| Craig
Murray was the United Kingdom’s Ambassador to Uzbekistan
until he was removed from his post in October 2004 after exposing
appalling human rights abuses by the US-funded regime of President
Islam Karimov. In this candid and at times shocking memoir,
he lays bare the dark and dirty underside of the War on Terror.
In Uzbekistan, the land of Alexander the Great
and Tamburlaine, lurks one of the most hideous tyrannies on
earth – one founded on cotton slavery and brutal torture.
As neighbouring 'liberated’ Afghanistan produces record
levels of heroin, the Uzbek rulers cash in on massive trafficking.
They are even involved in trafficking their own women to prostitution
in the West. But this did not prevent Karimov being viewed
as a key US ally in the War on Terror.
When Craig Murray arrived in Uzbekistan, he
was a young Ambassador with a brilliant career and a taste
for whisky and women. But after hearing accounts of dissident
prisoners being boiled to death and innocent people being
raped and murdered by agents of the state, he started to question
both his role and that of his country in so-called 'democratising’
states.
When Murray decided to go public with his shocking
findings, Washington and 10 Downing Street reached the conclusion
that he had to go. But Uzbekistan had changed the high-living
diplomat and there was no way he was going to go quietly.
All Customer Reviews
5 out of 5 - July 11, 2006
Few of us have done battle with a murderous
dictator. "Murder in Samarkand" tells how a British
Ambassador did so and survived, only to be stabbed in the
back by his own Prime Minister. Tony Blair ignored diplomatic
advice if it complicated his relations with George W. Bush.
How the British Foreign Office tried but failed to dismiss
Ambassador Murray for invented disciplinary offences is an
individual tale of injustice. However, the gripping core of
this story is of a young and studious Ambassador driven to
take absurd risks in remote parts of Uzbekistan as he builds
up a dossier of incontrovertible brutalities by his host government.
Those who try to obstruct him find this experienced and slightly
overweight scholar is no patsy. He disputes the lies of petty
bureaucrats. He storms into a corrupt procurator's office
and dismisses him as a criminal - a risky way to use an Ambassador's
"full and plenipotentiary" powers. But it works.
The bully is exposed as a coward in front of those he has
bullied. There is even a snow-shrouded chase with President
Karimov's goons in pursuit - no wonder film rights are under
discussion.
The shocking part of this story - narrated with
skill and honesty - is that, at heart, much of the British
Foreign Office valued Ambassador Murray's reporting from his
Embassy in Tashkent. Dealing with human rights abuses is never
easy. Murray knew his way around the policy heavyweights at
home well enough to make sure that a controversial speech
critical of Uzbekistan had support from the human rights desks.
But when the White House complained to Tony Blair and he passed
this down the line, spines crumpled - from Foreign Secretary
Jack Straw down. This book shows how diplomats can bring shame
or honor to their country. There is a simple lesson for Tony
Blair (and George Bush) to learn. If you ask diplomats who
are trained to report truthfully, to tell lies, the lasting
problems will come from the ones who obey you, not the ones
who stick to their professional calling.
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