Aiming at the Imam

When the hero of Evelyn Waugh's novel Scoop went off to cover the war in Ethiopia, the London Daily Beast's publisher gave him a tip on how to send dispatches out of such places--by cleft sticks. Last week some 20 newsmen covering the weird little war in Oman were marooned by the nervous British on desert islands and airstrips in the Persian Gulf without one cleft stick among them. All they could report was that the R.A.F., at the request of the Sultan of Muscat and Oman, continued to drop warning leaflets and then strafe the mountain fastnesses of the rebellious Imam of Oman, who has perhaps 600 troops at his beck and call. The R.A.F., under instructions only to scare and disperse the enemy without trying to kill him, seemed to be settling nothing.

None of the assembled war correspondents had yet seen the Imam and his phantom forces, or for that matter the Sultan. Lieut. General Sir Geoffrey Bourne flew in from his Cyprus Middle East command headquarters to the Sultan's forward base at Ibri to" consult on the next step, to send British-led local troops overland to the Imam's capital, wind up the war quickly, and so preserve Britain's reputation as a reliable protector and friend of Persian Gulf oil sheikdoms. At week's end the London Foreign Office issued the first casualty report: Muscatis 7, Britons 0. Of the enemy Omanis, nobody knew the casualties, if any.

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