The long stability which the Gulf has enjoyed is now at risk". Edward Heath,_April 1969.
The Gulf is most important economic base in the third world, and is an area of crcuial strategic importance for world imperialism. This derives from three factors.
First, it supplies,50% of Britain's oil, and a similar amount of Europe's needs. Japan gets as much as 80% of its oil from the Gulf, and the US war effort in South-East Asia depends on it. The Gulf accounts for over a quarter of the worlds annual oll procucuon, and more than half of the world's known reserves.
Secondly, although there is oil elsewhere, and more is being found (Alaska), Gulf oil is much cheaper than any other kind to produce. It costs 6 cents per barrel in Kuwait and 9 cents in Saudi Arabia, as opposed to 62 cents in Venezuela and 1.51 dollars in the USA. This means that Europe saves hundreds of millions of pounds by having Gulf oil available - it also means that protectionist US oil firms loot the US public of 3,500 million dollars per year by refusing to allow the import of cheaper oil into the Us. Oil companies in the Gulf, British and US, make huge profits by selling this cheap oil to Europe. Over the period 1956-60 the rate of profit in Iran was 71% and in Saudi Arabia 61%. Even now, Britain makes £200 million a year profit on its total investment of around £1,000 million in the Gulf.
This means a huge boost to the balance of payments, both direct and indirect. revenues in the Gulf purchase over £100 million per year of Britain's exports. Most important, the decision neo-colonial regimes in the Gulf to bank their revenues in London, as sterling balances means that Britain does not have to pay for its oil; the money allegedly paid to foreign governments is available in London for British domestic or foreign investment. Kuwait alone has over £1,000m. banked in London and could wipe out virtually the whole of Britain's reserves if she tried to cash in her account. Not that she can do so, if she tried Britain would block it.
A third reason for the Gulf's importance is ILS SLALCZIC position. Revolutionary developments in the Gulf would upset other Middle Eastern states and would be a great encouragement to revolution in the Indian sub-continent. Conversely the Gulf has a high strategic value for imperialist countries as a post where troops can stationed for potential use against insurrectionary forces in these areas.
This economic and strategic importance is well known: but it goes with an almost complete ignorance of the • area 1n the Western press and among the left. Either nothing is said (about political repression, imperialist plots) or else one is dished up with lies about 'stability", 'modernising rulers' and 'progress.
THE PRESENCE OF REACTION Two big local powers, created by imperialism, are competing for domination of the Gulf. They are Iran and Saudi Arabia. The Shah's Iran was established by a CIA coup in 1953 and is now strengthening itself through a land reform programme designed install capitalist agriculture in the countryside. Iran is the only local state with a substantial navy. Saudi Arabia is using the Iranian threat to call for a defense of the "Arabism of the Gulf". She is backed by Egypt and most other Arab states. It is a chauvinist attempt to protect the local Arab ruling class. The threat from Iran exists in that she is trying to use historic claims and the Iranian minority in Bahrein to claim that island as Irans 14th province. The solution to this conflict between these two reactionary states can only be the united struggle of the Iranian Arab working classes to overthrow both regimes.
Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, both staunch allies of the West, use their oil revenues to bribe other Arab regimes, like Egypt. and Jordan, into supporting imperialism. The US has a big air base at Dhahran in Saudi Arabia and British and US military advisory groups serve with the Saudi arily Britain also helped to set up a £120m. Saudi base at Khamis Mishayt in 1963-65, where it used Air Work Ltd, as a cover to send in RAF personnel in civilian clothes.
At the moment Britain officially rules nine political entities in the Gulf: Bahrein, Oatar, and seven Trucial Oman states, of which the largest is Abu Dhabi. Britain will "leave the Gulf in 1971, and has grouped these nine entities into a Union of Arab Emirates. This is a clique of old Sultans, Emirs and Sheikhs which Britain has had to knock together in a hurry after it decided to pull out for economic reasons. Britain still has 6,000 TrOODS the Gulf but these will be withdrawn.
The purpose of this neo-colonial Union is to guard western oil interests after 1971. Kuwait is actively subsidising it. The base of Union will be its army, supplied and Correspondent of The Times has described its ornicered by Britain The Defense intended role: "It certainly seems to be the case that the British hope to be able to achieve milars after 1971 what they achieve now through the presence of 6,000 troops. Their proxies would be local forces commanded and equipped to British standards" (March 3rd 1969.) The rulers of these little states, artificially sustained by Britain, have been coming to London in a regular flow over the past nine months, to sign up more investment and to get arms Though they will have one united Union army, some of them also have private armies, and a firm of British ex-army officers, Watchguard International Ltd. has been signed on by several Gulf rulers to train up local counter-revolutionary forces.
Britain's departure is little more than formal: she will still control the Union army (now the Trucial Oman Scouts) and in the separate entity of the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman, her position will remain exactly the same as at present. The Sultanate is nominally independent: in fact it is a British colony. On two different occasions in this century, in 1913 and in the 1950s, the British had to send in troops to suppress tribal risings led by the Sultan's traditional rival the Imam. The Sultan's cabinet are, with one exception, Englishmen and his army othered by britain. reactionary state in the world. Slavery is still In e Sultanate most legal, and the Sultan has over 5,000 personal black slaves working on his plantations and staffing his personal bodyguard. The laws are unbelievable: is illegal to football, to smoke in public, to eat in public, to wear glasses trouser or s hair to im Tot medicine or to have one's hair Sultan's prisons are full of political prisoners, many of them sick and undergoing torture; it is normal for them to be shackled.
Britain that the Sultan independent; and that she has "leased" an off-shore island, Masira which now has a big RAF base and BBC relay installations from him. The Sultan himself tries to keep out of view: he has not been seen for five years since his army fired at him on a paradeground and may believe he is dead foreign correspondents are now allowed into his realm, and his London Consulate is not even in the telephone (It's in a block of flats next to the Albert Hall, at 7 Albert Court, telephone 01-589-1256). The Sultanate will be the key to British rule in the Gulf after 1971 and the possibility of it falling to the revolution undermines British plans in the area as a whole.
In one province of the Sultanate, Dhofar there has been guerrilla war for five years and the Marxist-Leninist Popular Front has liberated nine-tenths of the country. The Sultan's mercenary army of Pakistanis and Omanis with British officers has been routed.
The British media have almost completely suppressed this news, and the Foreign Office and the Ministry Defence refuse Meanwhile RAF planes, Navy launches and army officers are in active combat against the rebel area.
One story in the Sunday Times (February 15 1970) did admit that the Front "now controls all of Dhofar except the desert and the narrow coastal plain where Salala and its airstrip are situated". Yet when The Black Dwarf rang up to find out who had given this story to the press we were told it was an anonymous serviceman who was "politically MILES BASIC STATISTICS The Gulf area consists of Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Suadi Arabia. the Trucial Oman states, hewin O tar, and the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman. It is known to Arabs as the Arab' Gulf, to Persians and to most other people as the Persian' Gulf. This problem of the name is an object of dispute. In fact it Name Bahrein 200,000 Qata ruca oman slalc Abu Dhabi 465,000 Sharjah Ras al-Khaimah Ajman Umm al-Qaiwan Fujairah Muscat and Oman 750,000 30,000,000 Iraq 8,000,000 Kuwait Saudi Arabia 4,000,000 AN ARAB PROLETARIAT It is not only in the mountains of Dhofar and Oman that imperialism is threatened. The oil industry has created a proletariat. In Bahrein a reformist workers movement waged a series of strikes in 1954-56, followed bi severe repression. Then, in March 1965 when 1,500 workers were sacked, the 13,000 worker force staged several days of armed resistance, demanding the right to unions, the release of political prisoners and an end to unjustified dismissal. The Wilson government has refused these demands. In Qatar in 1963 a bloody urban rising was suppressed after several days. In Saudi Arabia hundreds of workers in the Damman oil fields were arrested after anti-US demonstrations in June
The Black Dwarf 23rd March 1970 Page 11
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jumpy" and is now "out of the country". SAUDI ARABIA BAHRAIN THE GULF SOUTH YEMEN