A Struggle for Sovereignty

Abstract

This chapter discusses the origins of the Dhufari revolutionary movement. It discusses its beginnings in exile in the 1950s accounting for the responses of Dhufari migrant youth to the colonial nature of the Anglo-Sultanic regime and the political and economic injustices it entrenched. The chapter examines how the movement was significantly impacted and shaped by broader patterns affecting the Arab world as a whole, with two Dhufari strands originating in exile: a Dhufarist one inspired to action by the regional atmosphere, responding to local discontent and ordered around an emerging local identity; and a republican strand of a highly organised nature, centred on a set of universal normative values. A third strand of the movement developed inside Dhufar, deriving from the local tribal tradition. While they preserved their distinct features, these three strands were tied together by a practice of armed struggle modelled on previous anti-colonial experiences. The response of Britain and the Sultan to that development was severe, initiating the last colonial war in South Arabia, an instance of a wider regional struggle over sovereignty of the land and people.