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Who is the Sultan of Muscat and Oman?
Is he a yes-man or a no-man?
Is he noblest, like the Roman?
Or abominable, like the snowman?
Is he a pro- or anti- status quo man?
So went a piece of newspaper doggerel discussing the ruler of the Sultanate in question: Said bin Taimur, a man of antiquated views dealing with an internal rebellion made up of those with even more antiquated views. For if the Sultan, as wisecracking mercenary officer P.S. Allfree described it, was of the medieval period, his adversaries had scarce advanced from the mores of the Prophet Muhammad.
The Imamate of Yemen were the adversaries in question, the “terrible three” of Ghalib and Talib bin Ali and Suleiman bin Himayer, men who despised the Sultan’s connections with the British government and (relatively speaking) modern views. But what really galled them was the Sultan’s overrunning their land to ensure continued oil exploration, a violation of the Treat of Seeb which guaranteed autonomy to the Oman Imamatet. They began a low-intensity conflict, emplacing mines along Oman’s scattered roads, conducting hit and run attacks against the Sultan’s thinly spread armed forces.
Bin Taimur knew the center could not hold, not as it was. His “army” such as it was were merely his own tribesmen levied en mass, no match for the embittered, blooded combatants of the Imam. Indeed, an expedition known as the Muscat and Oman Field Force had been practically torn to shreds by the Imamate’s fighters and sympathetic villagers after its sole attack had been repulsed. Foreign soldiers were the answer. To fill his ranks, he embarked on a recruiting drive among the people of Pakistan’s Baluchistan region, and soon the Baluchis outnumbered Omanis in the Sultan’s Armed Forces. For his officers, he turned to his defense allies, the British government, and recruited “contract officers” to train and command his men, veterans of the British Army proper and more esoteric (and semi-mercenary outfits) such as the Trucial Oman Scouts.
These contract officers, men like P.S. Allfree, Colin Maxwell, and especially the modern-day proconsul Brigadier Pat Waterfield, basically ran the Sultan’s Armed Forces. There was little “regimental” soldiering in those early days: officers wore what they chose, whether it was the beret and cap-badge of their old regiments or a flowing keffeyah in the tradition of Jordan’s own Glubb Pasha or the Trucial Oman Scouts. The sole concern was whether the men could hack in Oman’s inhospitable climate and conditions, and whether they could make soldiers out of the Baluchis recruited by the Sultan.
This they proceeded to do, and it wasn’t long before fighting patrols were being sent out against the Imam’s fighters. Surprised by the sudden ferocity of the mercenary-helmed SAF, the Imam and his followers promptly retreated up the Jebel Akhdar mountain, and atop this redoubt they stayed, decisively repelling any assault leveled against them.
For a time, that was. For by 1958 the Sultan had a new source of officers coming in, ones a bit more straight-laced than his somewhat free-wheeling contract officers. These men were “seconded” from the British Army—that is to say they were merely loaned out to the Sultan, and retained their rank, pay, and employment by the British Army rather than holding rank, receiving pay, and having their commission be a part of the Sultan’s Armed Forces. There was, as P.S. Allfree somewhat glumly noted, a bit of friction between the mercenary officers and the seconded soldiers, due to the former being a bit cliqueish and having a know-it-all attitude and the latter sneering at the mere mercenaries they were expected to work with.
The commander of these seconded officers, and indeed now the SAF as a whole, however, was determined to work past these. Colonel David Smiley was a veteran of conventional and unconventional warfare alike and Allfree glowingly described him as the perfect mix of “guerilla pugnacity and Guards punctilio” that the SAF so desperately needed to rally against the Imam’s stronghold. Establishing a strong working relationship with the top mercenary officer Colin Maxwell (whose role he had usurped), and soothing the ego of the aloof Waterfield, Smiley soon managed to overcome the initial antagonism between the two groups, and soon seconded and contract officers alike were working hand-in-glove.
The assault on Jebel Akhdar could not have been pulled off solely by the SAF’s soldiers, for even with their training the Baluchis were not up to British standards. Instead no less than two squadrons of the SAS itself, supported by Ferret armored cars and conventional infantry from nearby Aden, as well as two squadrons of the picturesque Trucial Oman Scouts, were in 1959 dispatched to support Colonel Smiley.
The battle was, to be somewhat coarse, a curbstomp. Against the SAS main effort the Imamate’s fighters stood no chance. The Imam and his two loyal allies fled into exile, the Sultan’s reign was unassailable, and the seconded officers, as well as the British regulars who had supported the whole adventure, packed up shop and went home, leaving the mercenaries to get on with the business of building an Army from the ground up.
Of course, the whole house of cards came tumbling down when Qaboos executed his coup d’etat. But that’s another story in and of itself…
Image Sources:
http://www.jepeterson.net/dennison_collection.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/4210129/Colonel-David-Smiley.html
Literary Sources
Arabian Assignment by Col. David Smiley
Warlords of Oman by P. S. Allfree
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