Sheep magazine Archive 2: issues 10-17

One strategically vital war, waged by Britain for more than a decade,
was fought for most of that time in complete secrecy. In January 1972,
readers of the Observer opened their newspaper to see a report
headlined “UK fighting secret Gulf war?” On the same day, the Sunday
Times ran a very similar article, asking: “Is Dhofar Britain’s hush-hush
war?” British troops, the newspapers revealed, were engaged in the war
that the sultan of Oman was fighting against guerrillas in the mountains
of Dhofar in the south of the country.
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Four years earlier, the devaluation crisis had forced Harold Wilson’s
government to pledge that British forces would be withdrawn from all
points east of Suez by December 1971 – the only exemption being a
small force that was to remain in Hong Kong. Now the Observer article
was demanding to know: “Has Britain really withdrawn all her forces
from the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula? Or is the British
government, like the Americans in Laos, waging a secret war without the
full knowledge of parliament and public?” The Observer located one of
the insurgency’s leaders, who told its reporter that the war had begun
with an “explosion” in the country on 9 June 1965, triggered by what he
described as poor local governance and “the oppression of the British”.
By the time the Observer and Sunday Times were publishing their first,
tentative reports, Britain had been at war in Oman for six-and-a-half
years.
Situated on the south-west corner of the Arabian peninsula, the Sultanate
of Oman is bordered by the United Arab Emirates to the north, and by
Saudi Arabia and Yemen to the west and south-west. The country also sits
alongside the Strait of Hormuz, the 33-mile wide waterway through which
SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 15