On Thursday 10 February 2022, the ACRPS Strategic Studies Unit hosted Muhanad Seloom, Assistant Professor of Critical Security Studies at the Doha Institute, who gave a lecture titled “Intelligence Studies in the Arab World: A Gap in the Literature?” as part of his interest in the subject as an instructor for the DI’s Intelligence Studies course. He is currently publishing the findings of his research project, “The Iraqi Intelligence Apparatus: 100 Years of Covert Action”.

Seloom began the lecture by noting that intelligence studies is a recently established subfield even in the Anglophone world such as the United States and United Kingdom. A small number of universities offer postgraduate study in the field. The DI, in this light, is one of the first institutions of higher education in the State of Qatar to offer intelligence studies as a required course for the master’s program in Critical Security Studies and a research area for the doctoral program.

Seloom contended that intelligence studies is frequently associated with information, to the extent that intelligence services in some Arab countries are known as the Department of Information. But information, despite its importance, is not the most important component of intelligence work: collecting, organizing, and storing information without analysing it scientifically and deploying it to achieve the strategic goals of the state deprives it of its value. The primary objective of intelligence work is to investigate information to direct efforts toward a better future for the state, avoid falling into the traps of other states, challenge adversaries, and work to prevent laxity in security work, especially regarding issues with external implications. Seloom further demonstrated that intelligence work in its professional form concentrates security matters that extend beyond the state.

In answer to the question of why states take recourse to intelligence work, Seloom clarified that the state generally turns to secret diplomacy or intelligence work when other (diplomatic and political) avenues fail to achieve the desired goal, when the military option would be ineffective, or at times to avoid committing an offence punishable by international law.

Seloom then turned to the relationship between intelligence studies and intelligence apparatuses and the objective of the former, showing that there are two main schools in the field. The first sees intelligence studies as a social science concerned with analysing, understanding, deconstructing, and predicting strategic phenomena that are objects of the state’s attention as determined by decision makers. This school supports making intelligence-related information available to researchers, in line with the globalization of information and open access. The second school sees intelligence studies as a review of the intelligence archive, with the goal of identifying and preventing the recurrence of mistakes and advancing intelligence work. It suggests periodically declassifying intelligence archives and implementing shorter periods of restriction-lifting than those of some states: the dangers of archive declassification are less damaging than what might result from not studying the archives. Both schools agree that the democratic oversight of intelligence praxis is an essential condition for the realization of its objectives, which confirms the field’s necessity in the Arab world – especially as some states have experienced differing levels of democratization whilst democracy has receded in others – for a deeper understanding of authority and exploration of its articulations (namely as relates to intelligence, one of the central branches of political authority).

Seloom outlined a set of challenges facing the field of intelligence studies in the Arab world, including the fact that since the establishment of the Arab states the field has been concealed from study, with research limited to intelligence apparatuses, state security, military leadership, and state research centres. Until recently, therefore, there were no university departments involved in the study of intelligence. Further, a large portion of research output studies the operational aspect of intelligence activity, which reinforces “conspiracy theory” claims due to the lack of precise information. There is a negative perception of intelligence science and action that conflates intelligence and espionage, which are distinct. The former is the methodical pursuit, collection, and analysis of information to produce intelligence that serves the higher goals of the state and helps accomplish its strategic aims.