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Sorcerers' Apprentices 221

doctrines of Marxism-Leninism as preached by the Palestinian Fronde and

practised by the National Front in Aden?
Which of these examples attracts the potential revolutionaries in the Gulf it
is difficult to say, just as it is hard to determine which of the political ideas these
regimes embody excite them most. Baathist ideas have been circulating in the
Gulf from the late 1950s onwards, and Iraqi agents have been trying to

penetrate the Arabian states since the early 1960s. Neither they nor their
teachings had much success until after the triumph of the main wings of the
Baath party in Iraq and Syria later in the decade, when they began to win some
converts in Kuwait and Bahrain, and in two or three of the Trucial Shaikh-
doms. Baathism, which is virtually the only indigenous political movement in
the Arab world with some doctrinal pretensions and a measure of practical
success to its credit, has exerted for the restless and semi-educated youth of the

upper Gulf states the same fascination at the intellectual level as the latest
imported gadgetry from the industrial world exerts at the material. Stronger
meat than Baathism has been purveyed by the wilder fringes of the Palestinian
movement, whose cause progressed by leaps and bounds in the Gulf after the
1967 war. While many of the older generation of Gulf Arabs regarded the more

atrocious crimes committed by the PFLP, Black September and some con­
stituent groups of the PLO as abhorrent, their sons and grandsons failed to
share their abhorrence, electing instead to regard the perpetrators of these
crimes as heroes. As several of the terrorist groups professed Marxist-Leninist
beliefs, some of their admirers in the Gulf states sought to emulate them by
subscribing to the same political faith. As a further stimulus, they had before

them the example of the PDRY, which was not only a full-blown Marx­
ist-Leninist state but probably the most ardent supporter of the Palestinian
guerrilla movement in the Middle East.
Along with the more radical wing of the ANM, the government of the
PDRY has tried over the past decade to infiltrate the Gulf states through the

agency of PFLOAG (or PFLO) and other extremist groups inspired by
Marxist-Leninist doctrines, such as the Popular Revolutionary Front. The
aim of these various groups is to exploit the discontents of the immigrant
population in the Gulf states so as to bring about a revolutionary movement of a
Marxist-Leninist kind. Their propaganda plays down sectarian and racial
differences, and even nationalist aspirations, which formed the basis of much

earlier agitation. It is framed instead in Marxist universal terms - the corrup­
tion of existing institutions, the tyranny of the traditional orders, the parasit­
ism of the bourgeoisie, the oppression of the masses, the unending struggle,
the permanent revolution and so forth. Shaikhs, religious leaders, merchants,
bureaucrats are lumped together with Western governments and oil companies
as forming a monolithic capitalist and imperialist structure dedicated to the

exploitation and suppression of the urban and rural proletariat. While the
targets of this propaganda among the Gulf labourers may not be aware of its