File 619/1907 Pt 6 'Arms traffic:- Persian Gulf - Searching of vessels in territorial waters of Trucial Chiefs. Position of Katr [Qatar].' [‎233r] (5/124)

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No. 755, dated Bushire, the 2nd (received 12th) March 1913 (Confidential).
From—L ieutenant-Colonel Sir Percy Cox, K.C.I.E., C.S.I., Political Resident A senior ranking political representative (equivalent to a Consul General) from the diplomatic corps of the Government of India or one of its subordinate provincial governments, in charge of a Political Residency.
in the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. ,
To—The Secretary to the Government of India in the Foreign Department.
I have the honour to refer to the correspondence ending with my commu-
< 30 R f l d ?JA 0 w 0reign Department, telegram No. nication marginally cited on the subiect
89, dated 14th January 1913. of the Qf ^ ^ & fact0] ,
arms traffic problem.
2. After some days’ delay owing to bad weather at sea, and heavy rain
aS ^’. W , h l Cl i n ' ad , e U difflcult for camels *0 travel, I effected a meeting
with Shaikh Jasim bin Thani and his son, Shaikh Abdulla bin Jasim, Governor
0 -ii ?r a i ’ 011 the February, and discussed the position frankly and fully
with them. * ^
, ,, .^ e bastion for them is merely one of price. Shaikh Jasim, who did the
talking, his son merely echoing him, said that he fully appreciated the con
siderations which obliged the British Government to seek to suppress the Arms
iraflic and expressed his abstract desire to co-operate with and satisfy them in
this, as m other matters affecting their interests. He then went on to explain
his own position in the matter. The following is the condensed purport of
some two hours’ discussion which ensued.
. Sffinldi Jasim said that he recognized that the British Government were
in a position to do what they pleased in the direction of the seizure of arms
m transit by sea and he accepted that position; but that in point of fact most
ot the arms which reached Katar came either by land all the wav, or merely
ci ossed from the Trucial Coast A name used by Britain from the nineteenth century to 1971 to refer to the present-day United Arab Emirates. , and that once in Katar, although he was not
prepared to say that some might not pass across the Gulf, most "of them went
to supply the Arab market. He estimated that in the last year his dependents
had made a profit out of them of not less than Rs. 50,000. He continued
that he was not m a practical position to compel his tribesmen to accept at
his hands the arbitrary extinction of this source of income, and that if he
undertook to take that course in deference to our wishes, we must place him
m a position to square his influential dependents and show them that he was
receiving a fair quid pro quo which justified his compliance.
At this stage I repeated the argument which I had already explained to
him, that our mam reason for asking him to execute this prohibition was not
with a view to preventing his Arabs from supplying their legitimate needs but
to enable us to deal with fraudulent exporters from Maskat, whose real object
was to export arms to the Persian Coast and who made use of any loophoffi or
colourable pretext for passing the arms out of Maskat.
I continued that Shaikh Mubarak among others had made no difficulty in
executing such a document and had asked for no payment for it. Shaikh
that m sSh e tr, h v r te " nderst00 l d begged me to remember
that Shaikh Mubarak derived so much substantial advantage from our support
in other ways that he was more than repaid for any co-operation he might have
afforded us m that dmectmn. He added that it was only our protection which
had saved Mubarak from being “ eaten up ” long ago by the Turks and had
made it P osslb le for him to enjoy the income from his Shat-el-Arab properties
unmolested. He ^ himself (Shaikh Jasim) was quite differently situated, and
we had done nothing of a like nature for him.
AbA'rf 6 him S 3 ! !, h , ad 1 sent m >’ representative, Khan Sahib Haii
.). ak > hls son,(Abdullah, last year to discuss with him the issue of a
prohibition on the basis of a cash payment and an annual allowance from
Government hoc, but that in reply Abdullah had asked me to believe that ^
was doing his best to co-operate with Government, when required, in keeping
away dhows carrying arms and that as, consequently, no arms were coming in
worth 86 t0 be Called fOT - 1 had ‘ aken this for what it was
not h Jasin Y e P lied ^at the offer then made was not adequate; he did
not wish for a cash present but for a regular allowance of a substantial nature.
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