Sheep magazine Archive 2: issues 10-17

Strategically, the Dhofar war was one of the most important conflicts
of the 20th century, as the victors could expect to control the Strait of
Hormuz and the flow of oil. Thousands died, the British won and the
west’s lights stayed on. Today, the war is still studied at the Joint Services
Command and Staff College in Britain. But because of the way in which
information about the long campaign was so successfully suppressed at
the time that it was being waged, it has been all but blanked out of the
nation’s memory. Like the British wars in Eritrea, Indochina, the Dutch
East Indies and Borneo, it is remembered in Britain only by those men
who fought it, and their families.
Some aspects of Britain’s role in the coup and the war remain among
the deep secrets of the British state. Wilson’s correspondence on Oman,
for example, and that of his successor Heath, are to remain closed to
historians and the public until 2021. In 2005, a Foreign Office memo
was briefly made public that describes the way in which the old sultan’s
own defence secretary, Colonel Hugh Oldman, had taken the lead role
in planning the coup that deposed Oman’s ruler, in order to safeguard
British access to the country’s oil and military bases. The document was
then hurriedly withdrawn – its release, the Foreign Office said, had been
an unfortunate error.
49
Judging from the last decade and a half, there is little sign that the
British state is about to lose its appetite for war. The first conflict of the
new century in which the UK became involved was the post-9/11 assault
against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
SEPTEMBER 2016