anti‑colonial movement

Abstract

Mehdi Ben Barka (1920–1965), a prominent representative of the Moroccan opposition and anti‑colonial movement, who was kidnapped in Paris in October 1965 under unknown circumstances and whose body has not been found to this day, was a frequent visitor to socialist Czechoslovakia in the first half of the 1960s. He was repeatedly travelling to the other side of the Iron Curtain to maintain his collaboration with Czechoslovak intelligence (State Security, StB), with whose he made first contact through the Residentura in Paris in 1960. Although the details and development of this cooperation are now known thanks to the declassification of the relevant documents, it is still inadequately answered what circumstances and motives led the Moroccan politician to maintain his connection with the StB. The article, based on a study of the extensive files that the First Directorate (Intelligence) of StB kept on Mehdi Ben Barka and other relevant sources, attempts to seek an answer to this question, which will be pursued along three different interpretive levels. The emphasis will be placed not only on the changing political situation in Morocco and the Maghreb, but also on the overall context of the Cold War and developments within the anti‑colonial movement in the 1960s.