What diplomats should, and should not, do
Syed Badrul Ahsan pities a fallen ambassador
Craig Murray lives these days in quite pitiable conditions in London with his Uzbek girlfriend Nadira. In these past few years he has been a candidate for a parliamentary seat and then rector of a university. It was in Blackburn that he took on Jack Straw, the man he considers his nemesis, at the 2005 elections. He lost, but then he actually did not expect to win. It was his way of getting back at the man who he believes linked up with the mandarins in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Straw was then foreign secretary) to deprive him of his job as British ambassador to Uzbekistan. In this account of his brief yet dramatic period heading the British mission in Tashkent, Murray defends himself against all the accusations of improper conduct on his part. His peers in the FCO believed, and still believe, that his behaviour in Tashkent went beyond accepted norms of diplomatic conduct. And they may well be right. What clearly did not worry Murray was that in his crusade against corruption in Uzbekistan he was perhaps discarding that very element of subtlety needed to goad a regime towards change. He freely spoke out against the repression employed by the regime of President Islam Karimov, in sharp contrast to the more restrained comments of other diplomats in Tashkent, such as the US, French and German ambassadors. Indeed, he thought the British government was ignoring his reports on the human rights situation in Uzbekistan and, in line with American policy on global terrorism, was simply looking away from the wrongs that Karimov and his friends were regularly committing. Murray certainly made things worse for himself when, every time news came to him of an incident somewhere in Uzbekistan, he dashed off to the spot, staff in tow, for a first hand account of it. He constantly ran into trouble with Uzbek police and heroically (that is the impression he tries to convey) skirted past them in his drive toward a dissident's home or a meeting planned by the anti-government opposition. The Uzbek authorities got exasperated, while back home at the FCO, he was increasingly being considered an embarrassment by those who manned the Eastern Department. Straw, Simon Butt and others take quite a number of raps in this book. These people, Murray argues throughout the work, were simply closing their eyes to the terrible policies that Karimov was pursuing in Tashkent. Dissidents were boiled to death and some were simply picked up late in the evening, only to be dumped as dead bodies before their homes at dawn. Murray's human feelings come across poignantly here, but they did not cut any ice with the British diplomatic establishment in London. Of course, it was much later (as the writer points out) that he learnt about the rendition flights, authenticated by London and Washington, to Tashkent that clearly may have prevented the West from coming down hard on the Uzbek regime. There is little question that Craig Murray is much more than a diplomat. He speaks openly of his fascination for women, of the many times he ogled young Uzbek beauties at the bars and restaurants of Tashkent. When he meets Nadira, she is working as a dancer in a night club to supplement her income and so help the family. Soon the two are in love, despite the presence of Fiona, his wife, and their children in Tashkent. Confronted by Fiona, he confesses and tells her plainly he cannot turn his back on Nadira. Fiona turns her back on him and flies off to London with the children. And then there are the bouts of illness, the passings out, with Murray in hospital in London. Meanwhile, his battles with the FCO, where no one is ready to speak up for him, continue. He turns up at the FCO, sits in the ambassadors' waiting room and dozes off. He peeps into a conference of officials, cheerily says hello to them and finds some of the men there positively hostile to him. He is in good health now, he tells them, and plans to go back to his duties in Tashkent. In the event, he is prevented from doing so. Not long after, he is dismissed from the Foreign Service. It is the story of a sensitive man who certainly has his heart in the right place. The unfortunate part here is that in his battles against the Uzbekistan regime, the fine line between diplomacy and the crusading zeal in him often gets distinctly blurred. The work ought to be seen as a lesson on what diplomats posted abroad should not do.
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