Sceptic of the week – Craig Murray
Craig Murray was UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan from October 2002 to October 2004, when he was removed from his post after repeatedly highlighting the systematic use of torture by the Uzbek authorities. Murray had been sent to Uzbekistan by the UK Foreign Office with a brief that explicitly included the promotion of human rights – but when he began to do so – both in public speeches and internal memos to London – he quickly fell foul of the gap between rhetoric and reality within the ‘War on Terror’. Uzbekistan, which borders Afghanistan, and at the time hosted several US military facilities, was deemed to be a key ally in the global struggle against Islamist terrorism. In March 2003, Murray was summoned to London, and told that his concerns about the use of torture by the Uzbek authorities were understood; the Foreign Secretary had even lost sleep over the right course of action – but that the torture-tainted intelligence being received from Uzbekistan was nonetheless ‘useful’. Murray took a different view:
“this material is useless”, he wrote, in a confidential memo in July 2004, “we are selling our souls for dross. It is in fact positively harmful. It is designed to give the message the Uzbeks want the West to hear. It exaggerates the role, size, organisation and activity of the IMU [an Uzbek armed group] and its links with Al Qaida. The aim is to convince the West that the Uzbeks are a vital cog against a common foe, that they should keep the assistance, especially military assistance, coming, and that they should mute the international criticism on human rights and economic reform.”
By this time, Murray had already – in August 2003 – been slapped with 18 disciplinary charges, suspended, and pressured to resign quietly. When he refused, the Foreign Office was forced to back down – all 18 charges were subsequently dropped.
In the same July 2004 memo, Murray also raised pointed questions about the competence of the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), following the fiasco over WMD in Iraq:
“Sixteen months ago it was difficult to argue with SIS in the area of intelligence assessment. But post Butler [the Butler report looked into the intelligence failures leading up to the 2003 Iraq war) we know, not only that they can get it wrong on even the most vital and high profile issues, but that they have a particular yen for highly coloured material which exaggerates the threat. That is precisely what the Uzbeks give them… At the Khuderbegainov trial I met an old man from Andizhan. Two of his children had been tortured in front of him until he signed a confession on the family’s links with Bin Laden. Tears were streaming down his face. I have no doubt they had as much connection with Bin Laden as I do. This is the standard of the Uzbek intelligence services.”
Craig Murray put his job on the line – and ultimately sacrificed a lucrative Foreign Office career – because he believed that the policies he was being asked to support were fundamentally wrong-headed. Yet his struggles against UK Foreign Policy doublethink didn’t end in 2004. In the 2005 General Election he made a quixotic stand as an independent candidate against the same UK Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, who had tried to silence him. An accompanying BBC documentary, which followed his campaign’s progress, billed this ”The Ambassador’s Last Stand” – but there was more to come. When, in December 2005, the UK Foreign Office sought to block the inclusion of Murray’s damning memos in his book, ”Murder in Samarkand“, he arranged for them to be published instead on hundreds of internet blogs across the world. The Foreign Office’s attempt at covering its tracks had only pushed the issues further into the public domain.
In ”Don’t Get Fooled Again”, I look at the wider issues raised by the Craig Murray case, and at the delusions around the use of torture within the ‘war on terror’.
