The Dhofar War as a Documentary: An Analysis of ‘Britain's Other War’ (1972)

Abstract

The Dhofar insurgency (1963–1976) is one of the forgotten conflicts of post-1945 Middle Eastern history, and throughout this war the United Kingdom provided military assistance to the Sultan's Armed Forces of Oman. The Thames TV documentary series This Week provided a rare contemporary report on Dhofar with its December 1972 film ‘Britain's Other War’. This article examines the making of this documentary and its findings, concluding that although ‘Britain's Other War’ had gaps in its coverage, it presented an accurate appraisal of the nature of the Dhofar conflict and the UK's role in aiding the Omani royal regime.

On 28 December 1972, British viewers watching the Independent Television (ITV) documentary series This Week would have seen footage of troops boarding a military helicopter in a distant war zone, accompanied by the programme's distinctive title music, an excerpt from the Intermezzo from Jean Sibelius’ ‘Karelia Suite’. The pilot would have stood out from the soldiers he was ferrying because he was a white man with blond hair and olive-green jungle fatigues. Some viewers may perhaps have wondered if they were viewing a film shot in South Vietnam, where the US military commitment was in the process of being wound down by Richard Nixon's administration. In fact, this documentary focused on the insurgency in Dhofar, Southern Oman, and the airman was either a Royal Air Force (RAF) pilot seconded to the Sultan of Oman's Air Force (SOAF) or a contract officer serving with the same force. The title of the documentary – ‘Britain's Other War’ – alluded to the fact that the United Kingdom's armed forces were not just fighting in the ‘troubles’ in Northern Ireland, but were also involved in an anti-guerrilla campaign to help Sultan Qaboos bin Said fight a Marxist–Leninist insurgency intent on overthrowing his absolutist rule. ¹

This article analyses and evaluates ‘Britain's Other War’ as a piece of historical source material, relating its reporting to recently declassified archival evidence on the Dhofar War, examining what it disclosed about the UK's involvement in this Middle Eastern conflict waged over fifty years ago. It concludes that while the Thames TV news crew shot their documentary under strict restrictions imposed by both the British and Omani governments, the ensuing film was remarkably candid about the nature of the war and the support that Britain was providing to Qaboos and his military, the Sultan's Armed Forces (SAF). ‘Britain's Other War’ also highlighted one of the main conclusions of recent scholarship on Dhofar, which is that contrary to presumptions about the supposed importance of ‘hearts and minds’ tactics by the SAF and its British allies, the Sultanate's eventual victory over the insurgency had more to do with the use of military force than the enactment of socio-economic reforms to win over the support of the civilian populace.

This article starts with a summary of the Dhofar War and a brief historiographical analysis of the literature on this conflict and Britain's role in it. It then turns to the efforts of both the Labour and Conservative governments of this era to control press coverage of the war in Oman – most notably with reference to the contribution played by the 22nd Special Air Service Regiment (SAS) – and the circumstances in which This Week was invited to report on Dhofar. It will conclude with a summary of the documentary and an assessment of how well its content reflected what historians now know about the characteristics of this counter-insurgency campaign.

Britain and the Dhofar War, 1963–1976

Following the October 1798 treaty between Sayyid Sultan bin Ahmed and the East India Company, the Busaid dynasty ruling in Muscat became a client of British imperialism, granting their patrons exclusive influence over their foreign policy in return for military protection from their internal and external foes. ² During the Jebel Akhdar rebellion (1957–1959), the government of Harold Macmillan concluded a defence treaty with Said bin Taimur in July 1958, which led to the establishment of the SAF. From its commander-in-chief (CSAF) down to the platoon level, the SAF's chain of command was dominated either by seconded officers from the British armed forces or Britons and other foreign nationals who signed contracts to serve the ruling dynasty. Although the SAF did enlist Omani Arabs, until the early 1970s, the bulk of its troops were recruited from Balochistan, which added to its character as a quasi-colonial rather than an indigenous military force. ³

The Dhofar Liberation Front (DLF) rebellion emerged as a result of indigenous resentment against Said's autocratic rule and its British backers, and it crystallised around expatriates in neighbouring countries in the Arabian Gulf, including Dhofaris serving in their security forces. Relying initially on support from Egypt, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia, the DLF began guerrilla warfare in Dhofar in April 1963, although it was to formally date the inception of its revolt from 9 June 1965. The SAF managed to contain rebel activity until 1968, the year following Britain's withdrawal from Aden and South Arabia and their takeover by the insurgent National Liberation Front. Augmented by aid from the newly established Marxist–Leninist state in South Yemen (and also from other Communist powers), ⁴ the DLF renamed itself the Popular Front for the Liberation of the Occupied Arabian Gulf (PFLOAG) in September 1968, ⁵ reflecting objectives that had broadened from liberation of Dhofar to the overthrow of all the pro-Western monarchies in the Gulf region. In the context of Britain's military withdrawal from and closure of its bases ‘East of Suez’ (1968–1971) and the growing strength of the PFLOAG in Dhofar, the Conservative government acquiesced in a coup instigated by Said's British advisors on 23 July 1970, which put his son Qaboos on the throne. ⁶ The Prime Minister Edward Heath, the Foreign Secretary Sir Alec Douglas-Home, and the Defence Secretary Lord Carrington approved aid to support the expansion of the SAF, which grew from 3,200 troops in mid-1970 to 9,000 two years later. ⁷ In September 1970 the Heath government committed special forces soldiers from the SAS to serve in a counter-insurgency role in Dhofar, principally to raise a tribal militia the British referred to as the Firqat Forces to fight the PFLOAG. It took five years of major combat operations – which included the commitment of Jordanian and Iranian troop contingents in 1974–1975 – for the SAF to clear the PFLOAG out of Dhofar. Even after the formal end of hostilities in Christmas 1975 low-level guerrilla activity continued in Southern Oman for the remainder of the decade. ⁸

Traditional accounts of the Dhofar War had access to meagre sources, including memoirs from participants. Influenced by the latter in particular, they reflected the notion that Britain waged wars against insurgents with strategies shaped by the principles of ‘minimum force’ which restricted the use of violence, and ‘hearts and minds’ policies to address popular grievances with socio-economic reforms. The Sultanate's eventual victory was attributed to development funded by oil revenues, and enlightened measures of reconciliation such as Qaboos’ amnesty for PFLOAG fighters who voluntarily surrendered, and the enlistment of Dhofaris in the Firqat Forces. ⁹ With greater access to archival sources and witness testimony, this image of the conflict has been challenged, as indeed has the received wisdom about a supposedly enlightened, politically sophisticated, and culturally conscious ‘British Way’ in counter-insurgency warfare. ¹⁰ Recent research on this war not only covers a greater range of perspectives – including that of the PFLOAG and its supporters – but it also emphasises that the defeat of the insurgency only took place after a tough campaign fought by the SAF across Dhofar's mountainous terrain, and the war also had the potential to escalate into a wider confrontation with South Yemen. This new scholarship also highlights the use of coercive measures under Qaboos to cow Dhofari civilians into obedience, and also the limited scale of civil development not just in the battleground itself, but across Oman during the course of the war. ¹¹ There are still gaps in our knowledge of the conflict, and due to the comparative ease of access to the UK National Archives and other documentary repositories in Britain the literature is generally Anglocentric and less focused on the role of other participants in the conflict. Nonetheless, over the past two decades historians have acquired a more detailed understanding of the war in Dhofar.

Dhofar, the British Government, and Official Secrecy

In contrast to Northern Ireland, there was far less extensive British and international press reporting on the war in Southern Oman. While the former conflict involved the commitment of up to 22,000 troops in 1972, Britain had at most 641 personnel on the ground in Dhofar, about half of whom never ventured beyond the perimeter defences of the RAF airbase outside the provincial capital of Salalah. 38 British servicemen were either killed in action or died of other causes during the war, so only a small proportion of the UK public was directly affected by operations in Oman. ¹²

For policymakers in Whitehall, the commitment to defend the Sultanate against the PFLOAG represented a dilemma. Officials in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and the Ministry of Defence (MOD) concluded that an insurgent victory would threaten the Busaid dynasty's survival, and would also destabilise other pro-Western Arab autocracies, leading to a takeover of the oil-rich Gulf by revolutionary regimes hostile to UK strategic and economic interests. ¹³ However, Britain's economic travails, the ‘East of Suez’ withdrawals (completed in December 1971), the overstretch of its armed forces by operations in Northern Ireland and NATO commitments, and institutional memories of the South Arabian insurgency (1962–1967) ruled out overt intervention in Dhofar. ¹⁴ Ministers, senior civil servants and the military Chiefs of Staff were also wary of parallels between the PFLOAG insurgency and the USA's experiences in Vietnam, which had started as an advisory mission and ended with open embroilment in a costly and protracted war. ¹⁵ British policy and strategy were therefore influenced by the requirement for aid to the SAF to be limited in scale and cost and concealed both from domestic and international scrutiny, not least from non-aligned governments. ¹⁶ The British wanted to minimise global and regional attention to its aid to Oman so as to promote its status as a sovereign state, an objective which was aided when Qaboos ended the Sultanate's diplomatic isolation by taking it into the Arab League and the UN in September and October 1971. ¹⁷ Both the Conservative and Labour governments in office at this time were aware that most of their Arab counterparts would acquiesce in British military assistance to Oman, provided it did not involve the outright commitment of combat troops. As one senior Egyptian official put it to the UK ambassador to Cairo in May 1972, Britain could have as many advisors and technicians in the Sultanate as it and Qaboos required, but when it came to directly fighting on the battlefield, it should ‘let Arabs kill Arabs’. ¹⁸

Officials in Whitehall and senior British Army officers both at home and (until December 1971) in the Gulf were also determined to keep the involvement of SAS troops in Dhofar a secret from both Parliament and the public. Throughout the post-war period the British Army's special forces had been used for politically sensitive operations where the open commitment of its regular units would have caused a diplomatic furore. Two other examples involving Oman include the storming of the rebel tribal stronghold of the Jebel Akhdar at the end of the Imamate rebellion (26–29 January 1959), ¹⁹ and an operation involving the SAS and the British-led Trucial Oman Scouts to occupy the Musandam Peninsula (December 1970 to April 1971), asserting Omani territorial control over this enclave. ²⁰ Previous operations showed however that official secrecy could be breached as a result of operational failures which led to the deaths of special forces personnel in battle; for example, during the Radfan campaign in South Arabia in April 1964 two SAS soldiers were killed by rebels and subsequently decapitated, with their heads reportedly being displayed in the city of Taiz. ²¹ The initial orders given by the overall commander of British forces in the Gulf to the officer in charge of the SAS contingent in Dhofar on 18 September 1970 therefore focused on providing a bodyguard for Qaboos, training assistance to Omani government forces and also ‘hearts and minds’ measures such as the provision of medical aid to the Dhofari tribes, but it also stipulated that their operations were secret, and that SAS soldiers were to avoid combat with the PFLOAG and remain in territory under the control of the SAF. ²² However, FCO diplomats drawing analogies with US special forces activity in Laos had already noted that the SAS's involvement in Dhofar would eventually be exposed to external scrutiny, and the last commander of British forces in the Gulf noted privately that the Regiment's own war-fighting ethos meant that its soldiers would not just confine themselves to ‘digging wells’. ²³

These predictions proved to be accurate. The Heath government had to go public about the presence of the SAS in Oman after the Sunday Telegraph (then as now, ironically, a pro-Conservative newspaper) broke this story in late December 1971. ²⁴ The MOD also had to contend with coroner's inquests that followed deaths of military personnel overseas, in addition to regional newspapers reporting on locally recruited SAS soldiers being killed in action. The Peterborough Evening News, for example, reported the death of Trooper Michael John Martin in a South Yemeni artillery strike on the border fort of Habarut on 5 May 1972. ²⁵ The British Army's special forces also directly fought the PFLOAG, most famously when the insurgents assaulted the coastal town of Mirbat and its garrison on 19 July 1972. Without SOAF air support and a timely airlift of reinforcements the eight-man SAS team at Mirbat would have been overwhelmed and its soldiers either killed or captured, giving the PFLOAG a propaganda triumph. The UK government, however, decided that publicising this victory would expose the role of its elite troops in Dhofar. The MOD went as far as to contact Fiji's High Commissioner in London, Josua Rabukawaqa, as one of the SAS soldiers killed at Mirbat – Talaiasi Labalaba – was Fijian; Rabukawaqa was requested not to publicise Labalaba's death in combat, and also to refer any press queries to the MOD. ²⁶ During the war there was some protest within the SAS over the MOD's press restrictions; on 11 July 1972 the regiment's commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Peter de la Billiere, wrote to his superior to argue the case for having a sympathetic journalist sent to Dhofar to report on the SAS's ‘hearts and minds’ activities. However, appeals like this were of little avail to the MOD. In January 1974 the officer commanding the SAS Squadron in Oman received a revised directive from the Chiefs of Staff noting that his contingent's presence in Dhofar had been acknowledged in Parliament, and that it was no longer classified information. However, the directive continued, ‘like other SAS deployments worldwide, public and press attention shouldn’t be drawn to it’. ²⁷

It is also important to understand the party-political context behind official secrecy. Although there were some Conservatives who were critical of Britain's Oman policy, ²⁸ the consensus within the party was that the UK had essential defence interests in the Sultanate and other Gulf monarchies, and a Cold War-related mission to defeat any Communist-led insurgencies that threatened them. Heath entered office in June 1970 with a specific pledge to reverse the ‘East of Suez’ withdrawals enacted by his predecessor, Harold Wilson, and only relented when he realised that this was no longer feasible. ²⁹ In contrast, Labour's left – most notably the MP for Harlow, Stan Newens – condemned aid to the Busaid dynasty as imperialistic. In much the same spirit the party's International Department published a report on Oman in November 1975 which bluntly stated that ‘Britain under a Labour government is involved in the support of a regime which is indefensible by any socialist standards’, due to its character as an autocratic monarchy and its human rights record. ³⁰ In office, Labour Ministers were wary of provoking protests from the party by engaging with any public discussion on Dhofar. For example, in May 1975 the Foreign Secretary James Callaghan quashed a suggestion by his counterpart in Defence, Roy Mason, to promote the civil affairs work the SAS was doing with Dhofari civilians, on the grounds that left-wing backbench MPs would draw unflattering analogies with the US Green Berets in Vietnam. ³¹

Press Reporting on the Dhofar War

Both Said and Qaboos imposed strict controls on media reporting on Dhofar, ³² although there were limitations to their ability to manage the international press. Independent Television News (ITN) reported prior to the July 1970 coup that the UK government ‘would probably welcome a takeover by Qaboos’, which as it happened, reflected official British collusion in Said's downfall. ³³ British and Omani censorship could also not prevent an American journalist, Jim Hoagland, from publishing an unflattering account of the Iranian contingent's performance in battle in mid-December 1974. ³⁴ This created a diplomatic uproar for the then-CSAF, Major General Timothy Creasey, as Hoagland's report not only caused outrage in Tehran but led the Iranians to suspect that his sources had come from the SAF. ³⁵ The Sultanate was also unable to block press coverage from journalists embedded with the PFLOAG, such as the Anglo-Irish reporter Fred Halliday. ³⁶ Halliday's articles – printed in broadsheets such as the Guardian and The Sunday Times – were treated by the FCO as being inspired by insurgent and South Yemeni propaganda, and its Information Research Department shadowed his public meetings in the UK. ³⁷ Halliday also published Arabia Without Sultans in 1974 which denounced British imperialism in the Gulf, and also the UK's role in fighting the Dhofar insurgency. Forty years later he later admitted his own biases, noting retrospectively that Arabia Without Sultans reflected ‘not just … the perspective, but also the tone and language of the revolutionary left’. ³⁸ Another source of reporting sympathetic to the PFLOAG came from the Luxembourgish journalist Gordian Troeller, who produced a report broadcast by BBC2 in June 1969 purportedly filmed in the ‘liberated’ territory of Dhofar, although the FCO's Arabian Department concluded from an analysis of the footage that it had actually been recorded in South Yemen. During the same year Troeller co-wrote an account of the revolt with the French journalist Marie-Claude Deffarge for the West German news magazine Stern, which depicted the rebellion against the Sultan as being conducted by ‘Arab slaves’. ³⁹

In response to pro-insurgent reporting, both the British and Omani authorities became more proactive in seeking to influence the press. Qaboos gave interviews to Arab journalists, while Brigadier John Graham, the CSAF from March 1970 to September 1972, tried to counter pro-PFLOAG news stories by inviting Deffarge and Troeller to Oman for an interview in January 1971. Graham also hosted two French journalists reporting on Oman – Eric and Rosy Rouleau – to promote the Sultanate and the British government's version of events in Dhofar. ⁴⁰ In October 1972 Qaboos also granted permission for ITN to film a short report on the Dhofar War, which was presented by Ranulph Fiennes, a former loan service officer with the SAF (1968–1970) who was known in Whitehall as a critic of Said's regime. Although MOD officials feared that ITN would reveal the presence of both British and Iranian special forces personnel in the Sultanate, the SAS thought that Fiennes was a potentially friendly commentator, and one of its officers recommended inviting another sympathetic journalist to provide a more in-depth report on Dhofar. ⁴¹ The brief news clip that ITN broadcast was greeted by MOD officials as not being ‘misleading or unduly damaging’, and Fiennes published his own memoir of the war three years later. Although his book condemned Said's rule it also included descriptions of PFLOAG atrocities – including executions of suspected government sympathisers and the rape of Dhofari women – and praise for the apparently reformist character of Qaboos’ rule. ⁴²

The invitation to Thames TV to Oman originated with a visit to London in mid-June 1972 by Colonel Hugh Oldman, a British contract officer who was also Qaboos’ Defence Minister. Oldman was concerned by the dissemination of PFLOAG propaganda in the UK – on 14 June a Liberal Peer, Timothy Beaumont, arranged the screening of a pro-insurgent documentary in Parliament – and he met with Thames TV executives to discuss shooting a film on Dhofar. ⁴³ Thanks to Oldman, the This Week reporter Vanya Kewley and her crew subsequently gained authorisation to visit Oman in the autumn of 1972. Kewley was a veteran war correspondent who had reported on Vietnam, the Nigerian Civil War (1967–1970) and the Bangladeshi War of Independence (1971). She had extensive experience with the hazards of conflict reporting and had faced them with considerable courage. This was evident at one point in ‘Britain's Other War’ with the composure and good humour she showed when one of her interviews was interrupted by outgoing artillery fire. ⁴⁴ Although the MOD insisted that she could not film SAS soldiers, and her film was made under the supervision of the SAF, ⁴⁵ as discussed in the following section she gained considerable access to the Sultan's military, and publicised aspects of the war in Oman that the British government was nervous about disclosing.

‘Britain's Other War’ – A Retrospective Analysis

As a piece of primary source evidence, the documentary film has the advantage of providing a more in-depth analysis of a current affairs story than a shorter news bulletin, and historical documentaries can also provide rich period footage and interview material for scholars and students to analyse. As far as shortcomings are concerned, potentially valuable material may have been edited out, and with war documentaries the effect of being ‘embedded’ (to use a contemporary term) with the armed forces or military wing of any belligerent can make reporters implicitly or explicitly biased in favour of their hosts. Recent conflicts from Iraq to Ukraine highlight that journalists may end up reporting through the perspective of a state military or non-state faction either as a result of their own political sympathies, dependence on their hosts (including the provision of armed protection) which provides the latter opportunities to censor them, or a sense of personal association and identification with the troops or fighters they are accompanying. ⁴⁶ Readers should bear these points in mind with reference to the content of ‘Britain's Other War’.

The film footage shows that the This Week team visited the Omani capital of Muscat, Nizwa in the North, Salalah and the RAF air base on its outskirts, and the SAF outpost at Sarfait on the border with South Yemen. The latter had been established on 16–19 April 1972 after an airborne landing of a SAF battalion (known as Operation Simba), and was intended to cut the PFLOAG's supply lines and infiltration routes. Kewley also interviewed SAF and SOAF officers, including Brigadier Jack Fletcher (the commanding officer of the SAF Brigade in Dhofar), who was also mentioned by name in the report. Two others include Lieutenant Colonel William Kerr (the commanding officer of the Muscat Regiment, the infantry battalion occupying Sarfait at the time of filming) and Major Raymond Barker-Schofield (a contract officer commanding the Dhofar Gendarmerie), although neither was named. There were no interviews with any SAS soldiers in this programme, or any featuring Omani officials, the SAF's rank-and-file, Firqat Forces militiamen, or civilians. This probably reflected official control over This Week and the MOD's own interests in restricting any reporting on British Army special forces activity. The results, therefore, were misleading in one respect, as Kewley stated in her report of the frontier region that ‘it is along this border where the war in the Oman [sic] is being fought’. ⁴⁷ In fact, at the time of filming the SAF, SAS, and Firqat Forces were fighting in the East of Dhofar to establish a zone controlled by Qaboos’ government where the civilian population could be guarded and isolated from the PFLOAG.

Kewley's description of the causes and course of the war reflected both British and Omani government narratives, particularly the emphasis on the Dhofari insurgency being taken over by a Communist leadership, and being backed by both the Soviet Union and China. Her report also openly referred to the UK's strategic and economic interests in keeping open access to the region's oil-fields. ⁴⁸ At the time of filming, Beijing's own support for the PFLOAG and other revolutionary movements across the globe was waning because of Mao Zedong's own rapprochement with the West, and his conclusion that the USSR had replaced the USA and its allies as the People's Republic's main external threat. ⁴⁹ The British were however slow to see the implications of this for Dhofar, and FCO officials continued to complain about Chinese aid to the PFLOAG into the following year. ⁵⁰ Kewley's narrative also echoed what became the ‘nadha’ (‘renaissance’) interpretation of Omani history that became official orthodoxy during Qaboos’ regime, describing Said's reign as ‘repressive’ and ‘positively medieval’, and emphasising the reformist and modernising ambitions of his son and successor, whose accession followed a palace coup in July 1970. As noted above, we now know that Oldman, Graham, and other SAF officers were instrumental in this takeover. ⁵¹ Kewley also stated that Qaboos’ own aspirations for internal economic development had been hampered by the war in Dhofar, with 50% of the national budget being spent on defence. This was an accurate observation on her part. The costs of the war, and the priority placed on defeating the PFLOAG, at this time were also reflected in the British Embassy in Muscat's own reporting to the FCO. ⁵²

In six respects the This Week documentary shed important light on the war in Dhofar. Firstly, it emphasised that the SAF was under British command, highlighting the role that contract personnel played as well as loan servicemen who were on temporary secondment from Britain's armed forces. ⁵³ The SOAF was particularly dependent on British aircrew for its missions, whether this involved air support to ground troops or the airlift of soldiers and supplies. The SAF's contract officers were of considerable utility for the British government because they could quickly carry out politically sensitive tasks without the need for London to be consulted in advance, and be passed off officially as ‘Omani’ rather than UK military personnel. ⁵⁴ This could be seen, for example, in the use of contracted SOAF personnel in the punitive air-strikes launched against the PFLOAG base in Hauf, South Yemen (25–26 May 1972), or with the interrogation of captured insurgents held as detainees by the Sultan's security forces. ⁵⁵ Their use, however, did carry some political risk, as was shown during Kewley's interview with Barker-Schofield when he was asked what the difference was between him and the mercenaries who had fought in Congo. Although Barker–Schofield's answer contrasted the professionalism and expertise of contract officers with the ‘rather thuggish types’ enlisted to fight Congolese rebels in 1964–1965, ⁵⁶ this distinction would have been treated as meretricious by contemporary critics of British policy in Oman.

Secondly, ‘Britain's Other War’ also highlights the motivations of Britons who fought in this conflict. Loan service personnel had to volunteer for secondment with the SAF because – in contrast to Aden or Northern Ireland – Oman was not a formal operational deployment for the UK's armed forces. ⁵⁷ While taken from a small sample of SAF officers, interview comments reflect references in memoirs to opportunities British Army and Royal Marine officers gained from experiencing an active military operation, and also testing tactical knowledge, skills, and training in actual combat. ⁵⁸ One interviewee recorded off-camera stated that Dhofar offered any Army officer the only opportunity to test his aptitude for command in battle, which could not be replicated in military exercises at home or with the British Army of the Rhine in Germany: ‘Here he comes and finds out whether his tactical ideas do in fact fit live bullets, and he learns very quickly’. ⁵⁹

A SOAF pilot questioned by Kewley described active service in Dhofar as ‘an experience you can’t find anywhere else’, compared to routine training with the RAF back in Britain. ⁶⁰ A loan service officer from the Scots Guards commanding a platoon with the Muscat Regiment at Sarfait contrasted his experiences favourably with service in Northern Ireland the previous year, because he had a clearly identifiable enemy to fight and could order his troops to open fire ‘without worrying about hurting innocent people’. ⁶¹ Barker-Schofield expressed similar views, although his comments also display imperialist nostalgia, expressing approval at the fact that British officers in Oman were addressed as ‘sahib’ by their underlings, and describing Dhofar as a substitute for the Indian Raj: ‘When we lost the North-West Frontier we lost the finest training ground the British Army ever had’. ⁶² Barker-Schofield's colonial reveries may have been idiosyncratic – and his comrades considered him an eccentric – but they reflected the former CSAF Graham's own admission in his diaries that he was ‘an unashamed imperialist’ who saw the British Empire as a positive force in world history. ⁶³

Thirdly, and as an unintended consequence of MOD restrictions, this documentary accentuated the war-fighting emphasis of the SAF's operations, as emphasised in the directives from the CSAF which directed his forces to ‘end the rebellion in Dhofar’ by ‘seeking out [to] kill or capture the hard core of the enemy’. ⁶⁴ Five minutes of footage shot in Sarfait show Muscat Regiment soldiers with 82 mm mortars and gunners with C Battery, the Royal Oman Artillery, conducting fire missions against the PFLOAG, in addition to a SOAF Strikemaster jet flown by a British pilot carrying out an air-strike directed via radio by Lieutenant Colonel Kerr. ⁶⁵ During his interview with Kewley, Kerr described the strategic intention of the Sarfait base as being to cut off the PFLOAG's supply route into South Yemen, and claimed that it was proving to be a success. ⁶⁶ Kerr's confidence in his garrison's position and tasks was not reflected by the Defence Attache at the British Embassy, Colonel Courtney Welch, who reported in September 1972 that the occupation of Sarfait committed a battalion of troops from an overstretched SAF. The following February, SAF positions came under constant shelling from the PFLOAG and from South Yemeni forces across the border, and Sarfait acquired the ominous nickname of ‘Dien Bien Phu’ from its garrison. ⁶⁷ Had the This Week team arrived in Oman two months later than it did, it would have been impossible to fly Kewley and her crew into this border base, assuming that the SAF had been willing to still permit them access to it.

Kewley also interviewed a group of British loan service and contract airmen at the SOAF base in Salalah, with this exchange with a Strikemaster pilot revealing the military-centric focus of the counter-insurgency campaign:

Kewley: What do you think of the enemy soldier on the ground at the other end of your rockets and bombs?

SOAF airman: They started the war and we didn’t, and I’ve personally seen several people come in with their limbs blown off that we’ve had to rescue on our side through the enemy laying mines and causing general alarm and despondency, so I have absolutely no qualms about getting back at what is right … correction, getting back for what is right, which is getting at these people who are causing a lot of trouble. ⁶⁸

Another Strikemaster pilot questioned if operations would be different if he could see the enemy guerrillas he was trying to kill, merely replied that he was reliant on ground forces for accuracy in air-strikes: ‘The fact that the army tells you this is a target, that is what we’re here for’. ⁶⁹ During Said's time, there had been disaffection among British servicemen with the SAF over the ethics of supporting the Sultan's regime, ⁷⁰ and there were some cases of military dissent even under Qaboos; Graham, for example, sent home a Warrant Officer of the British Army's Intelligence Corps assigned to interrogation duties in January 1971 because he expressed sympathy with the insurgency's cause. ⁷¹ In contrast, Kewley's interviewees showed no qualms about the morality of their role or the Sultanate's cause, regarding their tasks in fighting the PFLOAG in purely professional, if not clinical, terms. It goes without saying that both the insurgents and their sympathisers would have rejected the SOAF pilot's statement that the PFLOAG ‘started the war’, placing the blame on the British interlopers and their backing for the Busaids.

Fourthly, while the MOD could prevent This Week from filming the SAS, it could not stop Kewley from asking questions about them. Her commentary noted their deployment to Dhofar under the cover of the ‘British Army Training Team’, stating that:

Their mission is something of a mystery. Officially, they are there to train the Omanis, but soldiers from the Training Team have been killed in action, and questions have been asked in Parliament about their exact role. So far, no satisfactory answers have been given. ⁷²

Kewley questioned Brigadier Fletcher about the SAS, to his evident discomfort. The Commander, Dhofar Brigade claimed that ‘[the] British Army Training Team is not part of the Sultan's Armed Forces’, that ‘their job is training the firqa, the firqa being the tribal irregular forces which assist us in the fight against the communist guerrillas’, and that they were also conducting ‘hearts and minds’ tasks within the local tribes which included medical aid. ⁷³ These were half-truths, as SAS activities were closely integrated with those of the SAF, and both they and the Firqat Forces had fought alongside Omani government forces in offensives to reconquer Dhofar such as Operations Jaguar and Leopard in October-November 1971. ⁷⁴ Fletcher responded to Kewley's follow-up question about why SAS soldiers involved in ‘training’ had been killed in battle with the assertion that cases such as Mirbat had been self-defence against guerrilla attack. ⁷⁵ As noted previously in this article, this was a disingenuous answer not just because of the ferocity of the battle at Mirbat, but because an SAS trooper had been killed in action on the South Yemeni frontier the previous May. The MOD would have had an additional reason for secrecy over the SAS, as some of its troops had been committed to Operation Dhib (‘Wolf’), a covert operation to train Mahri exiles from South Yemen for cross-border raids which the Heath government approved in late November 1972. ⁷⁶

Fifthly, Kewley's interviewees expressed respect for the PFLOAG's own fighting abilities. Kerr stated that: ‘The enemy I reckon are a very good enemy. They are typical guerrillas. They fight by their Red Book by Chairman Mao, Mao's direction’. The Guards officer serving as one of his platoon commanders also complemented the PFLOAG on their tactical performance:

Their fieldcraft is superlative. We very rarely see them moving into position, and once they are in position it's very difficult to tell exactly where they are. Their small arms fire is accurate and good, and their mortaring is on the whole fairly accurate. About 50% of the mortars which are thrown at us on this position I’m on fall in the wire, about 50% of them. ⁷⁷

These comments reflect what both memoir material from SAF veterans and the documentary evidence show about the insurgents’ skill and courage in battle. Aside from its recruits trained and indoctrinated in Hauf, the PFLOAG was also augmented by Dhofaris who had enlisted in the Trucial Oman Scouts, who continued to desert to join the insurgency even after its turn towards Marxism–Leninism. Former soldiers with this force – set up by the British to police the Trucial States (after December 1971, the United Arab Emirates) – enhanced the PFLOAG's combat performance with their own training, particularly with their use of crew-served weapons such as mortars and recoilless rifles. ⁷⁸ The insurgents’ effectiveness was such that following combat experience gained in late 1971 to early 1972 SAF infantry were instructed to ensure that they had artillery support constantly available in case they were ambushed, a testimony to their assessment of the PFLOAG's prowess in combat. ⁷⁹

Finally, in concluding her report Kewley stated of the British loan service and contract personnel in the SAF that: ‘With no end to the war in sight, there will be a job for them to do for several years to come’. ⁸⁰ This downbeat conclusion conflicts with retrospective accounts of the Dhofar conflict, which assume a linear process of success for Omani government forces after Qaboos’ takeover, ⁸¹ but they did in fact reflect contemporary pessimism in Whitehall about what appeared at the time to be an unwinnable war, and the prospects of an overstretched and exhausted SAF being defeated by an insurgency that had the will to outlast it. ⁸² At the time ‘Britain's Other War’ was broadcast, the SAF could only commit around two of its four infantry battalions to Dhofar, as Northern Oman still needed a troop presence to counter a potential revolt. ⁸³ In late December 1972 to early January 1973, the Sultanate's security forces were fully embroiled in Operation Jason, a wave of arrests to target a PFLOAG network in the North which had been discovered by sheer chance by the SAF's intelligence service, and which was preparing to open a second front with which Qaboos's troops would have struggled to cope. ⁸⁴

Conclusions

Despite the pessimistic conclusions of ‘Britain's Other War’, the insurgency in Dhofar was eventually beaten in the winter of 1975–1976, with the guerrillas being driven across the border into South Yemen by the SAF and the Iranian task force committed by Shah Reza Pahlavi. The UK achieved its aim of preserving a pro-Western monarchy in Oman, which has survived up until the time of writing, experiencing a peaceful transition between Sultans when Qaboos died in January 2020. Oman remains an important regional ally for Britain, particularly as far as defence ties are concerned, and is also still an absolutist state under the rule of the Busaids. ⁸⁵ In considering British policy during the Dhofar War and its indirect military intervention on behalf of the Sultanate, it is likely that in today's circumstances civil servants in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the MOD would find it far less easy to control reporting in the age of social media, and as a result the moral questions of backing a royal autocracy against its internal foes would gain far greater domestic public and parliamentary attention.

Research for this article has found very little evidence to suggest that ‘Britain's Other War’ had any significant impact on British public perceptions of the Dhofar War, although Halliday did refer to its contents in Arabia Without Sultans. ⁸⁶ Oman attracted little attention outside of a small circle of MPs and political activists, ⁸⁷ and in December 1972 there was far greater public and parliamentary opposition and protests against the US air campaign against North Vietnam, and the Heath government's support for the Nixon administration. ⁸⁸ The declassified MOD and FCO files show very little interest in how ‘Britain's Other War’ was received by domestic viewers, as officials in Whitehall were more concerned with Operation Jason and the security threat to Northern Oman. The documentary also attracted no discussion in the British press, aside from references in the TV listings for the day of its broadcast. The fact that it was shown immediately after Christmas may explain the lack of attention it received. ⁸⁹

Given the lack of controversy over Britain's involvement in the Dhofar War, a more permissive approach by the MOD to the This Week team may have presented opportunities to film ‘hearts and minds’ operations at work among the civilian population, and to publicise claims of PFLOAG abuses against the Dhofaris. Kewley could also have been given access to the Squadron of Royal Engineers deployed on civil affairs tasks (Operation Tenable) from 1971. ⁹⁰ As noted above, officers in the SAS proposed inviting sympathetic reporters to Dhofar to film their soldiers on operations under controlled conditions. In May 1975, the Defence Secretary himself complained that the lack of publicity given to either the special forces contingent or the Royal Engineers did ‘more harm than good’, and enabled parliamentary critics such as Newens to present the UK ‘as [an active supporter] of a despotic ruler bent on crushing a national liberation movement’. ⁹¹ However, as noted above, Mason's proposals to publicise British military activity in Dhofar ran counter to a general mood in Whitehall which preferred public ignorance over the UK's policy in Oman. Indeed, the readiness to facilitate Thames TV's reporting in late 1972 represented a rare example where the MOD was prepared to support media coverage of the campaign against the PFLOAG.

In summary, ‘Britain's Other War’ was filmed under the close supervision of the SAF, and its content was therefore controlled and shaped by both the British and the Omani governments. This documentary simply would not have been filmed without their co-operation. There were several aspects of the Dhofar War and the UK's involvement in this conflict that Kewley and her camera crew were unable to record, but nonetheless their documentary did shed important light on a military operation being conducted outside of parliamentary scrutiny. Her commentary on the SAS and her interview with Brigadier Fletcher also demonstrated that she was not a ‘tame’ journalist who would shy away from asking awkward questions of her hosts. As Kewley noted in her commentary, ‘both the British government and the government of Oman are anxious to play down the British presence in such a sensitive area of the Arab world, where British soldiers are fighting and dying for the Sultan of Oman’. ⁹² In December 1972, and despite the constraints noted above, This Week did an effective job in highlighting Britain's involvement in a Middle Eastern war that ministers, senior civil servants, and the Chiefs of Staff would have preferred to see waged in secret. In retrospect it also showed that despite memoir accounts from SAS veterans emphasising special forces-led ‘hearts and minds’ operations, ⁹³ the British-backed war against the PFLOAG in Dhofar relied more on the application of conventional military force to defeat the insurgency on the battlefield, than on civil affairs work and socio-economic reforms to win over the local population to transfer its support to Qaboos.