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| Volume XI, Summer 2004, Number 2 |
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| EXCERPT: Oman: Three and a Half Decades of Change and Development |
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| J.E. Peterson |
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Dr. Peterson is a historian and political scientist specializing in the Arabian Peninsula and Gulf, based in Tucson, Arizona. He has been, most recently, Sir William Luce Fellow at the University of Durham. His website is www.JEPeterson.net.
On July 23, 1970, supporters of
Qabus bin Said Al Said stormed
al-Hisn, the sultan's seaside
palace in Salalah, and forced his father the sultan to abdicate and accept exile. Two weeks later, the new 30-year-old sultan made his first appearance in the capital Muscat and a new era began. For the next few years, nearly any Omani, when asked what he or she thought of the new ruler, would almost inevitably reply, "Before him, there was nothing. Now, there is everything." Over the next decade or more, the sultanate made enormous strides in developing its potential and raising the standard of living of its people.1
Oman is a seeming anomaly in the Arab world. It rarely features in Western media and civil strife has been virtually unknown for several decades. It is neither a member of OPEC nor OAPEC, and its oil income is modest. Oman and Bahrain are the poor cousins of the Gulf Cooperation Council, but Oman proudly keeps an independent direction and maintains a conciliatory stance within GCC ranks. It retains close political and economic ties to Britain even though it has drawn close to the United States in security matters and was relatively quick in the 1980s to embrace diplomatic relations with China and the Soviet Union despite the protests of London and Washington. Its foreign policy is remarkably even-handed and flexible. Correct relations at a minimum were maintained with Egypt after the Egyptian-Israeli treaty in 1979, with Iran through and after the Iranian revolution, with Iraq through the Kuwait war and the sanctions regime, and even with Israel before and during the Palestinian intifadas.
In terms of political and economic development, generally speaking, Oman has accomplished as much or more than its fellow Gulf monarchies, despite starting from scratch considerably later, having less oil income to utilize, dealing with a larger and more rugged geography, and resolving a bitter civil war along the way. Of course, Oman's progress in the past 30-plus years has not been without problems and missteps, but the balance is squarely on the positive side of the ledger.
The job is still not finished, however; in some respects, it is only beginning. By 2003, more than 80 percent of all Omanis either were not yet born in 1970 or were too young to remember the hardships of the earlier years. Younger Omanis are hardly interested in the contrast between the pre-1970 and post-1970 situations. Their concerns are focused instead on rising levels of unemployment, dwindling natural resources -- most significantly, water -- Oman's future after oil, and what will happen when the heirless Sultan Qabus passes from the scene.
1 Works on post-1970 Oman are very uneven. An early account by an economic adviser to the sultan is John Townsend, Oman: The Making of a Modern State (Croom Helm; St. Martin's Press, 1977). A short introduction is Calvin H. Allen, Jr., Oman: The Modernization of the Sultanate (Westview Press; Croom Helm, 1987). A recent study is Calvin H. Allen and W. Lynn Rigsbee, II, Oman Under Qaboos: From Coup to Constitution, 1970-1996 (Frank Cass, 2000). Oman's foreign relations have been explored in Joseph A. Kechichian, Oman and the World: The Emergence of an Independent Foreign Policy (Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 1995). Studies on Omani society include Unni Wikan, Behind the Veil in Arabia: Women in Oman (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982) Fredrik Barth, Sohar: Culture and Society in an Omani Town (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983); Christine Eickelman, Women and Community in Oman (New York University Press, 1984); Jorg Janzen, Nomads in the Sultanate of Oman: Tradition and Development in Dhofar (Westview Press, 1986); Dawn Chatty, Mobile Pastoralists: Development Planning and Social Change in Oman (Columbia University Press, 1996); and Corien Hoek, Shifting Sands: Social-economic Development in al-Sharqiyah Region, Oman (Nijmegen University Press, 1998). Collected works include B.R. Pridham, ed., Oman: Economic, Social and Strategic Developments (Croom Helm, for the University of Exeter Centre for Arab Gulf Studies, 1987); and Marc Lavergne and Brigitte Dumortier, eds., L'Oman contemporain: État, territoire, identité (Éditions Karthala, 2002).
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