Killer Elite (previously published as the Feather Men) (2 page)

Dhofar is the southern province of Oman, sharing desert borders with Saudi Arabia and South Yemen. In the 1960s a band of Dhofari nationalists, aiming to rid their country of an oppressive Omani sultan, visited the USSR in search of support. Their nationalist and Muslim aspirations were soon redirected by the Soviets into a new guerrilla unit called the Popular Front for the Liberation of Oman (PFLO). The unit’s Marxist fighters, operating on their own home ground, were frighteningly efficient and for a while invincible. Fortunately, in 1970, Qaboos bin Said exiled his reactionary father, became the new sultan and proclaimed an amnesty. Many terrorists responded and were formed into armed
firqat
groups to fight against their former comrades, often from the same tribe or family.

Amr bin Issa, Sheikh of the Bait Jarboat tribe in Dhofar, was not a happy man. At forty-seven he was envied by many of his fellow
jebalis
, mountain tribesmen, for he was rich—richer than most
jebalis
could imagine.

As a seventeen-year-old Amr had left home with an uncle and sailed the Gulf waters in sardine dhows. For a while he worked as a gardener in Bahrain and as a delivery courier around town using a Lambretta moped. He had a keen eye for business and took advantage of the newfound wealth of the United Arab Emirates to set up a grocery and hardware shop in Dubai. A retail chain of
Woolworth’s lookalikes then evolved, second only to Khimji Ramdas in size and profitability.

Amr had married young, for he had a strong sexual appetite. His first wife was a great disappointment to him. She was an orphan girl who, like the majority of Dhofari women, had been brutally circumcised soon after birth. Her clitoris had been removed and, with it, most of her sensuality. Two sons were born who remained with their mother when Amr divorced her and went abroad. She remarried a man from the Bait Antaash and Amr rarely saw the two boys. Nonetheless they remained the blood of his blood.

His second marriage was altogether different. At the age of twenty-four he stopped off at an island on a fishing voyage and fell in love with a fourteen-year-old Shahra girl, Shamsa. Even before he discovered that her sexuality was intact he had determined to marry her, for to him she seemed the most alluring creature on earth.

The Shahra ranked low in the strict tribal hierarchy of Dhofar. Once the most powerful tribe in the land, they had borne the brunt of a century’s fighting against Portuguese invaders. Greatly weakened, the Shahra gradually became subjugated to the Qara tribes until they were “nontribe,” losing the right to carry weapons and working only as serfs to the Qara in return for security. Shahra men could not take wives from the master tribes although the women, lighter-skinned than most Dhofaris, were available to all as brides at especially low prices.

Out of a powerful sexual bond grew a friendship and trust that was rare in Dhofari marriages. Shamsa bore Amr four sons over the next seven years. Amr was a proud husband and father, a successful businessman and popular within the Bait Jarboat tribe when, in 1970, their sheikh died without a hereditary successor. The dead leader had spent much of his life avenging the tribe’s
honor following a series of raids which had decimated and impoverished them in the 1940s. There was great contention among the Bait Jarboat about who should succeed him. Those of the tribe associated with the hard-core communists of the PFLO had their champion, while the nonatheistic majority favored Amr, whose great wealth, personal wisdom and family connections were held in high esteem. Amr won and became sheikh.

Like most of his countrymen, from sheikh to humble wood collector, Amr and his sons fought with the PFLO for the freedom of Dhofar. One of his sons was killed in 1969, a second in 1972 and yet another in January 1975, all at the hands of the government forces. In accordance with the tribal tradition of
thaa’r
, or revenge, it was Amr’s duty to avenge himself for the killing of his sons.

For three years, with the war at its height, the newly appointed Sheikh Amr did his best for the tribe, leaving his business concerns to his managers in the Gulf. In Dubai he was an extremely wealthy man, but on the
jebel
he lived much the same sort of life as other
jebalis
.

In 1974 Shamsa had conceived unexpectedly and, following a fall while she was driving their goats over the hill pastures, had died in childbirth. Amr was stunned. His tribal duties lost their importance to him. His popularity slowly waned and the machinations of his opponents stirred accordingly. A cousin named Hamoud, envious of Amr’s position, used Amr’s failure to fulfill the
thaa’r
and avenge the deaths of his three sons as fuel to rouse tribal sentiments against him.

Fundamentalist Islamic law embraces various rules, or
sharia
, but by far the most binding for a Dhofari are those of
thaa’r
. The aggrieved relative is expected by law to insist on an eye for an eye. In return for murder, execution. For manslaughter, blood money. No time limit is set on the deed of vengeance. It can take place forty years
on, but the executor must show his intention clearly and act as circumstances allow.

There are many different applications of the
thaa’r
even within a single Islamic country, because the dictates of the Koran simply reflect, in a modified form, the principles of pre-Islamic tribal behavior. If among the elders of a tribe there is dissension as to how the
hadiyth
, the Prophet’s sayings, should be applied, then a consensus of opinion,
ijma’
, can produce any solution. Over the years the differences in the severity with which Koranic punishments are applied in different lands have increased greatly. Sunni, Shi’ite and, in Oman, Ibadi Muslims apply further differences as a result of their own considerable divergences within the body of Islam.

Sudan is a Muslim country but the
thaa’r
there has become all but nonexistent. In 1988 five Palestinian terrorists murdered two Sudanese and five British peace workers in a Khartoum hotel. They were arrested and the Sudanese government contacted the parents of the dead Britons through the Foreign Office. A middle-aged suburban couple in Britain were suddenly faced with the choice of whether they wished their child’s murderers to be executed, fined or pardoned. They were unable to make up their minds, and all five terrorists were released from jail in January 1991. In Dhofar Sultan Qaboos has had enormous success in subduing the
thaa’r
, to the extent that there were more tit-for-tat killings in Northern Ireland in 1990 than there were
thaa’r
murders in Dhofar. But the hard-core believers merely bide their time.

In July 1990 a
jebali
civil servant, a long-since pardoned member of the PFLO, was commuting to his air-conditioned office in Salalah in his air-conditioned Mercedes. He stopped at a zebra crossing to allow a pedestrian to pass. Over the past twelve years the two men had often passed each other in the street. That
morning something snapped in the mind of the civil servant and he rammed the pedestrian against a wall, seriously injuring him. He was sent to jail, having readily admitted his intention to kill the man, who had murdered his brother back in 1973.

In 1976 a Dhofari lieutenant revealed to Tony Jeapes, SAS (Special Air Service) commanding officer, that he expected to be killed according to
thaa’r
for the chance shooting, two years previously, of his
firqat
sergeant-major. The lieutenant often encountered the man asked by the late sergeant-major’s family to kill him. This man was always friendly and they shook hands whenever they met, but both knew that one day, when the time was ripe, one would try to kill the other. The lieutenant had not actually shot the sergeant-major, and no one thought that he had, but the real murderer had escaped to Yemen, and the lieutenant, as picket lieutenant and therefore the man locally in charge on that fateful night, was held responsible.

The
thaa’r
system was to cause Sheikh Amr a great deal of trouble.

On April 7, 1975, Amr was seventy miles to the northwest of his home, at the oasis of Shisr. A message reached him that day that was to change, or end, many lives over the next fifteen years.

Arabia’s central feature, the Empty Quarter, is the greatest sand desert in the world. Six-hundred-foot-high dunes, constantly on the move, make up much of the sweltering landmass of Oman and Saudi Arabia. The dunes tail away a day’s journey by camel to the north of Shisr and the oasis is, to many desert nomads, the most wonderful place on earth. To the few urban Omanis or Europeans who reach it, Shisr is a fly-blown outpost on the edge of nowhere.

The remains of an old fort, fashioned from stone and
mud, guard a well at the base of a cliff. In the shade of the low rock face that abuts the water, Sheikh Amr and his son Bakhait listened to three Bait Sha’asha’ nomads, the true desert bedouin,
bedu-ar-ruhhal
, who wished to purchase rice in exchange for camels.

To the south the dust trail of a vehicle was visible, stirred by the dry blast of the
shimaal
. Soon a Land Cruiser appeared beneath the scrawny palm trees of Shisr and a short man in a khaki shirt and checked
wizaar
(a skirtlike wraparound garment) approached. While the man was still a silhouette Amr logged him as a Qara
jebali
from his hairstyle. Then he recognized the man and felt both pleased and uneasy.

After the traditional greetings and much gossip of little consequence, Amr and his son took leave of the nomads and followed the newcomer to his vehicle. “What is your news, Baaqi? Why should you come to Shisr where you have no business with man or God?”

Baaqi was kin and the closest of friends to Amr. “They have convened a conference of the tribe in two days’ time. Your cousin Hamoud is behind it. He has stirred up the others against you, using your failure to fulfill the
thaa’r
as a sign of your disgrace. Those are his words.”

“But why a tribal conference this year? It is not due for sixteen months. If Hamoud wishes to depose me, he will have to wait. The tribe will be on the move now. Spring is over and everyone will need to move the herds to the summer grazing.”

When the PFLO attempted to force Marxism and atheism on to the
jebalis
in the early 1970s, it was the older folk who bore the brunt of the killings and torture. They proved steadfast in their devotion to Islam and forced a retrenchment of the hard-core communist
adoo
(enemy), including the likes of Hamoud. By 1975 the coercion had ceased but the older folk faced a new threat to their traditional ways. The Omani Sultan wished to
break up the more tribal, regressive customs and to encourage trade and progress. However, many conservatives, seeing that the
adoo
were no longer all-powerful, began to exhort a return to the
thaa’r
. Thus encouraged, revenge murderers set to work and by early 1975 a great many feuds had been pursued to their ends.

Baaqi placed his arm, sinewed by a life of physical effort and a subsistence diet, on his friend’s shoulders. “Hamoud has argued his case with the elders. Soon, he says, the war will be over. The government are daily strengthening their hold on the mountains. Soon
jebali
life will change forever.
Insh’ Allah
. There will be great new opportunities and the tribe must have a strong, respected leader to take advantage of such times. He says you are weak and your disgrace is a blemish on our tribal name. By the
sharia
, he maintains, you should be exiled because you have failed to avenge your own blood not once but three times.”

Baaqi held a forefinger to alternate nostrils and cleared his nose into the dirt.

“He has suggested the conference take advantage of the cattle drives by convening in the great cave at Qum. Enough of the families have already agreed.” He paused, looking skyward, as a Hawker Hunter of the sultan’s Air Force, one of a squadron donated by Jordan, streaked overhead. “Amr, my friend, you must go to the conference. Indeed you must chair the meeting as though nothing was in the wind. Then seize the initiative … promise that you will avenge the death of your sons.”

Baaqi saw the hesitancy in Amr’s eyes, the lack of set to his shoulders and the aimless movements of his hands. He sighed.

“For many months now you are a different man to the Amr bin Issa I helped elect as our sheikh. Your heart is gone away.” Baaqi looked into the eyes of his cousin. “Is that so? Do you wish to give in? Do you wish Hamoud
to plant one of his murdering atheist friends as our leader?” He shook his head and grasped Amr by the elbows. “Remember, there are many of us who will suffer if you go. Your family and your friends. We, who risked much to speak out in harder times to have you as
tamimah
[head of the local tribal grouping] and to keep out Hamoud’s faction.”

Amr nodded wearily at Baaqi and looked down at his son. Bakhait, a handsome fifteen-year-old, was clever beyond his years. He said little and missed even less. He loved his father as corn loves the sun. “We will go, Father,” Bakhait said with an intonation neither interrogative nor decisive, but merely encouraging.

Amr’s Land Rover, laden with sacks of rice, Korean combs and boxes of German knives, followed Baaqi’s vehicle just beyond the reach of his dust cloud.

In two hours they came to Midway camp for fuel. An isolated oil-company base of six wooden huts erected in the 1960s, the place now sprawled over a square mile of military installations and a modern airstrip used by the sultan’s fighters. A thousand tracks, of camels and vehicles, radiate out through the moon country that surrounds Midway. Muscat, capital of all Oman, lies six hundred miles to the northeast, the South Yemen border a hundred miles to the west, and the Qara Mountains a mere hour by vehicle to the south.

They passed no sign of life but camels, grazing the dry scrub of the wadi beds. Only ghaf, acacia and gnarled
mughir
trees can tolerate this arid region. As the outline of the mountains skittered about in the heat shimmer ahead, they sped by the ruins of Hanun. Potsherds and the detritus of neolithic flint factories lay scattered over the gypsum wastes. Here, 2,000 years ago, was a frankincense storage center and, at Andhur to the east, a main entrepot for the
laqat
incense gum that sold throughout the Roman empire at a price often higher than gold.