Oman, UAE and Yemen Cold War conflicts

Regiones petroleras - Medio Oriente — Oil and gas fields in the Levant, Egypt and the Persian Gulf.

Middle East geographic — A NASA globe software World Wind satellite image of the Middle East.

Background[]

Oman, Muscat, Dhofar and Yemen are rooted in pre-Islamic civilisations. For Centuries they only mad contact with the Horn of Africa and the Middle East. Later Muscat carved out an East African coastal empire and clashed with Portuguese colonial expositions. The British and Muscat become de facto allies in 1750.

Zanzibar was an overseas territory of Oman between 1698 and 1858. The British and Germans Destroyed the slave running Zanzibar Empire and made it and it's allies on the Swahili Coast of E. Africa in to colonies in the late 19th Century. Muscat had grown rich of the Arab slave trade prior to it's abolition in the 19th century. At it's peak Muscat controlled: Part of the Emirate of Fujairah, Zanzibar, Madha, Musandam, Pemba Island, Mafia Island, the Lamu Archipelago, Cape Delgado (on the northern border of the current Mozambique), Bandar-Abbas and the southern Iranian coast, Gwadar in the province of Balochistan (it was bought by Pakistan in 1958) and, for a short time Bahrain.

Growing religious, economic and political tensions between the Immanate of Oman and the Sultanate of Muscat over the last 100 years had lead to tension between both of them. Oil exploration in the 1930s and recent regional neglect of Oman's needs by Muscat since about 1900 had reach boiling point by the 1950s.

Prior to 1954, there was a dispute between the Sultanate of Muscat and Kingdom Saudi Arabia over the ownership of the Buraimi Oasis in the Imanate of Oman, an area which was known to have oil reserves. After the 1953 seizure of the Buraimi Oasis by Saudi Arabia, Muscat and Oman were afraid of Saudi encroachments on themselves and the Trucial States. In the October of 1957, The United Kingdom captured the the Buraimi Oasis and gave it to Muscat.

Dhofar was part of the Yemeni state of Aden when Marco Polo visited it and was the home of the Manjawi Civilisation from the 12th-to-16th centuries. By the time the colonial powers started to take interest in the region it had degenerated in to a smattering of small and primitive sheikdoms. The Ottomans sent an Arab governor to the region in the mid 19th Century, but the locals did not want him or his plans for a war with the near by Bedouin of the Arabian interior. After a while both the local sheikhs and the Bedouin tribal elders got together and drove the governor and his cronies out of Dhofar. The local sheikhs fell under Omani protection a few years later. The local dialect of Arabic is known as "Dhofari Arabic", which is distinct from that of the rest of Oman and from that of the Yemen.

Oman had been a Islamic state for over around 1,200 years and did not do much other than gain near independence from Muscat in 1783 after Ahmed bin Sa'id Al Busaidi expelled the Persian colonists from both nations. He elected Imam of Oman, with Rustaq as the Immanate's capital. A war with Muscat in the 19th Century and the subsequent semi-union with it that came after the war. Under the terms of the 1920 Agreement of Al-Sīb, created as a result of the 1913 rebellion formal autonomy was officially given to the Immanate. Oil was found in Oman in 1937. Oman was finally annexed by Muscat in the Jebel Akhdar War of the 1950s.

The City of Gwadar was fought over by Oman, Portugal and the local Balochi tribal states of what is the Makran region of today's Pakistan in the 15th Century. The Ottomans visited it in the same century, but showed no interest in it. It spent the 16th and 17th centuries under Mughal rule and was in Kalat's control by 1783, when they gave it to the Sultan of Muscat as a peace personal property until it was sold to W. Pakestan in 1958. Oman also conquered Chabahar in Persia for a few years after getting control of Gwadar.

Yemen took control of some Somalia ports over the centuries and traded with Zanzibar, but the Yemeni were eventually most conquered by the Ottoman Empire, with the surviving port city of Aden falling the British Empire and Somalia regaining it ports before both they and the rest of Somalia were also conquered by the Europeans.

Muscat, Oman and several minor Yemeni states like the Emirate of Beihan (founded in 1680) and the Kathiri State of Seiyun (founded in 1395) were all brought both willingly and unwillingly in to British control. The British singed several unfair treaties with Oman and Muscat including the De facto annexation of Omani Kuria Muria islands in the 19th Century. The UK, Muscat and Oman became friends in the middle of the 18th Century, but Oman and Muscat only being used after the turn of the 19th century. After WW1 N. Yemen became an the independent Kingdom of Yemen and the British holdings in Arabia began to think about independence from the British Empire after WW2, which the British did not want.

The Cold War saw a few conflicts arise between the pro-Western Omanis and the pro-Eastern S. Yemenis and their allies.

The wars[]

Jebel Akhdar War
Dhofar Rebellion
Dhofar Liberation Front
Northern Frontier Regiment
Operation Simba
1970 Omani coup d'état
Aden Emergency
Front for the Liberation of Occupied South Yemen
The 1971 Iranian seizure of the islands of Abu Musa, Greater Tunb, and Lesser Tunb off of the UAE
Aden Emergency
Front for the Liberation of Occupied South Yemen
Oman-S. Yemen Cold War conflicts
North Yemen-South Yemen Border Conflict of 1972
1962–1970 North Yemen Civil War
The Omani Territory of Madha and the UAE's Nahwa Territory

Oman, UAE and Yemen Cold War conflicts

Contents

Background[]

The wars[]

Also see[]

Sources[]

Fan Feed