Sultan Qaboos Quotes

According to Critchfield’s contacts, Sultan Qaboos came to the United States with no serious problems. He was interested mainly in meeting personally with President Ford and other U.S. government officials.

Akehurst was tremendously fortunate in having in Sultan Qaboos an unparalleled host for the counter-insurgency campaign. The new Sultan was utterly supportive of what Akehurst was trying to do, and brought statesmanlike qualities to the fight that saved his country from communist takeover. He compares very favorably with the host-nation leaders of the early twenty-first-century conflicts, such as Iraq’s Nouri al-Malaki or Afghan presidents Karzai and Ashraf Ghani. The only times that Qaboos frustrated Akehurst were during his occasional bouts of wariness of bad omens: the Sultan would refuse to embark on journeys or projects if his astrologers deemed them unpropitious. Nevertheless, Akehurst concluded that “It would have been folly to overrule the Commander-in-Chief’s premonitions.”110