Oman’s Revolutionary Movement Posed a Radical Threat to Arabia’s Royal Dictatorships
During the 1970s, Oman had the most powerful left-wing revolutionary movement in Arabia. A British-organized counter-insurgency eventually snuffed out the movement with massive violence, but its emancipatory legacy still endures in Omani society today.
Queen Elizabeth ll with Qaboos bin Said, the Omani sultan whom the British helped install after the downfall of the Dhufar revolution. (Tim Graham Photo Library / Getty Images)
Today, Oman is known for its conservative, authoritarian monarchy. Yet the country was once home to a liberation movement that fought against the county’s British-backed Sultans.
The liberation front became one of the most significant revolutionary struggles in Southwest Asia during the 1960s and ’70s, before a massively internationalized counterinsurgency arose to defeat it. Despite its violence, this counterinsurgency later acquired a reputation as a “model campaign” for “winning hearts and minds.”
How did Omanis become the vanguard of anti-colonial revolution in an Arabian Peninsula ruled by monarchies? What effects did this “model” counterinsurgency have on them? Did the counterinsurgency prevent the revolution from having a lasting impact — or can a revolution survive defeat?
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