When Britain wooed Arab hearts and minds — the story of Voice of the Coast

Note in July 2022: I wrote the first edition of this article in 2018 when substantial details of Voice of the Coast were very hard to find. For example, one of the leading books on British "propaganda" operations in the 1960s (Britain's Secret Propaganda War 1948-1977 by Paul Lashmar and James Oliver) covers the station in just two sentences. I could not even confirm the precise dates that Voice of the Coast was active. 

Much more information is now available. In particular, an excellent and well-sourced article by Athol Yates, published in June 2022 and running to more than 7,700 words (excluding notes and references), is devoted to the history of Voice of the Coast, and is highly recommended. 

I've therefore updated my article to clarify and confirm some details. Further research may yet reveal more. In particular, the Arabian Gulf Digital Archives – freely available and easily searchable – contain numerous British official documents related to the station.

Along with the article by Athol Yates, I also thank Lee Richards and Mike Barraclough for pointing me towards this little-known story, and Rory Cormac for publicising the article by Yates.

The Trucial States were a quasi-British protectorate until independence in 1971
Voice of the Coast was based at Sharjah (marked on the map as Ash Shariqah)

Objectives and techniques

Summary: Voice of the Coast (Sawt al-Sahil) [1] was a British-operated Arabic-language radio station on the air between 1965 and 1971, targeting audiences initially in the British-controlled Trucial States (now the United Arab Emirates, UAE) and then in the wider Gulf and Arabian Peninsula region. 

Objective: The aim was to support British influence in the region, drawing listeners away from hostile stations, notably Voice of the Arabs (Sawt al-Arab), the dominant presence on the region's airwaves at that time. Voice of the Arabs was a pan-regional Arab nationalist radio station broadcast from Cairo by Nasser’s Egypt since 1953. Its operations were a major concern to the British government for many years. The British Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) said in 1958 that broadcasts from Cairo had "played a large part in fomenting almost every recent crisis in the Middle East".

Techniques: Any planners of British political radio activity in the Middle East in the 1960s would have been only too aware of the shambolic failure of such British operations during the 1956 Suez Crisis.

Accordingly, Voice of the Coast adopted a light touch, playing plenty of music (as did Voice of the Arabs), as well as airing news, particularly local news. It also reported news that had already been broadcast by hostile stations. This attracted listeners, thereby denying them to Cairo, Damascus, etc, and by juxtaposing contradictory pieces could neutralise the hostile propaganda. 

As Athol Yates puts it: "The station’s strategy was essentially not to challenge foreign propaganda nor to promote the British way of life. Instead, it sought to reduce the number of people listening to hostile broadcasters, and thus slow or stop the spread of views which were against the interests of Britain and the Trucial States’ rulers."

In the jargon of psychological warfare, Voice of the Coast was not a "black" operation, that is one that operates under a false flag. Although was not explicit about its anti-Nasser purpose, it did not conceal its location in British protected territory. The full station identification was: "Voice of the Coast from the Trucial States" (Sawt al-Sahil min al-Imarat al-Mutasaliha – صوت الساحل من الإمارات المتصالحة). 

And listeners were invited to write to the station, particularly with their music requests, at Post Box 201, Sharjah. (By 1967 it was receiving 1,000 listeners' letters a month.)

However, Voice of the Coast was certainly not a "white" operation (one that clearly declares its affiliation). It did not announce over the air that it was run by Britain, and once it began to be heard outside the Trucial States many listeners may not have automatically linked it to British interests. In late 1967 it began airing commercials, mostly for local advertisers, further obscuring its official backing. 

British control

Geopolitical background: Voice of the Coast was based in Sharjah, one of the so-called Trucial States on the Arabian side of the Persian Gulf. Although they were not formally British possessions, all the Trucial States had treaties that gave Britain substantial rights in exchange for military and diplomatic protection.

London's authority on the ground was exercised by the Foreign Office through a British "Political Resident" in Bahrain, who in turn used a number of "Political Agents" in various sheikhdoms. Sharjah's affairs were looked after by the British Political Agent in neighbouring Dubai, just a few miles away. [2]

The UK's local military presence in the Trucial States was a paramilitary/gendarmarie force called the Trucial Oman Scouts (TOS). The TOS was headquartered in Sharjah, initially at a site next to RAF Sharjah airbase. 

The men in charge

Command and control: Voice of the Coast was a joint political-military operation, involving both the British Foreign Office [3] and Ministry of Defence. Political and military control was exercised by, respectively, the British Political Agent in Dubai and the commander of the TOS.

For most of its existence, the station was funded by the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence on a 50:50 basis.

Station management: One of the first British officers in charge was Tim Ash (who died in 2012, aged 79), an Arabic-speaking member of the Royal Signals who had volunteered for service in the TOS. Ash later recalled:

The station’s main aim was to provide listeners with Arabic music as well as supplying local news. The world news was taken from the BBC, but it had to go to the [British Political] Agency in Dubai first for checking before being broadcast. The station broadcast about six hours a day and had its own transmitter.

Denys Johnson-Davies (1922-2017), an Arabic-speaking civilian, took over as director of Voice of the Coast in 1968.

Johnson-Davies was offered the chance by the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Rashid, to remain as head of the station after independence in 1971, but turned it down. "I said, ‘Here you are, an independent Arab country – what do you want an Englishman for?'"

Tim Ash was one of those in charge of Voice of the Coast
Photo (undated): The National, Abu Dhabi

Launch, expansion and closure

Start of broadcasts: The station's origin lay in a completely separate station, Forces Radio Sharjah, which served the personnel at RAF Sharjah and the British members of the Trucial Oman Scouts. Forces Radio Sharjah had a low-power AM (mediumwave) transmitter. It began broadcasting in 1959. The following year it added two hours a week of Arabic programmes for the local members of the TOS. These were gradually expanded. By late 1963, ninety-minute programmes in Arabic were being aired four times a week.

In 1964, the British government's Counter-Subversion Committee had its status and remit raised, and it proposed, along with the Foreign Office's Information Research Department (IRD) and the Ministry of Defence, that the Arabic broadcasts from Forces Radio Sharjah be expanded and placed on a new footing. (The IRD was the part of the Foreign Office responsible for countering communist and Nasserite propaganda.) 

Additional resources were made available, new premises built and extra staff hired. The new series of broadcasts began using the name Voice of the Coast in 1965. 

After Voice of the Coast was hived off to run as a separate station, Forces Radio Sharjah continued as a service for its military audience in the RAF and the TOS. The 1968 edition of the World Radio TV Handbook lists Forces Radio Sharjah running on a low-power mediumwave transmitter on 1480 kHz.

Expansion of the station's transmission coverage: By August 1966 Voice of the Coast's low-power mediumwave transmitter had been replaced by a 1-kW mediumwave one and a 10-kilowatt shortwave unit, both supplied by the Foreign Office's Diplomatic Wireless Service (DWS). The shortwave transmitter gave reception in areas of the Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula well beyond the Trucial States. The following year it was noted that a 10-kW mediumwave transmitter had been obtained for the station. 

An increase in the strength of the shortwave transmitter (on 6040 kHz) was reported in 1970. This allowed the station to be heard by shortwave radio enthusiasts in Europe. Reception in the UK was also reported in 1970 of the station's mediumwave (737 kHz) signal.

(There are various reports of the frequency used on mediumwave. It had also been reported on 737 kHz in mid-1969 but an earlier (November 1967) Foreign Office document said 674 kHz was "to be used" by Sawt al-Sahil. After the station moved from Dubai to Sharjah in 1970 it used 1250 kHz.)     

Expansion of broadcasting hours: Alongside an increase in the station's transmission power was a rise in its daily output. In early 1967 it was only on the air for an hour and a half a day, but this had risen to three hours by July 1967, with plans to go to four hours a day. 

In mid-1969, Voice of the Coast was reported to be on the air for 8.75 hours a day (at 0615-0900 and 1700-2300 local times), while in early 1970 this was said to have expanded to 9.5 hours a day (0730-1000 and 1800-0100 local times). 

In 1970, Voice of the Coast moved its base from Sharjah to nearby Dubai but continued to broadcast under same name. 

Shortly before independence in 1971, it was operating with a 10-kW mediumwave transmitter (on 1250 kHz) and a 10-kW shortwave transmitter (on 6040 kHz). It was on the air for 11 hours a day at 0700-1100 and 1600-2300 local times. (Source: World Radio TV Handbook, 1972 edition)

Closure of the station: By the end of the 1960s the regional political climate had changed. The UK's interest in running such media operations in the region had waned. Britain had left Aden in 1967 and the following year Prime Minister Harold Wilson announced a general withdrawal of British forces east of Suez. 

The need for Voice of the Coast had also declined as the reputation and influence of Voice of the Arabs never recovered from Egypt’s defeat in the 1967 war.

On 1 October 1971, Voice of the Coast was renamed Dubai Radio, ahead of the Trucial States becoming independent as the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on 2 December that year. 

Assessment

After the failure and fiasco of British covert radio activity in the Suez crisis, Voice of the Coast stands out as an operation free of scandal and largely free of controversy. There were teething troubles in late 1964 as the moves began to form a separate station. Listener numbers fell, which was blamed on the policy of the station's new director, who came from the Royal Army Educational Corps, of making broadcasts more "sophisticated" and "political". A new director, a civilian (George Ioannides), was appointed, working under the supervision of a TOS officer. This seemed to work well and the station soon regained its audience. 

Programming was refocused back to light entertainment, mainly local news and Quran readings, with a limited amount of "judiciously cloaked propaganda material in small doses". 

The station was well-regarded by those who worked on it, and cooperation between its two sponsors, the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence, was harmonious (an aspect of British influence operations that failed to happen during the Falklands War). 

The station launches a successful career

Along with Tim Ash and Denys Johnson-Davies, an interesting personality at the station in the early days was a young female presenter, Hessa Al Ossaily. According to a 2014 article in the UAE newspaper The National:

Hessa Al Ossaily was only a teenager when she took the first step towards becoming a broadcasting legend. In 1965, a representative from the newly launched Sawt Al Sahel (The Voice of the Coast), an Arabic broadcast radio station in Sharjah that was operated by the British military, was looking for new talents. Just 15, the Emirati, who had a reputation as a star speaker at her school’s morning assembly, was determined to take up the ­challenge.

“I always had an adventurous kind of soul, where I like to try new things and always try to do them well,” says Al Ossaily, now known as the “mother of UAE ­media”.

With a heavy fringe, fashionable at the time, and a big smile, her voice was heard on the radio waves introducing the latest social affairs, celebrity talk and entertainment. As well as the chance of a lifetime, it was a way to help support her family.

“I would present light segments, depending on the requests of the listeners who would write in, and we would sit and read the letters and see what they would like to hear,” she recalls.

Mostly listeners wanted legendary Arab singers and the latest releases by a new generation of singers, especially from the Gulf.

“It was a very simple time: people just wanted a break from work, to listen to something light and fun, as the time for news and politics was announced by the males and adults at the radio station,” she says. 

Hessa Al Ossaily was a teenage recruit to the staff of Voice of the Coast
Photo (2014): The National, Abu Dhabi

Notes

[1] The station's name has been transliterated from the Arabic by various sources as Sawt al-Sahil, Sawt as-Sahil, Sawt al-Saahil, Sawt as-Saahil, Sawt al-Sahel, etc, with other variants reflecting the inclusion or omission of hyphens. The use of as for the Arabic definite article al reflects how it is pronounced when followed by a word beginning with an S. 

[2] The British Political Resident in Bahrain, covering the Gulf, was graded at the same rank as an Ambassador. 

 

[3] In 1968, the Foreign Office became the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) at the end of a series of reorganisations and mergers over previous decades which brought together the Foreign Office, the Dominions Office and the Colonial Office in a single department.

© 2018 and 2022. Material may be reproduced if attributed to Chris Greenway and any original source.