Britain’s key counter-subversion instrument before the 1971 withdrawal from the Gulf: Voice of the Coast [Sawt Al Saahil] Arabic radio station

Countering nationalistic, pan-Arabic and anti-British subversion became a core British security policy in the Middle East in the 1950s but Britain only became concerned with subversion in its protected states of the lower Arabian Gulf (now known as the United Arab Emirates) in the early 1960s. A core element of its local counter-subversion strategy in this region was the covert Arabic radio station Voice of the Coast [Sawt Al Saahil] in Sharjah. By detailing this station's history, this article expands the limited coverage of Britain's countersubversion efforts in the Middle East from the early 1960s to the early 1970s.