A New Laboratory

This chapter discusses how the British-led counterinsurgency campaign in Dhofar, Oman, which ran from 1965 to 1976, provides support for the compellence theory. The sultan of Oman, Sa'id bin Taimur, faced a popular nationalist and Communist insurgency in its remote southwestern corner. His British backers pressed reforms on him, which he resisted, but he welcomed the buildup of his military. In a palace coup in 1970, the sultan's son replaced him and gained additional British and regional support for the campaign. Accommodations took place in the form of empowering warlords and others, including insurgent defectors and tribal leaders. The British-formed militias led by these men were better able to fight the insurgents and gain information from the populace than was the regular army. Ultimately, the British-led military, the Sultan's Armed Forces (SAF), defeated the insurgent threat by controlling civilians to cut the flow of resources to insurgents, physically blocking the flow of resources from the insurgents' safe haven across the border with Yemen, and controlling the populace in the guerrilla-ridden mountains. Limited political reforms such as construction of clinics followed the military's success against the insurgency rather than causing insurgent defeat.