Martin Smisek

During the Cold War, communist Czechoslovakia was one of the largest arms exporters to the Middle East among the Soviet Bloc countries.

This volume of the Czechoslovak Arms Exports to the Middle East mini-series describes the history of arms deliveries from Czechoslovakia to Algeria, Libya and Morocco including related military assistance.

Between the 1950s and 1980s, Czechoslovakia covertly supplied arms to Arab states in North Africa. In Algeria, the first deliveries to local anti-French rebels served commercial purposes, with obsolete weapons being exchanged for US dollars. The unsuccessful delivery aboard the ship Lidice, which was detained by France in 1959, caused a diplomatic crisis with Paris. Though Prague later sent free shipments hoping for political ties, Algerian purchases remained sparse until the late 1980s. In Morocco, cooperation was brief yet intense (1967-1968), involving armoured vehicles and their spare parts, with a maintenance facility built later. However, collaboration ended shortly after. Libya's 1969 coup launched Czechoslovakia's peak in arms exports. By the early 1980s, Libya had acquired large amounts of military equipment and hosted hundreds of advisors under Operation Litomyšl - the largest foreign deployment of Czechoslovak troops during the Cold War.

Using the declassified original documentation, this is the most comprehensive account of the Czechoslovak military involvement in the Middle East during the Cold War which was ever published.