Alastair Crooke

Alastair Warren Crooke CMG (sometimes misspelled as Alistair Crooke), born 30 June 1949, Previously he was a ranking figure in both British intelligence (MI6) and European Union diplomacy. Crooke was brought up mostly in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He was educated at Aiglon College in Switzerland and at the University of St. Andrews (1968–1972) in Scotland, from which he obtained an MA in moral philosophy and political economy. under diplomatic cover in Northern Ireland, South Africa, Cambodia, Colombia, Pakistan and the Middle East. His early work included helping provide weapons to jihadists fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan and assisting in the Northern Ireland peace process.

In 1997, he became a security adviser to the EU special envoy to the Middle East, and operating out of the British Embassy in Tel Aviv was involved in British attempts to draw Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian groups into the political process.

In 2001, British ambassador to Israel Francis Cornish described him as "a person who worked with the security apparatuses of both sides. He went into action after they stopped trusting each other and developed a special skill to persuade them of the logic of things and to bridge the lack of confidence between them." He had a central role in establishing a Hamas ceasefire in 2002.

Crooke established Conflicts Forum in 2004, largely based in Beirut, with the aim of helping western governments understand Islamist groups and their military resistance to Israel. It was initially funded by some private donors, a small grant from the US Institute of Peace and some European Union funding to run a series of seminars.

In 2011, The Spectator published an apology for a story by Melanie Phillips which contained an allegation about Crooke that The Spectator acknowledged was "completely false". The New Statesman reported that damages of "tens of thousands of pounds" were made to Crooke.

Since 2018, he has written frequently for the Russian think tank Strategic Culture Foundation, and since 2023 for the U.S. based Eurasia Review. He is a frequent guest on YouTube podcasts Andrew Napolitano's "Judging Freedom" and Nima Alkhorshid's "Dialogue Works".

Private life Crooke married in 1976; they had three sons, and later divorced. In 2005 he moved to Beirut with his partner; they had a son and a daughter and married in 2012.