Word: oman
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When British explorer Wilfred Thesiger traveled through Oman in the 1950s, he did it the hard way: an arduous crossing by camel of the sand-dune seas of the Empty Quarter, the Arabian peninsula's desolate interior. Parched, starved, waylaid by tribesmen and imprisoned by local sheiks, he barely survived. Fortunately, today's traveler needn't be as tough or determined as Thesiger; regular flights now make the hop over the Empty Quarter...
...Thursday morning, the plane from the United Arab Emirates' capital, Abu Dhabi, to Oman's, Muscat, looks like an exodus. Arabs and expats flee the monotony of their oil-rich states for a long weekend in Oman. "Oman is the only interesting country in the gulf," declares a Kuwaiti princess. "All the others are just the same." Compared with the singularly flat and bland desert landscapes of the gulf coast states, Oman's raw, rocky mountains, plunging fjords and ribbons of white sand beaches are a visual buffet to sand-seared eyes...
...just the landscape that draws people to Oman; it's the Omanis themselves. Before landing in Muscat, a Kuwaiti oilman tells me, "Omanis are hospitable, hardworking and humble." Rashid, a young Omani man who works in the oil fields of Abu Dhabi, responds with a wry smile: "That's because we are poor." It's a stretch to call Rashid poor?he sports a new mobile phone and a watch-mounted digital camera?but in relative terms, he is right. Oman's oil reserves are modest compared with the rest of the gulf states', and many Omanis like Rashid work...
...Bedouin of Oman scorned the towns of the coast, preferring the desert sands and open skies. But the towns offer the best introduction. Muscat and its port town Muttrah, wedged between the coast and the imposing Jebel Akhdar massif, evoke an old-world flavor. Portuguese-style whitewashed mansions?remnants of the colonial era?crowd the harbor front. Ancient forts crown the heights, securing dominance over the lucrative spice trade between Arabia, Africa and India. From here Oman controlled an empire that stretched from Zanzibar, now in modern-day Tanzania, to Baluchistan, now part of Pakistan...
...issue, the use of Saudi bases is another matter. The U.S. has significant operations at the Prince Sultan Air Base south of Riyadh, where a superhigh-tech Combined Air Operations Center is situated. The Pentagon is beefing up its presence elsewhere in the Arabian peninsula--in Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and especially Qatar, where a second CAOC is hastily being built. But if the Saudis do not want America to attack Saddam from their territory, the region's smaller states are apt to balk as well. "If the Saudis are not doing it," says a U.S. official in the region...