THE
ROVING EYE Don't take your eyes off the
Gulf By Pepe Escobar
Picture a feudal, or neo-medieval,
paradise, the former home of legendary Sindbad the
Sailor, absolutely ruled by an unmarried, slim,
lute-playing septuagenarian who prefers to live
alone in his palace; paradigm of discretion Sultan
Qabus bin Sa'id. That, in a nutshell, is Oman.
Oman practices Ibadi Islam - neither Sunni
nor Shi'ite - also found in selected latitudes in
northern and eastern Africa. This couldn't be
further apart from Wahhabism, or al-Qaeda style
jihadi fanaticism. In Omani terms, Ibadi Islam
involves finding the right mix between tribal
custom and the state apparatus (Qabus is very fond
of consultations with tribal leaders).
Washington - and London - absolutely love
Qabus; the graduate of the Sandhurst military
academy in Britain is a lover of Mozart and
Chopin, and his strategic
acumen is compared to Singapore's founding father
Lee Kwan Yew. (When I went to Oman I actually felt
I was in an Arabian Singapore. It helped that I
had lived in Singapore. Everything in Oman is too
neat - and too Disneyland-perfect, in a
Singaporean Stepford Wives way.)
American
love is helped by the sultan having given a big
hand to George H W Bush during the first Gulf war
in 1991 against Iraq's Saddam Hussein, and
extending the favor to George W Bush, allowing for
20,000 US troops to hang out in Oman before the
invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq. To top it
off, the deepest stretch of the exceedingly
strategic Strait of Hormuz - essential for the
navigation of supertankers in the Persian Gulf -
lies in Omani territory.
Sorry to
intrude on your idyll Qabus, in power
since 1970, may still not be an object of
revulsion in his Gulf of Oman paradise. But his -
and Oman's elites - time may be running out under
the relentless great 2011 Arab revolt clock.
In The Economist's shoe-thrower index,
Oman is in no less than sixth place, right behind
Hosni Mubarak-deposed Egypt and way ahead of Zine
el-Abidine Ben Ali-deposed Tunisia and
Khalifa-in-peril Bahrain. Half the population of
less than three million is less than 21 years old.
Unemployment is rife - especially among the youth
carrying a useless diploma. Of a total of up to
40,000 high school graduates a year, only a few
find a job.
This could not but spell major
trouble. Bloggers and tweeters from Oman stress
there have been demonstrations in Sur and the
crucially strategic ports of Salalah (in the
south, near Yemen) and Sohar (where the police
used live ammunition, killing a 15-year-old boy;
the Omani police - as well as the Mukhabarat - is
trained in Jordan). No less than 3,000 protesters
were fought with tear gas. The road from Sohar to
al-Ayn - across the border in the United Arab
Emirates (UAE) - was shut down.
The
protesters are basically complaining about
miserable wages, compared to relentless, rising
inflation; and that most jobs go to foreigners
(employed by foreign corporations) or to Omanis
from the capital Muscat.
Peaceful
protesters say they won't relent until they get
better pay. The sultan has preemptively raised the
national minimum wage from US$316 a month to $520;
protesters want "not less than $1,300". And more:
better pensions; free further education for all
Omanis; and even the resignation of the
government. During the weekend, the sultan also
reshuffled his cabinet and the government
announced 50,000 more jobs, plus unemployment
benefits. The protesters' reaction: "Mere words".
What's also crucial is that none of this
is being fully reported in the Gulf. Al-Jazeera is
eerily quiet. Al-Arabiyya - a House of Saud
mouthpiece - is also very quiet. Not to mention
broadcasters in Oman itself. Al-Jazeera has been
heavily criticized in many quarters for weeks on
its sloppy coverage of Bahrain - compared to a
24/7 blitzkrieg when it comes to Egypt or Libya.
This has raised ample suspicion that for the emir
of Qatar, there's "fight for democracy" (in
northern Africa) and "fight for democracy" (in the
Gulf).
Dire straits Sohar - the
former home of Sindbad - 80 kilometers from the
UAE border and 200km from the capital Muscat,
deserves very close attention. It is Oman's
industrial powerhouse - harboring one the world's
biggest port development projects plus a refinery,
a petrochemical complex, an aluminum smelter and a
steel factory. Oil workers in Sohar are now
becoming protesters. It's not far fetched for them
to block pipeline exports as a means of pressuring
the sultan. Oman pumps around 860,000 barrels of
oil a day and exports roughly 750,000 barrels.
The global economy knows the Persian Gulf
is its number one oil hub. The paranoid notion
that the Strait of Hormuz would be shut down by
Iran in a war against the US/Israel was always a
chimera fabricated by neo-cons. Reality is now
spelling another scenario; real democracy
intervening in "beacon of stability" Oman.
From the point of view of the global
economy, the fight for democracy could become a
nightmare scenario. Were both Libya and Oman to go
totally out of the market, the global economy
would lose 2.5 million barrels of oil a day, 3% of
what it consumes. There's no evidence Saudi Arabia
could compensate for it without pushing their
equipment and infrastructure to the limit.
Translation; oil may go beyond $150 a barrel in a
matter of days. And this without even factoring
possible March protests in Saudi Arabia.
Oman is not exactly an accident of history
like the Gulf sheikhdoms - which were basically a
"string of pearls" in the British empire's naval
highway along the Indian Ocean. No wonder
imperialist-in-chief Lord Curzon called them
"petty Arab chiefships" (arguably that has not
changed much under imperial US administration). As
far as Washington is concerned, Oman remains the
proverbial "stable US ally" - with its highly
US-trained navy attached and, crucially, deployed
right at the mouth of the exceedingly strategic
Strait of Hormuz.
Oman is not exactly a
recent family hacienda established in the desert -
like the House of Saud. The ruling dynasty - al-Bu
Sa'id - has been in power longer than the US has
been a country.
But let's add some juice
to all this "stability". Oman has harbored one of
the most sophisticated opposition movements in the
whole Arab world - largely embodied by the Popular
Front for the Liberation of Oman. Some of its
leaders were co-opted by the sultan, but the
progressive, modernizing impetus remain.
As much as the US State Department goes
out of its way to stress Oman respects human
rights, political rights remain close to zero. No
free press, no free speech, no freedom of
assembly, no freedom of religion. Oman may not be
ultra-repressive Saudi Arabia, or Wild West Yemen
- but it's not Scandinavia either (Washington
think tank types insist on comparing the sultan to
Scandinavian prime ministers).
The great
2011 Arab revolt is, to quote Bob Dylan, "driving
90 miles an hour in a dead-end street" in Bahrain;
is about to make a pit-stop in Saudi Arabia; and
it has already hit Oman. The septuagenarian sultan
has diabetes, no heirs to his throne, and is now
officially puzzled by unemployed youth and angry
workers right at this doorstep. Beware of
humanitarian imperialism possibly rearing its ugly
head in Libya. But all eyes should focus on the
Strait of Hormuz; on the Omani, not the Iranian,
shore.
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