VA. FIRM HAS BIG ROLE IN OMAN

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000201060005-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 22, 2010
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: March 24, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT r I Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/22 : CIA-RDP90-00806R000201060005-7
~T * WASHINGTON POST ?
Va. Firm Has Big Role in Oma
Ex-CIA Man's Company Guides Ministries on Gulf Peninsula
By Christopher Dickey
Washington Post Foreign Service
KHASAB, Oman-In the late
1970s. as the worldwide nil cricis
heated uo. an Arlington. Va.. com-
pany headed by a former Central
Intelligence Agency staffer amp
here to the remntn Musandam Pen-
glgUIL
Iran lies just 26 miles away,
across the strategic Strait of Hor-
muz, through which much of the
world's oil supply is carried by a
steady parade of tankers out of the
Persian Gulf.
The stated business of Tetra
Tech International Inc. is develop-
ment. But the power it came to
wield here is, in the words of one
employe, "a little peculiar."
On contract with the government
of Oman, TTI helped set up the
Musandam Development Commit-
tee in 1976. In that capacity, it was
given supervisory control in 1979
over the operations of 11 govern-
ment ministries.
TTI's employes have supervised
activities from road building and
port construction to minor details of
everyday life. They inspect the few
restaurants here for hygiene. They
tie up goats found wandering the
streets and fine their owners.
Oman's Sultan Qaboos, often de-
scribed as the United States' clos-
est friend on the Persian Gulf and a
man who has relied heavily on for-
eign advisers and employes in every
aspect of his country's develop-
ment, needed to secure the Musan-
dam quickly and efficiently in 1979.
The strictly military aspects of
that job were given to the Omani
Army, much of which is commanded
by British officers. At the same
time, the United States began in-
vesting hundreds of millions of dol-
lars in upgrading four Omani air
bases to handle fighter and trans-
port planes if Washington should be
called on to defend the gulf. One is
the Khasab field, where the U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers replaced
the old 2,000-foot dirt strip with a
6,500-foot runway.
Most of the rest of the work
done here was carried out und r
TTI, whose president lames H.
8V OAVIO ZUCKERMAN FOR THE WAShINGTON POST
die East desk officer and a national
intelligence officer for energy ntil
1974, according to several pub-
lished reports. including one in
The New York Tunes last March
M. and confirmed by Critchfield
reached by telephone in Arlington
lastwek?
In the Musandam there were
special problems to which a man
with such a background might be
sensitive. As one British consultant
to the sultan put it, Qaboos had to
keep the remote LAM
"floating away" politically.
The Musandam, with a popula-
tion of about 11,500, is separated
from the rest of Oman by about 40
miles of territory of the United
Arab Emirates.
Many fishermen on the coast still
use the boot., a traditional wooden
boat, to bring in their catches. The
Bedouins among the crags of the
mountains carry walking sticks
topped with small stone axheads.
For generations tribal rivalries
and feuds wracked the peninsula.
Some villages until recently pro-
fessed loyalty to the sheiks of the
United Arab Emirates rather than
to the sultan of Oman.
In Khasab, the biggest settle-
ment, about 40 percent of the pop-
ulation is Iranian or of Iranian de-
scent. Little Iranian fishing
launches still move in and out of the
Khasab port.
"With twin engines on the back
you can bang across to Iran in an
hour and a half," said a foreign
worker here. Iran seems a closer
neighbor than the rest of Oman.
TTI's projects are a highly so-
phisticated example of what sol-
diers like to call civic action, aimed
at winning and holding the some-
times shaky allegiances of the pen-
insula's people. In an area such as
this, development can be seen es-
sentially as preventive medicine
against subversion.
Sultan Qaboos, a graduate of
Britain's Sandhurst military acad-
emy, is expert in the nuances of
such undertakings.
After taking power from his fa-
ther, with British encouragement,
in 1970. Qaboos spent the first five
years of his reign crushing a Com-
munist-backed rebellion in the
southern province of Dhofar. He
was aided by British forces, includ-
ing the Special Air Service and in-
telligence officers who put a pre-
mium on civic action.
"The Dhofar war was eventually
successful," said a senior British of-
ficer in Oman's capital, Muscat,
"because civil projects followed
very quickly on military success."
But while Dhofar and Muscat be-
Ww
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/22 : CIA-RDP90-00806R000201060005-7