Thanks a lot for providing the link for that interesting article in
DAWN about Gwadur - a place that Pakistan wanted so badly and
apparently neglegted so much after it got it. I still have doubts
whether, in legal terms, you can talk of a "sale" of Gwadur. A sale is
a transaction between two parties, money against goods or other items.
Here we have Sultan Said accepting money from a third party, the UK,
for withdrawing from Gwadar and not opposing a Pakistani takeover.
Does it matter whether Pakistan reimbursed the UK or whether the UK
spent its own money?
Funny how newspapers create their own stories: I recall that in the
1990s during my time as a Consul General in Dubai, newspapers
(Pakistani?) spread the rumour of Oman "buying" or "leasing" Gwadar
back from Pakistan! At the origin of this was, if I remember
correctly, the news that an Omani company was interested in investing
in some industrial plant in Gwadur.
I did not find the time to read the archive sources on the postal
services provided by Pakistan in Gwadur before 1958. In any case, the
postal agency did not have any extraterritorial status. It was just a
convenient arrangement for both sides, and I can try to dig up the
documents.
If anyone looks for more info on the transfer of Gwadur from Muscat to
Pakistan, there are two lengthy chapters in the following books:
Miriam Joyce, "The Sultanate of Oman: a twentieth century history"
(Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1995), chapter "Relinquishing Gawadur" on
pp. 65-82; and
R.W. Bailey (ed.), "Records of Oman", (Archive Eds., 1988 and 1992),
chapter "Relations with Pakistan: Gwadur" in Vol. 10 on pp. 599-752.
Joachim Duester
--- In
BoundaryPoint@yahoogroups.com, "Lowell G. McManus"
<mcmanus71496@m...> wrote:
> What I posted came from http://www.dawn.com/2001/01/22/ebr5.htm ,
> a feature on Gwadur in DAWN, the leading English-language
> newspaper in Pakistan. Different interest groups probably
> have different views or spins on the events of 1958.
> Still, the place came to be Pakistani after a sale by
> the Sultan of Muscat in that year.
>
> Lowell G. McManus
> Leesville, Louisiana, USA
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Joachim Duester" <jduester@p...>
> To: <BoundaryPoint@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Monday, March 29, 2004 8:35 AM
> Subject: [BoundaryPoint] Re: New Subject - Gwadur
>
>
> > Well, we are talking here about
> > http://www.home.pages.at/maxifant/Frames/gwadar.htm
> > - Gwadar, Gwadur, Guadar - it's all the same actually in different
> > tranliteration.
> >
> > To claim that Sultan Said "offered" it "for sale" is ludicrous, as
> > well as the claim that there were offers from the UK, Iran and the
> > USSR. The story of Gwadar is well covered in some recently published
> > sources, though little is found about it in the Internet. Muscat
> > reliquished sovereignty over Gwadar in 1958, after many years of
> > Pakistani efforts to obtain that piece of territory. Sultan Said
> > always refused to negotiate directly with Pakistan, and authority was
> > not handed over to Pakistan, but under an arrangement made with the
> > BRITISH (not Pakistani) government, he withdrew his administrators
> > from Gwadar in September 1958 and Pakistani officials arrived hours
> > later to take over. The refusal to negotiate with Pakistan and the
> > absence of a formal handover to Pakistan seem to indicate that he did
> > not accept the loss of Gwadar, and that he wanted to show that he only
> > yielded to British pressure. On the other hand, he was very precise as
> > to the amounts of money to be paid to him through the British
> > government and how and where they were to be deposited. If I remember
> > correctly, it was the equivalent of 3 million pound sterling, paretly
> > to be paid in US dollars. Also in 1958, Sultan Said insisted that the
> > agreement of 1891 entered into by his grandfather Sultan Faisal with
> > Britain "never to cede, sell or mortgage" any part of his territory to
> > a foreign power should be abolished (and it was abolished by an
> > agreement in the form of an exchange of letters). He probably argued
> > that he was now asked to cede Muscat territory - i.e. Gwadar - to a
> > foreign nation, exactly what the British had requested Muscat NOT to
> > do in 1891 ...
> >
> > Joachim Duester