ABSTRACT
All Arab states rely on elaborate – often redundant – security establishments for regime security. The leaderships of states as politically diverse as Morocco, Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia charge their intelligence agencies with the mission of neutralizing an array of threats from ruling establishment conspiracies to terrorist groups and foreign espionage. Ultimately, Arab intelligence services are responsible for ‘coup-proofing,’ a mission that requires the collection and analysis of intelligence on the intentions and capabilities of real and potential adversaries.1 But the Arab secret services do more than collect and analyze information. In most cases, they are the ‘sharp end of the spear,’ symbols of a state’s power to coerce its citizens and intimidate its enemies. As Saddam Hussein’s Iraq most recently demonstrates, Arab regimes exploit the sinister reputations of their intelligence services to deter and dissuade; indeed, the word for intelligence service in Arabic – al-mukhabarat – evokes for many Arabs images of terror, torture and death. Paradoxically, by using the mukhabarat to project strength and fear, Arab states also reveal their ‘profound weaknesses’ such as a lack of popular legitimacy.2 Given the centrality of the security apparatus to Arab regime stability and, by extension, the importance of the Arab world to global security, it is surprising that so little has been written about the mukhabarat in any Arab state. Indeed, the fact remains that much more has been written about the intelligence agencies of the United States, United Kingdom, Russia, France, Israel, China and Germany than the individual Arab services.3 This book addresses some of these deficiencies by investigating the history of the Egyptian intelligence community. Why Egypt? First of all, the Egyptian mukhabarat is widely reputed to be the oldest, largest and most effective in the Arab world. Second, there are ample credible sources upon which to build a reliable assessment. The result is an intriguing portrait of an evolving intelligence community in an under-studied but nonetheless pivotal Arab state.
