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For three years the Sultan's only son, Qaboos bin Said, was held a prisoner in his father's castle because the Sultan believed he had been "corrupted" by his studies in England, where he attended Sandhurst, Britain's military academy. He came back to Oman with a love of Gilbert and Sullivan. When his father heard the strains of The Pirates of Penzance drifting through the palace, he was furious and destroyed every one of the D'Oyly Carte records that the young Qaboos had brought back from Britain.
In 1970 the British, who had lost their grip on neighboring South Yemen and its crucial port of Aden, collaborated with Qaboos in a bloodless coup. The only bullets were fired by the Sultan, who drew his pistol and aimed a few shots of defiance into the air. Then he was hustled to a waiting Royal Air Force plane, flown to London and installed in a suite at Claridge's Hotel. He died there two years later.
At the age of 29, Qaboos became the 14th in his dynastic line to take the throne of one of the most backward nations in the Arab world. With the aid of Jordanian and Iranian forces and Saudi money, the young Sultan finally managed to put down the rebels in Oman's southern Dhofar province in December 1975. The Omani counteroffensive was led by British army officers; 665 of them are still in Oman either under contract or "on loan" to the Sultan, including the commander of the Sultan's army and the pilots who fly the country's aircraft.
"He has the best small army in the Arabian peninsula," says one of the British officers of Oman's 12,000 troops. The Sultan's air force includes British-made Skyvans, Defenders, Strikemasters and Jaguars. The navy has seven modern British patrol boats and two Dutch minesweepers. Annually for the past three years, 100 Omani NCOS have received commissions in an effort to gradually reduce British command functions. About 40% of Oman's national income is allocated to defense.
So far, the Omani army has proved to be an effective deterrent against an invasion from Soviet-leaning South Yemen, which is host to an estimated 2,000 Cuban troops and advisers as well as Russians, East Germans and Ethiopians. Because the Sultan's army has consolidated its position on the ground, a move into Oman at this tune would be costly in terms of casualties. This does not mean that Oman has its guard down. There have been intermittent forays into Dhofar by guerrillas positioned across the border in South Yemen. One unsuccessful attempt was made by the rebels to blow up a satellite station in Oman. In an incident last summer, three British engineers were attacked and killed as they picnicked on a beach.