Description
From the 1950s until the fall of communism, Czechoslovakia financed, armed, and trained over three hundred Third World revolutionaries. This small covert assistance scheme was designed to improve the capacity and gain political leverage over mostly African and Middle Eastern non-state actors - national liberation movements and so called non-governing political parties. By doing so, Prague hoped to aid the fall of colonialism and to create alliances across the Third World. This paper reconstructs the history of this top-secret program ran by Czechoslovakia’s foreign intelligence service – the First Directorate of the StB (State Security) – in conjunction with the Czechoslovak People’s Army. It analyses the purpose, nature and limits of Prague’s covert assistance programs directed at Third World revolutionaries. It argues that although Prague was an early and enthusiastic supporter of these non-state actors, it was initially not entirely fit for the job. Crucially, it struggled to deliver well-calibrated training programs and achieve a level of deniability, which would not put the country’s reputation, business interests, and trainee lives in jeopardy. By the 1980s, however, Prague professionalised its training venture and devoted much of the closing decade of the Cold War to training Palestinian spies and bodyguards. By zooming in on this small, yet remarkably well documented operation, we are able to better understand the dilemmas small powers face when running covert operations with unfamiliar allies from across the globe.
