Sheep magazine Archive 2: issues 10-17

While the Wilson government had every reason to be sensitive about
the military support it was providing to a slave-owning despot, whose
rule might charitably be described as medieval, there were additional
reasons for the all-embracing secrecy. This was an era in which the
developing world and the United Nations had rejected colonialism, and
Arab nationalism had been growing in strength for decades. It was vital,
therefore, for the credibility of the UK in the Middle East, that its hand in
Oman should remain largely hidden.
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John Akehurst, the commander of the Sultan’s Armed Forces from 1972,
suggests a further reason for the British government not wishing to draw
attention to its war in Dhofar: “They were perhaps nervous that we were
going to lose it.”
Certainly, by the summer of 1970, Britain’s secret war was going so badly
that desperate measures were called for. On 26 July, the Foreign Office in
London announced that Sultan Said bin Taimur had been deposed by his
29-year-old son, Qaboos bin Said, in a palace coup. In fact, the coup was a
very British affair. It had been planned in London by MI6 and by civil servants
at the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office, and given the go-ahead
after the election that brought Edward Heath into Downing Street.
The new sultan immediately abolished slavery, improved the country’s
irrigation infrastructure and began to spend his oil revenues on his armed
forces. Troops from the SAS arrived, first as the sultan’s bodyguards, and
then in squadron strength to fight the adoo. Eventually, the tide turned,
journalists were permitted into the country, and by the summer of 1976
the war was won.
SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 15