Abstract

This talk focuses on the relationship between the German Democratic Republic’s Ministry of State Security (often referred to as the “Stasi) and the Arab Middle East. I present several institutional layers through which the Ministry of State Security shared knowledge about intelligence matters – or refused to – with the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, Iraq and Syria. Beyond the layer of diplomatic and institutional exchange, I will present some examples of how intelligence knowledge was also shared through micro-processes of social encounter and mutual observation.
 

Short bio

Dr. Sophia Hoffmann is a political scientist with a focus on the international relations of West Asia. In the past decade, she focused on migration politics in and around Syria and her book "Iraqi Migrants to Syria: The Crisis before the Storm" was published in 2016 with Syracuse University Press. Since two years, Dr. Hoffmann is working on a new project, which looks at the exchange of knowledge between German and Arab intelligence agencies, with the goal of understanding the role that intelligence agencies play for modern statehood.

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