Oman / Dhofar campaign: catch all

[davidbfpo]

A new Journal article that has many web links and so could be useful. It ends with:

If the United States intends to assist its allies and partners by building military capacity, a blend of conventional and special operations support is ideal. The combined British-Omani counterinsurgency campaign in Dhofar provides an outstanding template for a balanced security force assistance strategy.

Link: https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/ar...isors-security

[davidbfpo]

Post 24 refers to an article 'The United Kingdom's last hot war of the Cold War: Oman, 1963-75' by De Vore and has been made available by the author. Contact davidbfpo for a copy via PM. Alas too large to upload.

[davidbfpo]

Last week the ‘Daily Telegraph’ published an obituary for Nick Downie, who had fought in Dhofar, first with the SAS, then for Oman. It is alas behind a pay wall, so I cite just a few passages:

Nick Downie, who has died of Covid-19 in South Africa aged 74, was a former SAS soldier widely regarded as one of the world’s best combat cameramen.
Downie had been a professional soldier for six years, three-and-a-half of them in the SAS, and also fought as an irregular alongside Bedouins in the Sultanate of Oman against Marxist-led insurgents from 1972 to 1974, and with Kurdish Peshmerga guerrillas in Iraqi Kurdistan during the Second Iraqi – Kurdish War (1974-75).
From 1971 the SAS were involved in suppressing the Dhofar Rebellion, a clandestine war in Oman against communist-backed insurgents from South Yemen. Downie was sent to Oman as a trooper, but after a while decided to buy himself out to join the Sultan of Oman’s Yemeni exile Bedouin irregulars as a contract mercenary.
Promoted to sergeant, he was put in charge of a unit with orders to penetrate deep into South Yemen to carry out acts of sabotage and foment insurrection among the tribes. On one raid from their base on the edge of the Empty Quarter they captured a large fort, 80 miles across the border. After the garrison surrendered, Downie decided to blow it up “as a demonstration that we had arrived”. His calculations showed the need for 300 lb of gelignite, so he laid 1,000 lb. The fort, he recalled, “literally vanished”.
The demolition of the fort and the subsequent success of “Nick’s Guides”, a camel unit he founded, so impressed the Sultan that he wrote out a cheque for £500,000. However, disillusioned by what he saw as obstructionism by the British officer corps, Downie returned to London, though he felt vindicated when his irregulars mutinied with the aim of having him brought back as their leader.’

From: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituari...flict-western/

[davidbfpo]

A new book includes Dhofar as an example of how COIN works; I listened to an online talk last week:

In Bullets Not Ballots, Jacqueline L. Hazelton challenges the claim that winning "hearts and minds" is critical to successful counterinsurgency campaigns. Good governance, this conventional wisdom holds, gains the besieged government popular support, denies support to the insurgency, and enables military and political victory. Hazelton argues that major counterinsurgent successes since World War II have resulted not through democratic reforms but rather through the use of military force against civilians and the co-optation of rival elites. Hazelton offers new analyses of five historical cases frequently held up as examples of the effectiveness of good governance in ending rebellions—the Malayan Emergency, the Greek Civil War, the Huk Rebellion in the Philippines, the Dhofar rebellion in Oman, and the Salvadoran Civil War—to show that, although unpalatable, it was really brutal repression and bribery that brought each conflict to an end. By showing how compellence works in intrastate conflicts, Bullets Not Ballots makes clear that whether or not the international community decides these human, moral, and material costs are acceptable, responsible policymaking requires recognizing the actual components of counterinsurgent success—and the limited influence that external powers have over the tactics of counterinsurgent elites.

The publisher's website is: https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu...ts/#bookTabs=1

A 30% discount is available, for details see: https://fsi.stanford.edu/events/bull...rgency-warfare

[davidbfpo]

It took a long time to completely read Jacqueline Hazelton's book; the chapter on Oman, Dhofar is pgs. 81-105, with 220 footnotes, so is probably the most comprehensive account of the campaign.

[davidbfpo]

This thread still attracts attention and yesterday on another website for WW2 history a veteran of the conflict was the topic, Arthur Robert BROCKLEHURST, a UK contract officer who served in Oman for ten years. I don't think the references found have appeared here before.

The London Gazette on 29/9/1959 refers to:

Short Serv. Commit. 2nd Lt. Arthur Robert BROCKLEHURST (458614) from Reg. Army, Nat. Serv. List, to be 2nd Lt., 29th Aug. 1959

From: https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/.../6127/data.pdf

He was a company commander (with Red Company, NFR) in 1966, when there was an attempt to assassinate the (old) Sultan. See: http://www.jepeterson.net/sitebuild...1966_Assassination_Attempt_on_Sultan_S aid.pdf

He did adapt well when in Oman:

British officers were primary targets to the enemy insurgents, but despite their height and pale skin, some would blend in quite well. Many of the officers within the Sultan’s army, after a deepening tan and a closely cropped beard, became unrecognizable to the foreigner’s eye. On one occurrence when a senior British officer attempted to talk to one of the Sultan’s soldiers in his practiced Arabic, the soldier responded in Arabic to his questions. It was not until later that the visiting dignitary realized that he was talking to Arthur Brocklehurst, the British Regimental second in command.

From a 2009 US Army Masters thesis: https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA513085.pdf

There are eight references to him being interviewed in 1981, in Oman, when he commanded the Northern Frontier Regiment (NFR) by a British Army officer for a Cambridge Masters thesis. See: http://www.55fstramc.com/wp-content..._War_McKeown/Dhofar-War-John-McKeown-Full.pdf

There is a photo of him alongside his C.O. in Oman, Bryan Ray, in the later's book on his time in Somalia and Oman. See: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dangerous-F.../dp/B00911RU1Q and parts are available on: https://www.google.co.uk/books/edit...ehurst"+++"oman"&pg=PT119&printsec=frontcov er

Some context is available in this document: https://www.sant.ox.ac.uk/sites/defa...collection.pdf

The opening post refers to:

Apart from this I have found very little information though I was told he committed suicide not long after leaving the army.

One book author, Ian Gardiner, 'In The Service of the Sultan' refers in the acknowledgements to:

owes much to my recollection of long conversations with the late Arthur Brocklehurst who had a deep and abiding interest in Oman

From: https://www.google.co.uk/books/edit...lehurst"+++"oman"&pg=PP13&printsec=frontcov er

[davidbfpo]

A new article on the early years of the insurgency by Dr. Simon Anglin, KIngs College London War Studies: https://www.militarystrategymagazine...ies-1970-1976/

I found some of the information on foreign (non-British) support remarkable, for their scale. That does not mean others have not written such before.