KUWAIT IRAN Muscat Madhoub lago doesn't matter what the Gulf is called; wha t matters are the pomical and social relauons in the states around it. In this prevalling sense the Gulf is now an imperialist Gulf; it can pecome socialist ORIC The term Occupied Arab Gulf" refers to the following areas: Muscat and Oman, Bahrein, Qatar and the Trucial Oman states Population (1968) Crude Oil Production in millions of metric tons (1969)
3.8 80.000 28.0 59,000 1.0 31,500 24,500 4,200 3,700 9,700 74.7 700,000 129.4 149.7 workers in Kuwait in January 1969. Severe repression has not silenced these workers and the union of the revolutionary peasants in the mountains with •THE revolutionary workers of the oil fields holds the key t the future. is clearly worried. After visiting the Gulf last April, Heath said "The long stability which the Gulf has enjoyed is now at risk". . The US now has a naval force operating out of Bahrein and is desperately trying to forge an alliance of Saudi Arabia and Iran, an aim which Britain shares Another token of imperialist concern is a flurry of activity on the academic front: the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, the main British institution specialising in the third world. Over the period 1968-69 it held two conferences on the Gulf. One during the 1968 summer holidays was secret, and was attended by military correspondents, academics and former Governor of Aden; it was founded by the Center for Strategic and Internationa Studies, of Washington DC, and produced a report on the danger of a Russian invasion of the Gulf (sic). The other was a public conference, in spring 1969, and was funded by Shell and the Kuwait Oil Company. The revolutionary forces in the Gulf are gaining strength; the contradictions between different reactionary forces in the area are growing; and a liberated area, controlled by the popular masses, already been established. For all these reasons a major new flank has been opened up in the antiThis area is of the imperialist offensive highest importance for imperialism and it is about to explode.
F.H.
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TRUCIAL OMAN STATES OMAN DHOFAR
1967. A general strike and a series of bomb attacks was followed by the arrest of 300