Czechoslovak Arms Exports to the Middle East Volume 5: Algeria, Libya and Morocco 1948-1989

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 Litomy l 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. AUTHOR: Martin Smisek was born in 1985 and received a master's degree in aerospace engineering at the Czech Technical University in Prague in 2010. In addition to his regular job of a mechanical design engineer, he has written over 70 articles about contemporary armoured vehicles, modern air-launched weapons as well as Czechoslovak military history and local conflicts since 1945. He is the author of the ground-breaking book Super Sabry nad Ceskoslovenskem (Super Sabres over Czechoslovakia) about US spyflights over Czechoslovakia in 1955. Martin Smisek is also a regular contributor of the Czech and Slovak leading military website www.valka.cz. 12 colour profiles, 3 b/w maps, 1 colour map, 32 tables