Jackal - John Follain

A while ago, I wrote a blog post on a book about Carlos the Jackal, "To The Ends Of The Earth", by David Yallop.

I have read one or two other books about Carlos.  John Follain's "Jackal - The Secret Wars of Carlos The Jackal", and Colin Smith's "Carlos - Portrait of a Terrorist".  Follain's book has been re-issued under another name, and remains the most credible and coherent book which I have come across on this particular subject.

Follain refuses to be blinded by the mythology, and doesn't pad the book out with idle speculation and hypothetical or "alternative" scenarios. He simply tries to document what is credible and widely accepted, but at the same time not simply regurgitating verbatim what others have written in the past. The approach here is unvarnished and methodical, and the language used is largely calm and measured, devoid of some of the moral self-righteousness of some books in this sphere. Lean, dispassionate, and structured and argued in a such a way as to make it quite plausible..

There is some good material about the the man's upbringing in Venezuela, and the years which he spent in London and Moscow, tracing his personal and political growth and development.

This work deviates slightly from the normal Carlos "scholarship" with its relative brevity regarding the 1973-75 period, and its dwelling on the aftermath of the OPEC operation. In that respect, more valuable and "original" than other works in telling the whole story in all its facets, and not just the headline-grabbing episodes which are the staple of documentaries and newspaper articles.

We are given extensive accounts of complicated and tense relationships with Eastern bloc countries and various Middle Eastern rulers. In addition, Follain shines a torch on the French political scene of the early 80s, and the boiling cauldron of Beirut. The whole Carlos v France saga is told at some length, as is the process by which France engineered the "arrest" in Khartoum in 1994.

The 1990s was a bit of a "twilight zone" for me concerning world affairs, and the latter chapters shed some light on some of the pressures and dislocations, as the world changed after the collapse of Communism, and new allegiances had to be forged. The version which I have read ends with an account of the first trial in Paris.

A fine read, not just for those interested in the story of Carlos, but for its coverage of the Middle East landscape of the time and the murky worlds of espionage and power politics.