On a sweltering April afternoon in 1988, a young Palestinian man disembarked from a flight in Tripoli, Libya. As he stepped onto the tarmac, he was swiftly ushered away by waiting operatives and driven to a discreet seaside apartment. There, a seemingly casual lunch soon turned into an interrogation. Over the next few days, he was forced to document his entire life in exhaustive detail. Within a week, the Palestinian had been inducted into the Abu Nidal Organisation (ANO) - one of the most ruthless Middle Eastern terrorist outfits of the late Cold War.
By the time he put the final stroke on his signed oath of loyalty, he was given his first mission: he was to return to Czechoslovakia and conduct surveillance of Palestinian students in Prague, monitor the activities of the Office of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), Abu Nidal’s sworn rivals, and track Arab diplomats and intelligence operatives. Any deviation, any whisper of divided loyalty, could cost him his life.
With his assignment set, he was dispatched back to Prague to begin his mission. However, instead of following orders, the young Palestinian made his way to a safe house codenamed Faust - a sinister nod to Goethe’s tragic protagonist who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for eternal youth. Here he met his handler from Czechoslovakia’s State Security Service (Státní bezpečnost, StB), who he had been working for all along. Codenamed JIRKA by the StB, the Palestinian delivered an extensive debriefing on ANO operatives, their security arrangements, and even the layout of their safe houses in Libya. Unlike key Western intelligence agencies, which spent the final decade of the Cold War hunting ANO operatives, the StB had managed to successfully infiltrate one of the most lethal terrorist organisations of the era.
This is just one of the countless stories unearthed in Watching the Jackals: Prague’s Cold War Liaisons With Terrorists and Revolutionaries, my new book that reveals the extraordinary ways in which communist Czechoslovakia secretly interacted with Middle Eastern terrorists and revolutionaries during the Cold War. These figures, referred to here as jackals for their strategic cunning and operational ruthlessness, included members of Yasser Arafat’s PLO, operatives linked to the ANO, and the notorious Venezuelan-born terrorist, Carlos the Jackal. Despite long-standing beliefs that Moscow and its satellites enthusiastically supported all terrorists and revolutionaries who attacked the West, Watching the Jackals contributes to a body of literature which paints a much more complicated and nuanced picture of the Soviet Bloc’s interactions with these often-feared jackals.
Swiss Army Knife
At its core, Watching the Jackals examines how states use their spies to engage with violent nonstate actors, balancing covert support, containment, and counteraction. Drawing on extraordinarily detailed archival sources largely housed in the Czech Republic’s Security Services Archive (Archiv bezpečnostních složek, ABS) and interviews with direct participants, the book explores how communist Czechoslovakia used its intelligence and security apparatus, the StB, to navigate complex relationships with Cold War jackals. Far from a singular approach, Prague’s spies were deployed as a Swiss Army Knife - sometimes forging covert alliances with politically significant factions, while at other times infiltrating, manipulating, or expelling radicals deemed too dangerous.
For instance, in the mid-1970s, Prague forged a close intelligence-sharing alliance with Arafat’s PLO, particularly Fatah. Their liaison was centred on intelligence sharing, joint operations, and active measures targeting mutual adversaries such as the United States and Israel. It, however, took a far more cautious and at times hostile stance towards more radical figures. Carlos the Jackal, dubbed by some as the Osama bin Laden of the Cold War, was initially tolerated but later barred from returning through visa denials and expulsions. While Prague also viewed Abu Nidal’s ANO as a threat, their approach to the era’s deadliest terrorist organisation was somewhat different than to Carlos. In the last years of the Cold War, the StB infiltrated the ANO, hoping to use agents such as JIRKA to better understand the group’s operational and recruitment aims. The StB navigated these relationships with strategic pragmatism, tailoring their engagement to suit their political and security priorities.
While adopting this multifaceted approach, however, Prague’s spies often found that its toolkit was not sharp enough to navigate these complex and shifting interactions. The StB frequently encountered dilemmas and challenges, as Cold War jackals proved to be unpredictable allies and adversaries, often difficult to control and, at times, outright dangerous. Despite its reputation for maintaining a tight grip on the local population within the communist state, the Czechoslovak intelligence and security apparatus was not always sufficiently equipped, trained, or staffed to manage these elusive foreign targets effectively. As a result, interactions between Czechoslovak spies and these violent non-state actors were often uneasy, deeply fraught, and, at times, filled with suspense.
Rewriting Cold War History
Watching the Jackals challenges the traditional Cold War narrative that places Moscow at the centre of all decisions regarding support for violent non-state actors. Instead, it demonstrates the diversity within the Soviet Bloc, revealing that when it came to the most radical jackals, satellite states designed their own approaches - often in ways that significantly diverged from those of their closest allies.
By doing so, it highlights how smaller states wielded their own agency in global intelligence affairs. It also shows how Czechoslovakia played an outsized role in shaping international events and adopted unique approaches to security issues which need not have been in sync with those adopted by their closest communist allies.
The book depicts totalitarian intelligence and security services not as the highly efficient bureaucracies they are often assumed to be, but as complex and, at times, struggling organisations that found it difficult to manage or contain the jackals they engaged with. It brings the secret state to life in full colour, showing the anxieties, dilemmas, and unintended consequences that shaped its interactions with unfamiliar allies.
Why This Story Matters Today
Understanding Cold War intelligence operations is not merely an exercise in history - it has profound implications for the present. Three decades after the end of the Cold War, states continue to align, infiltrate, negotiate with, and counter the jackals of today. Yet, due to restrictions on these most secretive alliances in most Global North as well as Global South intelligence archives, we have little insight into these complicated and controversial interactions. The mechanisms of state support, covert training, and clandestine diplomacy uncovered in the book offer a vital lens through which to understand such contemporary alliances.
Another reason Watching the Jackals matters today is the glimpse it offers into the world of totalitarian security states—many of which still operate in similar ways. The book peels back the curtain on how these regimes balance strategy, ideology, and hard-nosed business interests in their intelligence dealings. It shows how decisions were not merely about politics or loyalty but also about profit, pragmatism, and self-preservation. Understanding how a Cold War-era security service played this dangerous game helps us make sense of how authoritarian states today build covert alliances, take risks, and navigate the murky world of intelligence and power.
Featured image is of Abu Nidal's spindoctor, Abu Bakr, with his security escort in Prague, 1988 (ABS, sb. OB, r.č. OBŽ-38165/6 MV).
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