Process
Status Items Output None Questions None Claims None Highlights Done See section below
Highlights
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As the British empire was expanding eastwards in the nineteenth century, Britain sought to dominate the Indian Ocean. It oversaw the partition of the al-Busaid empire between Muscat, the capital of today’s Oman, and Zanzibar in 1861. Britain held informal colonial power over a nominally independent, Muscat-based Sultan. In Aden and the future Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, and Qatar, Britain became the formal colonial authority.
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Although Dhufar’s subsistence economy offered little to British colonialists during the Victorian era, its geographical location promised connectivity between British Aden and India
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Britain participated in a series of conflicts to crush an anti-colonial movement that sought to reinstate the rule of a religious Imam.
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engaged with left-wing ideas and with anti-colonial decolonization movements such as Arab nationalism. Some were inspired by indigenous ideals of autonomy from outside rule that had motivated previous uprisings in Dhufar. Drawing on these heterogeneous political persuasions for their anti-colonial visions, Dhufaris founded the Dhufar Liberation Front in 1965.
✏️ As a province that was being mistreated by the nation, seen as second class, taxed more, etc.. Their exposure to Arab nationalism and anti colonial thinking drove them to create the liberation front. 🔗 View Highlight
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After Israel’s defeat of Egypt and Syria in 1967, Arab nationalism was in crisis. In newly independent South Yemen, Dhufar’s neighbor, a left-wing independence movement came to power in 1967. Maoism was also ascendant in liberation movements globally. In this context, front members elected a leftist-dominated leadership in September 1968, taking a new name: the Popular Front for the Liberation of the Occupied Arabian Gulf (PFLOAG).
✏️ The evolution and strengthening of the resolve of the front 🔗 View Highlight
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aspired to liberate the Arabian Gulf from British colonialism, both formal and informal,
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PFLOAG embraced Marxism-Leninism, with many policies taking inspiration from Maoism.
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margins of the al-Busaid and British empires was Dhufar. Bordering with Yemen to the east, separated from the north of today’s Oman by some eight hundred kilometers of desert, Dhufar prospered in ancient times thanks to the export of frankincense.
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Its goals included the emancipation of women, enslaved people, and others who had been historically marginalized. Female and male guerrillas fought side by side, and girls and boys studied together in revolutionary schools. Whereas previously one’s social background had determined access to resources, the front’s redistribution efforts undermined tribalism.
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Dhufar became a “colony within a colony”
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in South Yemeni bases and in front-controlled areas of Dhufar’s mountains, PFLOAG set about transforming society.
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establish popularly elected committees for local governance.
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promoted education and literacy for all as well as access to health care. Dhufari revolutionaries created new infrastructure projects
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the regional rise of left-wing ideas, from South Yemen to the neighboring liberation movement, led Britain and its allies to fear a “Red Arabia.” They anticipated threats to western access to the rich hydrocarbon resources of Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, and Kuwait.
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British interventions were strategically significant: planning and leading the campaign; enabling air strikes and aerial supplies of food, water, and equipment so that government troops could maintain a year-round presence in the mountains; and deploying Special Air Service personnel from 1970.
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Britain mobilized its allies. Jordan deployed pilots and engineers, while Iran — then under the rule of the Shah — provided helicopters, jet fighters, and several thousand “boots on the ground.” By 1974, there were an estimated 11,000 counterinsurgency personnel in Dhufar, facing some 1,800 front guerrillas and militias.
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counterinsurgency deployed devastating violence. Air strikes destroyed homes and livelihoods. The campaign forcibly displaced many Dhufaris, and imposed food and water blockades.
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disseminating propaganda that condemned revolutionaries as immoral, the campaign recruited Dhufaris into progovernment paramilitary forces. It distributed food, water, and welfare services to these paramilitaries, and to civilians under government control.
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Whereas the front emphasized social egalitarianism, counterinsurgency programs distributed resources through tribal networks, stoking rivalries.
✏️ The usual modus operandi. Pit people against each other. Put them in survival mode. 🔗 View Highlight
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Britain orchestrated a coup to install Sultan Qaboos bin Said, who ruled the country from 1970 to 2020.
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Oman’s revolution and its revolutionaries created lasting legacies on multiple scales. One national legacy is the country’s welfare state. Although conventional narratives within and beyond Oman credit Sultan Qaboos for the country’s socioeconomic development, it was the revolutionaries who helped establish a developmentalist agenda. The counterinsurgency and the postwar government subsequently embraced that mandate.