Paper short abstract:

This paper follows the ebb and flow of territorial anxiety over Omani-Emirati borderlands through the lens of Madha, an Omani exclave located inside the United Arab Emirates. It shows how fluid conceptions of belonging today clash with notions of territoriality imposed in the mid-twentieth century.

Paper long abstract:

In the southeastern corner of the Arabian Peninsula, territorial disputes refuse to disappear: in recent years, a number of cartographic errors, in which parts of Oman are included within the borders of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), have laid bare persistent local anxieties about the security of these two countries’ territories. Where some Omanis fear the maps reflect actual Emirati territorial ambitions, other Omanis respond in kind and welcome a reconstitution of Greater Oman, a former, more expansive entity. “Taking back land” signfies not just a return of territory, but seemingly also of history.

This paper pushes the phrase “taking back land” beyond its literal meaning to explore its temporal and epistemological connotations. It traces the source of Omani and Emirati territorial anxieties to a (post-)imperial British vision that, in an effort to secure territory for its protectorates, began to freeze in place otherwise versatile allegiances and malleable claims to land. Through its focus on Madha, an Omani territorial exclave located squarely inside the UAE, this paper demonstrates how questions of national belonging remain unresolved and how border-dwelling Omanis juggle old and new ways of making sense of their connection both to the Omani and Emirati states, and to imaginations beyond these institutions. Drawing on archival research and a combined 17 months of fieldwork in Oman, this paper argues that, in this corner of the Middle East, “taking back land” may entail not just a territorial, but also an epistemological shift that undoes the violence of the past century.