The Dhofar Rebellion, also known as the Oman Civil War, began as an uprising of people from the Dhofar region in Oman’s south against then-Sultan Said bin Taimur. The conflict soon became a proxy war, with the Soviet Union and China supporting the rebels and Britain and its allies supporting the sultanate.

“You’d have heard about it if we lost it, I can tell you,” Ian Gardiner told Bourdain. Gardiner is a former British Army Special Air Service officer who served in the Dhofar War in the 1970s.