Diplomatic Spouses Oman’s Power Couple Wife Serves as Envoy to U.S.; Husband Represents Country at U.N. They officially live in two different cities—New York and Washington—but this diplomatic power couple may be more in touch with each other than many husbands and wives who live in the same house. Fuad Mubarak Al-Hinai, a career diplomat, has been Oman’s ambassador to the United Nations for the last nine years. Concurrently, he is the nonresident ambassador to Colombia, Cuba and Venezuela. Since December 2005, his wife, Hunaina Sultan Al-Mughairy, has been Oman’s ambassador to the United States. She is not only Oman’s first female ambassador in Washington, but the first and only female ambassador to represent an Arab country in the United States. “She was not trained as a career diplomat,” Al-Hinai said, “but I’m extremely proud of how fast Hunaina learned ‘the trade’—how to deal in diplomacy and how successful she has been.” “I had a good teacher,” she responded quickly, with a broad smile. “We complement each other.” Al-Mughairy is an economist with an extensive business background, which she says helped her in her dealings to secure the U.S.-Oman Free Trade Agreement a year ago—only the third Arab free trade agreement with America. “Now we want to make sure the free trade agreement is implemented and that investments will come into Oman for industries and other projects that help create employment,” Al-Mughairy explained. “We have natural gas, oil and the production of plastics. And we also have tourism, five-star hotels and connections daily. Go to Oman in your winter—it’s the most beautiful then.” “It’s like your spring and you can still swim,” her husband added of their Middle Eastern country, which boasts a long coastline along the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Oman and is bordered by Saudi Arabia, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates. According to these two ambassadors, Oman today is a modern, stable, peace-loving country with an educated monarch who studied abroad and understands what an Arab country needs to get and stay ahead. “We have a progressive leader, Sultan Qaboos bin Said Al-Said, who believes that if you don’t have 50 percent of your potential workforce, the women and girls, attend schools and go into professions, you will not achieve as much,” Al-Mughairy said. “But we have not forgotten our history and we go all out to retain our roots and preserve our past.” “Sultan Qaboos went to military college in England, was stationed in Germany, and then took a world tour,” Al-Hinai pointed out. “All these experiences at such an early age made the difference and made him a visionary.” Speaking of gender issues, Al-Mughairy has plenty of mistaken identity stories to tell. “While I was working on the free trade agreement, I spent most of my days on the Hill. Often one of my male colleagues would go with me,” she remembered. “And invariably, when we knocked on the door, the members of Congress and the senators made a beeline for the man,” she reported, good-naturedly. “Very few Americans know about Oman so it turned out to be a great advantage for me to catch them off-guard. “Even at our National Day that first year, in the receiving line, people would reach over me to my husband, thinking the man must be the Omani ambassador. I guess they thought that since I was standing in line first that I must not know my place!” Al-Mughairy also appreciates “how supportive the other Arab ambassadors have been to me too. They are very proud I’m here. We work together to change the image of Arab women, and I am often invited to speak on panels and they include me with the other Arab ambassadors.” We met just outside Al-Mughairy’s inner office. She was wearing a pearl gray pantsuit with no covering over her head. “I dress like this when I go home. The only difference is that I wear a scarf over my hair, like I sometimes do in Washington,” she noted. Her husband, meanwhile, was wearing a handsome dark business suit and silk tie. “Sometimes, I will wear a robe at home or on National Day celebrations, but in New York, I dress like this,” he said. This ambassadorial couple makes a substantial statement for Oman wherever they go, whether in Washington, New York, in the Arab world or elsewhere. They love their work as well as their private time together—and somehow, they always seem to be smiling. “We are the eyes and ears here of the Omani government,” Al-Hinai said. “My job is multilateral and hers is bilateral, but together we follow all the international issues that affect the whole world.” She added: “We need each other’s voice.” “What we do is for the benefit of Oman and neither of us would hesitate once we are called upon to serve,” he continued. “We would only say yes.” This husband and wife are also well accustomed to working together. “We used to both be in New York,” she explained. “That was when I served as the representative of the Omani Center for Investment Promotion and Export Development before I was asked to come to Washington. But now we are still in constant touch.” Next Page

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