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| Oman
The sultanate of Oman has been a quiet corner of the Arabian Peninsula under the one-man rule of Sultan Qaboos, who deposed his father in 1970. Since the regime’s defeat (with British and Iranian aid) of left-wing revolutionaries in the Dhofar province in the late 1970s, events in Oman have rarely made international news.
Though significant oil deposits were discovered in the 1960s, Oman had no paved roads until 1968. Sultan Qaboos used the oil wealth to commence a program of fairly rapid modernization, and more widespread prosperity ensued, though for years observers have been warning that Omani oil reserves will soon be insufficient to hold up the national economy. In consequence, and much like other Gulf states, Oman has recently begun privatizing its state-owned utilities and lowering barriers to foreign investment.
Oman is nominally a constitutional monarchy, and the country’s 2003 parliamentary elections were the first universal-suffrage contests in its history. But, as implied by its name, the Consultative Assembly’s powers are limited, and governance is largely a ruling family affair. Political parties are not permitted.
As in the days of the Dhofar rebellion, whose guerrillas were backed by the Marxist-inspired government of South Yemen, Oman is not entirely sheltered by its location from trends and tensions in the region. The large air base at Thumrait is used by the US to supply its forces in Iraq, despite that war’s unpopularity among Omanis. Several Islamist currents mount periodic challenges to the sultan’s policies, though it is uncertain how strong these groupings are and what their aims may be. The ruling family and (possibly) the majority of the population practice Ibadism, a form of Islam distinct from both Sunnism and Shiism, but closest to the Maliki school of Sunnism.
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