Fighting the Sultan's War

The Memoir of a British Infantry Officer in Oman's Dhofar War, 1974–1976

David Freeman

• Publisher: Greenhill Books
• Year: 2026
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781805002260
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

From 1965 to 1976, the Dhofar War was being fought in southern Oman - a conflict wherein the Omani government, led by Sultan Said bin Taimur, and later his son Sultan Qaboos, fought against the Dhofar Liberation Front (DLF), a Marxist insurgency group who wanted to overthrow the Sultan's rule and establish a communist government.

The conflict escalated in the 1970s, with Sultan Qaboos receiving military support from Britain and Iran. By 1975, the government forces, with the help of British and Iranian troops, defeated the insurgents, securing the region and stabilizing Sultan Qaboos's rule.

Major David Freeman was a one of those British troops - a British Infantry Officer who was seconded to the Sultan of Oman’s Forces in the 1970s. Major Freeman has recorded his experience of this conflict - the operations, the tactics, the successes and the struggles - in extraordinary detail, covering the last year of the war in 1975 and the first six months of 1976 in the still active eastern sector of Dhofar. Fighting the Sultan's War is an eye-opening first-hand account of one of the lesser-known ‘small wars’ of the Cold War era, and should not be missed by any military history enthusiast. 

David Freeman's memoir was transcribed by his son, Alex Freeman. Born in 1967 into a military family, Alex was educated in the West Country and commissioned into the British Army in 1986. He served as an infantry officer with the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment and The Royal Welch Fusiliers, seeing active service in Northern Ireland, Germany, the Middle East, Africa, and Bosnia. After two decades in uniform, he left the Army in 2006 to pursue an MBA and a career in business.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations and Maps
• Glossary
• Dramatis Personae
• Introduction by Calvin H. Allen, Jr.
• Foreword by Peter Willdridge
• Chapter 1 Arrival
• Chapter 2 Settling In
• Chapter 3 White City and Medina al-San
• Chapter 4 Hagaif
• Chapter 5 A Dual Command
• Chapter 6 Miscellany
• Chapter 7 The Darbat Picquet
• Chapter 8 Tawi Atair: June–August 1975
• Chapter 9 Tawi Atair: September–December 1975
• Chapter 10 Tawi Atair: January–March 1976
• Chapter 11 Arzat
• Epilogue
• Appendix 1 Letter to Lieutenant Colonel John McKeown
• Appendix 2 Timeline: War in Dhofar
• Index
• Plates