MUSCAT: In 2017 the waters of the Persian Gulf are still choppy. There is U.S. President Donald Trump’s choice to decertify the Iran nuclear deal, Iran’s bluster under President Hassan Rouhani and the ongoing U.S. efforts to end the dispute between several Gulf states and Qatar.
One group of entrepreneurs hoping their position will be strengthened by regional turbulence and economic sanctions against Iran are the smugglers of Musandam, which have made the most of their location by supplying imported goods to Iran before sanctions began to be lifted in the wake of the 2015 nuclear agreement.
Sparsely populated, remote and economically underdeveloped, the exclave of Musandam is one of eleven governorates of the Sultanate of Oman. The Musandam peninsula juts into the Strait of Hormuz, which separates the Arabian Sea from the Persian Gulf. It affords joint control with Iran over the Strait of Hormuz, 18 nm wide at its narrowest point. In 2015, 30 percent of all seaborne-traded crude oil and other liquids transited the Strait.
Hidden behind rugged mountain ranges, land access to this area was traditionally limited. Until the 2008 opening of a weekly ferry service from Muscat to Musandam and road construction over the last two decades, much of the territory was only accessible by offroad vehicles. The weekly ferry service can still fail to reach the Governorate’s capital of Khasab as a result of storms in the Sea of Oman, as I experienced in early 2017.
Its remoteness notwithstanding, the strategic location and maritime outlook have brought a range of foreign powers to this coast over time. For hundreds of years, Musandam was part of the Persian world during the Achaemenid and Sassanid empires. As such, the Persian language of Kumzari can be found in small numbers on either side of the strait, and in the earthquake-prone mountains of southwest Iran. In more recent centuries, at the height of its maritime power Portugal controlled Oman for around 150 years, before being ejected from their fortification at Khasab and from Muscat in 1650. Two centuries later, a British attempt to build and sustain a submarine telegraph cable linking Karachi and London saw the construction of a telegraph repeater station within a mile of the old Portuguese fort. Thanks to the monotony, local attacks and some of the highest minimum temperatures on the planet, many soldiers stationed at Musandam were said to have gone insane during their postings.