Create an FP account to save articles to read later and in the FP mobile app.

Sign Up

ALREADY AN FP SUBSCRIBER? LOGIN

Oman’s renaissance man

The democratic upheaval across the Arab world has now become so profound and overwhelming — so unstoppable — as to engulf arguably the least oppressive and most competent autocracy in the region: that of Oman. Compared with other Arab countries, Oman has scored comparatively well in recent years in human rights reports compiled by the ...

By Robert D. Kaplan, the Robert Strausz-Hupé chair in geopolitics at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

March 2, 2011, 12:32 AM

The democratic upheaval across the Arab world has now become so profound and overwhelming -- so unstoppable -- as to engulf arguably the least oppressive and most competent autocracy in the region: that of Oman. Compared with other Arab countries, Oman has scored comparatively well in recent years in human rights reports compiled by the U.S. State Department. Although there is no political freedom when it comes to choosing the country's ruler, citizens have participated in free and fair elections for the Majlis al-Shura that advises Sultan Qaboos bin Said. Reports of arbitrary killings and arrests and politically motivated disappearances are rare. In the four decades since he overthrew his reactionary father, Sultan Said bin Taimur, Qaboos has single-handedly brought the country from the throes of anarchy and rebellion to being a strong and modern country with the minimum of repression. I have never encountered a place in the Arab world so well-governed as Oman, and in such a quiet and understated way.

The democratic upheaval across the Arab world has now become so profound and overwhelming — so unstoppable — as to engulf arguably the least oppressive and most competent autocracy in the region: that of Oman. Compared with other Arab countries, Oman has scored comparatively well in recent years in human rights reports compiled by the U.S. State Department. Although there is no political freedom when it comes to choosing the country’s ruler, citizens have participated in free and fair elections for the Majlis al-Shura that advises Sultan Qaboos bin Said. Reports of arbitrary killings and arrests and politically motivated disappearances are rare. In the four decades since he overthrew his reactionary father, Sultan Said bin Taimur, Qaboos has single-handedly brought the country from the throes of anarchy and rebellion to being a strong and modern country with the minimum of repression. I have never encountered a place in the Arab world so well-governed as Oman, and in such a quiet and understated way.

Oman was historically two places. First, there are the coastal cities, which for millennia have been infused with the cosmopolitanism of the Indian Ocean that, thanks to the predictability of its monsoon winds, has brought to Oman the cultural richness of civilizations from as far away as East Africa and the East Indies. Then there is the desert hinterland, a warren of nomadic tribes battling each other for scarce water. When Qaboos came to power, the coast and the desert were politically split. A separatist rebellion had broken out in Dhofar, in the southwestern desert near new oil deposits. The rebellion was hijacked by Marxist radicals. The British backed the Omanis of the coast. When the 29-year-old Qaboos came to power in 1970, he offered a general amnesty to the Dhofari tribesmen. Tribal guerrillas who surrendered were incorporated into the British-trained armed forces. The desert interior was economically developed. Qaboos initiated a nonstop campaign of consultations with friend and enemy to unite the country. It was classic counterinsurgency-cum-nation-building, and over time it worked. By 1975 the desert rebellion was over and Oman was poised for development as a modern state.