Arabia's Frontiers: The Story of Britain's Boundary Drawing in the Desert

462 Pages·1991·7.615 MB·English

by  john Craven Wilkinson

Arabia’s Frontiers

Arabia’s Frontiers:
The Story of Britain’s
Boundary Drawing in the Desert
JOHN C. WILKINSON
I. B. Tauris & Co Ltd
Publishers
London - New York
Published in 1991 by
I. B. Tauris & Co Ltd
110 Gloucester Avenue
London NW1 8JA
175 Fifth Avenue
New York
NY 10010
Distributed in the United States of America
and Canada by
St Martin’s Press
175 Fifth Avenue
New York
NY 10010
Copyright © 1991 by John C. Wilkinson
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review,
this book, or any part thereof, must not be reproduced in
any form without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
US Library of Congress Catalog Card number: 90-063389
A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN 1-85043-319-4
Phototypeset by Computape (Pickering) Ltd, North Yorkshire
Printed in Great Britain by WBC Print Ltd, Bridgend
Contents
List of maps page vii
Prologue ix
Conventions xxxvi
Abbreviations xxxviii
PART I GEO-POLITICAL SETTING
Chapter 1. The Regional Powers: Saudi Arabia, Yemen
and Britain 3
Chapter 2. The Gulf 27
PART II THE BLUE LINE
Chapter 3. The 1913 Anglo-Ottoman Convention 61
Chapter 4. The Violet Line 100
PART III SUCCESSOR STATE
Chapter 5. Britain’s Relations with Ibn Saud up to
the End of World War I 113
Chapter 6. Post-War Relations 141
Chapter 7. Conflict with Yemen 158
PART IV PRE-WORLD WAR II NEGOTIATIONS
Chapter 8. Oil: The Casoc and Qatar Conesssion Boundaries 169
Chapter 9. Negotiations 186
Chapter 10. Aftermath: 1936-9 205
PART V A NEW CLAIM
Chapter 11. Procrastination 225
Chapter 12. The Oman Problem 250
Chapter 13. Final Negotiations 288
VI Contents
PART VI CRISIS AND CONFRONTATION
Chapter 14. Unilateral Declaration of Frontier 301
Chapter 15. Aftermath 303
Conclusion 330
Maps 365
Notes 379
Bibliography 400
Index 409
List o f M aps
( between pages 365 and 378)
Map 1. Main frontier claims and area submitted to arbitration.
Map 2. Col. Pelly’s map of territories in the Gulf, 1863.
Map 3. The Aden-Yemen frontier area around the Wadi Bana
according to the Anglo-Ottoman 1905 Protocol.
Map 4. Holmes’s Concession map ca. 1923.
Map 5. Frontier lines around the base of the Qatar Peninsula.
Map 6. Frontier lines in Eastern Arabia.
Map 7. Map of Aden area (Naval Intelligence, Western Arabia,
1946).
Map 8. Trucial Oman.
Map 9. Post-war frontier lines and proposals, Abu Dhabi/UAE.
Map Part of the map drawn for G. W. Rendel (Head of FO
IQ-
Eastern Department, 1930-38) in 1935.
Map 11. Boundary claims according to the Saudi Memorial,
1955.
Note: for principal locations, see index

Prologue
Not one of the states of the Arabian Peninsula recognized by the
international community, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar,
the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Yemen could put up a
watertight case to the International Court at the Hague to retain the
territory it actually occupies. Each one of their boundaries could be
challenged, in whole or in part, by its neighbour or a third party.
The only fully ratified international boundary agreement that has
ever been demarcated on the ground of Arabia is the short section
extending from the Red Sea to the Wadi Bana between the Ottoman
Vilayet of Yemen and the “nine cantons” of British Aden. Within
months of this boundary fulfilling the conditions for becoming
inviolable, permanent and final in the summer of 1914 it was
breached and, when World War I ended, the Imam of the newly
independent Yemen absolutely refused to recognize its legality:
military action had to be taken to drive his government to behind
the pre-war line. British force had also to be used to impose on Saudi
Arabia the boundary with the Aden Protectorate (subsequently
South Yemen), with the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman (where the
Imamate government in Oman was also forcibly removed) and Abu
Dhabi (now part of the United Arab Emirates). A few years earlier
the British had likewise used force to refute Saudi claims to islands
which Britain considered belonged to Bahrain and Kuwait. War
imposed the boundary between Saudi Arabia and (North) Yemen
as also that between (South) Yemen and Oman. Disregarding, as
this study generally does, the additional internal disputes between
the seven constituent states of the United Arab Emirates, as well as
the boundaries of the Arabian Peninsular states with their neigh­
bours (Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Israel and Egypt), we are, at the begin­
ning of 1990, still left with twelve international boundaries that,
within living memory, have been the scene of acrimonious dispute or
violence. Assuming the union of the two Yemens survives, that
figure has now been reduced to ten.
There are two clear reasons for this state of affairs. Firstly, the
X Prologue
boundaries have not fully met the precepts of international law.
Secondly, local concepts of territorial organization have been
largely ignored in imposing or otherwise deciding boundaries. In
many other areas of the world where outside powers have imposed
state boundaries, local concepts have been conclusively overridden
by arrangements between the protecting powers: it is these bound­
aries which are recognized when the ex-protected states or colonies
are accepted as fully-fledged, independent members of the “family
of nations”. In Arabia such “colonial” boundaries only devolved on
Britain’s former protégés with respect to each other (and even
then independence saw some unresolved disputes); Saudi Arabia,
Yemen, Iran and Iraq are not obliged to recognize them in so far as
they have not been party to an agreement which affects their own
claims. For most of the history of defining territories in Arabia
Britain has been the sole arbiter of boundaries. The only other
external international powers to challenge its role were the Ottoman
Empire and, marginally and ineffectually until the 1950s, Persia
(redesignated Iran after 1935). After World War I there was no
counterbalancing “colonial” power in the Peninsula and there was
only one indigenous independent state, Yemen, prepared to stand
up to Britain. It was not until 1949 that Saudi Arabia obtained
proper advice on its sovereignty rights from lawyers hired by the
Arabian Americal Oil Company (Aramco) and formulated onshore
and offshore territorial claims that exhibited the political will to
challenge Britain’s claims. Later, in the contemporary context of the
Cold War and of increasingly strident Arab nationalism, Yemen,
Saudi Arabia and the Imamate of Oman learnt to reformulate local
concepts of sovereignty in terms of “effective occupancy”. These
new territorial claims were certainly exacerbated, but by no means
created, by the potential oil fortunes that lay under the ground of
the disputed land.
Because the legal rulings that an international body would apply
in arbitrating the disputes would generally have been unfavourable
to Britain’s attempts to maintain a permanent sphere of territorial
control, Britain decided in 1955 to resolve the situation by uni­
laterally declaring a frontier which it stated defined territory that
incontestably belonged to its protégés and drove the Saudis back
across the new lines, notably from Buraimi; it also supported the
Sultan’s suppression of the Imamate of Oman and repelled incur­
sions by the Yemenis into Aden. Thus, when Britain withdrew from
its formal protecting role in the region, between 1961 and 1971, it left
a heritage of de facto boundaries. To some extent the countries con-