Apr 2001
In this issue:
Features
In The Shadows
Emir Farid Chehab was independent Lebanon’s first Head of Intelligence. A new book collects his informant’s notes, papers and tip-offs.
Issue: Jun, 2008
Emir Farid Chehab’s job was to know. And know everything. As head of Lebanon’s Sûreté Générale between 1948 and 1958, a critical decade in the nation’s nascent independence, he harvested information on Soviet agents in Syria, assassination plots in Amman, communism in Cairo, Armenian agitation in Aleppo and British back-stabbing and Muslim Brotherhood belligerence everywhere else; and for the first time his personal papers have been archived and published in English.
A Face in the Crowd reproduces the memos, cables, notes, tip-offs and analyses – all written in crisp, dispassionate bullet points from a variety of anonymous sources before being dispatched to Beirut – to provide a compelling insight to the troublesome infancies of the Middle East’s post-colonial nations.
Incredible in their breadth and detail, the documents were all supplied to Emir Farid by informers he cultivated personally as the country’s chief intelligence official. The first chapter alone, compiled from notes from an anonymous journalist from a Soviet-aligned country, tells us the Toby Inn, on Beirut’s George Picot Street, was the centre for Zionist activity in the city, that Syrian dictator Husni al-Za’eem was an admirer of the Gestapo and feared for his life to such a degree that four pistols are trained on each visitor to his Damascus headquarters, and that Jordanian army elements were in Beirut in the spring of 1949 to plot a coup against King Abdullah.
Perhaps the most staggering realisation, though, is that the published material represents less than 10 per cent of the surviving archive, which is now stored at Oxford University. In addition to the papers that were destroyed on Emir Chehab’s instruction to protect certain informers as violence flared in the 1970s, much of the material is still under legal embargo.
The compilation of what remained was the work of his daughter, Youmna Asseily, and journalist Ahmad Asfahani, with historical context provided by Badr al-Hage. A painstaking process of cataloguing, sifting and editing that took well in excess of two years to complete, culminating in late 2005 with the Arabic book. A further edit was required for the English version. “People had always expressed interest in my father’s life even before he passed away,” Youmna says. “And after he was gone, we were constantly asked whether he had kept papers or not. I always answered vaguely – just to tease! So, I never doubted the interest this book could generate – and also because of the extraordinary contents of some of the papers.”
Extraordinary is certainly the right word. In later chapters, we learn of America’s growing influence on the region – both bizarre and bellicose. In the early 1950s, for instance, they used YMCA gym classes at Palestinian refugee camps in Syria and Lebanon as a vehicle to persuade the inhabitants to give up hopes of returning home. More sinister revelations follow in January 1956, when US Ambassador Elwood promised military force against Camille Chamoun’s administration should it try to block recently signed uranium export deals to the States.
Conversely, Britain’s declining regional role is exposed in failed plans to build a canal across the Sinai to the Mediterranean for joint Jordanian-Israeli use, while the ousting of Glubb Pacha from the head of Jordan’s army in 1956 follows his secret communiqué to London confirming he had ordered the Kingdom’s generals not to resist an Israeli invasion.
Youmna, who undertook the project to fulfil a promise made to her mother to safeguard the papers, does concede there was a James Bond element to her father’s life. She recounts stories of sheltering Britain’s head of MI6, Sir Maurice Oldfield, in their London home in the 1970s and having to check the street before he left. Before that, there were run-ins with the British over spy Kim Philby, who Emir Farid tried to prevent coming to Beirut – a reasonable piece of foresight considering the latter’s eventual disclosure as a Soviet double agent – and the remarkable tale of a successful libel suit against Soviet news agency TASS, who paid up $15,000 in damages after claiming he was an agent of Moscow.
“My brother and myself somehow always knew that his life had been very dangerous,” Youmna says. “I am still amazed how he survived his job without getting killed! Although there were several serious attempts to do so even into the late 70s. We were sometimes part of that danger, especially when we hid some people at the beginning of the 70s civil war. I even acted as a go between with some papers. But he was also careful not to endanger us and I think this is why he repeatedly refused to run for president after he retired – even though there was a lot of pressure on him to do so.”
“As we worked through the archives,” says Youmna, “my admiration grew bigger and bigger; for his humility in the face of his achievements and, unlike many people around him, his discretion – he could easily have blackmailed many people and we would have become millionaires!
Although touching all aspects of post-Imperial Middle Eastern politics, the documents also reflect Farid Chebab’s key responsibilities. In 1950, he was appointed to head the anti-Communist section, and notes include Zionist-Communist alliances to push forged Palestinian guineas into regional stock markets to destabilise the economies. We learn of Russian bribes to oust popular radio broadcasters in Beirut. In 1958, though, as the fist of Lebanon’s civil wars rumbled into view – local turbulence linked to the Suez Crisis and the fall of the Hashemite monarchy in Baghdad – he resigned to take up diplomatic positions in Ghana and Tunisia.
“His last words about Lebanon, hours before he died in February 1985, were: ‘Ce pays est foutu’… This country is going to the dogs. It says it all.”
At least it is still capable of producing remarkable people. And as these papers demonstrate, few more remarkable than Emir Farid Chehab.
A full version of this article appears in NOX23
