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 In a highly unusual intervention, the department’s hierarchy
overruled its own staff’s assessments of Oman’s deteriorating record
on forced labor and human trafficking and inflated its ranking in a
congressionally mandated report, U.S. officials told Reuters. The
move, which followed protests by Oman, suggests the Obama
administration placed diplomatic priorities over human rights to
pacify an important Middle East partner.
In the weeks leading up to publication of the State Department’s
influential annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report, top advisers
to Secretary of State John Kerry disregarded findings by its Middle
East diplomatic bureau and a U.S. government office set up to
independently grade global efforts to fight human trafficking, the
officials said.
In April, diplomats in the State Department’s Near Eastern Affairs
bureau and experts in the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking
in Persons agreed that Oman would be downgraded from “Tier 2” to a
status known as “Tier 2 Watch List”, one notch above a level that
can incur U.S. sanctions, according to an internal department memo
seen by Reuters.
 Oman, they agreed, had not done enough to improve the plight of
migrant laborers and domestic workers who make up a large part of
its expatriate community.
In June, when the final report is usually published, the advisers to
Kerry took an unusual step. They put the entire 382-page document on
hold, two sources with knowledge of the process told Reuters.
“Oman was the only hold-up,” said a State Department official,
speaking on condition of anonymity.
In response to questions, a State Department official declined to
directly address Reuters' findings on the Oman TIP process, saying
that the department sought to make the report "as accurate and
objective as possible" for all countries.
The official said the United States speaks to Oman’s government on a
variety of issues including trafficking, but declined to comment on
“private diplomatic discussions” or on the recommendations by its
trafficking experts and diplomats.
The TIP ranking, the official said, resulted from a “thorough,
deliberative process” based on year-round efforts by U.S. embassies,
foreign government officials, non-governmental and international
organizations to gather information on human trafficking.
But the case of Oman illustrates how even a small country that is
strategically significant to the United States can win concessions
despite Washington’s public insistence that it bases its ranking
system solely on human rights.
In its protests over the possible downgrade, Oman stressed its
broader strategic importance to the United States, according to U.S.
officials. While it is not unusual for a country’s ranking to be contested
between the State Department’s human rights analysts and political
bureaus such as Near Eastern Affairs, high-level intervention to
change a ranking after those two parties have agreed is extremely
rare.
By the time this year’s TIP report was published on July 27, five
weeks later than usual, Oman’s ranking had been maintained at “Tier
2”.
 "I’m not aware of a case where something like this has happened
before,” said Mark Lagon, the TIP office’s ambassador-at-large from
2007 to 2009 and now president of Freedom House, an advocacy group
in Washington.
The reprieve has important implications. Watch List countries are
defined as those where the absolute number of victims of severe
forms of trafficking is “very significant or significantly
increasing”, according to the State Department.
Without showing measurable progress, countries on the Watch List for
two straight years are automatically downgraded to the lowest Tier
3, a rank that can trigger sanctions and is shared by some of the
world’s worst abusers of human rights, including North Korea. Many
countries lobby the State Department hard to avoid that designation
or to prevent approaching that status.
A Western diplomatic source said he believes Kerry is "protecting
Oman when it comes to this issue,” referring to human trafficking.
"John Kerry has a good personal relationship with (Oman Foreign
Minister) Yusuf bin Alawi and a good feeling towards Oman. So he
doesn't want to see Oman downgraded.”
Kerry’s press office declined to directly address whether he
deliberately shielded Oman in the latest TIP report. A State
Department official who took questions about Kerry’s role said the
secretary made all the decisions on TIP rankings, including Oman’s,
“based solely on the content of the report produced by State
Department staff".
"We stand by the integrity of the process," the official said.
A Reuters investigation published on Aug. 3 revealed a high degree
of “grade inflation” in this year’s rankings.
 An unprecedented number of diplomatically sensitive countries such
as Malaysia, China, Cuba, Uzbekistan and Mexico wound up with
ratings higher than recommended by the State Department’s own human
rights experts.
In the aftermath, lawmakers have questioned at congressional
hearings whether this year’s report was politicized, an accusation
the State Department denies.
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BACK-CHANNEL TALKS
Oman, a trusted U.S. ally in a strategic location at the toe of the
Arabian Peninsula, prides itself as a stable presence and mediator
in a region beset by conflict. The country of 4 million people has a
“good neighbor” policy with Iran and close relations with the West.
Its ruler, Sultan Qaboos, orchestrated secret U.S.-Iran contacts
that began in Muscat in 2012, leading to the first formal talks
between the United States and Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution
and helping to pave the way for July’s nuclear deal, a
legacy-defining foreign-policy achievement for President Barack
Obama.
Oman has also won U.S. favor in other ways, including helping to
secure the release in 2011 of three American hikers held by Iran and
taking in prisoners from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay
in Cuba. In recent months, Muscat has also helped facilitate the
release of American hostages held in Yemen and has assisted in Syria
diplomacy.
But it has faced criticism by rights groups over its trafficking
record. Many victims are from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Rights
groups have reported complaints including unscrupulous recruiters,
confiscation of passports by employers and physical abuse.
“The sultanate continues to work hard on TIP issues and we take this
very seriously,” Badr Albusaidi, secretary-general of Oman’s
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told Reuters. “When problems are
identified, for example a pattern of underage domestic servants
coming from a particular country, we intervene actively.”
He added that Oman was constantly working on "improving hotlines,
care centers, public information and education, and agency
coordination." He said if Oman were downgraded, it would be “unfair
and unreasonable”.
UNUSUAL TREATMENT
Oman has protested its trafficking ranking in the past. When it was
downgraded in 2008 to Tier 3, it demanded a retraction, suspending
all contacts with the United States on human trafficking issues and
threatening to reassess its relationship with Washington, according
to diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks.
That impasse was resolved when Oman was given a special 60-day grace
period to make specific improvements in its anti-trafficking
activities and was then elevated to a higher tier.
U.S. embassy officials held a series of meetings beginning in
December of last year with the Omani Foreign Ministry, giving the
Omanis “a working paper” to shore up their anti-trafficking efforts,
an Omani source close to the matter said.
The U.S. diplomats initially said they did not want to downgrade
Oman because of “strong ties” but “they were not convinced that Oman
was taking practical steps,” said the source.
In those meetings, the Omanis made their case not to be downgraded.
The government in Muscat then asked its embassy in Washington to
make "diplomatic attempts" to head off a downgrade, the Omani source
said.
The final TIP report was handed down from the State Department
building’s seventh floor, where Kerry and other top aides work, U.S.
officials said.
It acknowledged Oman’s shortcomings in fighting human trafficking,
saying Muscat had “decreased minimal anti-trafficking law
enforcement efforts” and “made inadequate efforts to identify and
protect victims” over the previous year.
The report also described Oman as a “destination and transit country
for men and women, primarily from South Asia and East Africa,
subjected to forced labor and, to a lesser extent sex trafficking.”
But it said Oman was making “significant efforts” to comply with
minimum standards, even though its investigations of trafficking
cases decreased to five from six the previous year and its sex
trafficking convictions fell to two from five.
Ahmed al-Mukhaini, an analyst and former assistant secretary general
for Oman’s Shura council, or consultative national assembly, said
efforts against human trafficking seem to remain a low government
priority.
“We don’t have sufficient capacity where people can seek recourse to
assistance,” he said, citing issues such as workers fleeing their
employers and a high suicide rate among expatriates.
(Editing by Stuart Grudgings)
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