Introduction

Mohamed Heikal, an Egyptian journalist writing on the potential appeal of Communism, illustrates a common sentiment amongst Egyptians immediately after the Second World War. More importantly, these ideas could be found throughout the Middle East, where many dominant political parties enjoyed close ties with Britain and were increasingly being challenged by a public growing frustrated with their local politics. While the idea of Communism never became popular in the region, as a result of measures adopted by the strongly anti-Communist governments, frustrated nationalists adopted a revolutionary tendency often associated with International Communism and engaged in subversive activities to change the status quo. Sometimes anticolonialists did work with the Communists to achieve shared goals. Anwar El Sadat, as quoted above, has pointed out that the Muslim Brotherhood, an anti-British militant group, conducted subversive activities against the pro-British Egyptian government in tandem with Communists.

This chapter reveals firstly, how the British government came to conclude that training Middle Eastern security services in anti-Communist measures was necessary, and secondly, the way in which these measures were implemented in Lebanon, Iran, Iraq and Jordan.