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Sultan Qaboos ben Said, who just died of colon cancer on Friday evening at the age of 79, has ruled his country for half a century, profoundly transforming the sultanate of Oman. In the Middle East, he embodied a form of stability, not only because of the length of his reign, but because of his concern for maintaining relations with all the countries of the region, whether from Sadat's Egypt, Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Israel or the Islamic Republic of Iran, often allowing countries in conflict to speak to each other discreetly.
On July 23, 1970, Qabous ben Saïd , who is about to turn 30, overthrows his father, Sultan Saïd ben Taymour, in a palace revolution with the support of British special forces, the famous British SAS who, in the past, had so many times confirmed the throne of Said. We can not even say that in this coup, no drop of blood was shed: Said, in a barrow of theatrical honor, injures himself trying to take his gun to resist.
In fact, it is likely that the idea of overthrowing his father was prompted in Qabous by the British. The situation of the sultanate worries them most. Saïd ben Taymour, a medieval despot, keeps his country in a terrifying state of backwardness: at his fall, there is only one clinic and only one school in the whole sultanate, completely closed to the outside world. The result is a deplorable health situation and widespread illiteracy. The sultan, however, made an exception to this policy of autarky by sending his son in 1958 to train abroad in the prestigious British military academy at Sandhurst. The long studies of the young Qabous widen the gap with his father. Upon his return in 1964, the latter assigned him to residence in Salalah, in the capital of Dhofar, next to the palace. He spent six years there, confined to a single room. Her mother, herself Dhofarie, comes from time to time to comfort Qabous and soften his detention. A true tale of a Thousand and One Nights in the middle of the 20th century!
The Dhofar War
The only foreigners authorized to reside in the country are the British soldiers who ensure the security of the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman , and of the Sultan himself. The legend even claims that there is only one telephone and that Sultan Said keeps it locked! In any case, the telephone network was effectively embryonic at the dawn of the 1970s. And, in application of the sovereign's whims, the doors of the city of Muscat, the capital, were closed at dusk and the inhabitants did not can go out at night only with a lantern at face height, on pain of being shot by the police. Since 1964, the region of Dhofar, in the south-west of the sultanate, is in the grip of an uprising caused by extreme poverty despite the presence of oil as well as the contempt of the capital for the ethno-linguistic specificities of the dhofaries. But quickly, outside powers supported the rebellion, first Saudi Arabia, then Egypt and finally China and the Soviet Union. In the West, we are alarmed by the risks of a communist push into the Arabian Peninsula, due to the retrograde policy of Saïd ben Taymour.
Even relegated to Salalah, Qabus is not as isolated as Said imagines. At Sandhurst, Qabous established useful relationships with British officers. The London authorities have had time to assess and appreciate his intelligence and hard work. The United Kingdom begins to find a weight in the isolation imposed by the monarch on his country. Admittedly, this isolation made it possible to keep France aside for the exclusive benefit of Great Britain, but now this autocrat is really too much a thing of the past. They do not seem to have had too much trouble convincing Qabus that the future of the sultanate lay in the overthrow of his father.
Cooptation of former adversaries
Barely seated on the throne, Qabous does not waste an instant to make up for lost time. His first gesture is to change the name of the country: the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman becomes the Sultanate of Oman to affirm the unity of the country. He starts building schools and hospitals, and engages in a total struggle against the Dhofar rebellion, openly supported by Beijing and Moscow. To do this, he relied on his British advisers, on Jordanian soldiers as well as Iranian soldiers dispatched by the Shah in 1973. Two years later, the revolt was crushed. The intelligence of Qabous is to co-opt his former enemies by showing magnanimity. The Dhofar is opened up by the construction of a Muscat Salalah highway of a thousand kilometers and the Dhofaris carve out the lion's share in the administrative jobs of certain ministries, such as that of petroleum. Its emblematic foreign minister, appointed in 1982, is also a Dhofari. The fact that Qabus himself is half Dhofari by his mother helps reconciliation.
Few leaders can boast of having shaped their country. This is the case with Qabous. In a few years, the transformation of the country is spectacular. To this day, official propaganda has spoken of the era that opened in July 1970 as nahda, the rebirth. In the streets, on buildings, and in offices, everywhere appears the paternal and reassuring figure of the sultan, the turbaned chief with the soft and regular face of the coppery complexion of many Omanis, rich in a long history of interbreeding between Indians , Arabs and Africans. When he came to power in 1970, who could have imagined that a reign of fifty years would open? The Omani population is young and today, very few have known any other sovereign than Qabus.
" An absolute monarch reigning by consensus "
He takes care to widen participation and consultation, according to the Ibadi tradition, but at homeopathic dose. It would never occur to anyone to speak of democratization, even if the Omani advisory council set up in the 1990s has now been elected since 2003. But the Sultan is the source of all authority and an observer has been able to describe him as an " absolute monarch " reigning by consensus ”. Opponents have little opportunity to organize: the formidable secret police take care of them before they can pose the slightest threat.
On the external level, Omani diplomacy is marked by a very great continuity according to a cardinal principle: Oman speaks to everyone and never breaks off his relations. Alone in the Arab world, Qabous has kept ties with Sadat after the Camp David agreements, after the fall of his ally the Shah of Iran, he has established cordial relations with the Islamic Republic, Oman has not broken with Iran, neither with Iraq, nor even with Qatar despite pressure from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Qabous received two Israeli prime ministers while maintaining close ties with the Palestinians. While South Yemen had served as a rear base for Dhofarian guerrillas, Qabous welcomed the former South Yemeni leaders fleeing their former country. Some of them even took Omani nationality, as did the adopted daughter of the former Libyan dictator Gaddafi. Finally, it was in Oman that, for eighteen months, they met in secret with Iranian and American diplomats, which led to the signing of the Iranian nuclear agreement in July 2015.
The two envelopes
Qabous, who has only been married for three years, has no children. Undoubtedly not to arouse vocations as a putschist in this country which has experienced five family coups in a century (including his own) and to retain all of his power until the end, he abstained to designate a crown prince, announcing that if the family council could not find him a successor in three days, he had written a name in two envelopes, one kept in Muscat and the other in Salalah. By this very fact, he reassured those who would have worried about a succession crisis after his death. Until the end, Qabous remained master of his destiny and that of the sultanate for which he took responsibility since the overthrow of his father half a century ago.