Interview with former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan

Craig Murray spoke out against the human rights abuses of the US-funded regime long before the recent massacre. He lost his job as ambassador to Uzbekistan last year

http://www.metro.co.uk/metro/interviews/interview.html?in_page_id=8&in_interview_id=1086

President Karimov of Uzbekistan is a brutal dictator but he's our dictator. Discuss.
Yes, that's very much the American line. They argue that our alliance with Karimov is a necessary evil, like our alliance with Stalin in Word War II. There is no such comparison. The only factor driving radical Islam in Central Asia is people despairing at the regime and the lack of any democratic alternative.

Is the 'War on Terror' a genuine threat or a fantasy from the intelligence services?
A great deal of it is a fantasy. The intelligence about weapons of mass destruction wasn't true, either, but it was extremely useful. The same is true of intelligence that allows former Met Police Chief John Stevens to say there are 200 Islamic terrorists active in Britain. Active Islamic terrorists, prepared to sacrifice their own lives, but they haven't managed to kill anyone yet. Not very good terrorists, are they? It's all complete rubbish designed to keep the population in a state of fear. Tanks at Heathrow to keep a suicide bomber off a plane? It's plainly bollocks - hype.

We topple an evil dictator in Iraq, yet support an evil dictator in Uzbekistan. Why the paradox? You can't believe Tony Blair and Jack Straw are evil or stupid.
There certainly are evil people in the White House and the Pentagon. The decision has been taken that, in the war on terror, Britain should be extremely close to the US. Jack Straw finds the alliance over Uzbekistan distasteful but he's held his nose and got on with it. The Americans are cynical; their interest in Central Asia is all about oil and gas. We back a dictator in Central Asia to get access to oil and gas, and we remove a dictator in Iraq to get access to oil and gas. Explain American policy in terms of freedom and democracy and you get a contradiction. Explain it in terms of oil and gas and it's completely consistent.

which is good to know.



I've started doing it recently (luckily my MP broadly agrees with me on most subjects, so hopefully she doesn't think I'm a nutter), so I now have hope that continuing to do it is worthwhile. A 'can you ask the government why ...' letter, couched in very calm language, seems the way to do it (I got a detailed reply on Darfur from the Foreign Office, which showed they really had read my letter and considered my question).

He stood against Jack Straw in Blackburn, gaining 2082 votes.