The Dhofar Redemption: A Primer

This is a primer on the Dhofar Rebellion that took place in the 1960s and 70s in the South Arabian country of Oman. It is by no means a definitive history, and it does not quite do the country justice. Oman ensnared my imagination during my trips there during the summers of 2017 and 2018, their culture, climate, and people were distinctly different, and more agreeable, than anywhere else in the Middle East.

I hope you enjoy, and I hope that this helps anchor your thoughts as you read the rest of The Dhofar Redemption!

An airplane on a stick at a Royal Air Force of Oman (RAFO) base grabbed and held my attention like only obscure, historical aircraft could do. The British Aircraft Corporation (BAC) Strikemaster enshrined just above the desert floor bore a striking resemblance to one of my favorite USAF jets, the Vietnam-era A-37 Dragonfly. After dinner at the RAFO Officer’s club that evening, my small team of Americans found ourselves playing darts with the RAFO Colonel in charge of the active airbase. In between turns, I asked the seasoned fighter pilot about the Strikemaster on the pole just outside the entrance to the airfield.

He proceeded to regale me with stories of either his or his father’s experience in the Dhofar Rebellion. Stories of British SAS and Omani troopers ambushing religious extremist-communist fighters in the jebel (hills/mountains) near the Yemen border. Rocket attacks on the Southern port city of Salalah where I had flown into. Fighting in the open desert, then the soup-thick fog of the jebel in the same day. Retaliatory airstrikes on terrorist training camps deep into Yemeni territory.

As the Colonel spoke, he would step closer to the dart board, throwing from well in front of the fault line. He and his partner, another RAFO pilot, both ended up throwing darts from little more than an arm’s length from the target. They beat us handily, and the Colonel took his leave with an appeal to bring American military to his base full-time, as the rebellion “wasn’t truly over.”

I was never entirely sure whose feats of daring, real or imagined, the RAFO Colonel took credit for. Nor was I a fan of his dart-throwing strategy, but the mention of the Dhofar Rebellion spurred me into a fit of research that blossomed into a story idea.

The Dhofar rebellion could, arguably, be labelled one of the most successful Counterinsurgency operations in history, yet it remains largely obscure in the West. Probably because most of Western Society was focused on a little dustup occurring in Viet Nam. For that reason alone, it is interesting, but how success was achieved made the Dhofar Rebellion fascinating for me.

Oman is the oldest, continuously independent Middle Eastern nation, although its territory has shifted over the years. At one point, a huge maritime empire, Oman now is made up of eleven “Governates,” including two geographically separated regions, the Musandam Peninsula, and the exclave of Madha. An entire history of Oman would take many volumes and many years to write, so to simplify the history, at the beginning of the 20^th Century, Oman was divided into the coastal Muskat Sultanate and the inland Imamate of Oman.

In 1932, Sultan Said Bin Taimur ascended to power in Muscat. The Sultan was backed by the British, despite being considered isolationist, reactionary, and feudal. When oil exploration failed to turn up any black gold in the coastal sultanate, Sultan Bin Taimur set his sights on the inland imamate. In 1954, Sultan Bin Taimur’s forces attempted to use the turmoil following the death of the inland region’s leader to take over the Imamate of Oman.

With British support, the Jebel Akhdar War unified Oman into a single country, rather than a Sultanate and an Imamate. It also solidified Sultan Bin Taimur’s legacy as disliked and regressive. The Jebel Akhdar War ended in 1959, and served as a precursor to the Dhofar Rebellion, which broke out just four years later.

In 1963, the Dhofar Liberation Front (DLF) sought to violently oppose the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman and establish an independent Dhofar. DLF gained early support from the Saudi Arabian and United Arab Emirates governments, due to an argument between the House of Saud and the Sultan of Oman over the ownership of the Buraimi Oasis. The early days of the rebellion took the shape of a low-level insurgency with hit-and-run attacks being conducted against the Sultan’s forces and any foreign presence in the Dhofar Governate.

At this point in time, the Omani forces were poorly equipped, using mostly surplus British equipment left over from World War II. The DLF were receiving materiel support from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, China, and the Soviet Union. Largely due to this, the war started off very poorly for the Sultan’s forces.

So poorly, in fact, that in 1966, members of the Sultan’s own “Dhofar Force,” attempted to assassinate the Sultan. Their attempt failed, and Sultan Bin Taimur began a series of heavy-handed assaults upon any perceived threats in his populace and retreated to the safety of his palaces in Muscat and Salalah.

By 1968, the DLF had been reorganized into the Popular Front for the Liberation of the Occupied Arabian Gulf (PFLOAG). This newly reorganized movement took on a Marxist-Leninist stance, and garnered further support from China as a peasant-based communist rebellion. Small arms, rockets, and vehicles began pouring into the country through recently de-colonized Yemen. So much so that the communists were in control of Dhofar by the beginning of 1970.

In 1970, the British had enough with losing, and were tickled pink when Sultan Bin Taimur’s son, Qaboos Bin Said al Said, informed his British commanders that he intended to overthrow his father. The planning for such a coup had been in progress for weeks, and on 23 July, 1970, Sultan Bin Taimur was deposed in a “bloodless” coup.

It was “bloodless” because nobody reportedly died. Two people were shot during the coup, Sultan Bin Taimur shot one of the coup’s planners in the stomach before accidentally shooting himself in the foot while trying to cock his pistol. Wounded, the Sultan briefly escaped before being captured and shuttled off to the UK to live out his days in exile.

The new Sultan Qaboos Bin Said immediately set to work making progressive reforms. Abolishing slavery (in 1970!), changing the countries name from the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman to simply the Sultanate of Oman, ending his father’s isolationism and feudalism, and bringing about a campaign of modernization and education for the people of Oman. Simple things, like providing cheap transistor radios to spread the Sultan’s message across the country, helped show the people of Dhofar that communism didn’t reflect their Islamic ideals, and that allying themselves with the Sultan was a preferable option.

By this point in time, PFLOAG fighters had begun waging campaigns of terror across Dhofar. Tribal elders that didn’t ally with PFLOAG and provide young men to fight and young women as “servants” often found themselves flung from cliffs or buried alive, their people taken anyway. Camels, sheep, and other livestock were stolen for transportation and food, leaving the tribes with little or nothing to subsist on in the harsh desert.

Sultan Qaboos realized the best way to win the hearts and minds of the people of Oman, and especially the people of Dhofar was to provide them with not only what they needed, but what communism couldn’t give them. The jebeli (people of the mountains/hills) in Dhofar were proud herdsmen, whose status was determined by the number and quality of their livestock. So, Sultan Qaboos began importing camels, sheep, goats, and hardy cattle to distribute and sell around the country. More importantly, he relied on his British allies to bring medical and veterinary support.  

British SAS troopers operating in Oman would close with, engage, and destroy the rebels, who were now known as adoo throughout Oman, but they would also help provide security for British, American, and other nations’ Doctors, Dentists, Veterinarians, and Engineers while they visited isolated tribes to lend much needed assistance. Wells were built, teeth were checked, animals were vaccinated, and the tribal allegiances swung heavily in the Sultan’s favor.

The Sultan also began organizing tribal militias, called firqats, who opposed the PFLOAG in their areas. British officers and regular Omani soldiers regarded the firqats with suspicion, claiming getting them organized was much like “herding cats.” They were notoriously unreliable, especially out of their tribal territories, and refused to fight during holidays, at night, or when they didn’t feel like it. More allied Arab help, from the Kingdom of Jordan, Pakistan, and even Iran eventually came. By 1975, the PFLOAG was on its last legs, cut off from its bases in Yemen and in 1976 the rebellion was declared “over.”

Despite being declared over, isolated incidents related to the Dhofar Rebellion occurred as late as 1979. I personally believe that many Omanis never viewed the turmoil as truly finished, especially given the continued state of war in Yemen. Nevertheless, Oman flourished after the rebellion. Sultan Qaboos was the longest ruling Arab monarch when he died in 2021, and often regarded as one of the most tolerant and progressive. Foreign workers from Southeast Asian countries, a staple of most Middle Eastern economies, regarded Oman as one of the safest to work in. British involvement in the country dwindled from controlling virtually all aspects of the government, to viewing the beaches of Salalah as a tourist destination.

I saw the benefits of these efforts when I first visited Salalah during the khareef (monsoon season) in 2017. Oman sported an efficient police force and professional military for sure, but also a bustling city with modern amenities nestled alongside ancient palaces and castles. The Omani people were among the friendliest I have encountered in my trips to the Middle East, and it served to deepen my fascination. How could a nation of herders and farmers defeat a determined communist adversary with minimal outside support, when the strongest military power in the world couldn’t expel a determined communist adversary from a nation of farmers and herders around the same time on the other side of the same continent?

That’s a can of worms for someone else to open.