi Arabia is concerned, it is clear that the events of 11 September 2001 have led to a change in its approach to relations with Yemen. Even if few in the West recognise it, Saudi Arabia’s leaders are conscious that they are the ultimate target of al-Qaida terrorism. Furthermore, many of the terrorists are themselves of Saudi origin. GCC states recognise that measures must be taken to protect Saudi Arabia against this very direct threat to its security and stability. Among these measures must be ways of stemming the flow of recruits from Saudi Arabia to the training camps of the terrorist organisations, as well as cutting off, wherever possible, their financial support. The Saudi leadership may gradually have moved to recognise that this can only be achieved with some cooperation from Yemen. After all, the path from Saudi Arabia, via Yemen, to Afghanistan and to acts of global terrorism, is a well-trodden one. Supporters of Yemeni integration into a peninsula-wide framework argue that cooperation with Yemen might help to close this route. Although there is no security component to the agreements reached on Yemeni membership of GCC bodies, the incentive for Saudi Arabia to drop its previous objections may well lie in this area. Saudi Arabia finds itself sharing a vital common interest with Yemen. With Yemen gradually accepted into the GCC, participating in its integrated economy, the climate for continued terrorist recruitment declines in Yemen, while Saudi Arabia and Yemen can find institutional contexts in which to work together against the existing terrorist organisations and supporters who threaten them both. The question of Yemeni stability also has a wider international dimension because the weakness of the Yemeni government creates conditions in which militant organisations are able to organise and train in Yemen for potential terrorist actions around the world. In

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December 2009 a Nigerian was arrested in the United States apparently on the verge of exploding a bomb on a Detroit-bound airliner. It emerged that he had been trained in Yemen. Politicians and media round the world started talking about Yemen as a third location – after Iraq and Afghanistan – for the so-called ‘war on terror’. The Obama administration, however, which had publicly revoked the use of this term, and announced the withdrawal of US troops from military operations in Iraq (completed in August 2010), resisted calls from some quarters for a military presence in Yemen, opting instead for diplomatic cooperation. Oman contributes to this cooperation and continues to assist the Yemeni government with economic and other material support, especially on sensitive issues such as border security. Most recently, in the context of widespread political protest in Yemen in the first half of 2011 demanding the resignation of President Saleh, the Omani government also decided to prepare refugee reception centres on the Omani side of the Oman–Yemen border, in case events in Yemen resulted in the kind of collapse of order that might provoke major flight. It was with a view to enhancing Yemen’s capacity to develop and maintain its own economic and political stability on the one hand, and the GCC’s capacity to contain the challenge of Yemen’s fragile economic and political situation on the other, that agreement was reached in December 2001. The Supreme Council of the GCC agreed at its twenty-second summit meeting in Muscat to admit Yemen to a number of GCC bodies for joint action – the GCC Council of the Ministers of Health, Arab Education Bureau of the Gulf States, GCC Council of the Minister of Labour and Social Affairs, and Arab Gulf Football Tournament. The final summit communiqué also indicated that further integration was intended: ‘this step will be followed by others which will allow Yemen to participate in GCC economic cooperation 3 domains.’ This development was regarded as a modest success for Omani diplomacy. However, only very limited progress, if any, has been made since, and the decision, at the GCC summit in May 2011, to accept a longstanding membership application from Jordan, and simultaneously to invite Morocco to join, suggests that the idea of expanding the organisation by incorporating Yemen is no longer at the top of the agenda. This chapter has aimed to trace the evolution of Omani diplomacy during a period in which the Gulf region was seeking to reorder itself following the collapse of cold war divisions. Beginning more widely, with the recognition of a need for collective cooperation, we have seen

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how the GCC was formed in an attempt to meet this need: succeeding in some cases, failing in others. Our attention then narrowed more specifically upon Oman, and how evolving regional relations intersected with Oman’s bilateral relations. Finally, we have attempted to look simultaneously inwards and outwards to consider Oman’s involvement in the facilitation of relations between the GCC and Yemen. Our survey has focused primarily upon security and political dimensions of the emerging GCC arrangement, much less upon economic aspects; but this reflects the priorities of Omani diplomacy itself, disposed as it is to view the GCC as a vital political and security arrangement, but limited in its economic value. Perhaps this position is one partly informed by Oman’s historical experience of participation in the wider Indian Ocean network. In any case, Oman has consistently viewed its economic interests as spread across numerous regions and relationships. It is this broader neighbourhood that we shall turn to in the final chapter, in the context of twenty-first-century cosmopolitanism. Notes 01 This chapter draws repeatedly on the following accounts of the formation, coordination and policy deliberations of the Gulf Cooperation Council and its member states: Anthony H. Cordesman, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and the UAE; Gregory Gause, Oil Monarchies: Domestic and Security Challenges in the Arab Gulf States; Gregory Gause, ‘The Arabian Peninsula’; Gerd Nonneman (ed.) Analyzing Middle East Foreign Policies and the Relationship with Europe; Gerd Nonneman, ‘The Gulf States and the Iran–Iraq War Revisited’; Erik R. Peterson, The Gulf Cooperation Council: Search for Unity in a Dynamic Region; Rouhollah K. Ramazani, The Gulf Cooperation Council: Records and Analysis; J. Sandwick, The GCC: Moderation and Stability in an Interdependent World; and Rosemarie Said Zahlan, The Making of the Modern Gulf States. 02 Our analysis of Oman’s position on the developments discussed in this chapter rests, in addition to those published sources already identified, on a number of research papers from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including the following: ‘Lessons from the Gulf Crisis: Some Points’; ‘Regional Security: A Synopsis for a Study of Alternative Structures’; a series of mainly factual chronological updates on developments all dated through 1991; ‘Regional Security under Negotiation’; ‘Position: Gulf Security’; and on annual editions of the internal briefing document, Oman and the World, from 1994 to 2004. 03 Supreme Council of the GCC, GCC Summit Final Communiqué, 31 December 2001.

11 The Key Strategic Ally: Oman and the United States

1 Several of the previous chapters have made reference to the growing relationship between Oman and the United States of America since the Treaty of Commerce established the first official ties in 1833. This chapter now takes that relationship and places it at its focus; for since the end of the cold war, the United States has been Oman’s key strategic ally outside the Middle East region. The relationship with the United States – one between a small nation and a very large one – is of obvious importance and value to Oman. It is equally clear that, for obvious reasons, the United States places considerable value on the partnership with Oman. Oman’s strategic location is of course vital to the safe transit of oil out of the Gulf, and Oman’s cooperation in maintaining this supply, and its discreet participation in other security measures designed to maintain regional stability are recognised as key assets for the United States in its evaluation of the relationship. Ultimately, relations with the USA underpin the security of the Gulf region. All the relationships developed with neighbours and other regional states would be imperilled without the final guarantee provided by the political and security relationship between the USA and its Gulf allies. It is therefore Oman’s view that its relationship with the United States must be maintained and strengthened, despite the fact that it has not infrequently encountered some difficulties, largely as a result of profound cultural differences. On occasions the American government itself, or other bodies within the American political structure, for example Congress, will pursue courses of action or adopt positions that may seem to place in question the importance of Oman in American eyes. Such episodes can give the impression that the USA no longer values its relationship with Oman as highly as before. Oman therefore places a high priority on diplomatic activity so as to ensure that its views are fully understood by the widest possible constituency of political actors.

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Oman continues to engage in dialogue with the US government on issues of human rights and political development, in the belief that such dialogue constitutes a crucial process of educating US officials and policymakers in the culture and traditions of Oman. The more US officials and policymakers understand of Oman’s culture and traditions, the less the profound differences of culture that exist will threaten the continued development and enhancement of Oman’s crucial relationship with the USA. This has become of utmost importance in an atmosphere of heightened global tension following the terrorist attacks on the United States on 11 September 2001. Oman has sought in this most recent period to encourage the USA to act responsibly and proportionately and with proper understanding of the realities of the Islamic world. Relations between Islamic countries and the West had already become strained in the 1990s as a consequence of the plight of the Bosnian Muslims, the antagonism between the West and several Muslim countries (Iran, Iraq and Libya, to name a few), the crisis in the Middle East peace process, and above all, the resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism, in Algeria most notably in the early 1990s, and the growth of related terrorist actions later in the decade in Saudi Arabia, East Africa and Yemen. The terrorist attacks on the United States on 11 September 2001 made all these tensions a great deal more acute, and opened up new areas of actual and potential conflict. In this context Oman sought – from the early 1990s, but with increased urgency from 2001 – to promote mutual understanding between Islamic nations and people and the United States. Oman took the view that it was uniquely well placed, as an Islamic nation closely allied to the USA and other major Western powers, to help ease whatever tensions arise, and to take part in a process of education wherein the West is encouraged to take a more informed view of Muslim sensibilities on these issues. Omani diplomats hoped, and continue to believe, that success in this field may help to defuse possible international tensions, and may help in some small way to prevent any further rise in fundamentalist sentiment, which is so clearly fuelled by anti-Western feeling. In his National Day Speech of 1994 Sultan Qaboos spoke of the need to interpret Islam as a religion of love, rather than a religion of extremism, calling on Omani citizens to ‘hold fast to the principles of Islam that call 1 upon us to have a spirit of tolerance, intimacy and love’. This is a message that Omani diplomacy has sought to promote, both within the Islamic world – where, if heeded, it will strengthen the position of the tolerant and progressive, and weaken that of the extremists, but

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also in efforts to persuade the West of the need for a greater understanding of Islam. The first part of this chapter will present an account of the key developments in the Oman–USA relationship in the post-cold war period, with particular focus on issues of regional security arising after the American intervention in defence of Kuwait against the 1990 Iraqi invasion. The second part of the chapter will review the development of Oman–USA dialogue and cooperation on questions of cultural values alongside that of bilateral economic relations, where advances have been most vividly signalled by the conclusion of a Free Trade Agreement. SECURITY COOPERATION

Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 – which led subsequently to the 1991 formation of an international coalition, headed by the United States, committed to reversing this action – would usher in an entirely new era regarding US involvement in Gulf security. After a period of some months in early 1990, during which the Iraqi leadership under President Saddam Hussein had made increasingly threatening demands of Kuwait in both OPEC and Arab League meetings, Iraq invaded and occupied Kuwait on 2 August 1990. A period of intense diplomacy followed in which a range of negotiators sought to persuade the Iraqi leadership to accept the will of the international community as expressed in United Nations Security Council Resolution 660, which called for a complete Iraqi withdrawal. In the meantime, the United States was working to assemble a coalition of mainly Arab and European forces to join its own military in preparing for an armed operation to recover Kuwait. A crucial element in the coalition’s formation and military preparation for its mission included the stationing of American troops in Saudi Arabia. This factor, perhaps above all others, would come to have long-term implications. After the failure of last-ditch negotiations in January 1991, the United States commenced an aerial bombardment of Baghdad, which was swiftly followed by a ground assault against Iraqi positions in Kuwait, launched from within Saudi Arabia. Forces from a number of GCC states, including Oman, participated in these military operations. A ceasefire was agreed on 3 March 1991, following which the US leadership decided not to seek the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Instead, it set up – through the United Nations – an inspections and monitoring system designed to identify and eliminate Iraq’s

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supposed arsenal of weapons of mass destruction (presumed to be mainly chemical and biological, rather than nuclear). Pressure to comply would be applied through a regime of economic sanctions. What is important, in this context of Oman’s relations with the USA and the question of regional security, is the new regional situation created by these events and the new relationships established as a result. As we shall see in Chapter 12, the nature of American involvement in the region, and its partnership with Arab allies against Iraq, would lead directly to a renewed international effort to seek peace between Israel and the Arab world, an effort in which Oman would play a significant role. But, at present, our focus lies on how American leadership in defeating Iraq in 1991 both created new relationships in the region and raised new questions as to how the security of the region should be achieved. For Oman, whose strategic position at the Strait of Hormuz has always given it a particular interest in and responsibility for the security of the Gulf, this means that the consequences of the events of 1990–1 continue to sit at the heart of foreign-policy discussion and diplomacy. Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait would reveal a number of serious problems in the Gulf region. Rather like ethnic resentment and conflicts, which have emerged in Europe and the former Soviet Union since the 1989 collapse of communism, profound flaws in the political and security structures of the Gulf could only be clearly seen once the distorting lens of the cold war had been removed. Therefore, the crisis and war that followed Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait can be seen not only to have been the first test of the new international order, but also a serious and specific challenge to the states of the Gulf region, proving that there were regional problems that needed to be addressed and dealt with comprehensively and once and for all, if peace and security in the region were to be preserved. Some of those underlying problems lay behind Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. Perhaps the most obvious of these was (and in a sense remains) Iraq’s abiding need to access the waters of the Gulf – the ostensible reason for both its war with Iran between 1980 and 1988 as well as its attempt to annex Kuwait as its ‘thirteenth province’ with its Gulf port facilities. This is a problem for the Gulf, which has only been further deferred by the invasion and occupation of Iraq from 2003, and therefore remains unresolved, having been a catalyst for war since 1980. The persistence of this geostrategic problem can be attributed in part to the continued absence of any effective political and security arrangements that might mitigate its effects, and that – had they

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existed in 1990 – might have contained the crisis of Iraq’s increasingly threatening behaviour towards Kuwait in the first half of the year. Neither the GCC, of which Kuwait was a member but Iraq not, nor the ACC, a largely paper body of which Iraq was a member but Kuwait not, nor the Arab League, which by this point seemingly existed largely to promote a far from credible impression of ‘Arab unity’, were capable of providing an appropriate forum for dispute resolution. Nor was any kind of credible military response – either before or after the invasion – available to Kuwait and its allies. The involvement of the United States seemed therefore to be, to a significant extent, the consequence of the weakness – or rather the near complete absence – of regional security arrangements. Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait exhibited Iraq’s own failure to recognise the realities of global politics in 1990. While Kuwait and its allies may be faulted for having failed to construct an adequate political and military structure to develop and preserve regional security in a postcold war world, Iraq may reasonably be accused of having behaved as though the cold war was still in operation. Unlike, for example, Syria, which had for some years already been tentatively moving towards an accommodation with the West in the light of the decline and impending collapse of its Soviet backer, Iraq chose to throw away the possibility of developing its relationship with the West (which was in fact far better, prior to August 1990, than Syria’s had been) and to count upon the support of both the Arab ‘socialist-rejectionist’ camp and the Soviet Union itself to prevent successful intervention by the United States. Iraq assumed, in effect, that some kind of cold war ‘deterrence’ factor would still hold, and that the threat of Soviet retaliation would restrain the United States from taking action in support of Kuwait. The success of the international coalition in 1991, however, underlined the extent of this miscalculation. Not only did the Soviet Union itself support the coalition, partly as a way of securing a post-cold war partnership with the United States, but Syrian troops actively participated in the military operation, and only Yemen and the PLO – from the supposed ‘socialist-rejectionist’ camp – even opposed coalition action (and did so carefully, indicating that their position did not imply support for Iraq). The First Gulf War (as it is now most usually called, to distinguish it from the Second Gulf War, which began in 2003 when the USA invaded and occupied Iraq) would therefore transform the nature of politics in the Gulf region, and in the Middle East as a whole. By the end of the war, four major features of the new environment – shaped

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by a combination of regional factors and changes in the wider international context since 1989 – had asserted themselves, and each was significant for the development of Omani diplomacy in general and for Oman’s relationship with the United States in particular. First of all, it had been made very clear, as we have already seen in Chapter 10, that there was no effective regional structure guaranteeing the security of the Gulf, and that such a structure was needed. To some extent the First Gulf War was a consequence of regional rivalry, in this instance Iraq’s frustration at its neighbours’ refusal to concede it a regional leadership role. The collapse of the old cold war international order had removed a framework that previously kept these rivalries in check. With the risk of superpower confrontation gone, the compelling requirement for major powers to keep their clients and allies in check had also disappeared. Previous notions of regional security had not taken into account the possibility of conflict arising on purely regional terms, since the security of the Gulf had been perceived in a cold war context. Paradoxically, Oman – one of the countries in the region most closely attuned to cold war considerations – had also been one of the keenest to develop a regional security arrangement of the kind that might address such problems, as our analysis in Chapter 10 has illustrated. In the aftermath of the First Gulf War, Oman took the lead among GCC states in advocating a regional security arrangement, ideally the most inclusive possible, and one based on cooperation rather than competition and antagonism. Second, in the absence of an adequate regional security arrangement, the USA had firmly established itself as the major external power with influence in the region. With the acquiescence of the Soviet Union in American military leadership of the anti-Iraq coalition, there were now few limits on American freedom of action in support of its allies in the region. In this vacuum, the USA had acted in direct defence of its own vital strategic interests in the region, superseding not only the limits to its action imposed by the cold war, but also setting aside other powerful considerations such as Saudi Arabia’s intense discomfort with the idea of American (non-Muslim) troops on (sacred) Arabian soil. From 1991 onwards, the USA would continue to exert its influence in the Gulf, and throughout the Middle East, where it felt its interests were at stake. But Oman, now with some considerable experience of managing security cooperation with the USA and the (temporary) presence of American forces in Omani territory, viewed this situation with less apprehension than some of its neighbours. Third, the idea that Arab states could find political strength in Arab

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unity had been conclusively proved unworkable. The First Gulf War, and the crisis that preceded it, had undermined the traditional political framework of inter-Arab relations: one Arab state had invaded another, perhaps the clearest possible violation of supposed Arab brotherhood. Ba’athism in particular had been exposed as an expansionist and aggressive ideology, and pan-Arabism in general appeared to be a political trend belonging to the past, bankrupt and no longer relevant. Its roots lay in the response to specific circumstances of the colonial era and the process of decolonisation that followed, but by 1990 it was evident that pan-Arabism had no role in guiding relations between independent and modern Arab states in the contemporary era. Interestingly, this revelation resonated with Oman’s historical experience of cosmopolitanism, alongside more specific instances from the 1950s to 1970s in which Oman had faced hostility from a range of Arab states (among them PDRY, Iraq, Egypt and Saudi Arabia), while benefiting from alliances with non-Arab partners (including Iran and Great Britain). Recent events seemed to justify Oman’s reluctance to trust any ideological or ethnocentric approach, pan-Arabism among them. Finally, the First Gulf War had shed some important light on Iran. The republic had demonstrated its capacity to participate in the region as a moderate supporter of the status quo, rather than as a potential threat to regional security, which is how many regional states had previously viewed the country (excepting Oman, the GCC states had offered Iraq material support in its 1980–8 war with Iran). In 1988, Iran had made peace with Iraq, creating an opportunity for the GCC states to reconsider the nature of their relationships with Iran; the process was pushed forward when, in 1989, the death of Ayatollah Khomeini had eventually brought President Rafsanjani to power. Rafsanjani’s policy of reconstruction at home accompanied by conciliation abroad signalled for many analysts, Omani diplomats included, that Iran was entering a period of consolidation. The era of ‘exporting the revolution’ – had it ever really existed – appeared to have reached a definitive end. During the entire period of the First Gulf War, then (and the crisis preceding it), Iran had remained positioned carefully to one side. Although numerous Iranian voices objected to American coalition leadership and to the prospect of a long-term American military presence in the region, Iran did nothing to obstruct operations. Neither did it exploit in any way the flight of Iraqi aircraft to Iran in the first days of the war. Nor did it, in the wake of Iraq’s rapid defeat, seek territorial gains in southern Iraq, despite the

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outbreak of a largely Shia rebellion against Saddam Hussein in the aftermath of Iraqi surrender. From an Omani perspective, this sequence of events had revealed a good measure of Iranian restraint. The situation rekindled hopes for some kind of US–Iranian rapprochement, or, at the very least, the possibility of a collective regional security apparatus, backed by the United States, which could include Iran as a partner, rather than assuming it to be an adversary. This state of affairs has been understood in retrospect as substantial vindication of Omani policy and diplomacy. As Joseph Kechichian writes, in an appraisal of the effects of the war for Kuwait: Although it took GCC rulers the better part of two decades to understand what Qaboos was contemplating and applying, the Sultanate reaped the rewards of its many diplomatic initiatives. The Omani ruler was correct in assessing that neither Iran nor Israel posed the most immediate threats to the security of the Gulf region. He was also vindicated by granting the United States access to Omani facilities without which Washington and its allies simply could not have fought the War for Kuwait the way they eventually did. Muscat was wise in allowing its military facilities to be upgraded as needed, all of which served the GCC states in total rather well during the war. Qaboos was also right in pushing for the full reintegration of Egypt into the Arab fold as Cairo’s leadership helped isolate Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Finally Qaboos was right in pressing for the establishment of close internal security and military cooperation between the conservative Arab Gulf monarchies, which – in a subtle but effective way – proved vital 2 on several occasions.

Even before the coalition’s military success and the liberation of Kuwait, Oman was once again seeking to take the lead in the development of a new regional security agreement. At the eleventh GCC summit, held in Doha from 22 to 25 December 1990, GCC leaders agreed to establish a committee under the chairmanship of Sultan Qaboos to examine the various alternatives for a new security framework for the Gulf region. This committee developed an elevenpoint proposal for presentation at the Kuwait GCC summit in December 1991. The key element in this proposal was the formation of a 100,000-strong GCC military force. In taking the lead and making this proposal, Oman was offering a policy consistent with the approach it had taken to regional security since the 1970s. Oman’s initial vision for regional security had sought to incorporate not just the six states that would later form the GCC, but also both Iraq and Iran; it was a possibility discussed at the Muscat summit of November 1976, attended by representatives of all

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eight Gulf littoral states. But, as the Omani foreign minister commented at the time, ‘the present atmosphere is not suitable to reaching a formula for mutual cooperation. There are many reservations and 3 many options to clear up first.’ Despite this setback, Omani diplomacy had continued throughout the 1980s to encourage its neighbours to take regional cooperation seriously, urging the establishment of a US$ 100 million Common Defence Fund among the six Gulf monarchies, with the specific purpose of providing security for the Strait of Hormuz. But, at this point, with Iran in the turmoil of revolution and simultaneously at war with Iraq, the aim of including the two larger states in any arrangement naturally had to be postponed. The Common Defence Fund never materialised, but by this time the six smaller Gulf states were already on their way to forming the Gulf Cooperation Council, an organisation of future potential for regional security, from the Omani perspective. In 1981, the sultanate succeeded in placing the issue of collective security at the heart of the first GCC summit. Several joint initiatives were pursued throughout the early 1980s in the military and security fields, leading to the 1984 formation of Peninsula Shield, a combined military force stationed at Hafr al-Batin in Saudi Arabia. The 1990 GCC summit decision to request Sultan Qaboos to take the lead looked initially like an opportunity to realise its hopes more substantially. But these hopes would be frustrated: Oman’s GCC counterparts seemed content to depend on the United States as a last line of defence, unwilling to devote serious resources to multilateral alternatives, and certainly unprepared to consider the inclusion of Iran in a regional arrangement (a theme that would remain at the heart of Omani policy during the year or so in which discussions were most intense). Counter to Oman’s perspective advocating Iranian participation, very shortly after the ceasefire agreement ending the First Gulf War, on 6 March 1991 the six GCC states along with Egypt and Syria issued the Damascus Declaration, in which they proposed the formation of a GCC+2 defensive alliance. Although Omani diplomats could see some advantages in such a plan – it was after all a form of regional cooperation – they also had serious reservations. For one, it excluded Iran, a major regional power no matter which way one would argue it, and which seemed to have indicated readiness to take a responsible part in a collective endeavour. The inclusion of Egypt would more or less preclude Iranian involvement, for relations between these two regional powers were chilly during this period.

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For its part, Iran had already indicated its own concerns about the GCC+2 proposal. Iranian Foreign Minister Velayati expressed Iran’s view during a visit to Muscat on 16 March, arguing that Iran had an important role to play, while Egypt and Syria could not realistically be expected to act as effective security partners in the Gulf. His Omani interlocutors seemed to agree, recognising that while Egypt and Syria could plausibly offer military support to GCC states, Iran had a far more immediate and compelling interest in contributing to Gulf security. By May 1991 the Damascus Declaration already seemed to be collapsing. On 5 May GCC foreign ministers met in Kuwait to discuss arrangements for the establishment of the GCC+2 provision. Disagreements were reported, both over the question of Iranian involvement and over signs that Kuwait was increasingly inclined to have its own security guaranteed by an extended American presence, rather than by Egyptian or Syrian forces. Three days following the summit, President Mubarak of Egypt announced that Egyptian troops, stationed in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait as part of the 1990 coalition force, would be withdrawn within three months. A week later, Prince Saud was reported to have taken a message from King Fahd to Mubarak, assuring him that Saudi Arabia did not favour the American presence over an Egyptian one. Omani diplomats observed these developments, alongside missile purchases by Bahrain and the UAE, as indications that enthusiasm for both the Damascus Declaration (GCC+2) and for regional security cooperation in general was already declining among its GCC partners. Saudi proposals for amendments to the declaration itself were effectively replacing the original target of a permanent Arab peacekeeping force with a set of looser and effectively bilateral agreements by which signatories could call on one another’s military assistance when necessary. While Oman held out some hope that the failure of the Damascus Declaration might open the way for fresh consideration of a regional agreement involving Iran, it also recognised that the GCC appeared to be headed towards reliance upon the Americans. Oman was not at all uncomfortable with American assistance of this kind; the sultanate had already enjoyed over a hundred and fifty years of positive relations with the USA, and the prospect of a longterm US presence in the region presented far fewer political difficulties in Oman than it did in Saudi Arabia. But the sultanate also believed the most effective system would be one under local ownership, in which regional participants did not depend on a foreign power, and in

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which the legitimate interests of Iran were accommodated – in short, a system owned and maintained by its direct and immediate stakeholders. This is perhaps the best summary of Omani foreign policy in the immediate aftermath of the First Gulf War – the effort to combine a limited American role with genuine involvement from Iran. From Oman’s perspective, the security relationship with the United States from the early 1990s has yielded a largely positive state of affairs. The USA had demonstrated itself to be a reliable and powerful ally. Its involvement in regional security, in the absence of a regional solution, was probably essential and certainly very important. It created a context in which a deepening understanding on issues of mutual concern could develop, in which the significance to the United States of Oman’s role as a regional ally could be properly recognised, and in which dialogue of potential benefit to Oman could therefore take place. However, the relationship was and still is not without its problems: it was (and remains) highly asymmetrical (although Oman is used to the realities of being a small nation dealing with large ones), and it can be subject to political criticism, particularly as American actions elsewhere can lead critics of the arrangement to question whether it is politically appropriate (examples include occasions when American actions in relation to the Palestine issue, or the mistreatment of Muslim prisoners in American custody excite legitimate concern among citizens). Although this is not a major difficulty for Omani diplomacy, it is an issue that has required increasing diplomatic attention in recent years. More problematic, however, is the way in which the American role in Gulf regional security has precluded the participation of Iran. From the Omani perspective, this is perhaps the greatest casualty associated with long-term US regional involvement. There were moments in the 1990s, particularly during the presidency of Mohammed Khatami in Iran, when hopes revived that the USA might see Iran as a potentially constructive player, or that some kind of US–Iran rapprochement seemed possible. But the emergence of the policy of ‘dual containment’ – developed in the 1990s under the Clinton administration – by which security of the Gulf was organised according to a strategy of preventing either Iraq or Iran from emerging as a powerful regional force, effectively put these hopes to an end. And, from 2001, the USA has grown even more unyielding in its view of Iran. In the mid-1990s the relationship underwent a significant transition. Broadly speaking, it was during the 1990s that the relationship moved from its basis on security cooperation and financial aid (in which the

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USA was, in effect, paying Oman for the use of facilities) to one more firmly grounded in mutual recognition of equality and reciprocity, in which security cooperation became part of a richer fabric that included trade, economic and technical cooperation, educational and cultural links, as well as frank exchange of political views on matters of shared concern. When, in the mid-1990s, constraints imposed by the US Congress on the budget of the Administration for International Development (AID) led to a reduction in economic assistance, senior US officials were quick to emphasise that this did not indicate any lessening in Oman’s strategic importance to the USA. On the contrary, a number of factors had increased Oman’s political and diplomatic capital. Among these were its roles in the peace process (which will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 12) and as a member of the UN Security Council in 1994 and 1995. Perhaps these contributed to the decision by US officials during their routine review of the US–Oman military access agreement, in 1995, to explore ways in which the USA might advance and expand the relationship. The new agreement that emerged from these discussions – signed on 25 September 1996 – would replace the former arrangement under which the US government provided economic assistance from its Agency of International Development (AID) through a joint Oman–US commission, with three new joint bodies dealing with, respectively, technical assistance, business and commercial cooperation, and science and technology. Oman–US cooperation would therefore no longer involve direct financial assistance, but would instead aim to create a framework within which cooperative ventures could be developed. Thus, the foundations were laid for the beginning of negotiations towards a bilateral Free Trade Agreement. It is in the context of this partnership that Oman has continued to offer crucial but discreet military and security support for American operations (most notably in Afghanistan and as part of international cooperation designed to combat and eradicate terrorism). This is also the context in which it has become possible for Oman to engage American officials in substantive dialogue on issues where the two governments disagree, including the conduct of the war in Iraq after 2003, American policy as regards Israel and the Palestinians, American policy on Iran and aspects of the American pursuit, after 2001, of the ‘war on terror’. All four of these areas of policy difference have now become part of the fabric of diplomatic interactions between Oman and the USA, without damaging the quality of the friendly relationship between the two states. All four areas of policy difference may be

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considered more generally under the heading of ‘cultural values’. It is under this general heading that the second half of this chapter will now go on to address other developments in the Oman–US relationship, from the start of a bilateral dialogue on human rights in 1992, to the current state of the relationship following the signature of the Free Trade Agreement. These discussions will show, beginning with human rights, how questions of cultural value are from time to time found to intersect with issues relating to free trade, making diplomacy relevant in all spheres, and relationships such as that between Oman and the USA increasingly complex. POLITICAL AND CULTURAL DIALOGUE

In 1992 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) decided to respond formally and in writing to the US State Department’s 1991 Country Report on Human Rights in Oman. These annual reports, commissioned by Congress and prepared by State Department officials on all the countries of the world, covered a wide range of issues from worker rights to forms of government, among others. Oman’s response sought to correct a number of factual errors contained in the 1991 report. It also drew to the attention of the State Department the extent to which the 1991 report rested on a set of assumptions specific to a Western view of the world, and failed to address the difficult questions of differences in culture and tradition. The MFA chose to make this formal response in the light of problems arising relating to Oman’s GSP status with the USA (the Generalised System of Preferences status effectively exempted some developing countries from otherwise mandatory lifting of protective trade regulations). Complaints by American trade unions (AFL–CIO) to the Congressional committee charged with decisions on GSP status, regarding issues of worker rights in Oman, had resulted in the possibility of Oman’s GSP status being revoked. In this context it seemed essential to correct some of the misperceptions and errors in human rights reporting that had occasioned the AFL–CIO complaints. It had emerged that the AFL–CIO complaint arose directly and only as a result of the State Department’s Human Rights Country Report on Oman. MFA’s response aroused considerable interest within the State Department. In its reply the State Department explicitly conceded some of the points made by the MFA, and the 1992 report, which followed, showed several changes for the better that can be attributed directly to the MFA response to the 1991 report.

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An ongoing dialogue on the issue was thus established between Omani and American diplomats. This dialogue had three main tracks. The first and most pragmatic, from the perspective of both parties, was the resolution of the GSP issue. The second was the practical question of the substance of US human rights reporting, alongside the development of Oman’s own legal system. The third was a more wide-ranging debate on culture and values, in which Omani diplomats sought to use the discussion of human rights to explore questions of cultural difference as part of a dialogue between ‘Islam and the West’, which had become an important priority in Omani diplomacy in the 1990s. These three tracks illustrate the increasing complexity – both technical and cultural – of Omani diplomacy and of Oman’s relationship with the United States during this period. The wider discussion of cultural values has become an ongoing conversation, with outcomes that are not always immediate, but longer term, and sometimes indirect or intangible. But the discussion has yielded tangible successes, too: the pragmatic issue of the GSP dispute is but one example. On 1 July 1994, following a period of intensive diplomacy, Mickey Kantor, then US trade representative, announced the conclusion of the review of Oman’s GSP status. Oman was found to be ‘taking steps to afford internationally recognised worker rights’ and was therefore ‘in compliance with the worker rights provisions of GSP law’. Oman was accordingly removed from the list of countries whose GSP status was under review. Kantor attributed his decision to Oman’s recent measures in the field of labour relations: Oman has joined the ILO, and has asked for ILO technical assistance in the drafting of a new labour code. In addition, it has informed us that the legal prohibition on strikes will be eliminated, and there is evidence that strikes are being permitted. These are important actions that advance Oman’s process of more fully meeting international labour standards, and on this basis we find that Oman is ‘taking steps’. We look forward to Oman’s 4 continued progress in these efforts.

Without all three of these measures it is unlikely that the outcome would have been successful. Each represented, from a US perspective, a substantial change in Oman’s overall labour relations position, while, from an Omani perspective, they involved the development of labour practices in keeping with existing Omani custom and practice, and longstanding Omani social structures. The negotiation over Oman’s GSP status therefore produced a positive outcome for both parties – offering another example of the way in which Omani diplomacy has

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worked to achieve better outcomes than those obtained by conventional zero-sum approaches. From the US perspective, it was important that all three steps taken by Oman were part of an ongoing process of political and social development to which Oman was manifestly committed. The seriousness of the sultanate’s approach, demonstrated by well-thought-out links between social and political development, assured the USA that these were not merely cosmetic measures designed with GSP review procedures in mind. In hindsight, the success of Oman’s diplomatic strategy on the GSP could be attributed to three main factors. First, Oman took the initiative in an unprecedented manner. From the outset, Oman sought to question the US government on GSP-related matters, specifically in relation to the State Department’s annual human rights report, which had given rise to the original US labour union petition to revoke Oman’s GSP status. In many cases, certain points of contention were amended and subsequent annual human rights reports reflected these changes. Ultimately, this impacted US government opinion on the AFL–CIO petition, tipping it in Oman’s favour. Secondly, Oman engaged in direct dialogue with the real decision-makers in all relevant agencies. The US government is a large and complex body, in which decisions are frequently taken, in effect, at a relatively junior level, and as the result of an interface between officials in a number of different departments (in this case, primarily State, Defense, and Trade). Oman’s diplomacy succeeded in identifying those officials actually involved in the decision-making process, and talking directly to them. It was therefore possible to establish precisely what action on Oman’s part would be effective and also to recruit key officials in support of Oman’s case. Thirdly, Oman communicated effectively in written form. US officials expressed surprise at the sophistication of the Omani approach, which they inevitably interpreted as indicative of the seriousness Oman attached to this matter, and to overall relations with the USA. This approach also meant, of course, that US officials had no excuse for misunderstanding Oman’s position, could know for certain what Oman intended to do, and how and why Oman would do it. This transparency significantly assisted those officials who broadly supported Oman’s position in their efforts to argue on Oman’s behalf within the US government. Without direct dialogue, Oman would not have been able so effectively to determine what substantive action would prove effective, nor would Oman have been able to convey to the US government, in all its relevant agencies, the nature of and background to its actions.

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The dialogue established by MFA with the relevant US departments therefore seemed to contribute to a more sophisticated understanding of the geostrategic and political realities underlying the bilateral relationship. Discussions with previously less informed officials, which took place as part of the developing dialogue, were therefore able to highlight Oman’s key strategic role in the Gulf, its contribution to the Middle East peace process, and its leading role in the water working group. This in turn yielded a more favourable climate of opinion, enhancing Oman’s value to the USA, not least in the eyes of key decision-makers involved in the GSP process. In 1996, as we have already noted, the Oman–USA relationship entered a new phase, a phase that reflects very clearly the emphasis on economic and trade relations and the importance of strengthening private sector links as well as government-to-government relations. The economic dimension of the relationship led eventually to the establishment and implementation (from the beginning of 2009) of an Oman–USA Free Trade Agreement. Also during this period Oman continued to encourage dialogue at all levels with the United States on mutual cultural understanding, seeking, particularly, to enhance American understanding of Islam as a religion of peace and tolerance in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the United States in September 2001. In the concluding pages of this chapter we will therefore briefly analyse the negotiation and implementation of the FTA and the dialogue between civilisations conducted by Oman in the first decade of the twenty-first century. A Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between Oman and the USA was first proposed to Congress by the US government in 2004, following which the two countries entered into serious negotiations for two years, culminating in an agreement in January 2006. The agreement required Congressional approval through a series of votes taken between June and September 2006, a process that was far from straightforward. Ultimately, the success of the FTA would rely precisely upon the years of dialogue built up with US interlocutors on a broader, cultural level. This case, then, would demonstrate the interlinkage among various spheres, and the importance – and even unforeseen impacts – of cultivating long-term relationships. In the wake of terrorist attacks on the USA in September 2001, antiArab and anti-Muslim rhetoric had, of course, increased in US political circles. This would have threatened to taint general opinion on US ties to Oman; cultural understanding had therefore been made a high priority, with the ability to affect all branches of the relationship. As in

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the case of negotiations over human rights and Oman’s GSP status, anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiments in the run-up to the Congressional elections of 2006 could have endangered economic projects, threatening to undermine years of work towards an FTA. But diplomatic work to counter inaccurate perceptions would pay off when, on 26 September 2006, President Bush signed the Oman–US FTA into US law. The FTA would then finally come into effect from January 2009. It would constitute a binding international agreement between the Sultanate of Oman and the government of the United States designed to improve economic relations and strengthen the overall relationship. By committing themselves to eliminate or reduce trade barriers, Oman and the USA expected the FTA to promote more open and competitive markets, create employment, promote reciprocal business opportunities for Omani and US firms in their respective countries, and raise the standard of living in Oman. Oman entered into negotiations towards such an agreement in anticipation of both direct and indirect economic benefits. Direct benefits were expected to come predominantly from increased import and export trade volumes resulting from reduced tariffs and improved market access. Indirect benefits would result from the implementation of a more effective regulatory environment that would reduce business risk and attract private capital and foreign direct investment. The FTA involved the setting up of processes through which Oman would be able to enhance its business environment and create renewed potential for better accessing increasing new trade and investment. By removing or reducing tariffs and other trade barriers, the FTA also represented an opportunity for Omani businesses to expand the market for Omani goods and services in the United States. It was envisaged that duty-free access to the US market would make Omani goods and services more cost competitive. Easier access to US markets should help expand Omani’s services sector through the cross-border supply of services or through establishment in the USA. By removing barriers to inward investment by American investors, the FTA would create opportunities for partnering and other business arrangements that could facilitate the exchange of technology, know-how and expertise, all of which could contribute to making Omani goods and services more competitive in the US and other export markets. In political terms, the FTA marked a decisive step in the Oman–USA relationship because, intrinsically, it rendered the two countries – despite their comparative disparity in size – partners, building further on developments from 1996, when Oman had shifted from US AID

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assistance to cooperative joint business, technology and economic initiatives. Under this even more evolved arrangement, privileges would be reciprocal and free trade would go hand in hand with open and frank dialogue. It was understood that economic underpinnings of the relationship would reinforce decades of security cooperation and provide the context for further dialogue on a range of issues. Questions of cultural values and understanding first became a significant element in Oman–USA relations in the early 1990s, when, as we have noted above, the Omani government initiated a dialogue with the US State Department over issues of human rights. In their contributions to this dialogue, Omani diplomats responded to State Department reports on human rights in Oman by offering a comparative and historical account of human rights norms by which the State Department reports operated. Omani diplomats pointed out, for example, that civil and political rights were prioritised by the State Department reports at the expense of economic and social rights; as a result, the reports enshrined Western democratic forms of government as unquestionably superior to any other. But as products of this system, those who developed the reports were likely unaware that the indicators by which it measured – which they assumed were ‘universal’ – were in fact historically and culturally specific, shaped by recent experience of Nazi totalitarianism, and Western fears of Soviet totalitarianism. Oman fully endorsed the purposes and principles of the Universal Declaration but also pointed out that an understanding of its origins – and the breadth of its applicability – was important. Oman did not deny that elements within it may have passed into customary international law, but did note that the Congressional report was premised on an interpretation of the declaration that was the product of a specific history, and that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights could in fact be applied much more broadly than the report allowed for. Omani diplomats therefore sought to encourage the State Department to acknowledge the document’s fuller history and to apply the Universal Declaration with greater sensitivity to cultural factors, drawing their attention specifically to a whole aspect of human rights, explicitly present in the Universal Declaration, which did not appear in the report’s assessment – the question of economic and social rights. These, described in the United Nations’ own account of the declaration 5 as its ‘second cornerstone’, seemed secondary from the US perspective, but in many other cultures they were prioritised, partly as a result of the fact that these societies had evolved from roots in kinship and com-

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munity, rather than as groups of individuals pursuing a specific political ideal. The effort to encourage the United States government to look at the world with openness to the possibility that other perspectives – arising from different histories and circumstances – might validly shape the lives, social and political arrangements of people outside the United States, would become a priority for Omani diplomacy throughout the 1990s, and for a number of reasons. Among them was the fact that relations between some Islamic countries and the West had become increasingly strained as a consequence of the plight of the Bosnian Muslims, while antagonism had also intensified between some Western states and Muslim countries such as Iran, Iraq and Libya. Then there was the crisis in the Middle East peace process, which seemed to have halted. Above all, a resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism, initially in Algeria, extended later in the decade to incidents in Saudi Arabia, East Africa and Yemen. Tension between peoples of Islamic countries and Western nations would play out on questions as varied as Russia and its relations with the Muslim states of the former Soviet Union, Kosovo, and the position of North African and Turkish immigrants in the EU. The terrorist attacks on the United States on 11 September 2001 would, of course, render tensions even more acute. The subsequent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would also contribute to conditions in which extremists on both sides can claim that there is some 6 unavoidable antagonism – or ‘clash of civilisations’ – between Islam and the West, and to exploit these ideas for narrow political aims. A wedge was being driven between East and West, intensifying distrust and misperception. The development of the notion – particularly in the West – labelled the ‘clash of civilisations’, which held that Islam and the West based themselves on differing cultural values that would inevitably be sources of global conflict, had potentially grave ramifications. To Omani diplomats, this view ran counter to a historical experience in the Indian Ocean region as a hub of exchange among peoples with a range of cultural backgrounds; to subscribe to the ‘clash of civilisations’ would not only jeopardise progress already made between Eastern and Western countries, but would effectively justify future antagonism, virtually preordaining (and implicitly excusing) global conflict. As a result, extending the bilateral conversation on specific issues of human rights into a more general dialogue on the relations between civilisations would become a core focus of foreign policy for Oman during the 1990s, and it continues as a priority in present-day

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relations. In the relationship with the United States in particular, efforts have specifically targeted issues of culture and religion, in the belief that such dialogue constitutes a crucial process of educating US officials and policymakers in Oman’s culture and traditions, to reduce the threat of damage posed by the ‘clash of civilisations’ to continued enhancement of Oman’s crucial relationship with the USA. Notes 01 Sultan Qaboos bin Said al Said, Speech on the Occasion of the 24th National Day, 18 November 1994, accessed online at http://www.omanet. om/english/hmsq/hmsq4.asp?cat=hmsq 02 Kechichian, Oman and the World, pp. 251–2. 03 Ibid., p. 116. 04 Kantor’s comments are cited in an MFA report on the US decision, dated 19 July 1994. 05 ‘Fact Sheet No. 2 (Rev. 1), The International Bill of Human Rights’, accessed online at www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/FactSheet2 Rev.1en.pdf 06 This idea, generally associated with an article and then a book by Samuel Huntington, will be discussed more fully in Chapter 13.

12 Working Towards Peace: Oman and the Middle East Peace Process

1 In 1990 Saddam Hussein, justifying Iraq’s invasion and occupation of Kuwait, offered an Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait in return for an Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Territories. The idea behind this proposal, rejected by the majority of the international community, came to be known as ‘linkage’; it was vital, at the time of Iraqi occupation and during the subsequent war to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait, that all parties to the coalition should repudiate the idea. However, although Saddam Hussein’s version of ‘linkage’ appears to have been opportunistic (there is no evidence to suggest that the plight of the Palestinians played any part in Iraq’s decision to invade Kuwait), it would have the effect of highlighting the extent to which Israel’s occupation of Arab territory was shaping regional politics. Subsequent events have demonstrated, perhaps even more decisively, that the injustice of the Palestinian predicament can readily mobilise Arab and Muslim opinion into political action. In more recent years, the question of Palestine has been exploited in support of Islamist radicalism rather than Arab political militancy. But for many years, questions of Arab political solidarity were understood almost exclusively in terms of the Arab–Israeli conflict. This chapter is primarily concerned with the revival in the Middle East peace process following the defeat of Saddam Hussein in 1991, and specifically with Oman’s participation in that process. As context is necessary, however, it is useful to return to the historical circumstances in which Oman resumed its engagement with the regional and international community in the years after 1970. In order to establish the background for this account of Omani peace diplomacy in the first half of the 1990s, we shall begin with a consideration of Oman’s relationships with the wider region, particularly the Arab dimension.

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TOWARDS CAMP DAVID: OMAN’S ARAB DIPLOMACY

Oman’s relationship with what we might broadly call ‘Arab nationalism’ has been uneasy from its earliest days. Since Oman was not subject to direct colonial administration, Arab nationalism as an anticolonial vehicle for the expression and realisation of identity and political independence had limited relevance to most Omanis – whose sense of identity, as Omanis, was already quite strong (perhaps even strengthened by difficult circumstances of poverty and relative isolation in the 1950s and 1960s). At the same time, and despite this relative isolation, Oman felt the consequences of Arab nationalism in various ways. First of all, since Arab nationalism – particularly as conceived and popularised by President Nasser in Egypt after 1952 – was a republican movement its rhetoric was hostile to the remaining Arab monarchies, intrinsically threatening their overthrow. Secondly, as avowedly anti-colonial, Arab nationalism viewed relations between Arab states (including Oman) and the UK as inimical to the broader cause of Arab unity and postcolonial independence. Thirdly, Arab nationalism contained within it an aspiration to see all national boundaries between Arab states transcended by the formation of a single Arab republic: this pan-Arabist aspect therefore made claims upon the political lives and solidarity of Arabs across the region, explicitly challenging the legitimacy of individual states and the loyalties of their citizens. In practical terms, all three of these rhetorical positions could be used to justify various forms of interference in political affairs of Arab states across the region by more powerful Arab states. Oman suffered directly from such interference in at least three different local situations, and from at least four significant external sources, namely Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt and Iraq. From the early 1950s, Saudi Arabia, while a monarchy, had chosen under King Saud to ally itself with republican Egypt and adopt an ostensibly nationalist position. It proceeded to press territorial claims against both Oman and Abu Dhabi at the Buraimi oasis. By 1954, both Saudi Arabia and Egypt were also offering significant material assistance to imamate forces in Oman’s Jebel Akhdar, with the intention of undermining and even securing the overthrow of Sultan Said bin Taimur. From the early 1960s, with the emergence of the Dhofar Liberation Front, Arab nationalists would again seek to exploit Oman’s vulnerability: it was not only the socialist government of the neighbouring People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen that would back the Dhofari

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insurgency, but also Nasserist Egypt along with the Ba’ath government of Iraq. By the time Sultan Qaboos came to power in 1970, the Arab nationalist project had already suffered serious reverses. In the Six-Day War of 1967, combined Arab military forces of Egypt, Syria and Jordan (with additional troops from at least six other Arab nations) suffered a swift and devastating defeat by Israel. As a result of this conflict, the Arab territories of the Sinai Peninsula, Gaza, East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Golan Heights all fell under Israeli occupation. In September 1970, just weeks after Sultan Qaboos’s accession to the throne, King Hussein of Jordan launched a military campaign to suppress the activities of Palestinian militants within Jordan, necessitating an emergency meeting – the first emergency summit of the League of Arab States – convened to bring the conflict between the Jordanian government and the PLO to an end. On 28 September 1970, in the immediate aftermath of this summit, the leading figure of Arab nationalism himself – President Nasser of Egypt – died of a heart attack. A year and a day later, on 29 September 1971, the Sultanate of Oman formally acceded to the League of Arab States. The Arab League, as it is commonly called, is acknowledged as the organisation first established as the international vehicle for Arab nationalism and pan-Arab solidarity. By 1970, however, it had already begun to lose credibility as a consolidation of radical Arab power. The timing of Oman’s accession against this backdrop is therefore key: it helps contextualise successive indications that Oman’s membership never constituted a commitment to Arab solidarity above all other concerns. Instead, the move formed part of a wider policy of formalising commitments within the international community at large: Oman became a member of the United Nations later in the same year; in the year following (1972), it joined a range of other international organisations including the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, the Arab Cultural and Scientific Organisation, the Arab Postal Union, UNESCO, World Health Organization, FAO, International Postal Union, and UNICEF. That same year (1972), Oman opened seven diplomatic missions in Kuwait, Tunisia, Cairo, London, New York, Iran and India respectively, while the United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, Iran, Jordan, the USA, Egypt and Saudi Arabia established embassies in Muscat. Oman’s participation in the Arab League, therefore, and in other regional and international conglomerates where Arab nationalism, pan-Arabism or Arab solidarity are considered central, needs to be considered in relation to the history of Oman’s relationship with Arab

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nationalist states, in particular, alongside institutional rhetoric and the weakness of the League itself, at the time of Oman’s accession. These colour Oman’s position as one of neighbourly solidarity, tempered by sober scepticism towards the efficacy of Arab nationalism as a political project on the whole. It is this general stance that will be said to have since governed Omani policy and conduct in the Arab–Israeli conflict: a position that, at times, has elicited a degree of Arab hostility due to dimensions that prioritise pragmatism and peace, rather than strict adherence to old principles of Arab solidarity. Oman has consistently upheld the rights of the Palestinians – not, however, because the Palestinians and the Omanis are all Arabs, but because Oman considers that the Palestinian claim is based on natural justice and is grounded in international law. But before taking it for granted that the Arab League is, in fact, rigid and binding on certain issues routinely regarded as tenets of Arab solidarity, it is perhaps wise to look more closely not only at its foundations, but at the ways in which the League has actually operated. The initial purposes of the Arab League framed its appeals to transnational solidarity within, rather than in opposition to, the concept of individual national sovereignty. Thus, League policies are in fact products of agreements leaving individual states room for independent policy decisions. This should help contextualise the way in which one of the League’s most notorious policies – the boycott of Israel, declared in the aftermath of the Six-Day War – has actually played out in reality. The boycott of Israel is commonly held up as either the keystone or unquestioned shibboleth (depending upon one’s perspective) of Arab policy towards Israel. Institutionalised by the Arab League in 1945, it specifically targeted the State of Israel from its foundation in 1948 through a series of prohibitions against: (1) the import of Israeli goods and services into member countries; (2) business engagement of any kind with entities doing business in Israel; and (3) business transactions with firms or individuals doing business in Israel. In practice, however, while the boycott has been fairly widely observed by member states, it has never been very effectively enforced by the League itself. The Khartoum Resolutions – drafted and agreed in the Sudanese capital after the end of the Six-Day War – supposedly aimed to reinforce the boycott, by further refining Arab League policy according to the principles that the Arab states would enter into no peace with, make no recognition of, and conduct no negotiations with the state of Israel, and would insist on the rights of the Palestinian people in their own country. But subsequent events would reveal that there still

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remained room for sovereign decisions in the application of these collective League edicts, especially when aspects proved less than pragmatic. Since its accession, Oman had observed collective Arab policy, including the boycott of Israel. Unlike some of its Gulf neighbours, however (namely, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait), it shied away from Arab solidarity as early as the 1973 War, when it refrained from providing direct support to Arab combatants. Nor did it participate directly in an oil embargo, imposed by Arab members of OPEC on the United States, following President Nixon’s increase in American support for Israel during the 1973 War. It was Egypt, however, which would first and decisively break ranks with the supposedly sacrosanct set of Arab League principles by entering into negotiations with Israel over the Sinai Peninsula, Egyptian territory seized and occupied by Israel in the Six-Day War. The first Sinai Agreement, concluded between Egypt and Israel, provided for a reduction of forces in the Suez Canal area and the re-establishment of a buffer zone patrolled by United Nations troops. Then, on 4 September 1975, Egypt and Israel entered into the Sinai Interim Agreement – also called Sinai II – which stated that conflicts between the two states would not be resolved by force. It also stipulated an Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai in accordance with United Nations Resolution 338 (the Security Council Resolution concluded at the end of the 1973 War). President Sadat of Egypt, who had led Egypt into the 1973 War, hoped that this process would secure for Egypt what the 1973 War itself had failed to secure, namely the return of Egyptian territory. In the eyes of what would come to be known as the ‘rejectionist’ states of the Arab League, Sadat’s approach constituted a betrayal of Arab solidarity, placing the interests of one Arab nation above those of others, and particularly the Palestinians, deprived of nation. Oman did not share the Arab League view; this would only become fully apparent, however, once the Egyptian president had taken the far more radical step of visiting Jerusalem in 1977, and signed a full peace treaty with Israel at Camp David in 1978. Oman had voiced its support, along with Morocco and Sudan, for Sadat’s decision to visit Jerusalem, and it maintained its position in response to the Camp David Agreement, declining to join the majority of the Arab League in severing diplomatic relations with Egypt (Somalia and Sudan, two other member states, also refused to sever relations). After Sadat was assassinated in 1981, only these three Arab states would send representatives to his funeral.

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This recent history illustrates how Omani diplomacy and foreignpolicy decision-making is built upon longstanding characteristics of the Omani approach. Where there is a basic attitude that involves a reluctance to take sides, it is perhaps to be expected that policy will avoid exclusive commitment to one side of an issue or another, especially where that commitment is on the basis of ethnic-linguistic affiliation rather than either principle or pragmatic interest. The decision not to sever diplomatic relations with Egypt may in some sense have established a new paradigm for modern diplomacy, embodying in a more contemporary context a crucial aspect of the traditional approach – that diplomatic relations are both necessary and useful in cases where there is conflict. Oman’s support for Egypt during this period by no means implied that the two countries were on friendly terms. Egypt had very recently been an active supporter of an insurgency within Oman, which was still continuing at the time of the exchange of ambassadors (1972). Establishing diplomatic relations was therefore in itself a step of significance, indicating that opening channels of communication was of greater importance than holding a grudge, or waiting for a more ‘favourable climate’. Egypt itself was seeking negotiations, and the sultanate would not take reprisals against it for pursuing a course of appropriate diplomatic behaviour. Any chance of resolving a conflict, or even inching in that direction, would require differing perspectives to come to some sort of agreement: how could progress be achieved if dialogue were ruled out until some degree of mutual accord existed? The sultanate saw that diplomatic relations, and the pathways for communication they allowed, were precisely the blocks upon which a more favourable climate could be built, rather than the other way round. This idea, that diplomacy is partly – and perhaps most importantly – about keeping open channels of communication for difficult conversations with those who are not obviously friends and allies, can be traced in Omani policy since 1978. It has guided, perhaps most obviously, Oman’s engagements with Yemen and Iran and, above all, its conduct in the Middle East peace process from 1991, a subject to 1 which this chapter will now turn. OMAN’S PEACE DIPLOMACY: MADRID TO MEDRC

During the Gulf crisis and war of 1990–1, the Iraqi government and its supporters repeatedly asserted a direct link between the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the continued Israeli occupation of Arab land in

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Palestine and on the Golan Heights. Iraq demanded an Israeli withdrawal from Occupied Territories as a condition for its own withdrawal from occupied Kuwait. This idea of linkage was explicitly rejected by most of the rest of the international community. However, although the Iraqi position was clearly both untenable and unproductive in itself, it emphasised very forcibly the fact that political tension and insecurity in the Middle East region was to a very large degree a product of the forty-year-old Arab–Israeli conflict. It was increasingly recognised that without a settlement to that conflict, there could be no real basis for regional security. The significance of this recognition was that it was shared by the US government, which – with its power in the Middle East region sharply increased by the Gulf War, and its relations with the moderate Arab coalition deepened – would help set in motion the Middle East peace process. The peace process began in Spain with a meeting of delegations from Israel, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and the Palestinians in October 1991, in Madrid. Bilateral negotiations involving these core states and multilateral negotiations on issues of regional concern, involving other regional and non-regional states, were established. These negotiations initially made little progress due to the intransigence of the Israeli Likud government of Yitzhak Shamir. They were reinvigorated, however, during 1992 by the election in Israel of a Labour government explicitly committed to the principle of ‘land for peace’. This may be taken as the point at which Omani policymakers concluded that there was a real opportunity for a meaningful peace process, and it was on this basis, and this interpretation of the new situation, that Oman 2 started to play an active role in its construction and development. Although it was not apparent to all at the time, an influential group of Labour Party politicians associated with then Foreign Minister Shimon Peres – foremost among them, Deputy Foreign Minister Yossi Beilin – had for some time recognised that Israel’s long-term development depended upon the establishment of normal relations with its neighbours. During the first half of 1993, it became evident to Omani observers that, on the Israel–Palestinian track of bilateral talks, at least, both sides were genuinely seeking a settlement. There were indications that the Israeli government was prepared to abandon its previous refusal even to talk with members of the PLO. With the cold war at an end, Israel could no longer rely on unconditional support from the USA, which had been forthcoming in the past because the USA had perceived Israel as its single most effective strategic asset in the region in the struggle to combat Soviet encroachment.

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Furthermore, during the final years of the Likud government, the USA had adopted a stance against allowing its financial support to be used by Israel to sustain and entrench an illegal occupation. Housing loan guarantees were withheld by the Bush administration because they were helping the Shamir government establish Jewish settlements on illegally occupied Arab land. An analysis of demographics at the time showed that the overwhelming Jewish majority in Israel was being eroded by the country’s Arab population. Political demographics also showed that the younger generation of Jewish Israelis, born in Israel, lacked the ideological attachment to the land of Israel that seemed to characterise those of the older generation who had founded the state, many of whom were refugees from oppression in Europe. The younger generation of Israelis therefore appeared willing to support the exchange of land for peace, if they believed it would bring real and tangible benefits. Foreseeing a gradual reduction in US support for Israel, and a decline in popular Israeli support for extreme religious or nationalist justifications of its illegal occupations of Arab land, Labour politicians such as Beilin began to see an imperative for Israel to engage with its neighbours and integrate more fully into the Middle East region. This analysis of the newer Israeli position, based on an understanding over a wider period, coincided with Oman’s long-term view of the regional situation. Beilin, among others, seemed to see that in order to survive and progress, Israel must begin communicating, trading, and cooperating with its Arab neighbours. Labour seemed attuned to the recognition that, in order to attract inward investment, Israel must convince major regional and international financial institutions that it was a safe place to invest. But as long as a state of war still existed between Israel and its Arab neighbours, Israel was not really part of the Middle East, nor could it trade with its neighbours or attract the inward investment it would need from the region and the outside world. Its economic and social development would at some point reach a ceiling beyond which it would be unable to progress any further. That time was fast approaching. There was only one solution to this fundamental problem. Israel must make peace. The men who came to power in 1992 were those who seemed to understand this. Whatever caused the subsequent hesitancy and intransigence on individual issues shown by the Rabin and Peres governments since June 1992, the fact was evident that Israel sought peace and would relinquish occupied Arab lands to achieve it, because peace and normal relations with its neighbours were essential to its

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long-term development and stability. Israel’s overriding strategic objective was therefore to achieve long-term regional stability, as the fruit of peace. Israel recognised that any attempt to gain strategic superiority in the region would be resisted by the Arab world. Any such attempt would therefore endanger regional stability. It was therefore no longer in Israel’s own interest to seek strategic superiority. Israel’s interests now resided in buying into a regional partnership based on common strategic goals; namely, the security and stability that would permit increased development and prosperity. From the early 1990s, then, Israel became a regional state, rather than part of a global superpower strategy. To be a regional state requires normal relations with the rest of the region. For a regional state, regional stability is the highest priority. This thaw in the Israeli position seemed to represent a historical opportunity. It was on this basis – that enduring underlying realities would assert themselves, and that there was new recognition on the part of the Israeli leadership – that Oman would renew its commitment to and step up its participation in the peace process. With pragmatic recognition that any political peace agreement had to be underpinned by substantial progress in social and economic spheres as well, Oman supported every initiative towards a comprehensive peace based on the implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 and the principle of land for peace. Oman announced full backing for both the Palestinian delegation, in its search for an interim agreement (in the belief that it would lead eventually to a permanent solution), and the Syrian delegation, in its objective of returning the Golan Heights to Syrian sovereignty, as part of a comprehensive treaty. Oman also formally considered relaxation of the Arab boycott of Israel, in conjunction with its partners in the GCC. By 1994, the member countries of the GCC had jointly announced that they would only enforce the primary boycott against Israel, outlawing direct import of Israeli goods and services into member countries; the secondary and tertiary levels were suspended. The Arab League condemned this position, claiming only the Council of the League could enact a change. But as the boycott was non-binding, there was little the Arab League could effectively do. Ultimately, in 1996, the Council would recognise that total elimination of the boycott would be a necessary step for peace and economic development in the region. These developments ignited a new multilateral push in the Middle East peace process. The multilateral phase was officially inaugurated in Moscow on 29 January 1992. Twenty-six delegations, including ten

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from Arab states (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, Oman, Qatar, Mauritania, Kuwait, Bahrain and the UAE) met for discussions on a range of issues related to the conflict – namely, disarmament, economic development, water, refugees and environment. In the run-up to the meeting, Syria and Lebanon had already announced they would boycott the talks in the absence of progress in bilateral talks with Israel. The Palestinian delegation was excluded from the talks because of a dispute over its composition. In protest at their exclusion, both Yemen and Algeria decided to stay away as well. After an opening day on which participating nations made preliminary statements of position, five multilateral working committees held simultaneous meetings in which dates, venues and chairmanships for further discussions were proposed. Subsequent meetings within the multilateral phase of the peace process took place throughout the remainder of that year (1992), with working groups dedicated to arms control convening in Washington (11–14 May), to refugees in Ottawa (13–15 May), to economic cooperation in Brussels (11–12 May), to water resources in Vienna (13–14 May) and to the environment in Tokyo (18–19 May). The talks in Vienna on water resources apparently reached a consensus on exchanging information. Oman, taking a particular interest in the Water Resources Working Group, began to understand and explain its own position in terms of the tangible economic and infrastructural issues that would need to be addressed if a settlement reached at a purely political level would be sustainable on the ground. At the same time, however, Omani diplomats were always careful to frame their participation in the process in terms of a contribution to the process under way at the purely political level, aimed at achieving a formal peace settlement. At the Tokyo meeting of the Water Resources Working Group in 1993, Oman’s delegate affirmed that the Sultanate of Oman’s eagerness to participate in the multilateral talks was an index of Oman’s commitment to the principles that lay behind the entire Middle East peace process, and that Oman believed that the multilateral talks could assist in a process that is designed to achieve peace through the full implementation of UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, and on the basis of the principle of land for peace. In the context of this meeting Oman secured the working group’s agreement for a feasibility study to be conducted on the possibility of creating a research centre on a water-related issue, and Omani officials organised a global survey designed to assess the feasibility of such a project. The chosen focus of this survey was water desalination – an

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area in which it was widely believed that scientific and technical collaboration, technology sharing and joint projects might yield tangible benefits for the countries of the region, while also providing a context in which regional cooperation could be pursued more generally. In April 1994, Oman hosted a meeting of the Water Resources Working Group in Muscat, at which the results of this survey were presented, along with its recommendation that a desalination research centre be established by participants in the working group. An ad hoc committee of the working group, in which government officials were joined by technical experts, was then formed to carry this proposal forward, meeting again in Muscat, in October of the same year. The key priority at this stage was to move forward on raising funds to support the establishment of the proposed desalination research centre, which would be a membership organisation in which national governments would become founding members. Crucial to the success of the project would be appropriate membership, which meant the inclusion of Israel as well as at least one Arab state. Taking a lead in this process, Oman would undoubtedly be a founding member. From a political as well as a financial point of view, it was also vital that the United States join in. In November 1994, the Omani minister responsible for foreign affairs, Yusuf bin Alawi, formally requested American membership and financial help for the proposed centre. In June 1995, within the framework of an annual minister’s visit to Washington, Yusuf bin Alawi met US Vice President Al Gore – whose support for this initiative was critical at this stage. As a result of this meeting, both the sultanate and the United States formally committed US$ 3 million each to the establishment of the proposed desalination research centre, which, it was now agreed, would be called the Middle East Desalination Research Center, and which would be located in Muscat. A joint communiqué issued by the Omani and the US government announced this development. An initial ambition to raise US$ 30 million had clearly been somewhat scaled back: the matching contributions of $3 million made by Oman and the United States would not, even if replicated by likely additional founding members (which would be Israel, Japan and South Korea), come anywhere near this target. While both Jordanians and Palestinians were among the contributors to the development of the centre, their formal membership would only be concluded some years after its foundation (and they could not, in any case, be expected to make the kind of financial commitments made by Oman and its cofounders). Oman also sought to encourage the European Union to join

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as a founding member. European Union officials and experts, especially from Italy and the United Kingdom, were playing key roles in the discussions leading to the establishment of the centre, and Oman therefore approached the vice president of the European Commission, Manuel Marín, with a proposal that the Commission should make a comparable financial contribution so that the EU could be a founding member. But negotiating with the European Union would present Omani diplomacy with a new range of systematic and formal questions. By now, Oman’s diplomats had some experience with the United States system, which allowed for the development of strong formal and personal relationships between key Omani and American officials. In the US system, Omani officials had come to understand the process by which proposals rising through US government agencies (such as the State Department and the Bureau for Water Resources) might obtain consent. They could identify whom to work with, enjoying helpful access to key American interlocutors, as illustrated by the engagement of Vice President Gore. However, the European Union would present an entirely foreign structure, leading to unanticipated difficulties. Although EU Commissioner Marín expressed his full support for the project and indicated that 3.3 million ecus (the precursor to the Euro) could be allocated as part of the EU becoming a founding member, such an undertaking turned out to be constitutionally impossible. Omani officials were dealing not with a national government but with a bureaucracy in which the relationship between political decisionmaking and implementation was opaque. While senior Omani diplomats, such as Yusuf bin Alawi, could expedite decision-making on the Omani–US axis, by dealing directly with decision-makers, in the interaction with the EU it became apparent that, in effect, decisions made by the senior interlocutors were then subject to complications and regulations over which Omani diplomats found themselves in lengthy correspondence with relatively junior officials of the Commission. This was not a situation likely to produce decisive action on the part of the European Union. In the end, a provisional agreement was reached, according to which the European Union would be one of the centre’s founder members pending the eventual allocation of the financial support pledged at the time. In the years since, individual members of the European Union have joined the centre of their own accord, effectively superseding the Commission’s collective participation. Once Oman’s diplomats had gradually secured, on the basis of the matching pledges of the Sultanate of Oman and the United States,

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further matching pledges from Israel, Japan and Korea, as well as provisional commitment from the Europeans, it was decided that sufficient political momentum and initial financial backing was in place formally to establish the centre. An international search for a centre director concluded with the appointment of Eric Jankel. The process of establishing the centre itself was then concluded at a meeting in Muscat on 22 December 1996, a major success for Omani diplomacy. As we shall see in more detail below, it was a complex process in which the centre was both an end in itself, as well as a contribution to a wider peace process, and also, crucially, a context within which Oman could explore the possibility of entering into some form of bilateral relationship (framed by this multilateral engagement) with Israel, on an ostensibly non-political, scientific issue (that is, water desalination). Before concluding the story of the establishment of the centre, it is worth taking a moment to think about the whole process as an example of the principles of Omani diplomacy, including those derived from traditional Omani social life, put into action in a critical international context. In a speech given in Amman in October 1995, then Under-Secretary Sayyid Badr bin Hamad Al bu Saidi, outlining plans for the establishment of the Middle East Desalination Research Center (MEDRC), articulated his country’s participation in the process as follows: Throughout the Middle East different people at different times have developed technologies designed to solve the problem of water scarcity. One such ancient technology, for which my own country, Oman, is often credited, is the use of falaj. The falaj system of irrigation was the basis for human settlement in the interior of Oman and was developed over 2,500 years ago. I mention this technology not simply to boast of Oman’s historic expertise in the field of water resource management, but because the word falaj itself offers what seems to me to be a vital clue to the mission of the Middle East Water Desalination Center. The word falaj in classical Arabic means to divide property, to share resources. A falaj is therefore essentially a system for sharing water among those who need it. A limited water supply can be made to go a long way if the people who have access to it are prepared to share it among themselves. This is true not only of the raw resource, water, itself, but also, it seems to me, of desalination technology. Apply the falaj principle to the newest technologies at our disposal and we will all be the beneficiaries of 3 the partnership we thereby create.

This is a particularly striking instance of a professional Omani diplomat referring directly, and in the public sphere, to an aspect of

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what we have earlier called ‘domestic diplomacy’. It provides evidence that the connection proposed in this book – between the practice of diplomacy as a feature of everyday Omani life and tradition, and the practice of diplomacy in the modern international sense – is real and substantive. But it also suggests that at least some Omani diplomats themselves are aware of this connection. As stated here, localised practices of domestic diplomacy not only subconsciously but even consciously yield principles that shape the conduct of more macroscopic relations. Emphasis on cooperation and the avoidance of zerosum, winner-takes-all solutions, of which the falaj system is exemplary, thus inform an approach to foreign relations which might be described, in ethical terms, as a matter of moral principle and a way of life at the same time. Thus, the entire MEDRC project may be seen as a typically Omani initiative on several grounds. It draws on a strong sense of the importance of water resources and an understanding of the necessity for cooperation in this vital area. In its wider political aims, to bring about collaboration and cooperation between people (and nations) whose interests might otherwise be competitive or even antagonistic, it conforms to underlying principles of which the falaj system (and other examples of domestic diplomacy discussed earlier) is exemplary. It continues Oman’s consistent position as regards the Arab–Israeli conflict, in which a principle that communication is better than severed or non-existent relations tends to prevail. It also attends to long-term considerations rather than short-term political situations, in that the aim of developing a ‘new’ Middle East beyond the frameworks of twentieth-century conflict seems to predominate in Omani thinking. We will consider the significance of this aspect of Oman’s peace process diplomacy more fully in the discussion, below, detailing the process by which Oman and Israel would move to establish mutual trade representative offices. OMAN AND ISRAEL: TRADE REPRESENTATIVE OFFICES

Oman’s participation in the Water Resources Working Group and its dedication to the establishment of MEDRC – which continues to function today, despite subsequent vicissitudes of the peace process, of which it remains part – is perhaps contextualised in part by a diplomatic tradition based on commitment to long-term realities, and the apprehension of peace and stability as not mere words or intentions but constant processes involving layers of political, socio-economic

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and development issues. This long-term and comprehensive approach, which guided the foundation of MEDRC, had also governed Oman’s approach to bilateral relations with Israel. The bilateral process may thus be understood as a kind of parallel track to the process by which MEDRC was brought into being: this only tells part of the story, however, because the idea of parallel tracks does not quite capture the extent to which the two processes were deeply enmeshed in one another. By the last months of 1994, as the account above has shown, considerable progress towards the establishment of the Middle Desalination Research Center had been achieved. Oman had offered to host the centre at the Muscat meeting of the Water Resources Working Group in April of that year and, by November, Yusuf bin Alawi’s formal request for American participation and financial support had been conveyed to Secretary of State Warren Christopher. Oman had seen the process of garnering support for the centre’s formation as a way of starting to add a slightly more political dimension to what were essentially technical consultations involving Omanis and Israelis. Discussions about MEDRC, involving both Omani and Israeli officials, created a context in which other kinds of conversation could also be pursued: meetings between Omani and Israeli officials that might take place on the fringes of international gatherings (such as the United Nations General Assembly, for example) would be interpreted as part of the MEDRC process. It was not until late 1994, however, that the results of this discreet exploration became public, with the announcement in Israeli media that Yossi Beilin, then Deputy Foreign Minister, had met Yusuf bin Alawi personally in Muscat. It now seems fairly clear that one purpose of this meeting, in itself a historic and significant event, was to pave the way for a still more significant and surprising development – the brief visit to Oman, on 26 December 1994, by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Rabin’s visit came just two months after the successful conclusion of a peace treaty between Israel and Jordan. This provided an important additional external context for the visit: relations between Jordan and Oman were, and still are, very strong, based in part upon excellent personal relations between Sultan Qaboos and King Hussein of Jordan, whose respective views on many key issues at the time appear to have been very similar. Oman was thus, in one sense, following developments in the region, taking care to proceed in such a way as not to attract adverse comment from other parties (both Libya and Iran issued hostile public statements in response to the Beilin and

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Rabin visits; other parties generally refrained). In another sense, though, Oman was seen to be leading the way: it was widely reported at the time that Oman’s move towards some form of bilateral relationship with Israel would soon be followed by similar moves by Bahrain and Qatar. It was not yet clear, however, what form these potential bilateral relations would take. During 1995 it became clear that trade would be the key term by which this relationship would be defined. Considered in the light of Oman’s historical understanding of trade as perhaps the central factor in its relations with the outside world (drawing on the collective national memory of the spice trade and the Indian Ocean dhow culture), this is perhaps unsurprising. In diplomatic terms, Oman needed to be able to present the decision to engage with Israel to its own population – who were, as most in the region, accustomed to strongly anti-Israeli programming by regional news media, and attuned to concerns of its Arab neighbours and partners. Presenting the highly political move to develop a relationship with Israel in the context of trade and commercial interests was therefore a way of taking some of the heat out of the decision. Thus, it became central to Omani policy that relations with Israel should take the form of trade representative offices. These had the additional advantage of offering some prospect of tangible development, in contrast to the largely symbolic ‘interests offices’ in Israel earlier established by Morocco and Tunisia. Rather than being purely formal, and thus exclusively political, Oman’s relations with Israel were to be based on actual collaboration taking place in the context of MEDRC, and on the possibility of material economic benefits arising from the relationship. It meant that when Oman decided the time was right for some form of diplomatic recognition, the diplomatic officials involved in the relationship would have real and tangible matters of substance to deal with. To this end, and as part of the gradually developing relationships between Omani and Israeli officials, private-sector links were encouraged. The trade representative offices would have a priority task of encouraging private-sector cooperation between Omani and Israeli businesses and entrepreneurs. They would also work to encourage the development of public-sector cooperation in, among other fields, trade and investment, transshipment, desalination, computerisation, tourism and regional cooperation. Such an arrangement reflected Oman’s determination that its relations with Israel should be based upon realistic and practical cooperation in areas where Oman had real benefits to be

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won, rather than being merely a political formula from which only Israel could derive real advantage. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs succeeded in achieving cabinet approval for a continued policy of engagement with Israel; thus, it was able to take some more substantive and public steps, most notably by arranging a meeting between Yusuf bin Alawi and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres in Washington, DC. Outcomes of this meeting would include Oman’s agreement in principle to allow Israeli planes to use its airspace, while Israel would announce its $3 million contribution to the foundation of MEDRC. This meeting gave rise to an exchange of letters between Yusuf bin Alawi and Shimon Peres, in which Peres sought to accelerate progress towards formal diplomatic relations while Yusuf bin Alawi, seeking to maintain control over both the timing and the nature of their establishment, prioritised a number of specific and practical issues demonstrating progress towards the establishment of MEDRC. This appears to have underscored the fact that, to a certain extent at least, Oman’s willingness to engage in deeper bilateral ventures depended on Israel’s commitment to the multilateral track. It was at this point in the process – with Oman poised to conclude its agreement with Israel on the establishment of the trade representative offices, with the Oslo II Agreement between Israel and the Palestinians having been signed in September 1995 – that the whole peace process was thrown into doubt by the assassination of Israel’s prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin. Oman’s minister responsible for foreign affairs led an Omani delegation to Rabin’s funeral, and sent messages of condolence to Israeli leaders and to Rabin’s widow. In some respects these actions – involving public expressions of solidarity – resembled Omani participation in Sadat’s funeral: both cases illustrated Oman’s general tendency to try to place such issues beyond the domain of political ideology. They also served as clear indications that Oman intended to continue towards the much anticipated agreement on trade representative offices. Therefore, in spite of uncertainty following Rabin’s assassination, Oman and Israel signed a letter of understanding in Muscat on 27 January 1996. The respective trade offices opened in Muscat and Tel Aviv in May of that year. Oman’s first trade representative to Israel, Mohsen alBaluchi, had been instructed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to maintain the integrity of the trade and economic focus of his mission: limits were placed on his activity, with particularly strict instructions not to respond to Israeli media attempts to solicit views on matters pertaining to the wider political situation. Oman had secured relations

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with Israel on its own terms, and it appeared determined not to let anyone alter those terms. The turn of events following Rabin’s assassination, however, had already begun to tarnish the general climate. Optimism regarding progress on the bilateral track (involving negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, and Israel and Syria, respectively) had largely begun to fade. Although the Oslo Accords seemed to have paved the way towards a two-state solution, the death of Rabin, one of their key architects, dealt a sharp blow to the process. Optimism waned further in May 1996, when Rabin’s successor, Shimon Peres, was defeated in Israel’s direct elections for the post of Prime Minister. Into the position stepped the Likud Party’s Binyamin Netanyahu, who would put into reverse many, if not all, of the peace process gains achieved by the previous administration. The relationship between Oman and Israel based on the trade representative offices would be brought abruptly to a halt in September 2000, when Israel’s reprisals against Palestinians, following the failure of Camp David talks that summer, led Oman to close Israel’s office in Muscat and sever all formal relations. Relations with Israel remain frozen today, as successive Israeli governments have – in Oman’s opinion – been unable or unwilling to meet their commitments to the peace process. Official sultanate policy, therefore, maintains that Oman will not resume relations until real and substantive progress is being made, demonstrating Israel’s commitment to the broader region. This policy still seems to be based on the belief that there is an underlying logic that favours peace in the long term, and that a longterm strategy should assume a return to dialogue at some time in the future. In other words, as long as there is no peace process in which to participate, Oman will not engage directly with Israel; its basic propeace and cooperation policy remains intact, however, awaiting more positive developments. Notes 01 The bibliography on the Madrid process, its historical background and subsequent developments is extensive. Some starting points include Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World and Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations; Ilan Pappé, A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples; Mark Tessler, A History of the Israeli– Palestinian Conflict; Rashid Khalidi, The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood; Hanan Ashrawi, This Side of Peace: A

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Personal Account; Edward Said, From Oslo to Iraq and the Roadmap; Eyal Weizman, Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation; Saree Makdisi, Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation; Amira Hass, Reporting from Ramallah: An Israeli Journalist in an Occupied Land. 02 Our account of Oman’s involvement draws on a range of Ministry of Foreign Affairs research papers and also on documents related to the establishment of the Middle East Desalination Research Center. 03 ‘The Multilateral Peace Process: Forging a Partnership with Business: Gulf Participation in the Multilaterals; Public–Private Partnerships’, Second MENA Economic Summit, Amman, 29–31 October 1995.

13 Oman, Cosmopolitanism and ‘Globalisation’

1 Part I of this book considered some of the ways in which Oman and Omanis have participated in Indian Ocean cosmopolitanism, drawing upon the work of historians, such as K. N. Chaudhuri and Sugata Bose, who have developed persuasive accounts of commercial and cultural interactions among the people of the Indian Ocean region. Some of these accounts, such as Chaudhuri’s, suggest that this cosmopolitan interaction came to an end, or underwent a decisive transformation, with the entry into the Indian Ocean of colonial powers such as the British, French and Dutch East India companies. Part II of this book then examined in some detail a range of interactions in which Omani diplomacy had to manage both familiar Indian Ocean relationships and newer relationships with Europeans and Americans at a time when, according to at least one influential version (K. N. Chaudhuri’s) of the history of Indian Ocean cosmopolitanism, that very cosmopolitanism was coming to an end. We saw how the gradual introduction of European notions of sovereignty and ethnicity, and the penetration of industrial capitalist economic practices, effected a transformation of political and economic aspects of life for people in both Oman proper and Zanzibar. We also saw, however, that this was not a unidirectional process in which Western values and practices were simply imported to or imposed upon a non-Western culture. Participation in the global economy of industrial capitalism did not simply produce a relationship between core and periphery, in which nonWestern societies reacted and responded to demands – for labour or commodities – from Western ‘centres’ of power. The colonial powers may be said to have induced significant transformations, and thus to have ‘made history’ in the Indian Ocean region, but they did not do so in conditions of their own choosing. They were also obliged to respond – often in defensive or reactive ways – to the initiatives of regional actors who possessed power and exercised political choice. Therefore, in both economic and political terms (considering, for example,

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Zanzibari consumerism on the one hand, and the interplay between revolutionary and counterrevolutionary forces in the French colonial possessions, on the other), it appears that cosmopolitanism persisted, complicated rather than obliterated by the increasing dominance of colonial powers. Part III, in turn, examined a series of Omani diplomatic interactions in the postcolonial period. But our somewhat conventional manner of treating these interactions as discrete from one another may have, in fact, underemphasised the ways in which the kind of interplay we sought to emphasise in earlier accounts of nineteenth-century relations has continued on into the postcolonial period. For example, the scope of this study has not permitted us to explore in more detail whether Oman’s participation in the multilateral phase of the Madrid peace process may have, in effect, also secured for Omani diplomacy a degree of leverage, with the United States in particular, on other issues of the Oman–USA bilateral agenda. Our decision to proceed in this way, while examining the diplomacy of the most recent past, may reflect certain intellectual and ideological legacies handed down to us, which shape our epistemological frameworks. Two of these seem particularly relevant. The first is a view of the world, increasingly prevalent from the nineteenth century onwards, in terms of discrete national entities, often defined in terms of ethnicity and almost always conceived as geographically bounded. In this familiar view, almost taken for granted at this point in history, diplomacy is generally understood as either the management of a series of bilateral relationships between such entities, or the participation in multilateral processes assuming institutional frameworks organised around clearly distinct and autonomous bargaining units. The second, and related, legacy is the further tendency of ‘area studies’ to understand supranational associations in terms of regions and subregions, often organised according to a logic determined by considerations of cold war policymaking. ‘The Arab Gulf’ as a region or subregion may be seen as a conceptual product of both these legacies: a presumption of cultural homogeneity or affinity between a number of nation-states (many of which are of very recent formation), compounded by strategic rationales (oil security and resisting Soviet influence, for example), ends up encouraging certain frames of analysis and discouraging others. Some of these are, of course, helpful and worthwhile; but they also have their limitations, in that they prevent us from seeing the full picture, as this study of Oman has hopefully demonstrated. It is helpful to consider Oman in relation to its ‘Arab Gulf’ identity and its role in

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relation to cold war questions, but to prioritise these affiliations over a wider perspective that accounts for, say, participation in networks of Indian Ocean cosmopolitanism, past or present, is to sacrifice valuable data and misapprehend Oman. In this final chapter, therefore, we will examine some aspects of recent Omani diplomacy which might seem to escape these categories and the more clear-cut, systematic thinking associated with them. We will look particularly at various efforts to emphasise and develop some of Oman’s Indian Ocean relations, such as its participation as a founding member of the Indian Ocean Rim Association for Regional Cooperation (IOR-ARC). We shall also consider diplomatic activities involving dimensions outside the conventional state-to-state relations, which are usually thought to constitute diplomacy, wherein practice includes – but is not limited to – the work of accredited diplomats, or where accredited diplomats engage in activities that might normally fall under the remits of other agencies, such as those responsible for education and culture. Hopefully, these considerations should, in turn, invite further reflection on the more creative interpretation of diplomacy embodied by Oman’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in the development and execution of policy. WHAT IS GLOBALISATION?

One familiar conceptual framework within which to think about Oman’s diplomacy at the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century is, of course, globalisation. Against this backdrop, Oman’s historical narrative would presumably begin with an account of nation formation, based on the nineteenth-century categories referred to above. Its evolution would be traced through the period of organisation of the wider ‘Middle East’ encouraged in the wake of British colonial withdrawal, and accelerated through the process of national development, financed by oil revenues, that has been undertaken since 1970. The story would note how the constraints of the cold war period, ending around 1989, shaped Oman’s interactions with both neighbours and strangers in such a way as to limit its participation in wider networks. Indeed, it might suggest that such networks did not even really exist, because of the world’s polarisation around cold war alliances. The story would then tell of a sudden explosion of unprecedented, rapid communication and connection, in which the idea of the nation-state as a unit of analysis begins to be questioned; in which boundaries become increasingly porous; flows of

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capital and commodities draw people across the world into ever closer relations; and what results are surprising juxtapositions of culture and an intensification of ‘free trade’ under a new ‘global’ system of economic governance. Oman, at the turn of the twenty-first century, would find itself in this narrative faced with the challenge of adapting to and prospering in this radically new situation. But this version of Oman’s recent history – which would contain substantial elements of truth – would also be dramatically misleading. Both the concept of ‘globalisation’, and the various accounts of its history and its effects, have been called into question by historians who charge the proponents of the ‘globalisation’ thesis – which would underpin the ‘story’ we have just described – with an ahistorical ‘presentism’ in which recent developments are credited with a novelty they may not actually possess. To put this objection in concrete terms specific to Oman’s culture of diplomacy, the ‘historical’ critique of the ‘globalisation’ thesis would argue that the Indian Ocean cosmopolitanism (which we have identified as crucial to an understanding of Omani culture) constitutes a very substantial historical precedent for present-day globalisation. It would also suggest that the phenomena attributed to ‘modern-day’ globalisation are neither new, nor necessarily ‘global’. Nor perhaps, do they even constitute the kind of process that the suffix ‘-isation’ would imply – one in which a world is becoming progressively more and more global, just as ‘modernisation’ implied the idea of a world getting more and more ‘modern’ until the point at which it was fully ‘modern’. Many historians, attentive to the specificities of location and moment, are sceptical of the implicit teleology and universalism that the two terms, globalisation and modernisation, carry. Frederick Cooper and Jeremy Prestholdt, for example – to take just two of the historians whose work on East Africa has informed Part II’s analysis – suggest that many accounts of globalisation are ‘presentist’ in their assumption that the present is in some way radically and clearly distinct from the past. Both criticise what Prestholdt calls ‘con1 temporary fantasies of past isolation’. Cooper argues that historical analysis simply does not bear out such fantasies, for it ‘does not present a contrast of a past of territorial boundedness with a present of interconnection and fragmentation, but more a back-and-forth, varied 2 combination of territorializing and deterritorializing tendencies’. Prestholdt suggests that popular understandings of globalisation tend to assume the existence in early periods of ‘discrete spheres (continents, nations, cultures) whose minimal interactions ensured internal consistencies’, and that such views depend upon systems of

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classification in which ‘the essentialization of difference allowed and allows views of global integration to appear as vignettes of unprecedented, even paradoxical contrasts of traditions, religions, economies, 3 and racial, national, or social groups’. That is to say that the classification systems developed in the nineteenth century – the impact of which is evident in the case of the British interaction with Zanzibar – have come to be conceived as natural, enduring features of a past world, as enduring ‘containers’ that are only now breaking up and becoming porous to the ‘flows’ of people and capital that supposedly characterise ‘globalisation’. In this imagined world, the past was fixed and the present is fluid. But, Frederick Cooper points out, this division is all too easy; and it ultimately fails, for it does not account for the historical ‘back-and-forth’ between very uneven processes of territorial consolidation, on the one hand, and fluidity, on the other: ‘scholars’, suggests Cooper, ‘do not need to choose between a rhetoric of contain4 ers and a rhetoric of flows’. The answer he gives to his title question – ‘What is the Concept of Globalization Good For?’ – comes down as rather resoundingly negative. Particularly from Cooper’s ‘perspective’ as a self-described ‘African historian’, globalisation as a concept does not seem to be good for much of anything, because it tends to obscure the existence in earlier times of precisely those ‘patterns of interconnection’ it claims to find typical of the present moment. Also, in its assumption that everyone is more interconnected than ever before, it fails to take into account the unevenness of that interconnectivity, in terms of both space and time. The geographer David Harvey shares many of the reservations articulated by historians such as Prestholdt and Cooper, but seems prepared to accept that ‘globalisation’ does identify a qualitative shift, if not in the history of the world, then at least in the form and nature of capitalism. For Harvey, globalisation is the latest in a series of ‘spatial fixes’ – colonialism being another – in which capitalist economies seek to reorganise the spaces in which they operate, by measures such as ‘opening’ new markets, or shifting production facilities to new locations in search of more favourable regulatory conditions or labour relations. Harvey writes: Since there is a long history to these spatial fixes, there is a deep continuity (as I and many others have insisted) in the production of space under capitalist social relations and imperatives. There is, from this perspective, nothing particularly new or surprising about globalization since it has been 5 going on since at least 1492 if not before.

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For Harvey, there are three principal features of globalisation in its latest phase. The first is financial deregulation (the end of the Bretton Woods system). This he views, on balance, as simply a move from one global system to another, but a move that at least encouraged capital to flow between national economies more rapidly than before. The second principal feature Harvey identifies as an ‘information revolution’, but – he is quick to qualify – it may already be overemphasised by most popular media accounts of globalisation, in the same kind of ‘presentist’ manner Prestholdt identifies. Harvey cautions: ‘the newness of it all impresses, but then the newness of the railroad and the telegraph, the automobile, the radio, and the telephone in their day 6 impressed equally.’ The third, and for Harvey most important, feature of contemporary globalisation is the reduction in cost involved in moving both commodities and people from one place in the world to another. In relation to Oman, Harvey’s framework might imply that for Omanis and their principal commercial and diplomatic partners, there exist longstanding patterns of long-distance interconnection, but that the increased speed and, perhaps crucially, much reduced costs at which those distances can be travelled does create a qualitatively new situation. It is this situation that we will now examine, in relation to a number of examples of recent Omani adventures in long-distance interconnection, or, in other words, diplomacy. Among these are the rebranding and expansion of Oman Air; the voyage from Oman to Singapore of the reconstructed ninth-century ship, the Jewel of Muscat; the formation of the Indian Ocean Rim Association for Regional Cooperation; the recent endowment of academic chairs in a number of prominent ‘global’ universities; and, finally, Oman’s contribution to the ‘dialogue of civilisations’. NON-GOVERNMENTAL DIPLOMACY

Oman Air’s frequent flyer programme is named after the legendary Arab sailor, Sindbad, who – most Omanis will claim – hailed from the Omani port city of Sohar. While no concrete evidence supports the existence of a specific historical figure upon whom the Sindbad of the traditional tales is based, nor, therefore, anything other than hearsay to support his association with Sohar or even Oman, the circulation of this myth – and its use as part of Oman Air’s marketing strategy – has something to say about the relationship between Omani national identity, culture and diplomacy, particularly when considered in the

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context of the rebranding undertaken by the airline in 2008. It is clear that the Omani government and the management of Oman Air see the airline, its image and its employees, as contributors to Oman’s diplomacy, and that the strategic use of specific elements of Omani culture forms part of what we might call non-governmental diplomacy. In his history of the global airline industry, Anthony Sampson touches on the relationship between national airlines and international politics, suggesting that airlines offer a ‘visual projection of changes on 7 earth’, a way of tracking the rise of new national powers and the struggles between political rivals. Subsequent scholarship has focused on the role played by national airlines in postcolonial nation-building. K. Raguraman, for example, examines the development of civil aviation in Singapore and Malaysia, showing how the international profile of the airlines as ‘flag-carriers’ has contributed to the development of a sense of national identity in highly multicultural societies, and also, crucially, for a consideration of diplomacy, showing the ‘symbolic role’ played by airlines such as Singapore Airlines, in communicating an image of the nation to foreigners, including those 8 who may use the airline without ever visiting the country itself. The trick, it seems, if the success of Singapore Airlines is to be a guide, is to find the right combination between distinctive local elements (such as the sarong kebaya worn by the stewardesses who were central, as ‘Singapore Girls’, to the airline’s marketing campaigns) with an appropriately ‘modern’ visual presentation communicating a sense of cosmopolitan style and efficiency. Singapore Airlines is of course only one element in a much more farreaching and sustained effort on the part of the government of Singapore to use culture (in both its local and cosmopolitan manifestations) as central to national economic development strategy in the ‘age of globalisation’. Other high-profile elements in this strategy have included the first-ever Singapore Grand Prix (which broadcast spectacular images of an illuminated night-time Singapore to motor racing fans around the world), and the construction of the Esplanade (a multi-purpose arts, entertainment and retail centre, which opened on Singapore’s city centre waterfront in 2002, and which hosted, in 2005, the opening ceremony of the 117th International Olympic Committee Session, at which London was selected as the host-city for the 2012 Summer Games). Clearly, Singapore has been making a bid to be seen as one of an élite group of ‘global cities’ linked in a cosmopolitan network, in hopes of deriving status and revenue from such a position. Dubai (with its own well-established international airline, Emirates)

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and, more recently, Qatar (which relaunched its own international airline in 1997 targeting the ‘five star’ market and which has also looked to international sporting events as part of its development strategy, recently winning the right to host the 2022 football World Cup), are examples rather closer to Oman of similar approaches to that of Singapore. The construction of a Louvre and a Guggenheim Museum on Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi are comparable projects, even though, in these cases, culture functions as a signifier of élite global modernity rather than anything distinctively local. Oman (whose own cultural development projects as well as its culturaldiplomatic relations with Singapore will be considered shortly) is not trying to compete on these terms – it is, after all, not a city-state like these others – but it is indeed seeking to deploy its own cultural capital, in the service of not only economic development (the airline is a business and tourism is an important source of future revenue for the government), but also a wider diplomatic project. What can a brief study of Oman Air’s rebranding and marketing strategy tell us about the way in which images of Omani culture contribute to this wider diplomatic project? Let us return to the question of Sindbad. Three images rotate through the banner at the head of the web page for Oman Air’s frequent flyer programme: (1) a view of the al-Bustan Palace Hotel (built to accommodate the 1985 Gulf Cooperation Council summit in Muscat); (2) the more recently constructed Bar al-Jissah complex of hotels, which lies a few miles down the coast from the al-Bustan; and (3) a ship under full sail, its white sails bearing the red, crossed swords and khanjar emblem ubiquitous on Omani government publications, buildings, signs and vehicles. Together they suggest a relationship between Oman’s diplomatic relations, its hospitality and its maritime history, creating a cluster of associations around which a brand might organise itself. The same khanjar and crossed swords emblem was carried on the white sails of Tim Severin’s reconstructed sailing ship, Sohar, which sailed from Muscat to Canton in 1980 and 1981 (the passage took more than seven months) as the concluding phase of the Sindbad Project, sponsored by Oman’s Ministry for National Heritage and Culture. As Severin explains in his book about the ship and its voyage, although the Sindbad who appears in folktales such as those collected in the Thousand and One Nights may not have been based on any particular historical figure, his stories clearly drew on real historical experiences, with Sindbad serving as ‘a symbol for the whole extra9 ordinary phenomenon of early Arab seafaring’. Severin had travelled to

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Oman in 1979, to explore the possibilities of a project to build and sail such a ship, and, as he describes it, found the Ministry of National Heritage and Culture a surprisingly enthusiastic supporter of the project. Recalled to Muscat a couple of weeks after this initial visit, Severin learns from the Minister of National Heritage and Culture that his project has been approved by Sultan Qaboos, and that the ministry will be sponsoring it. The relevance of the project to Omani nation-building is clear from Severin’s account of the Minister’s contribution to this meeting: We want the project to be for Oman, and the ship to be an Omani ship, sailing under an Omani flag. Oman has a long and famous history as a seafaring nation. In fact it was the first Arab state ever to send a ship to the United States – that was in 1840. Next year will bring our tenth National 10 Day, and the ship should be ready by then.

The Omani government’s decision to fund and support Severin’s project indicates an interest in making diplomatic capital out of the consolidation of Omani national identity with an evocative mythic and historical narrative. The association is not based in a specific historical reality; instead it participates in the production of a kind of mythohistorical one, by bringing Sindbad, Sohar and modern Oman together in one rich symbolic cluster. Of course, the association and the symbolism can only be meaningful because the underlying general historical reality – that Omanis were major participants in the Arab seafaring tradition and in the ‘dhow culture’ of the Indian Ocean – is rooted in fact. The Sindbad voyage, then, as an act of cultural diplomacy, works as an imaginative appropriation of available cultural materials – a kind of crystallisation of imagery in the service of national identity and its international projection. The reconstructed ship now rests as the centrepiece of the roundabout which all traffic heading from Muscat to the al-Bustan Palace Hotel must pass. Oman Air’s use of Sindbad builds upon the use made of Sindbad by the Severin project. The use of Sindbad as the name for the airline’s frequent flyer programme predates the 2008 rebranding, and aspects of the visual imagery associated with the pre-2008 programme have carried over to the ‘new’ era: programme membership cards, both before and after rebranding, feature a key laid across what looks like an ancient map, as though membership of the programme will secure access not only to the usual travel benefits, but also to the world of ancient Indian Ocean navigation. In its pre-2008 versions, this image is accompanied by that of a khanjar, forming part of a graphic ensemble that includes the words ‘Oman Air’ printed in English, in red, and the

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corresponding Arabic above it, in green. The old Oman Air branding, which uses the colours of the Omani flag (red, white and green) and the traditional image of the khanjar, relies upon the formal and iconic presentation of core state symbols as main communication priorities. The logo therefore communicates what we might think of as a preglobalisation version of a national airline. By contrast, the 2008 rebranding has replaced the red, white and green ‘national’ colours with blue, silver and gold, and a stylised representation of frankincense smoke has replaced the familiar khanjar. Thus, the resulting effect of the updated logo conveys something much more corporate and artistic, appropriate to a private-sector business (although Oman Air remains in state ownership) in which images of ‘culture’ allude less directly, but just as evocatively, to the idea of nation, than in earlier imagery. The 2008 image, which has not been without its critics in Oman itself, as comment in various web forums shows, was clearly driven by business needs. In the context of the withdrawal of Oman from Gulf Air, Oman Air was seeking to expand its operations beyond that of a regional airline serving either routes within the Middle East or between the Gulf and the Indian subcontinent, to establish itself as an international carrier. The rebranding coincided with the establishment of a direct London to Muscat service, for example, which was advertised as an opportunity for travellers to fly directly from the UK to both Muscat and Bangkok. But it is also an example of the proliferation of contexts for cultural diplomacy. In 1979 a government-funded cultural project such as Severin’s Sindbad Project traded in the kind of national identity imagery typical of a period of state formation and consolidation. By 2008, in a far more extensive, but much less state-directed operation, the rebranding of Oman Air sought to carry some of the same ‘heritage’ sentiment forward by way of corporate global imagery. That Oman Air sees itself as a contributor to Omani diplomacy, even as its imagery might seem to be distancing it from national symbolism, is clear: on 6 February 2011, Oman Air’s website carried a press release announcing the first phase of its young ambassadors project, conducted in collaboration with the Ministry of Education: Thirteen of Oman Air’s 40 Young Ambassadors have embarked on their maiden voyage to deliver messages of evolution, development and achievements to the national carrier’s respective destinations in Bahrain, Qatar, Lebanon, Nepal, Sri Lanka, India and Pakistan. This first-of-its-kind initiative sets the stage for realizing Oman Air’s vision to establish a cultural exchange platform between the Sultanate and the world while positioning 11 the country as a premier and unrivalled tourist destination.

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The idea that a group of young Omani citizens are conceived here as ambassadors – as diplomats – is not, of course, original. The ambassadorial role is a widely used metaphor in many walks of life: prominent sportspeople, for example, are often referred to admiringly as ‘great ambassadors for their sport’, and the United Nations has itself adopted a strategy of appointing celebrity ‘ambassadors’ to raise awareness around specific causes. However, the usage here does point to an emerging feature of Omani diplomacy, in which Omani culture is regarded as a key element in the promotion of the country’s interests, and in which the lines between official diplomacy – involving state-tostate interaction – and other less-formal activities are increasingly to be blurred. The Jewel of Muscat project, which we consider next, provides a particularly good example of the way in which this kind of ‘cultural diplomacy’ works. In 1998, a shipwreck containing a cargo principally composed of a huge quantity of Chinese ceramics was discovered off the Indonesian island of Belitung. Marine archaeologists identified it as a ninthcentury ship of western Indian Ocean – and possibly Arab – design. The ceramics were all from the Tang dynasty period, and were probably being carried as exports to a Persian Gulf port – either Siraf in what is now southern Iran, or its main rival in the period in question, Sohar on Oman’s Batinah coast. The Belitung wreck offered, according to Michael Flecker, ‘the first clear archaeological evidence to support historical records which imply that there was direct trade between the western Indian Ocean and China during the later part of 12 the first millennium AD’. Ten years later, on the beach at the Omani fishing village of Qantab, just south of Muscat, work began on a project to build a reconstruction of an Arab ship, based on the Belitung wreck, using traditional shipbuilding techniques (the ship was to be sewn together rather than held together by nails). Leading the reconstruction was the marine archaeologist Tom Vosmer, who had worked on Severin’s Sindbad Project. Once built, the ship would sail from Oman to Singapore, as part of a joint project supported by the governments of Oman and Singapore. The ship, called Jewel of Muscat, was presented, on arrival in Singapore, after visits to Kochi in India, Galle in Sri Lanka and Penang in Malaysia, as a gift from the people of Oman to the people of Singapore. On the Omani side, responsibility for the management of the project fell to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. What does the role of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in such a project tell us about Omani diplomacy? At the state-to-state level, this project forms part of the development

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of Oman’s relationship with Singapore. Oman has long prioritised relations with East Asian countries – which are among the largest importers of Omani oil and liquefied natural gas. Singapore, while it is a small but growing destination for Omani exports, is seen as an excellent potential source of foreign direct investment for Oman. In 1995, Oman and Singapore were among the founding members of the Indian Ocean Rim Association for Regional Cooperation (IOR-ARC), along with Australia, India, Mauritius and South Africa. Oman’s participation in this initiative (it was initially the only ‘Middle East’ state in the new organisation) reflected a very deliberate and economically driven renewal of government attention to relations with Asian states. This focus arose in the context of plans drawn up and published in 1995 under the title ‘Oman: Vision 2020’, which sought to set out guidelines for economic policy with the horizon of the end of Oman’s oil reserves and the resulting requirement to diversify very much in mind. Sugata Bose has commented that the initial phase of the establishment of the IOR-ARC ‘touched a historical chord that harked back to a kind of cosmopolitan harmony’, while expressing doubts as to the appropriateness of an organisation comprised of nation-states as the 13 right vehicle for such a renewal of old forms of relation. Indeed, the IOR-ARC does seem somewhat contradictory, and not just because it may have involved a group of nations appealing to a cultural memory that predated the history of the nation-state. It was developed just as the World Trade Organization came into being, effectively establishing what could be seen as a regional trade bloc, right in the midst of the increasing dominance of a global free trade model, from whose perspective such blocs might ordinarily be seen as protectionist. Critics of the IOR-ARC, many of whom espouse neo-liberal views on ‘free trade’, may claim the arrangement is inadequate, pointing to its failure to implement core trade liberalisation measures according to agreed timetables. But this apparent contradiction can find some resolution through the concept of ‘open regionalism’, in which the reduction of trade barriers among the grouping’s members occurs simultaneously with and on the same terms as the reduction of barriers with nonmembers. In ‘open regionalism’, which is based on dialogue and informal arrangements, rather than upon laws and contracts, decisions are reached by consensus. A forum is created with academic- and business-oriented components to address the development of relations 14 between members on multiple levels and at varying speeds. All in all, the approach seems more tailored to meet the particular circumstances

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of member states; it is precisely a mode of interaction that resonates closely with Omani diplomacy. From Oman’s perspective in the mid1990s, with liquefied natural gas becoming a new export priority and the development of a major new port facility, Mina Salalah, in its nascent stages, a flexible and open approach to such relations such as that exemplified by the IOR-ARC seemed appropriate. This, then, is the broader context in which the development of relations between Oman and Singapore has taken place – Oman’s active re-engagement with the economic dimension of its Indian Ocean cosmopolitanism. Key elements of this evolving relationship have included the formation of a joint committee, which has met annually since 2001; the signature, in 2007, of an investment guarantee agreement; and the formation, in 2009, of a joint Singapore–Oman business council, which in 2010 convened the first Singapore–Oman business forum. At this meeting, held not long before the Jewel of Muscat’s arrival in Singapore, Singapore’s non-resident ambassador to Oman, Teng Theng Dar, drew attention to the project’s role – and the link between culture and diplomacy – in encouraging his Singaporean colleagues to do business with Oman: If I may use the Jewel of Muscat figuratively, to deliver a strong message to the Singapore business community, I would say that there is a strong wave that is bringing along with it, a strong intent from the Omanis to engage Singapore. I urge the Singapore business community to ride on the wave of strong social and cultural ties, and extend the goodwill towards establishing greater business and commercial connections with the 15 Omanis.

Participants in this meeting also heard that the foundation stone had recently been laid on a $1 billion joint venture between the government of Oman and Singapore’s Sembcorp Industries, agreed in November 2009, for the construction of a power and water desalination plant in the wilayat of Mirbat in Dhofar. Oman’s leading role in the establishment of the Middle East Desalination Research Center (MEDRC) may also be seen as a contribution to this aspect of the Oman–Singapore relationship: in April 2007 representatives of the Omani government and MEDRC participated in the first Singapore desalination and water reuse leadership summit, hosted by Singapore’s Public Utilities Board and the International Desalination Association. Oman’s interest in desalination and its experience of making cooperation on water resource issues a way of developing diplomatic relations (as outlined in Chapter 12) appear to have combined here

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with a cultural exchange initiative to give significant context for the development of an important infrastructural project. This suggests that Jewel of Muscat formed part of a carefully focused strategy for the development of relations with Singapore in which the cultural dimension was not regarded as merely decorative or symbolic. Oman does not have the resources to stage massive cultural projects with global brands such as the Louvre and the Guggenheim; its use of culture as a facet of diplomacy cannot therefore rely upon the combination of display and destination tourism being attempted by Abu Dhabi. However, in choosing to include the cultural dimension provided by the Jewel of Muscat project in the development of relations with Singapore, Oman’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs may have taken into account Singapore’s own very high-profile public support for major cultural projects, including the Esplanade performing arts centre, and its role in promoting Singapore as a ‘cultural hub’ in Southeast Asia. Given its comparatively limited resources, the level of Oman’s commitment to this cultural project, and the role of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in leading it, indicates the growing emphasis on culture as integral to Omani diplomacy. As Oman appears to be interested in developing its own cultural assets, both as an element in its diplomacy and as part of an economic diversification strategy in which tourism has been allocated a substantial role, it may benefit Oman to enhance its cultural partnership with a country that has been developing its own arts and culture strategy since the late 1980s, and which now possesses valuable expertise. Project outlines, media strategy and regular meetings of the joint working group reveal that the Jewel of Muscat project was also designed to achieve objectives beyond the context of Oman–Singapore bilateral relations, and to make a contribution to a wider communications strategy, interestingly placed, on both sides, under the remits of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs. Among the aspects of this broader public relations programme were a number of media components, including a documentary produced by National Geographic detailing Jewel of Muscat’s construction and its passage from Oman to Singapore; and an interactive multimedia website documenting the process in the form of logs, photographs and video material, which aims to reach a global audience, not only on a promotional level, but – in keeping with the targets of Oman’s development strategy – on 16 educational and technical levels. Featuring curricula, interactive games, and other educational resources, the website targets teachers in the classroom as well as those with general independent interest.

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The project, therefore, is but a part of a wider diplomatic initiative that seeks not only to convey a fuller picture of Oman, and of Singapore, and of the friendly ties between the two, but of a region and history in which such friendly ties formed the basis of real subsistence. The Jewel of Muscat project represents but a modern link in a much longer diplomatic legacy of cooperative partnership, upon which the very Indian Ocean network hinged, before political borders became so definitive; it is this legacy to which the Jewel of Muscat points – to perhaps a different way of relating in general. It is for this reason that the project has been incorporated into broader cultural initiatives; the ship itself occasioned the construction of an entirely new museum in Singapore, where it will remain on display, alongside portions of the treasure found on board the original Belitung wreck. In Singapore, and subsequently in Muscat and Salalah, the passage has featured alongside related archaeological material in a National Geographic exhibition entitled ‘From China to Arabia: Ancient Treasure Ships and the Great Oman Voyage’. There are plans to stage this exhibition at the United Nations building in New York as well. The key here, throughout, is to draw on the project’s multiple dimensions – science, technology, history, navigation, traditional craft and heritage – to prompt reconsideration of a region often thought of as divided from other ‘civilisations’ by ethnic or religious differences. This strategy is both domestic and international. Domestically, the exhibitions in Muscat and Salalah (where it was mounted at the Land of Frankincense Museum at al-Baleed) aimed to convey to Omani citizens as well as business visitors and tourists an expanded image of the country beyond its geographic location in the Arabian Peninsula. The website and television documentary, and the touring exhibition, communicate a similar message internationally. All seem to indicate a general shift in Oman’s attempts to create a ‘national ideology’, away from the one that Marc Valeri has identified as characteristic of the nation-building phase, towards a more cosmopolitan identity invoking historical precedent, signalling a landmark in the country’s development. In this respect, it may be particularly significant that Jewel of Muscat was captained, not by an expatriate expert like Tim Severin in the case of the 1980s Sohar, but by an Omani sailor, Saleh al-Jabri, who hails from the traditional fishing village of Haramel. In a sense, al-Jabri embodied, in the present, the ‘Sindbad’ side of Oman’s historic cosmopolitan identity and served as a link between present and past, most importantly for his compatriots. Omani

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diplomacy, then, appears to be not simply about explaining Oman to the world or the world to Oman, but even within Oman itself, it seems to have taken on some responsibility for shaping the ways in which future generations of Omanis think of Oman’s place in the world. ‘DIALOGUE OF CIVILISATIONS’

Chapter 11 presented, in the context of the 1990s, the concept of a ‘clash of civilisations’, which appeared to be gaining in force as a framework for perceiving modern global realities. Definitively 17 coined by a 1993 essay written by Samuel P. Huntington, the term posited that with the end of the cold war, the world had entered a new phase in which conflicts would not be economic or ideological, but cultural, and that they would therefore be fought out not between nations or blocs of nations, but between what Huntington calls ‘civilisations’, of which he identifies seven or eight major instances – ‘Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic18 Orthodox, Latin American and possibly African’. Huntington identifies certain modern trends leading, he says, to real and entrenched divides, including relations of increasing proximity, widespread feelings that ‘local’ cultures are under threat, a revival of religious ‘identities’, the economic and political power of ‘the West’, and the rise of economic regionalism. These, he says, are accentuating differences between cultures and encouraging powerful identifications within them; these differences, he predicts, will be the basis upon which global conflicts will tend to occur. It should be evident by now that Huntington’s thesis is at odds with the history of Indian Ocean cosmopolitanism treated within this text and, likewise, that it runs counter to Oman’s historical experience and resultant perspective. In an essay in The Nation, critic Edward Said dismantles Huntington’s thesis, diagnosing that he wants to make ‘civilizations’ and ‘identities’ into what they are not: shutdown, sealed-off entities that have been purged of the myriad currents and countercurrents that animate human history, and that over centuries have made it possible for that history not only to contain wars of religion and imperial conquest but also to be one of exchange, cross-fertilization and sharing. This far less visible history is ignored in the rush to highlight the ludicrously compressed and constricted warfare that ‘the clash of 19 civilizations’ argues is the reality.

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The ‘clash of civilisations’ has therefore earned its share of critics. Shortly after his election in 1997, Iranian President Mohammed Khatami seemingly responded to Huntington’s grim outlook – and rather diplomatically – by unveiling an alternative initiative he presented as a ‘dialogue of civilisations’, which he then promoted in a series of high-profile public appearances, including a meeting with Pope John Paul II, discussions at the United Nations and a CNN interview. The international community seemed to catch on, adopting Khatami’s terminology when the UN General Assembly declared 2001 ‘The United Nations Year of Dialogue among Civilisations’. Before the end of that year, however, terrorist attacks on the United States procured by Osama bin Laden – and radical ideology – would seem to vouch for Huntington’s conviction in unavoidable conflict between Islam and the West (the aspect of his thesis that most frequently elicited comment). But the climate of intensified fear that ensued would only render more urgent the kind of dialogue that Khatami had proposed. It was in the immediate wake of the 11 September attacks that Edward Said would publish in The Nation his essay, ‘The Clash of Ignorance’, as one of many attempts to emphasise the value of dialogue over what he called the ‘gimmick’ of the clash thesis. In its initial formation at the 1997 news conference, Khatami’s articulation seemed to have had twin purposes: on the one hand it was a call for a general conversation, a call for dialogue as a valuable activity in itself; on the other hand, it was an attempt to open up a very particular dialogue between Iran and the United States. The ‘dialogue’ urged the United States to think differently about its foreign relations, and, by strong implication, its relationship with Iran. The United States, Khatami said, should ‘abandon its instrumental rationality and stop considering others as objects [and instead] respect the rights of others and adopt an approach based on communicative 20 rationality’. As Marc Lynch has pointed out, Khatami drew largely on terminology derived from the work of the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, invoking particularly the concept of the ‘public sphere’, in which rational communication takes place between individuals based on the assumption of equality and reciprocal suspension of con21 siderations of private interest. Critics of Habermas have questioned the extent to which this ideal scenario is ever possible, and have suggested that it is too readily susceptible to domination by those people who are best placed to assert their credentials as rational and

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disinterested subjects. This is much easier, for example, for those who already enjoy social and political privilege, than it is for those who are struggling to meet their daily needs and simply do not have the time or the freedom from necessity to set aside their material interests. However, while the feasibility of the ‘dialogue of civilisations’ remains a source of debate, it is worth noting that the very bases of Khatami’s argument, in a sense, support his case. Khatami’s intellectual foundations themselves seem to come as much from ‘the West’ as from his own ‘Islamic’ world, calling as they do upon the work of Habermas and ideas considered typically ‘Western’. In perhaps an ironic practical refutation of Huntington’s notion of clear distinctions between ‘civilisations’, the very act of Khatami’s call for ‘communicative rationality’ may tend to undermine generalisations about ineradicable and inevitable differences between ‘civilisations’, even if Khatami – by contrast with Said – does not explicitly reject the idea that such distinct ‘civilisations’ may exist. It should not be surprising that Khatami’s ‘dialogue of civilisations’ resonated well in Oman. With its broader understanding of relationships among peoples and civilisations, and especially, with its own very particular relationships with Iran and the USA – the primary targets of this potential dialogue – Oman viewed Khatami’s initiative very positively. But it was not only the obvious political dimension of the proposal that generated interest. As a way of bringing this book to a close, we will explore the nature of Oman’s interest in this idea in the context of increasingly complex interplay between Oman’s culture and diplomacy. DIALOGUE THROUGH CULTURE

Looking more closely at Omani culture, what aspects in particular allow the idea of the dialogue of civilisations to resonate so strongly? For this concluding discussion, we will recall the discussion of Chapter 2, in which we investigated the Omani practice of shura; to this we will add a brief exploration of the significance of ijtihad. Ijtihad is defined as the exercise of independent critical judgement in relation to the Muslim tradition (both the Qur’an and the hadith), and is of enormous significance because it permits scholars – and in some accounts individual Muslims – to interpret the sacred texts themselves in ways that are responsive to contemporary scientific discoveries and social circumstances. John L. Esposito and John O. Voll, among others, have

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emphasised its importance in shaping contemporary thought among predominantly Muslim populations. They point to a number of public figures, such as former Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, Abdurrahman Wahid of Indonesia and Mohammed Khatami of Iran, to show how ijtihad, exercised by these leaders, plays an important role in ‘defining the terms of inter-civilisational dialogue 22 from an Islamic perspective’. The significance of these leaders lies, in part, in their seemingly balanced positions: that they are neither advocates of Muslim revival as a critical response to the West in the tradition of, say, Sayyid Qutb, nor are they advocates of secular modernisation based primarily on a Western model. Instead, each is making distinctive intellectual contributions from within his specific Islamic culture. Esposito and Voll add that the ideas of leaders such as Khatami, Anwar and Wahid reaffirm the values of convivienca, a term used to describe the harmonious religious pluralism that existed under Muslim rule in the Iberian Peninsula between 711 and 1492 (al-Andalus), a point of reference that might exert some rhetorical pull on a cosmopolitan Omani sensibility. And while such figures occupy an exceptional position because of their leading roles in political life, other Muslim intellectuals have continued to develop work that also makes use of ijtihad to call for a renovation of Islamic thought in 23 relation to contemporary social, ethical and political questions. Some, such as Tariq Ramadan, have attracted substantial attention in the West, while others, such as Mohammed Shahrur, have only recently seen their work translated from Arabic. Mohammed Shahrur is perhaps most strongly associated with the concept of ijtihad, which he sees as essential to Muslim thought, and, with shura, as the basis for the expansion of human freedom and the development of democratic politics. Sultan Qaboos is known to have taken a keen interest in Shahrur’s work, presumably based on the publication in Arabic of his first book, The Book and the Qur’an: A Contemporary Reading, in 1990. In his National Day speech in 1994, given, significantly, in Nizwa, regarded as a centre for Omani religious and intellectual life, Sultan Qaboos, speaking not long after the arrest of a number of alleged militant extremists (later sentenced for various offences, and then pardoned), made a very explicit call for ijtihad, in terms that might be heard as an echo of Shahrur’s thought: Almighty God has sent down the Holy Koran with wisdom and clarity. He set out in it the general principles and Laws of Jurisprudence, but he did

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not express these in details which might differ from place to place and time to time. He did so to enable us to interpret the Law of Islam according to its basic principles and the requirements of life. When Islam spread following the time of the Prophet, new questions arose when Muslims needed to know Islamic answers to these questions. What did they do? They resorted to interpretation in an attempt to find suitable answers. As a result, they proved that Islamic Law was capable of dealing with any situation. Unfortunately, the backwardness of Muslims in recent times rendered them incapable of making use of their inheritance, and they did not even try to renew it, by reference to the original principles and bases, in order to solve the problems that arose in their lives. The least thing we can mention about this stagnation, which the Muslims themselves accepted, does not accord with the nature of Islam which calls upon us to adopt intellectual development and face the challenges that confront us at any time and in any environment, by drawing correct logic and suitable 24 solutions from Islamic teachings of the past.

For Sultan Qaboos, then, the significance of the trend in contemporary Islamic thought represented by Shahrur and others is that emphasis on dialogue and interpretation enables both productive engagement between Islamic and Western societies, and a way of unsettling the dangerous certainties motivating extremists who have, in his view, misunderstood the nature of Islam. Qaboos is not alone in this view. Omani scholar Sheikh Aflah al-Rawahy, in a series of talks in Britain and the USA, spoke about the relationship between shura and ijtihad, arguing that shura was mandatory in Islam, and that it did not mean doing as the Prophet had done, but rather developing the practice in relation to one’s own circumstances: shura itself, then, is not something fixed, but a practice that can be developed by means of 25 ijtihad. It was in this context – bracketed by Khatami’s initiative, the disaster of 2001, an interest in ijtihad, and a cultural inclination towards both shura and cosmopolitanism – that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs began to take an active hand in the development of opportunities for dialogue, most immediately by participating in the establishment of academic chairs and fellowships. Among the new chairs and fellowships endowed by Oman in the period since the launch of ‘the dialogue of civilisations’, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been involved in the creation of the Sultan of Oman Professorship at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, the Sultan of Oman Fellowship at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, the Sultan of Oman Endowed Chair in Arab and Islamic Studies at the

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University of Melbourne, and the Sultan of Oman Chair of Oriental Studies at Leiden University. In a speech given on behalf of Sultan Qaboos by the Minister Responsible for Foreign Affairs, Yusuf bin Alawi, the connection between the endowment and the ‘dialogue of civilisations’ was made explicit: At a time when the world is beset by conflict and misunderstanding, it is a matter of great pride to the people of the Sultanate of Oman, that, in supporting the endowment of this Professorship, they are making a contribution to the dialogue between civilisations, to the cause of mutual understanding between cultures, and to the greater good of both the academic and the wider international community.

Similar sentiments appear in the text of the agreement drawn up between the Omani government and the University of Melbourne: The Sultanate wishes, in particular, in view of its own history and traditions, to offer ongoing practical support to the study of Arabic and Islamic culture and civilisation worldwide, and, in particular, to assist in a better mutual understanding between cultures that will help promote peace and cooperation among nations. This ambition forms part of the Sultanate’s wider mission, to play a positive role in the dialogue among civilisations, the promotion of cultural exchange and the development of enduring ties of friendship and collaboration between peoples.

What is significant here is that these initiatives have fallen under the remit of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, or, in other words, that they are all encompassed within the sphere of diplomacy. There is clear evidence here that Omani diplomacy is interested in multiplying the channels through which ideas may be exchanged and influence exerted, in both conventional and creative ways, with the implication that dialogue leads to understanding. The participation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in projects with a cultural or intellectual dimension (whether they be the endowment of university chairs or the management of projects like Jewel of Muscat) suggests two things: first, that the relationship between culture and diplomacy is becoming part of diplomacy itself, and second, that Omani diplomacy is claiming for itself a distinctive role in the development of Omani culture. Notes 01 Jeremy Prestholdt, Domesticating the World, p. 1. 02 Frederick Cooper, ‘What is the Concept of Globalization Good For?’ p. 191.

272 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11

12 13 14 15

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

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Prestholdt, Domesticating the World, p. 3. Cooper, ‘What is the Concept of Globalization Good For?’, p. 213. David Harvey, ‘Globalization and the “Spatial Fix”’, pp. 24–5. David Harvey, ‘Globalization in Question’, p. 27. Anthony Sampson, Empires of the Sky, p. 19. K. Raguraman, ‘Airlines as instruments’. Tim Severin, The Sindbad Voyage, p. 17. Ibid., p. 29. Oman Air, ‘Oman Air’s 40 Young Ambassadors Traverse the Globe to Share Unified Message to the World’, http://www.omanair.com/wy/aboutus/media-center/press-releases-2011/oman-airs-40-young-ambassadorstraverse-globe-to-share-unified-message-to-world 6 February 2011, accessed 9 February 2011. Michael Flecker, ‘A Ninth-Century AD Arab or Indian Shipwreck’, p. 336. Sugata Bose, A Hundred Horizons, p. 281. For a critical perspective, see Saman Kelegama, ‘Open Regionalism in the Indian Ocean’. Singapore Business Federation, ‘Singapore–Oman commercial ties at a high’, http://www.sbf.org.sg/public/newsroom/details/20100614pr.jsp, accessed 15 June 2010. Jewel of Muscat, http://www.jewelofmuscat.tv, accessed 19 July 2011. Samuel P. Huntington, ‘The Clash of Civilizations?’. Ibid., p. 25. Edward Said, ‘The Clash of Ignorance’. Mohammed Khatami, news conference, ‘Vision of the Islamic Republic of Iran’, 14 December 1997. Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Bourgeois Public Sphere. John L. Esposito and John O. Voll, ‘Islam and the West’, p. 613. Among the most prominent figures are Abdol Karim Soroush, Mohsen Kadivar and Tariq Ramadan. Sultan Qaboos bin Said al Said, 24th National Day Speech, 18 November 1994. Sheikh Aflah al-Rawahy was a member of Majlis Ash’Shura from 1995 and later Deputy Chair of Majlis A’Dowla.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank those who have helped us with this book, in particular Hanadi Ismail for several important contributions, among them on cultural diplomacy in Chapter 2 and Zanzibar in Chapter 7. We also owe a great debt to Megan Furman for her editorial support, and so too we are grateful to our research assistant Lamya Harub, and also to Khalid Al Azri for giving us the benefit of his expert knowledge of Ibadism. However, the responsibility for any errors or omissions remains ours alone. Jeremy Jones, Nicholas Ridout

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Index

11 September 2001, 172, 206–8, 212, 226, 229, 267 al-Abri, Saleh bin Haramil, 130 Abu Bakr, 47 Abu Dhabi, 232, 258, 264; Sheikh of, 150 Abu Musa, 156, 158, 204 Abyssinia, 93 Achaemenid, 56 Adams, John Quincy, 138 Aden, 189, 195, 205, 207 Afghanistan, 28, 55, 172–3, 186, 194–5, 198, 208–9, 222, 229 AFL–CIO, 223, 225 Africa, 17, 22, 124–6, 184–5 Agency of International Development (AID), 222, 227 Ahmad bin Na’aman, 137–8 Ahmad, Sultan bin, 80, 83–4, 93, 118, 123 Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud, 174, 178 Ajmer, 29 Al bu Saidi dynasty, 7, 19, 27–8, 35, 74–6, 78, 93, 117–18, 129; Imam Ahmad bin Said, 49, 74–7, 79–81, 92, 116–17, 153–4; Sayyid Badr bin Hamad, 8–9, 176, 243; Sayyid Badr bin Saif, 95–6, 243; Sayyid Barghash bin Said, 127; Sayyid Faisal bin Ali, 192; Sayyid Hamad bin Said, 28; Sayyid Khalid bin Said, 138; Sayyid Majid bin Said, 147; Sultan Qaboos bin Said, 7, 17, 31, 34, 52, 59, 145–6, 150–1, 154–6, 158–9, 166, 168, 170, 178, 183, 190–2, 197, 212, 218–19, 233, 245, 259, 269–71; Sayyid Qais bin Ahmad, 81, 95–7; Sayyid Said bin Ahmad, 85; Sayyid Said bin Sultan,

79; Sayyid Said bin Taimur, 29, 33, 60, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 232; Sayyid Saif bin Sultan, 77, 83; Sayyid Shihab bin Faisal, 148; Sayyid Sultan bin Ahmad, 7, 71, 87; Sayyid Taimur bin Faisal, 148; Sayyid Thuwaini bin Said, 147 Albaharna, Husain M., 161 Albuquerque, Afonso de, 27 Algeria, 188, 212, 229, 240 Ali Nassir Muhammad, 188 Ali Salem al-Bidh, 188 Allen, Calvin H., 4, 27, 112 al-Qaida, 172–3, 195, 205, 207–8 Amman, 243 Anderson, Benedict, 18, 44 Ang, Ien, 26 Anglo–Mysore War, 82 Angola, 185 Arab Cultural and Scientific Organisation, 233 Arab League, 213, 215, 233–5, 239 Arab nationalism, 92, 189, 232–3 Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM), 189 Arabia, 13, 23, 46–8, 102–3, 127, 131, 197–8, 204–5, 265 Arabian Peninsula, 3, 47, 92, 159, 163, 192, 197, 205–7, 265 Arabian Sea, 3 Arab–Israeli conflict, 231, 234, 237, 244; 1973 War, 235 Aramco, 150 al-As, Amr bin, 46–7 al-As, Uthman bin Abi, 48 Ashura, 163 Asia, 20, 184–5 Atlantic, 128, 135–6, 138 Australia, 262 Avanzini, Alessandra, 13

288

OMAN, CULTURE AND DIPLOMACY

al-Awamer tribe, 56 axis of evil, 172–3 Azd tribes, 46, 48 al-Aziz, Abd, 95 Ba’ath/Ba’athism, 186, 188, 217, 233 Baghdad, 174, 213 Bahla, 71 Bahrain, 34, 93, 113, 161–2, 164–5, 175, 198, 205, 207, 220, 240, 246, 260 Balad, 106 al-Baladhiri, Abu al-‘Abbas Ahmad b. Yahya, 48 al-Baleed, 265 al-Baluchi, Mohsen, 247 Baluchi tribe, 18, 31–2 Baluchistan, 31, 83 Bandar Abbas, 74, 81, 87, 95 Bangkok, 260 Bani Bu Ali, 101–2, 105–7, 125, 136, 148 Bani Ma’in tribe, 81, 95 Barclay and Livingston, 137 Barka, 74–7 Barth, Fredrik, 4, 25–6, 40, 42, 51, 54, 66 Basra, 48, 50, 76–7, 80, 83, 85, 95, 97, 103 Batavia, 84, 93 Batinah, 40, 46, 60, 61, 95, 261 Battuta, Ibn, 23 Beilin, Yossi, 237–8, 245 Belitung, 261, 265 Bengal, 82, 84 Bennett, Norman, 128–30 Bertram and Shepard, 135 Bhacker, M. Reda, 76, 81, 95–8, 111–13 Bhatias, 27–8, 30, 32 Bhavnagar, 84 Bhimani, Gopal, 117 bin Laden, Osama, 267 Bombay, 30, 84, 88, 94, 102, 113, 130, 135, 137 Bose, Sugata, 22, 35, 114, 251, 262 Bosnian, 212, 229 Botsford, Edgar, 137 Bourdieu, Pierre, 6, 66 Braudel, Fernand, 22 Bretton Woods system, 256

Britain/British, 10, 26–7, 35, 41, 72, 76, 78–88, 91–9, 101–8, 111–12, 114, 117, 119, 123–8, 130–5, 137, 140, 147–50, 155, 157, 161, 187–93, 217, 232–3, 242, 251, 253, 255, 260, 270; British Empire, 124 Buraimi, 95, 98, 102, 150, 232 Burundi, 41 Bush, George W., 172, 174, 227, 238 Bushire, 84 Cairo, 218, 233 Calcutta, 82 Calicut (Kozhikode), 83 Camp David, 232, 235, 248 Cannanore (Kannur), 83 Canning Award, 119, 147 Canton, 19, 258 Cape Delgado, 126, 132 capitalism, 114, 123, 131, 187, 251, 255 Carnatic, 82 Central America, 185 Central Asia, 55, 173 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 192 Chahbahar, 84 Chaise, Christian, 177 Chaudhuri, K. N., 22, 34–5, 251 China/Chinese, 133, 166, 185, 188–90, 261, 265 Christopher, Warren, 245 clash of civilisations, 229–30, 266–7 Cleuziou, Serge, 15–16 Clinton, President Bill, 170–1, 178, 221 cloves, 129–30 Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), 175 Colby, William, 192 cold war, 8, 149–50, 164, 166, 183–7, 190–5, 197–8, 205, 209, 211, 213–16, 237, 252–3, 266 Cole, USS, 205, 207 colonialism, 41, 255 Common Defence Fund, 219 communism/communist, 159, 184–8, 192, 197, 214 Comstock, Cheney & Co., 133 conciliation, 24, 40, 66, 217 Confederation of Arab Republics, 199

Index conflict resolution, 65 Connecticut, 133 Contras, 185 convivienca, 269 Conway, Lieutenant-General, 86 Cooper, Frederick, 129, 131, 254–5 Coromandel, 84 cosmopolitan/cosmopolitanism, 6, 8, 14–15, 19, 22–5, 27, 29, 31–2, 34–5, 40–1, 43, 54, 59–60, 113, 115, 119, 139, 145, 147, 153, 210, 217, 251, 253–4, 257, 262–3, 265–6, 269–70 Coupland, Sir Reginald, 112 Craig-Jones, Toby, 163 Cuba, 185 cultural pluralism, 25, 27, 40–3 Curzon, Lord, 114, 125 Da Lage, Olivier, 155, 159 Daba, 47 Dakhliyah, 18, 31, 60–1 Damascus Declaration, 201, 219–20 Dammam, 163 Davies, Charles, 94–5, 97, 101 decolonisation, 184, 217 Deep River, 133 desalination, 240–1, 243, 246, 263 Detroit, 209 Dhaya, 101 Dhofar, 13, 16–19, 33, 113, 150, 154, 159, 167, 187, 189, 191–3, 197, 263 Dhofar Liberation Front (DLF), 166, 189, 190, 232 Dhofar War, 164, 183, 190 Diba, 95, 97 diplomacy, culture of, 32–3, 39–40, 45, 54, 58, 62, 66, 145–6, 254 Diriya, 91–2, 98, 105 Diu Head, 126 Dubai, 176, 257 Duncan, Governor, 88 al-Duwaima, 207 East Africa, 17, 35, 41, 73, 84, 112, 114–16, 131, 133, 212, 229, 254 East India Company, 77, 80, 102–6, 251 Eastern Province, 163, 198

289

Egypt/Egyptian(s), 86–7, 98, 112, 150, 178, 185, 188, 201, 217–20, 232–3, 235–6, 240 Eilts, Hermann Frederick, 138 Emery, Peter, 53 Emirates, 257 Esposito, John L., 63–4, 268 ethnicity, 25–6, 54, 72, 108, 161, 251–2 Euphrates, River, 20, 103 Europe, 82, 131, 184–5, 214, 238 European Union (EU), 203, 229, 241–2 Facilities Agreement, 193–4 Fahd, King, 220 falaj, 40, 55–7, 62, 153, 243–4 FAO, 233 al-Fattah Ismail, Abd, 188 Finkenstein Treaty, 96 Flecker, Michael, 261 Ford, Gerald, 192 Fort Jesus, 116 France/French, 15, 22, 35, 41, 66, 72, 79–82, 85–7, 96–7, 112, 124, 130, 133, 149, 163, 251 frankincense, 13–16, 260 Free Trade Agreement (FTA), 213, 222–3, 226, 227 French Revolution, 86 Front for the Liberation of South Yemen (FLOSY), 188 Galle, 261 Gates, Robert, 178 Gaza, 233 General Treaty, 101, 112–14, 125 Ghazal, Amal, 118 Ghubash, Hussein, 64 Glassman, Jonathon, 115–16 globalisation, 8, 35, 44, 25–37, 260 Godji II, 28 Golan Heights, 233, 237, 239 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 194 Gore, Al, 241–2 Governing Council, 174–5 Greater Tunb see Tunbs Guevara, Che, 190 Gujarat/Gujarati, 27, 115, 118

290

OMAN, CULTURE AND DIPLOMACY

Gulf, 3–4, 8, 13, 17, 19, 21, 27, 30–1, 33, 48, 53, 79–80, 83–4, 88, 91–3, 95, 97–9, 101–4, 112–15, 117, 125–6, 133, 149, 153, 155–7, 160–2, 167–8, 172–4, 185–6, 189, 191–5, 197–201, 204, 209, 211, 213–14, 216, 218–21, 226, 235–6, 252, 261; Gulf states, 19, 146, 160–1, 164, 176–7, 186, 189, 197–8, 202, 209, 219 Gulf Air, 260 Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), 9, 19, 72, 158, 167, 169, 175, 176, 178 197–210, 213, 215–20, 239, 258 Gulf War, 168, 216, 237; First, 200, 202, 215–17, 219, 221; Second, 215 Gwadar, 31, 83, 87 Habermas, Jürgen, 267–8 habitus, 6, 8, 66, 145 hadar /hadari, 40, 58–9, 60, 62 Hadrami/Hadramaut, 13, 14, 17, 189 Hafr al-Batin, 219 Haidar Ali, 80–1, 83 Haiti, 86 Halliday, Fred, 153 Hamerton, Atkins, 127–8 Hamrin, 189 Haramel, 265 Harvey, David, 255–6 Hasa, 77 Hejaz, 92 Hekmatyar, Gulbuddin, 173 Herat, 173 Hezbollah, 175 Hidan, 45 Ho Chi Minh, 190 Hobsbawm, Eric, 18, 44 Hodeida, 92 Hooghly, River, 82 Hormuz, 3, 19, 22, 27, 80–1, 95 Houthi, 206 Hunter, Shireen, 165 Huntington, Samuel P., 266–8 Hussein, King, 233, 245 Hyderabad, Nizam of, 81, 83 Ibadi/Ibadism, 18, 42, 43, 45, 48–51, 63–4, 93, 117–18, 166, 273

Iberian Peninsula, 269 Ibn Ruzayq, Hamid ibn Muhammad, 74, 76 Ibn Sa‘d, 45, 47 Ibrahim, Anwar, 269 Ibrahim Pasha, 98 ijma’, 63 ijtihad, 63, 268–70 Île de France, 80, 85–7 India/Indians, 17, 21, 23, 29–30, 32, 72, 79, 81–7, 91, 101, 103–4, 115, 117, 124–6, 131–3, 149, 233, 260–2 Indian Ocean, 3, 6, 14–15, 19–25, 27, 30–1, 34–5, 39–41, 43, 48, 58, 79, 82–3, 85–7, 97, 111, 114–17, 124, 128, 130–1, 133, 139, 153, 193–4, 210, 229, 246, 251, 253–4, 259, 261, 263, 265–6 Indian Ocean Rim Association for Regional Cooperation (IOR-ARC), 253, 256, 262 Indonesia, 269 Indus Valley, 13, 20, 48 International Desalination Association, 263 International Postal Union, 233 intifada(s), 162–3 Iran, 3–5, 8, 19, 31, 55, 72–4, 78, 80–1, 146, 153–78, 185–6, 190, 194, 197–9, 202, 204, 206, 212, 214, 217–22, 229, 233, 236, 245, 261, 267–9; see also Persia/Persian Iranian Revolution (1979), 3, 154–5, 159–65, 194, 198 Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRG), 170 Iran–Iraq war (1980–8), 154, 168, 176–7, 198–9 Iraq, 20, 92, 150, 157, 164, 167–8, 172–5, 178–9, 185–6, 188, 195, 198–203, 209, 212–19, 221–2, 229, 231–2, 237 Islam, 18, 23, 29, 40, 42–8, 50, 63, 92, 115–16, 153, 187, 197, 212, 224, 226, 229, 267, 270 Islamic Front for the Liberation of Bahrain (IFLB), 162 Israel/Israeli, 186, 188, 214, 218, 222, 231, 233–41, 243–8 Italy, 242 ivory, 115, 119, 129, 132–3

Index Ivoryton, 133 Izki, 56 Jabal Jahfan, 207 Jabir bin Zaid, 50 al-Jabri, Saleh, 265 al-Jafna tribe, 47 al-Jahdhmi, Zayd b. Suliman b. ‘Abdullah, 45 Jamaa al-Salafiyya al-Muhtasiba (JSM), 163 Jamaica, 131 Janaba, 95 Jankel, Eric, 243 Japan, 183, 241, 243 Jasanoff, Maya, 82 Jebel Akhdar, 105, 149, 153, 189, 232 Jerusalem, 235; East Jerusalem, 233 Jewel of Muscat, 256, 261, 263–5 Johasmi pirates see Qawasim John Paul II, Pope, 267 Jordan, 178, 190, 204, 209, 233, 237, 240, 245 al-Julanda, 46–7 al-Julanda, Abd bin, 45–7 al-Julanda, Jaifar, 45–6 Julfar, 22, 48 Kantor, Mickey, 224 Karim Khan Zand, 80 Karzai, Hamid, 173 Katzman, Kenneth, 177 Kechichian, Joseph A., 4, 73, 145–6, 155, 158, 218 Keene, Edward, 126–8 Kenya, 112 Kerala, 30 al-Khalifa tribe, 162 al-Khalili, Imam Abdullah, 148–9 Khamenei, Ayatollah, 171 Khan, Ismail, 173 Khan, Sadiq, 80 Kharijite movement, 42, 49, 50 Khartoum Resolutions, 234 al-Kharusi, Nasir bin Ja’id, 118 Khasab, 93, 193 Khatami, Mohammed, 169–73, 221, 267–70

291

al-Khattab, ‘Umar bin, 47 Khawarij see Kharijite movement Khimji, Kanaksi, 29 Khimji Ramdas, 29 Khobar Towers bombing, 170 Khomeini, Ayatollah, 154, 160, 163, 166, 169, 217; Khomeinism, 160 Khor Fakkan, 95, 97 Khor Rori, 13 Kilwa, 115–16, 132 Kissinger, Henry, 192 kitman, 48, 50 Kochi, 261 Korea, 184, 243; North Korea, 172, 184; South Korea, 184, 241 Kosovo, 229 Kostiner, Joseph, 175–7 Kurds, 175 Kutch/Kutchi, 28–9, 32, 84, 117 Kuwait, 125, 157, 167–8, 175, 186, 195, 198, 200, 202, 205, 213–15, 218, 220, 231, 233, 235–6, 240 labour migration, 33, 41 Laft, 93 Lamu, 112; Lamu Archipelago, 112 Land of Frankincense Museum, 265 Lawati/Lawatis, 18, 31–2, 60 Lawrence River, 82 League of Arab States, 233 Lebanon, 175, 237, 240, 260 Leiden University, 271 Lenin, Vladimir, 190 Lesser Tunb see Tunbs Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 26 Libya, 212, 229, 245 Likud, 237–8, 248 Limbert, Mandana, 5, 41, 71, 197 Lingah, 92 London, 139, 233, 257, 260 longue durée, 15, 34, 155, 166, 179 Lynch, Marc, 267 Mac-Némara, Comte de, 85 Madras, 81 Madrid, 236–7, 252 Maghreb Permanent Consultative Committee, 199

292

OMAN, CULTURE AND DIPLOMACY

Mahra/Mahri, 17, 33, 189 Majid, Ibn, 24 majlis, 53, 61; Majlis A’Dowla, 49; Majlis Ash’Shura, 49 Makran, 83–4, 153 Malabar, 23, 81, 84; Malabar Coast, 83 Malay islands, 84 Malaysia, 257, 261 Malcolm, John, 84 Manama, 162, 178 Mandvi, 29, 117 Mangalore, 82 Manhattan, 34 Mao Zedong, 190 Marathas, 81, 83 Marín, Manuel, 242 Marseilles, 139 Marx, Karl, 190; Marxism, 187–8 Mascarenes, 84, 130 Masirah, 134, 192–4 Massachusetts, 133, 135, 137–8 al-Masūdī, 133 Mauritania, 240 Mauritius, 80, 85, 124, 130, 262 Mayo College, 29 Mazrui, 112, 116 Mecca, 24, 45–6, 92, 162, 164, 198 Medina, 45–7, 92, 164 Mediterranean, 22 Melbourne, University of, 271 Ménoret, Pascal, 92 Mesopotamia, 16, 20 Middle East, 45, 57, 116, 146, 149, 185–7, 191, 194, 211–12, 215–16, 226, 229, 231, 236–40, 243–4, 253, 260, 262 Middle East Desalination Research Center (MEDRC), 236, 241, 243, 244, 245, 246, 247, 263 Miles, Samuel, 27 Mina, 263 Mina Sultan Qaboos, 193 Ministry of Awqaf and Religious Affairs, 56 Ministry of Education, 30, 260 Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), 5, 7–8, 34, 72, 146, 154, 158, 165–6, 168, 176, 179, 192, 223, 226, 247, 253, 261, 264, 266, 270–1

Ministry of National Heritage and Culture, 259 Mirbat, 189, 263 Mohammed al-Jabri, 97 Mohammed bin Saud, 92 Mokha, 77 Mombasa, 112, 115–16, 132 Moresby, Captain Fairfax, 123–4, 126 Moresby Treaty, 123, 126 Morocco, 134, 209, 235, 246 Moscow, 166, 185, 190, 194, 239 Mozambique, 116, 134, 185 Mtoni, 130 Muawiya, 49 Mubarak, President, 220 al-Mudarrisi, Hojatolislam Hadi, 162 al-Mudayrib, 41 Mughal, 76, 81 Muhakkima, 49 Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, 92, 148 Mujahedin-e Khalq, 171 mujahedin, 194–5 Musandam, 93, 193 Muscat, 7, 16–17, 19, 27–30, 33, 44, 51–2, 59–61, 71, 76–7, 79–80, 82–7, 91, 93–6, 98, 101–3, 105–7, 111–13, 116–17, 119, 123, 134–5, 147, 149, 154, 159, 167, 177, 179, 192–3, 209, 218, 220, 233, 241, 243, 245, 247–8, 258–61, 265, 271 Muslim(s), 23, 28, 30–1, 42, 45, 47–51, 63–4, 77, 79, 94–5, 97, 116, 118, 126, 131, 133, 136, 156, 187, 212, 216, 221, 226, 229, 231, 268–70 Mutlaq al-Mutairi, 97–8 Muttrah, 32, 60, 77 Mysore, 79–82, 84–6, 88 Nadir Shah, 80 nahda (scholarly renaissance), 118 Najd, 91–3, 102, 105, 112, 137 al-Nami, Amr Khalifa, 50–1 Namibia, 185 Napoleon Bonaparte, 86–7, 96 Nasir Khan of Kalat, 83 Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 188–9, 232–3; Nasserism/Nasserist, 188, 233 Nateq-Nuri, Ali Akbar, 169

Index National Geographic, 264–5 National Liberation Front (NLF), 187–90 Nazi, 228 Nepal, 260 Netanyahu, Binyamin, 248 New Hampshire, 134 New York, 7, 34, 71, 137–8, 172, 205, 233, 265 Nicaragua, 185 Nicolini, Beatrice, 84 Niebuhr, Carsten, 28 Nixon, Richard, 190, 235 Nizwa, 269 Norsworthy, Robert, 135 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 184, 186 Northern Alliance, 172–3 nuclear energy, 169, 204; nuclear programme, 174, 176; nuclear weapons, 72, 169, 174, 177, 183 Obama, Barack, 209 Occupied Territories, 231, 237 oil, 3, 15, 19, 30, 33–4, 150, 164, 172, 186, 189, 198–200, 203, 211, 235, 252–3, 262 Oman Air, 256, 258–60 O’Reilly, Marc, 73 Organisation for the Islamic Revolution (OIR), 163 Organisation of the Islamic Conference, 233 Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), 213, 235 Oslo Accords, 248 Oslo II Agreement, 247 Ottawa, 240 Ottomans, 76, 80, 83, 93, 96; Ottoman Empire, 93 Owen, W. F., 113 Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, 176, 270 Pakistan, 31, 72, 233, 260 Palestine/Palestinians, 92, 186, 188, 221–2, 231, 234–5, 237, 241, 247–8 Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), 186, 215, 233, 237

293

pan-Arabism, 199, 202, 217, 233 Paris, 85–6 Pate, 112 peace process, 8, 146, 212, 222, 226, 229, 231, 236–7, 239–40, 244, 247–8, 252 Peacock, 134, 137 Pearson, Michael, 20–3, 35 Pemba, 112, 116 Penang, 261 Peninsula Shield, 200, 219 Peres, Shimon, 237–8, 247–8 Persepolis Festival, 156 Persia/Persians, 46–8, 60, 74–7, 79–80, 83, 91, 93, 96, 153–4, 161; Persian Empire, 47, 156; see also Iran Peterson, John E., 4, 17, 190 Petroleum Development Oman (PDO), 150 Piscatori, James P., 63–4 Plassey, Battle of, 82, 84 politeness, culture of, 3–4, 40, 42–4, 51, 54, 62, 66, 127 Pondicherry, 82 Popular Front for the Liberation of Oman (PFLO), 166–7, 192 Popular Front for the Liberation of the Arabian Gulf (PFLOAG), 189–91 Port Louis, 85 Portuguese, 27, 116, 126, 133–4 Pouwels, Randall, 111–12, 118 Pratt, Deacon Phineas, 133 Pratt, Read & Co., 133 Prestholdt, Jeremy, 138–9, 254–6 Punjab, 84 al-Qahtani, Muhammad, 162 Qajar, 80–1 Qalhat, 22, 27 Qal‘it al-‘Awamer, 56 Qani, 14 Qantab, 261 al-Qasimi, Sultan bin Mohammed, 93–5, 101 Qatar, 92, 176, 198, 206–7, 240, 246, 258, 260 Qawasim, 79–80, 88, 91–8, 101, 103, 114, 125

294

OMAN, CULTURE AND DIPLOMACY

Qays, Azzan bin, 28 Qishm, 81, 88, 92–3, 95, 101 Qom, 171 Quraysh, 45 Qutb, Sayyid, 269 Rabi, Uzi, 4, 64, 147, 190 Rabin, Yitzhak, 238, 245, 247–8 Rafsanjani, President, 169, 217 Raguraman, R., 257 Rajasthan, 29 Ramadan, Tariq, 269 Ramazani, R. K., 162 Ras al-Jinz, 15–16, 21 Ras al-Khaimah, 48, 79–80, 91–5, 97–8, 101–2, 111, 157–8 al-Rawahy, Sheikh Aflah, 64, 270 al-Rawas, Isam, 46 Red Sea, 115, 207 Réunion, 130 Rhapta, 132 Rhodesia, 185 Riphenburg, Carol J., 4 Risso, Patricia, 75–6, 84, 87, 94, 117 Riyadh, 92, 172 Roberts, Edmund D., 134–5, 137 Roman Empire, 48 Rome, 13 Rousseau, Jean-François, 85 Royal Air Force, 193 Royal Navy, 113, 137 Russia/Russian, 103–4, 133, 229 Rustaq, 81 Ruwi, 77 Saadiyat Island, 258 Sadat, President, 235, 247 Saddam Hussein, 164, 174, 198, 200, 213, 218, 231 Safavid, 76, 153 Said bin Khalfan, 138 Said, Edward, 266, 268 Said, Sayyid, 7, 29, 71, 91, 96–8, 101–7, 111–13, 115–19, 123–8, 130, 134–40, 146–8, 267 Salafi movement, 164 Salalah, 13, 33, 52, 60, 155, 189, 263, 265

Saleh, President, 206, 208–9 Salem, 133, 135, 137 Salem Rubayi Ali, 188 Salihi, 80, 85 al-Salimi, Abdulrahman, 46 Sampson, Anthony, 257 Sanaa, 205 Sandinista government, 185 Saqr, Sultan bin, 96 Sassanid, 47 Saud, King, 232 Saud, Prince, 220 Saud family, 92 Saudi Arabia/Saudi, 9, 33–4, 72, 92, 94, 149–50, 162–5, 167, 169–73, 175, 186, 198, 201, 204–5, 207–8, 212–13, 216–17, 219–20, 229, 232–3, 235, 240 Saudi National Guard, 163 Sayhat, 163 Sayyid Sultan, 7, 71, 87–8, 91, 93, 95–6 Schlesinger, Arthur, 192 Scoville and Britton, 137 Second Anglo–Mysore War, 83 Second World War, 33, 149, 183, 185 sectarianism, 40, 45, 166; nonsectarianism, 51 secularism, 166 Sedov, Alexander, 13 Seeb, 193 Sembcorp Industries, 263 Seringapatam, 88; Treaty of, 83–4 Servants of Construction, 169 Seton, David, 84, 96 Seven Years War, 82 Severin, Tim, 19, 258–61, 265 Shah of Iran, 154, 156–60, 166, 190, 194 Shahrur, Mohammed, 269–70 Shamir, Yitzhak, 237–8 Sharjah, 92–3, 157 Sharqiyah, 41, 60, 101–2, 105, 148 Shatt al-Arab, 198 Shenna, John, 176 Sheriff, Abdul, 22, 112, 126, 129–30 Shia, 31, 42–3, 160–3, 166, 175–6, 198, 218 Shiite, 161, 178 Shinas, 96–7

Index Shiraz, 80–1, 93, 97, 116 Shirazi, 117–18 Shivji, Jairam, 117, 135 Shourd, Sarah, 179 shura, 40, 43, 49, 55, 62–5, 268–70 Siam, 134 Sinai, 233, 235; Sinai Agreement, 235; Sinai Peninsula, 233, 235 Sind, 27, 48, 84, 93 Sindbad, 19, 256, 258–9, 265; Sindbad Project, 258, 260–1 Singapore, 19, 256–8, 261–5 Singapore Airlines, 257 Siraf, 261 Siraj ud Daulah, 82 Six-Day War, 233–5 slavery, 86, 105, 119, 123–4, 127, 131, 133; slave labour, 115, 129–32; slave trade, 105, 123–6, 128–31 Smith, Sir Lionel, 102, 107, 125 Smithsonian Institution, 138 Sohar, 22, 26, 32, 40, 43, 47, 54, 59, 76, 81, 95–7, 256, 258–9, 261, 265 Somalia, 235 South Africa, 185, 262 South America, 184, 187 South Arabian Federation, 199 Southeast Asia, 131, 187, 264 sovereignty, 99, 114, 124–5, 127–8, 132, 157, 161, 192, 201–2, 205, 234, 239, 251 Soviet Union/Soviet, 149–50, 156, 166–7, 183–6, 188–90, 192, 194–5, 198, 201, 214–16, 228–9, 237, 252 Spain, 105, 237 Sri Lanka, 260–1 Stalin, Joseph, 190 Standard Oil, 150 Strait of Hormuz, 3–4, 19, 80, 155–6, 159–60, 167–8, 177, 214, 219 Subramanian, Lakshmi, 114 Sudan, 235 Suez, 155; Suez Canal, 235 Suleiman bin Daoud, 55 Sultan Qaboos Centre for Islamic Culture, 52 Sultanah, 7, 71, 137, 138

295

Sultanate of Oman, 13, 17, 60, 145, 154, 187, 191, 192, 227, 233, 240, 242, 271 Sultan’s Armed Forces, 149, 154, 159, 190, 191 Sumayil, 97 Sumhuram, 13, 14, 21, 22 Sunni, 26, 42, 63, 161, 164, 166, 173, 175, 176, 198 Sur/Suri, 22, 95, 105, 106 Sur, Ka‘b bin, 48 Surat, 84 Swahili, 31, 115, 116 Swahili Coast, 99, 116 Syria, 92, 185, 186, 188, 201, 215, 219, 220, 233, 237, 240, 248 al-Tahi, Asad bin Yabr’ah, 47 al-Tahi, Ka’b bin Barsha, 46 Tahiay tribe, 47 Tajik, 173 Taliban, 172, 195 Tang dynasty, 261 Taqah, 189 Tehran, 159, 162, 165–6, 171, 178, 194 Tel Aviv, 247 Teng Theng Dar, 263 Thattha, 28 Thompson, Captain T. Perronet, 101, 107, 125 Thumala, 45 Thumrait, 189, 193 Tigris, River, 20 Tipu Sultan, 79, 81–4, 86–7 Tokyo, 240 Topan, Shivji, 117 Tosi, Maurizio, 15, 16 trade representative offices, 244, 246–8 Treaty of al-Tā’if, 207 Treaty of Commerce, 211 Treaty of Perpetual Peace, 114 Treaty of Seeb (1920), 148 Trucial States, 101 Tunbs, 156, 158, 204 Tunisia, 233, 240, 246 Turkey, 186 Umayyad, 49–50

296

OMAN, CULTURE AND DIPLOMACY

UN Security Council, 157, 222 UNESCO, 233 UNICEF, 233 United Arab Emirates (UAE), 9, 48, 156– 8, 167, 198, 203–5, 220, 240 United Arab Republic (UAR), 199 United Kingdom (UK) see Britain United Nations, 7, 9, 34, 149–50, 157, 213, 222, 228, 233, 235, 240, 245, 261, 265, 267 United States of America, 3–4, 8, 10, 30, 34, 73, 78, 119, 123, 132–8, 140, 146, 154–6, 169–78, 183–7, 190, 192–5, 201, 205, 207, 209, 211–16, 218–19, 221–4, 226–30, 233, 235, 241–2, 252, 259, 267–8, 270; see also Americans Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 10, 228 US State Department, 134, 170, 223, 225, 228, 242 al-Utaybi, Juhayman, 162 Uthman bin Affan, Caliph, 48, 49 Valeri, Marc, 4, 18, 31, 42, 44, 265 Van Buren, Martin, 137–8 Velayati, Ali Akbar, 165, 220 Vienna, 126, 240; Vienna Declaration (1815), 126 Vietnam, 185, 190 Voll, John O., 268 Vosmer, Tom, 261 Wahhabi(s)/Wahhabism, 88, 91–9, 101– 3, 105–7, 112, 150 Wahid, Abdurrahman, 269 walayah, 50 Walker, John Frederick, 133 waqf, 132 war on terror, 207, 209, 222 Warsaw Pact, 184

Washington, DC, 138, 166, 171, 192, 218, 240–1, 247 Water Resources Working Group, 240–1, 244–5 Waters, Richard P., 135–6 weapons of mass destruction, 172, 214 Wellsted, J. R., 28, 102–7, 127, 136 West Bank, 233 Wikan, Unni, 4 Wilkinson, John C., 4, 16–17, 40, 46, 55 Woods-Ballard, Basil, 149 World Health Organization, 233 World Trade Center, 172 World Trade Organization, 262 wuquf, 48, 50 al-Ya‘qubi, Ahmad b. Abu Ya‘qub b. Ja‘far b. Wahb b. Wadih, 45 Ya’ariba, 27, 116 Ya’rubi, 77; Ya’rubi civil war, 75 Yemen, 14, 17, 33, 46, 55, 72, 92, 118, 186–8, 204–10, 212, 215, 229, 232, 236, 240; Democratic Republic of Yemen (DRY), 205; People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY), 160, 167, 183, 186–7, 189–92, 195, 197, 199, 217, 232; People’s Republic of South Yemen (PRSY), 188; South Yemen, 150, 187, 189–90; Yemen Arab Republic, 188 Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP), 205 Yusuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah, 166–7, 170–1, 241–2, 245, 247, 271 Zaidi, 206 Zanzibar/Zanzibari, 18, 22, 26, 28, 29, 31, 111–13, 115–19, 123–39, 147, 251–2, 255 al-Zawawi, Qais, 193