Oman Vision 2040 and Iraq Explosive Development: Mismanagement or Misconception?

“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted;

Persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished;

Persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.” – Mark Twain, Band of Robbers

“Without strong watchdog institutions, impunity becomes the very foundation upon which systems of corruption are built. And if impunity is not demolished, all efforts to bring an end to corruption are in vain. “— Rigoberta Menchú, Nobel Prize Laureate.

“Those who do not know how to manage their business, their wheat eats their barley” – ???? ?? ???? ??????? ????? ???? ????? – Iraqi proverb

(This story is narrated by the Professor himself.)

I was working as an Associate Professor and the Head of the English Language and Literature at the Rustaq College of Education (now the Rustaq College of Applied Sciences) in Oman when we started to hear about Oman Vision 2020. Everyone was talking about this vision. The teaching staff, especially the Omanis, the officials at the College and in Oman, the State TV, the ordinary people – almost everyone, even the College cleaners who used to work for more than ten hours a day for a wage less than $100 a month!

According to this vision, Oman would be prosperous by 2020 and Omanis would be living in luxury and happiness as Oman would be a leading regional power and a major player on the world stage. Omanis would live their life to the full and would be eating dollars and throwing out dollars even in toilets!

Almost all of our students at the College were female students who used to be very hard-working with a high level of intelligence. This was one of the motives for me to continue working at the College for nine years in very difficult circumstances and very bad College management and a very chaotic Ministry of Higher Education.

As the Head of the English Department, I used to hold meetings with the students’ representatives who used to be frank and voice their opinions openly about the problems and obstacles facing them in their studies and in life. I used to try my best to make them feel positive and hopeful about their study and their life and that the future would be brilliant and a great deal better. All of them, without exception, would tell me in Arabic, “Doctor, nothing positive would come out of this vision in 2020. Things would be worse. We do not believe anything!”. I was really surprised how young female students could say this at a time when everyone was hailing Oman Vision 2020 and the great achievements it would make for Oman and its citizens. I was happy during the first few years, especially since my students were very polite, friendly, sociable, and very hard-working. I felt these students did have the desire and motivation to learn and build up a career for themselves in education and serve their country as teachers.

Then things started to get worse and I started to think that these bad things had everything to do with Oman Vision 2020 and would certainly lead to its failure. The first thing that happened and shocked the College was what Said Al-Rubaii did a few months after the Oman Vision was launched.

Said Al-Rubaii, the former Director-General of Colleges, the former Secretary-General of the Council of Education, and now the President of the University of Applied Sciences and technology, has always played the biggest role in corrupting the Ministry of Higher Education in Oman and contributed to the failure of Oman vision 2020.  He is a creeper and a social climber. He is very arrogant, ignorant, and a big thief. He embezzles millions of dollars from the Ministry every year through his corrupt contracts with some Recruitment Agencies in Oman. The man is crooked in every sense of the word. He is disrespectful and morally rotten in mentality and behavior.

There are serious problems and challenges facing higher education in Oman. The absence of any sort of democracy or freedom of expression in management, the toxic work environment where a written memo within your job will lead to the termination of the work contract or to jail for years, the widespread culture of fear and hypocrisy, bribery, forgery of grades, fraud, and embezzlement of huge amounts of money, and “deep state corruption” are among these problems and challenges.

There is another important aspect related to corruption at the Rustaq College of Education in Oman. This concerns the top management of the College. When I started my job at the College, there was a Professor from Jordan as the Dean of the College. He was a very respectable professor and a dedicated dean. There was a Central Examination Committee supervising the Final Exams for which half of the total marks of the academic year were allocated.

After a year or two, the Dean left and a new dean was appointed. The New Dean was a Syrian who was also a very respectable professor and a dedicated top executive. He used to welcome all teachers, students, and staff into his office. He was a very polite and open-minded person and used to meet with the teachers, students, and staff in open official meetings for discussion and feedback. The Central Examination Committee continued with its great job of supervising the Final Exams in an efficient and effective way. He expanded the Committee and allocated more space and resources for it to meet all the challenges after the increase in the number of students in all departments of the College. Things were going very smoothly and I spent some of the happiest years of my career and my life at Rustaq College.

Then all of a sudden and without any prior information, the excellent Syrian Dean left the College, and, as always, we were not told the reasons. A new small-sized man was appointed as a new Dean. This time he was an Omani national. We were not given any information about him nor did he meet with us to introduce himself or outline his policies and plans. We heard he had just finished his Ph.D. in Something! Nobody knows his specialization and he has never mentioned his specialization in any document. It was also claimed he got his degree from an English-speaking country but in fact, he hardly speaks English and he cannot produce any coherent text in English. He came directly to us from the airport without any experience in management or deanship. They told us that his name is Said bin Hamed bin Said Al Rubaii ???? ?? ??? ???????, but for all of us, he was an indefinite article. We were also told he was appointed as Dean even if he did not have a single-day experience because the Ministry had just started to implement a new policy by appointing recent Oman graduates to the top positions of higher education in the country to replace expatriate professors. This policy has proved to be very disastrous and a calamity to higher education in the Sultanate.

Within a month or so, Said Al-Rubaii proved himself a very impolite person, very arrogant and ignorant. He was extremely stupid and unqualified to run the Rustaq College. He was lacking all the qualities of an academic person and of a human being and started to behave in a very reckless and bestial manner.

The first thing he did was to close the doors of his office and refuse to meet any teacher, student, or staff member for any reason. He canceled the Central Examination Committee and replaced it with a small commission for each department. Because there were not enough teachers for managing and supervising final exams and insufficient resources, big problems started to emerge in almost all the departments.

There was a great deal of forgery and deception at the Rustaq College during the years in which Said Al Rubaii was Dean of the College. There was a forgery of students’ grades, employees’ salaries, purchase receipts and documents, teachers’ qualifications, tuition fees, numbers of students at the colleges, HR documents, financial statements, bank accounts, and bonuses. Said Al Rubaii was a corrupt Dean down to his nails. He behaved in a selfish and very unfair and non-academic manner and did exactly the opposite of what His Majesty Sultan Qaboos, the late Sultan of Oman, was saying about honesty and loyalty and the goals of higher education in the Sultanate. It was, therefore, a great shock for us when this unqualified, crooked, and corrupt Dean was promoted to be the Director-General of the Colleges of Education in the Ministry of Higher Education in Oman.

The situation was getting dire and worse by the day. So I wrote a written memo to Dr. Rawiya Al-Busaidi, the Minister of Higher Education, on 20 March 2010 hoping she would take action and put an end to this miserable situation in the English Department and Rustaq College. After more than a month, I received no reply. Everything was “quiet on the Western front”! So I went to the Ministry and talked to the Secretary of the Minister. I told her about my written memo and enquired if I could see the Minister herself. She told me the Minister “is always busy and cannot see anyone”. This is not true. It applies only to expatriate teachers and professors; the Omani teachers can easily see the Minister or any top official in the Ministry whenever they want. This is clear racism and discrimination. But the Secretary did me a favor by giving me some information about my memo. She told me the Minister had taken a decision to form up an Investigation Committee to look into my memo and investigate the issues raised in it. The Investigation Committee was to be headed by Al-Khattab Al-Kindi, one of the Advisors of the Minister. I was a little relieved that at last there would be someone from the top looking into the miserable situation created by Mustafa Abdul Baqui and Said Al-Rubaii.

Almost two months passed without any result. Then all of a sudden a letter signed by Said Al Rubaii came to the Rustaq College terminating my work contract and the work contracts of about 36 professors of the College. So Said Al Rubaii resorted to the familiar corrupt technique followed by most Omani corrupt officials in order to conceal facts and get rid of those who may dare expose them or challenge them.

I went to the Ministry to see what had happened and to enquire about the Investigation Committee. I met Al-Khattab Al-Kindi and asked why he did not investigate. He replied, “because your work contract has been terminated”! This is then the dirty game. This is what Said Al Rubaii and other top officials in higher education in Oman do. They just terminate the work contract of the expatriate professors and teachers to avoid their corruption being exposed to the public.

In the second semester of the Academic Year 2009-2010, a letter signed by Said Al Rubaii came to the Rustaq College of Applied Sciences terminating the work contracts of about 36 professors of the College. They were among the best and most respected professors in higher education in Oman. They had high academic credentials and rich experiences in their fields of specialization. They were given no reason or explanation for why their work contracts were terminated. The Rustaq College was in terrible need of their services and academic qualifications and experiences. This termination came to be known in Rustaq as Said Al Rubaii’s massacre. It was really a massacre in higher education in every sense of the word. Said Al Rubaii was after one thing: how to fill his pockets with bribes from the Recruitment Agencies in Oman and from individual teachers who used to approach him individually for appointments in the Colleges.

Let us now move to A’Sharqiyah University in Oman and see how it has contributed to the failure of Oman Vision 2020 and will certainly contribute to the failure of Oman Vision 2040.

After I left the Rustaq College of Education, he joined A’Sharqiyah University as the Director of the Foundation Program which was outsourced to an Education Company in Muscat. After a year or so, I signed a work contract with A’Sharqiyah University itself to work as an Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics and TESOL at the College of Commerce (now the College of Business and Administration). I was working very hard, faithfully, and diligently. Then an academic and a legal dispute happened between the educational company that was running the Foundation Program and A’Sharqiyah University which was then a start-up higher education provider. This dispute was threatening the very existence of the University as there was no Foundation Program and there were no teachers available to run the Program. Being a qualified academic with a very rich experience, I was asked by the University to design the Foundation Program. The time was too short and there was no one to help me in any way. But I worked day and night to design the Program as per the national and international requirements and standards. I had also to work almost single-handedly to recruit 52 qualified teachers from all over the world to teach the English Language, Maths, and IT to the students of the Foundation Program. Then I had to contact reputed publishes to arrange for the purchase of the academic books, textbooks, and other teaching materials (CDs, DVDs, teachers’ manuals, etc.). Again single-handedly! I continued to work very hard and efficiently in running the Foundation Program after I became the Director of the Language Center and Foundation Program. As per the structure of the Language Center, there should be at least 5 academics and supporting staff to assist the Director in the management of the Language Center. There was none! The University behaved in a very stingy and stupid way and did not appoint anyone, in order to save money. So I had to do everything alone! You can imagine how hard it was to run a Language Center and a Foundation Program in a start-up university with 52 teachers and thousands of students by one single person! Then came Abood Al-Sawafi (former VC) and Hamed Al-Hajri (Assistant VC) and joined A’Sharqiyah University. Abood Al-Sawafi personally signed a work contract with me to work as the Director of the Language Center and Foundation Program for the academic year 2014-2015. There were six months left before the end of the contract when Abood Al-Sawafi issued an illegal directive No. 50 on 28 May 2015 to move the former Director of the Language Center and Foundation Program and replace him with an unqualified teacher who does not know his head from his bottom! Abood Al-Sawafi asked the Director to form a team to do the course descriptions of the academic programs for a new college to be named “College of Arts and Humanities”, as he said. There was an uproar among the Language Center teachers and staff as this step was very unreasonable and dangerous and would certainly destroy the Language Center and the Foundation Program. The Director was the dynamo of the Language Center and the University was in bad need of his qualifications, experience, guidance, management, and science-based planning. It was I who founded the Language Center and Foundation Program. In order to confront this uproar, Abood Al-Sawafi called for a meeting with all the teachers on 10 June 2015 and officially informed them that the Director would be promoted to be the Dean of a new college at the university and he was assigned the hard task of designing the feasibility study and the academic programs for the new college. This turned out to be one of Abood Al-Sawafi’s nasty lies and deceitful tactics. Abood Al-Sawafi is well-known for his illegal, non-academic, and immoral behavior. The Director worked very hard with his team for about two months and submitted the feasibility study and the completed documents of course descriptions and academic programs. Instead of keeping his word, Abood Al-Sawafi terminated the work contract of the Director. He has thus proved himself a dishonest, corrupt person without a word and without honor.

Instead of appreciating the hard work and the unique efforts done by the Director, his work contract was not renewed in spite of the fact that the University was in urgent need of his experience, expertise, and services. All this because he stood against their forgery of students’ grades and corruption They did worse than that. They decided not to give the Director his end-of-service gratuity though this is completely illegal in Oman and against all moral values. You cannot simply deprive your employees of their legal rights and compensations just because they voiced opinions in the interests of the University and the students. So the Director took them to court. The court case lasted about two years during which the Director, who was an expatriate, had to struggle to feed himself and his family. Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamed Al-Hajri, being immoral and ugly monsters, used all wicked and evil means to discredit the Director and deprive him of all his legal and human rights. But the worse thing they did was to publish an advertisement in a local newspaper in Arabic saying the Director, who was a university professor, “had run away from work and no one was permitted to give him work” in spite of the fact that the Director’s work relationship with the University had officially ended almost a year before and the court case was still going on. The Director had already been given an official letter by A'Sharqiyah University certifying the end of the working relationship. So how did he run away from work? Imagine yourself a university professor and your working relationship with the University has officially ended and you have an official letter from the university itself to this effect. Then after a year, they put an advertisement in a local newspaper with your picture on it saying “this worker has run away from the University and should not be given work by another employer” as if the University professor were a manual worker working on a farm! This is really insulting and very offensive to all university professors and educators and to higher education in Oman and the world. It also violates the very basic human values of the Omani society. Are Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamed Al-Hajri really Omanis?! Are they human beings or monsters? As if this was not enough for them, they went even further. They refused even to give air tickets to the Director and his family to return to their country as per the Oman labor Law in order to embarrass him and get him deported by the police. Wickedness beyond belief!

It is no surprise then that when 2020 came, it was a disaster for most Omanis. Thousands and thousands of them lost their jobs because of the new arrangement of “fire and hire” between the Ministry of Manpower and the businessmen. This arrangement is one of the most brutal and merciless arrangements you can ever find in a capitalist society. It does not look at the employees as human beings who have families and children to feed and look after. It has led to great miseries in Oman as many thousands of Omanis were unable to pay their personal debts and business loans and were mercilessly sent to jail, sometimes together with their wives. Oman vision 2020 was a real disaster for Omanis.

Iraq’s Explosive Development

In the 1970s, Iraq nationalized its oil industry, but the oil companies operating in Iraq then threatened to come back and make Iraq pay a heavy price for this nationalization. This is exactly what happened after the American Invasion of Iraq in 2003; these and other oil companies did come back and are operating now with full force.

After the oil nationalization, huge cash revenues started to flow into Iraq’s national budget. There was a golden opportunity for Iraq to become a very prosperous country in the Middle East, but unfortunately, it missed out on this opportunity because of very bad political, economic, and social policies. The political and useless wars Iraq engaged in wasted a very big portion of these revenues, especially the Iraq- Iran War (1980-1988); the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait (1990-1991), and the sanctions that followed. But the most serious mistakes were related to the bad, unjust, and very ineffective economic and social policies adopted by the Iraqi regime before the American invasion of 2003 and by the successive Iraqi governments after 2003. Before 2003, Iraq wanted to become a “superpower” at the expense of the basic needs of the vast majority of the Iraqi people who have never wanted to become a superpower. They have always wanted to live a decent human life like any other peace-loving nation in the world.

In the first five years after the nationalization of oil, the Iraqi government invested some of the revenues in basic education, higher education, hospitals, transport, water dams, and some infrastructure areas. Iraq witnessed a very good and reasonable development and prosperity: free education for all citizens and illiteracy was completely eliminated by 1976; free healthcare, generous higher education scholarships; a high standard of living; good salaries with a very good rate of exchange for the Iraqi currency against all major currencies (Iraqi dinar = 3+ Great Britain Sterling). But unfortunately, this reasonable and successful development did not continue and took a very serious and faulty turn because of what came to be called “Explosive Development”.

As per this Explosive Development, very big projects were adopted by the Government of Iraq and huge amounts of money were wasted. Billions and billions of dollars were wasted on building up a nuclear reactor with the aim of producing a nuclear weapon. The reactor was destroyed by Israel in 1981. The people of Iraq have never wanted to be a nuclear country.

Luxurious palaces and buildings were built for government and public functions and events just to show off that Iraq is a rich country even during the Iraq-Iran war whereas most of the people of Iraq were suffering from hunger and were lacking the basic needs of ordinary life.

Billions of dollars were wasted in sending rockets to space without any clear plan of what to do with these rockets for military purposes just to show off that Iraq is a superpower in spite of the fact that Iraqis never want to be a superpower. They just want to live a decent human life like any other peace-loving nation in the world.

Before 2003, there were very positive aspects to Iraq’s economy and development.

·        There was a Ministry of Planning stuffed with very dedicated experts and professionals and very effective development plans that had been very successful in bringing about many positive changes. This Ministry was in operation for decades in Iraq before it was abolished by the Government when the country was moving in the wrong direction of producing military equipment and was preparing for useless wars.

·        There was a Centralized Government Office responsible for the recruitment and appointment of all Iraqi graduates of colleges, universities, and other higher education institutions as per their specializations in the public sector and the mixed sector (public/private sector). This office was doing a great job together with the Civil Servants Office (Diwan). There was hardly any higher education graduate in Iraq without a job before 2003.

·        Education and higher education are both free for all Iraqis. There was a compulsory basic education law for all Iraqi kids. There were few, if any, dropouts from basic education. This greatly contributed to the elimination of illiteracy in Iraq by 1979.

·        Public higher education institutions were generally very well-staffed and equipped. The standards of high education were very high and Iraqi colleges and universities used to receive thousands of Arab and international students. This situation was negatively impacted, to some extent, by the Iraq-Iran War (1980-1988) but the situation was generally good even during the war.

·        There were few private schools, colleges, and universities in Iraq before 2003 and these were very strictly controlled and monitored by the Ministry of Higher Education in Iraq.

After 2003, the above positive aspects in Iraq have drastically changed for the worse.

·        The Ministry of Planning remains now canceled in spite of its very great importance for reasonable and sustainable development.

·        The Centralized Government Office for recruiting the graduates of higher education institutions was canceled and you see now these graduates demonstrating almost every day on the streets of Iraq for jobs. They are met with a bunch of lies from stupid and corrupt government officials and politicians.

·        Free education has been canceled now with public schools’ buildings too old and almost collapsing because of official neglect and corruption. These buildings are unfit for teaching.

·        Poverty has dramatically increased with 30% of Iraqis below the poverty line in spite of the fact that Iraq is the fifth richest country in the world in terms of natural wealth and resources. One of the consequences of this very miserable situation, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children have dropped out of school and taken to the streets and traditional markets to sell shopping bags and anything they can to support their hungry families.

·        Illiteracy has come back to Iraq after it was eliminated in 1979 and it has been reported that millions of young men and women are now unable to read and write.

·        There are now more than a million prostitutes in Iraq according to Christiane Amanpour’s report on CNN some time ago. This is one of the immediate and miserable consequences of the “democratic transformation”, poverty, and corruption brought about by the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. The successive Iraqi governments since 2003 have failed miserably to deal with the problem or have practically ignored the roots of this societal, health-risk, and dangerous phenomenon.

·        Unemployment is a big problem for Iraqi young men and women at a time when most of the public civil offices are extremely understaffed. A simple official request or dealing at any office made by an ordinary citizen or resident takes weeks and even months to deal with and finish. This unemployment problem can be dealt with very easily by staffing the civil offices and appointing full-time employees, especially now when the oil prices have recently hiked. There is now a surplus of $25 billion in the Iraqi budget just for the last few months. Where is the money going to go?

What are the basic problems and challenges?

The story of the Professor above is only a tiny part of the whole picture. There have been many serious episodes of mismanagement and corruption at A’Sharqiyah University about which the Board of Directors and the Board of Trustees did not take action or act responsibly to address and deal with in accordance with the charter, laws, and bylaws of A’Sharqiyah university. They have thus proved themselves once more as unfit for the job. Corrupt and incompetent top managers like them are incapable of contributing anything to the success of any vision put forward by the Government of Oman. This is not limited to A’Sharqiyah University. There are thousands of similar cases elsewhere in Oman, which indicate that Oman should put its house in order first before it aspires to any vision or development being achieved successfully.

Oman and Iraq have both adopted capitalism as the model for their economies, but unfortunately, they have been implementing the worst form of capitalism either because the officials and businessmen do not really understand what capitalism actually means or because they deliberately ignore that they are required to manage a country and a nation, not just a capitalist system based on generating profits at the expense of the vast majority of the population, especially the poor and those who are not endowed with the natural abilities to compete and survive in a merciless capitalist system. This is why the gap between the rich and the poor is getting bigger and bigger in Oman and Iraq out of reckless, inhumane, selfish, and stupid policies followed by the governments of these two countries.

The economic and social powers in both Oman and Iraq have been concentrated in the hands of a minority of politicians and a crony capitalist class that exists through the exploitation of the majority working class and their labor; prioritizes profit over social good, natural resources, and the environment. The politicians and capitalists and the wealthy classes associated with the governments have been building palaces and mansions and enjoying life to the full whereas the middle classes and low-income workers who live in slums, are deprived of education, healthcare, and the joys of life, and have nothing to eat.

The poor have no alternative but to give up education for themselves and their children and take to the streets of filthy towns and villages to serve the capitalists and all those who oppress and repress them. The kids work in the streets, polishing shoes for senseless customers and sleeping without shelter whereas the capitalists and the government officials and their families eat the best of food, live in palaces and big houses, and enjoy their lives to the full. And then you find these same government officials talking about social justice and the great efforts of the government to work hard for the prosperity and dignity of all citizens and promise great investments that will generate huge revenues for everybody in Oman Vision 2040 or Iraq Explosive Development.

Most Iraqis and Omanis do not care about any political system nor do they follow any ideology or politician. In fact, most of the ordinary people of the world do not care about politics as such. What they care about is how they are treated by their rulers, first officials, and governments: Do they treat them as human beings, or do they treat them like herds of sheep and cows?

The ordinary people of any country want to live a decent human life in peace and dignity. They do not want to starve and live homeless in a democracy or a dictatorship or a monarchy. They do not want to go to destructive wars with other nations for problems fabricated or exaggerated by their leaders although these problems can be solved peacefully. They do not want to be killed or critically injured or arrested when they demonstrate or complain about some issues even if they live under a democratic system. They do not care about labels; they care about actions.

The Government of Oman has recently announced its official plans to send rockets and satellites to space and maybe spaceships to Mars and other planets, which cost billions of dollars whereas millions of its citizens are homeless and live on the streets. They are not only hungry but they are starving to death. They are forced to sell, with their families and children, homemade foods on the streets, which has, until recently, been very unusual for the citizens of a rich Gulf country like Oman. They do not have access even to the basics of life like water and sanitation. Similarly, the successive Iraqi governments have been investing huge portions of oil revenues in useless investments and very big projects that have been left unfinished for almost two decades now, leaving millions of Iraqis below the poverty line.

Unfortunately, most of the investments have focused on investments for the rich and wealthy: luxurious villas and hotels, five-star clinics and hospitals, entertainment cities and parks, expensive tour companies, expensive products of all sorts, and even factories producing alcohol and beer for Muslim citizens! Most of the necessities and essential products are not locally produced or manufactured; they are still being imported from other countries and are sold to ordinary people at high prices. To facilitate the selling of these imported products, large supermarkets and hypermarkets have been built everywhere even in small villages. This is the only thing they are good at.

I would like now to mention some of the most urgent, practical problems and challenges for the majority of the Omani people. The Government of Oman should deal first with these problems before it talks about Oman Vision 2040. For me, this is vision is a way of deception and avoiding dealing with the real suffering and problems facing the ordinary Omanis, exactly like the misleading and disastrous “Iraq Explosive Development”:

·        The prices of food, energy, fuel, electricity, rents, medicines, and other essential goods and services have recently surged in Oman because of COVID-19, climate change, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and other factors. However, the Government of Oman has done nothing significant to alleviate the suffering of ordinary Omanis. Instead, the Government has increased the taxes on everything and the taxes are going up by the week and month, if not by the day!

·        Thousands and thousands of Omanis have lost their jobs because of the avarice and greed of corrupt Omani businessmen and the immoral policy of “hire and fire” approved by the Ministry of Labor and the Government itself to appease these corrupt crony businessmen. These Omanis have families to feed and take care of and have already taken personal and business loans. They are unable not only to pay their debts and loans but also unable to feed themselves and their children. What is more than the worse, their wives have left them because they are unable to feed them; thousands of them were sent to prison by corrupt, merciless judges and the Government is silent about it and has done nothing for these miserable human beings.

·        Oman is one of the Gulf countries which are supposed to be rich and prosperous, or at least it can provide a decent human life for its citizens.

·        Like Iraq, unemployment is a big problem for Omanis at a time when most of the public civil offices in Oman are understaffed and very badly equipped. A simple official request or dealing at any office made by any resident takes weeks and even months to deal with and finish as is the case in Iraq. This unemployment problem can be dealt with very easily by staffing the civil offices and appointing full-time employees, especially now when the oil prices have recently surged. There is now a surplus of $5 billion in the Oman budget. We may also ask: Where is the money going to go?

·        Any vision in Oman will never succeed unless there are modern and efficient systems and well-funded independent organizations for fighting corruption. The Government of Oman should give more freedom to the Omani journalists and ordinary people to freely express themselves. The repressive policies against journalists and ordinary citizens should be stopped immediately and the people of Oman should be given more freedom of speech, bearing in mind that Oman has one of the ruthless, repressive, and merciless Public Prosecutors in the region and the world. 

·        The minimum national wage in Oman has been continuously reduced throughout the years to that of a beggar, hardly enough for any human being to survive and live a decent life. Salaries are in general very low and young men cannot settle down and start a family. The rate of spinsterhood in Oman has recently climbed to almost 40% for the first in the history of the Sultanate. The salaries are the lowest in the Gulf region. The only exceptions are the salaries of Oman Government’s officials and the top corrupt higher education executives and managers like Abood Al-Sawafi who receives a salary of about US $30,000 per month together with a huge package of bonuses and privileges just to come to A’Sharqiyah University to read newspapers and drink coffee. There are many cases like that of Abood Al-Sawafi in both the public and private sectors. The Government of Oman should be ashamed of itself.

·        There is an urgent need to reform the Oman Justice System. The slogan: “All people are equal before the law” should be implemented in actual practice, not on paper. Corrupt, wealthy, and influential people like Abood A-Sawafi, Hamed Al-Hajri, and Abdallah Al-Harthi should be treated as given a preferable treatment at the expense of real justice and the suffering of ordinary citizens.

The Government of Oman and the successive governments in Iraq have failed for many years and decades to provide their citizens with basic needs and basic human rights. More than 30% of Iraqis live below the poverty line and maybe we have the same percentage in Oman, or even higher. More and more Omanis are going hungry and have nothing to eat in spite of the fact that both Iraq and Oman are regarded as among the richest countries in the Middle East and the world. 

There is a great deal of corruption, unemployment, poverty, and misery of all sorts in both Iraq and Oman. It is true that the present Iraqi Government is an interim government and legally cannot take very big decisions as the Iraqi politicians have so far failed to form a full government with full authorization and capacity. However, this is not a justification for the government to not do more to fight corruption and tackle the problems of unemployment and hunger in the country.

The Government of Oman has a great deal more to do as it is a full government operating in a good, stable environment. But, unfortunately, it has failed to a great extent in meeting the basic needs of a large portion of Omani citizens who are getting hungrier by the day. There are many requirements and procedures which Iraq and Oman should undertake in order to join the global fight against corruption and be able to achieve real-life development for their citizens. For more information and insights, read my three articles:

1. “Why Does Corruption Persist in the Middle East? Implications for Businesses and Higher Education Institutions”, published on LinkedIn on October 13, 2019

 2. A Tale of Corruption in Two Countries: Iraq and Oman, published on November 3, 2020

3. Corruption, Unemployment, Poverty, Misery in the Middle East: Capitalism Is Not the Solution! published on March 7, 2022

Both the Government of Oman and the Government of Iraq are required to set up their priorities correctly and provide all their citizens with the basic needs of a decent human life away from deception, nasty lies, mismanagement, misconception, and useless long-term visions. Oman Vision 2040 is like the Strategic Plan of A’Sharqiyah University according to which Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamed Al-Hajri were planning to send a camel to the moon!

Conclusions

Neither the Iraqis nor the Omanis want to be a nuclear or supper power. They just want to live a decent human life like any other peace-loving nation.

There can be no real development or realization of any vision without taking into account the basic needs of the low-income classes and poor people.

We all recognize that there can be no business, no trade, no education, no justice, no development – nothing at all without the elimination of corruption and without the freedom of the press and freedom of speech.

The fight against corruption in both Iraq and Oman is very weak and limited either because the Governments are not willing to engage in big fights against the powerful and influential people like Abdallah Al-Harthy, Said Al Rubaii, Abood Al-Sawafi, and Hamed Al-Hajri, or because of the absence of brave and courageous people and agencies who are well-equipped and well-prepared to fight corruption until the bitter end. This is one of the main reasons why corruption persists in these two countries, and unfortunately, it will continue for some time. It is also one of the reasons for the failure of Oman Vision 2020 and the very likely failure of Oman Vision 2040.

Pure Capitalism failed a long time ago. It has succeeded to some extent as an economic model but it has led to exploitation, corruption, unemployment, injustices, and misery all over the world because of greed and avarice. It has been replaced by many other economic and social models. One of them is what we may call "humanistic capitalism" or “welfare capitalism” where the focus will not be on making profits only but also on the social welfare of the whole population of the country and then the world. This is why the capitalist economic model adopted by both Iraq and Oman has failed the majority of the population and has brought only poverty, misery, and more corruption.

Most ordinary people in both Iraq and Oman do not care about any political or economic system nor do they follow any ideology or political party. In fact, most of the ordinary people of the world, especially in the Middle East, do not care about politics itself. What they care about is how they are treated by their rulers, first officials, and governments: Do they treat them as human beings? or do they treat them like herds of sheep and cows?

The best approach for managing people anywhere, especially in businesses and organizations, is to be fair, objective, and consistent in following the official policies, regulations, codes of work ethics, moral values, and international standards of management practice.

The people of any country expect their governments, officials, and top managers to treat them as human beings, take good care of them, and provide them with their basic needs and human rights. They need to live a decent human life in order not to feel injustice and some may go to the extreme to make problems and troubles or even sabotage the development of the country or its stability or its strategic goals. To treat them like a herd of sheep or even to use this term to refer to them in any situation or context is totally unacceptable and repulsive.

Unfortunately, this rosy picture does not exist in Iraq and Oman because of bad governance, bad management, and widespread corruption. Those who deprive their citizens of their rights and treat them like a herd of sheep are crony capitalists, bad managers, and corrupt officials. They should be held to account and face justice for their abuse of power.

Corruption does not exist in a vacuum. It is usually committed by senior managers and powerful capitalists who cheat the systems of control and supervision and do not respect any laws or regulations. They are usually entrusted with a range of executive powers but they always betray this trust and go beyond these powers for selfish and wicked purposes.

As we all know, corruption can be reduced, avoided, or eliminated if we take care of two important things: the systems and the people who operate these systems. The systems must be effective and the people who operate them must be honest and efficient. If one of these two things is missing, then we should expect deception and corruption. This is why we have scandals and persistent corruption that hinder the realization of any long-term vision or sustainable development.

Many government officials and top executives in the public and private sectors in Iraq and Oman behave like Pharaohs rather than responsible people in charge of human beings. They are “pig-headed” and do not have any morals, ethics, or principles. They do not really care about humanity in any form; they just care about money and profits. They mistakenly believe they “own” their people and can treat them the way they want as long as they pay them wages and salaries. This is very clear in the insulting, vulgar, and uncivilized style they follow with their citizens and employees. Corrupt officials, top managers, and crony capitalists like Abood Al-Sawafi, Hamed Al-Hajri, Abdallah Al-Harthy, and Sa’aeed Al-Rubaii always indulge in very unprofessional behavior of deception, cheating, and lying to the public, to their employees, and to their superiors. They never give correct and accurate information or respect their citizens’ or employees’ rights as specified in their social and work contracts. For them, the qualities of honesty, fairness, and justice do not exist in their life dictionary.

In both Iraq and Oman, the distorted current form of capitalism has failed to produce an increasing standard of living for most of its citizens. The rich capitalists are getting richer, and the rest of the population is getting poorer. The capitalists and the wealthy classes associated with the governments have been building up palaces and mansions and enjoying life to the full whereas the middle classes and the low-income citizens live in slums, deprived of education, healthcare, and the joys of life, and have nothing to eat.

The most serious danger to society, stability, and the future of both Iraq and Oman are that capitalism and the bad policies of the governments have created in each country an army of slaves, hypocrites, and puppets who are prepared to give up all their dignity, moral and human values and sacrifice themselves just to appease the capitalists, the officials, and the government in order to survive and get some of the left-over food from the crony capitalists.

The poor have no alternative but to give up education for themselves and their children and take to the streets of filthy towns and villages to serve the government officials and the capitalists and all those who oppress and repress them. The kids work in the streets, polishing shoes for senseless customers and sleeping without shelter whereas the capitalists and the government officials and their families eat the best of food, live in palaces and big houses, and enjoy their lives to the full. Corrupt government officials and greedy, filthy, crony, and immoral capitalists like Abood Al-Sawafi, Hamed Al-Hajri, Abdallah Al-Harthy, and Sa’aeed Al-Rubai in Oman are responsible for all the hunger, starvation, poverty, and misery. They should be ashamed of themselves.

Oman Vision 2040 is a myth and a way of deceiving the poor, the hungry, and the needy, exactly like the Strategic Plan of A’Sharqiyah University according to which Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamed Al-Hajri were planning to send a camel to the moon!