A Plug: Suburban's Muscat Crime Survey

Local Expat blogger Suburban is running a poll on burglaries in Muscat. If you know of anyone who's been burgled lately in Oman, you can send her an anon comment.

I think its a great idea, if totally non-scientific. Muscat Confidential is a big fan of data.

General word around the place is that the past 2-3 years has seen a tremendous surge in the number of house robberies in what used to be considered a non-event in Oman, both while people are away and more worryingly while people are in the house, asleep or even awake (with knives used to threaten occupants).

The cause is harder to pin down. Is it growth in heroin addicts? (who will do anything to get some cash to buy a fix). The illegal arrivals from AFPAK? The rapidly increasing numbers of unemployed or underpaid Omani youth? The Ministry crack down on free visa expats?

It would be very interesting to see some ROP data on this (oops, update: see end of this post!!!): numbers of cases solved vs unsolved, rates over the past few years, nationalities, locations, etc etc etc. Perhaps something for Y magazine or The Week to follow up? DATA is what we need.

Crime statistics are commonly public information in the West. The associated 'data driven' policing methodology is in part behind recent sustained drops in crime in the USA. When will we see this in Oman?


One problem with the lack of transparency and hard objective data in the public domain is that urban myths propagate needlessly. For example, the rape of an Expat woman who was playing tennis at the Intercon some time ago, by (allegedly) a gang of ex-ROP constables who she had previously had punished for sexual harassment, has been Chinese-whispered into 10s of different rapes, terrorising expat women across the Muscat area of an organised gang committing crimes at will*.

Almost all Omani I know say the burglaries couldn't be done by Omani, certainly not, because "Omani's don't commit crimes". Not 'true' Omani anyhow. They will refer to them being 'Baluchis' or 'Half Omani'. In a bizarre Omani version of detective classics where 'The Butler did it', the No. 1 suspect according to Inspector Plod in the Sultanate when there is a crime is always "The Housemaid", or the wonderful catch-all, "Indians"**.

While on many levels Oman is a weird Middle-Eastern twilight-zone cross between 1950s America and Victorian England, it seems Oman is continuing it's path to be just like everywhere else, at least when it comes to crime.

This is the life.


*This rape is a whole post on its own. Maybe I'll get around to being able to do it justice in a proper post soon. According to my pretty good sources, yes, it happened.

**This is just what happens in real life folks, that doesn't mean I agree with it! But perhaps it does reflect a statistical reality?

STOP PRESS 2008 Crime Stats online (convictions)

Wow. Thanks to anon commenter, there are some stats available! Follow this link from the Ministry of National Economy (page 16 and beyond.)

Nawras Marketing tweet caught with a backfire - Suburban on how not to use social marketing!

Just a quick lazy reblog tonight - but its such a ripper of a local story.

Local blogger (and super-tweeter, see last week's Week) Suburban has a fantastic post today on the badly mis-managed attempt by normally astute Oman mobile company Nawras to use 'Social Media', ie twitter, to promote its brand. LMAOFOFL.

It might be OK for Muscat Confidential to get snarky and arrogant, but (a)I'm not positioning (and ipso-facto representing) a major national brand on twitter; nor (b) do I claim to be an expert guru on using social media), unlike Beyrouti, some cocky young marketing consultant apparently hired by Nawras.

Unlike marketing FAIL "guru" Beyrouti, I'm also usually right.

Go check it out. You'll be entertained!

Oh, I HAD to repost this great satire of this Nawras blow-back made by developar, someone who perhaps Nawras would have been better off hiring in the first place.



Nice one Suburban. I suspect it will get retweeted and reposted around the world in around... oh... a couple of hours ago.

Big post tomorrow.