TRUCIAL OMAN: Blood, Sand & Oil

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For more than a year, Britain has carried on a sort of comic-opera blockade around the oasis of Buraimi. a cluster of 8,000 Arabs in mud-walled villages not far from the Persian Gulf. Last week the blockade abruptly lost its comic flavor. There was shooting in the desert and blood on the sand.

Fired by the belief that oil may lie under Buraimi's sand, strong-willed old

King Ibn Saud claims Buraimi as part of Saudi Arabia; and Britain, as "protector" of Trucial Oman, claims it for a Trucial Oman Sheik and the Sultan of Muscat. Since the summer of 1952, the claimants had fought their siege with angry words and glowering looks. Ibn Saud sent Emir Turki Ibn Utaishan to occupy Buraimi, supposedly in answer to an appeal for protection by the villagers. Britain countered by stationing three young officers and a batch of Trucial Oman levies in a string of Beau Geste mud forts sprinkled around the oasis, to harass and starve the Emir into retreat (TIME, April 27). Occasionally the British rifles would scare off a caravan, occasionally one would get through to bring food to the Saudi Arabians.

But recently somebody started shooting in earnest, and both sides admitted last week that there have been several small but nasty battles. The Saudi Arabians blamed the British, reported several casualties on their side, hinted they might throw the debate into the United Nations. The British insisted that Arabian caravan guards had started the shooting. The U.S., caught in the middle as a "third party" mediator between its British allies and its oil-owning Saudi Arabian business partners, had another small but serious trouble spot on its hands.