[1] In parallel stories, four operatives are given conflicting missions in response to the North African war of liberation headed by black American sociologist Homer Crawford, also known as El Hassan.

Meantime, having scored a victory over the Arab Union forces in Tamanrasset, Crawford and his team turn to governmental issues, which include naming their new country Ifriqiyah and the creation of a Desert Camel Corps to defend the progressive field projects sponsored by El Hassan.

Allen is kept in a portable iron cage at the council of chiefs of the Chaambra confederation, which has been convened so that Abd-el-Kader can be proclaimed as the reincarnation of Mahdi, the holiest prophet since Mohammed.

When Crawford returns and asks them to leave his territory, two of their number who have warmed up to El Hassan's cause, Doctor Megan McDaid and Sergeant Lon Charles, decide to stay.

Crawford decides to send a message to all such unscrupulous adventurers by going after the twenty-three mercenaries with twenty-two of his men and having the ensuing battle covered by the foreign news agencies in Tamanrasset.

[6] In The Best Ye Breed, the "totally unbought and unbuyable" Crawford argues that underdeveloped nations such as Ifriqiyah have to become radically independent from the first-world powers (here, capitalism and Soviet communism).

One of the storylines of The Best Ye Breed reuses Reynolds' 1973 short story "The Cold War...Continued," which follows the cross-purpose missions of special agents Kosloff, Sverdlov, and Hidetada in response to a revolution in North Africa.