Pressing on through Craig Murray’s Murder in Samarkand, we reach Chapter 4 – Diplomacy.

Craig has to present his credentials to President Karimov to assume the full rights and responsibilities of HM Ambassador. These credentials traditionally are formal letters in flamboyantly old-fashioned courteous language language from HM The Queen to the Head of State concerned, recalling the previous Ambassador and introducing the new one.

A diplomatic curiosity. My Portuguese colleague in Belgrade was proud to display on his wall the top copy of his letter of credentials from the President of Portugal to to President Milosevic – Milosevic had fallen from power between the letter issuing and the ceremony to present it, so the Ambassador kept it!

Craig goes to the high profile ceremony armed (to his surprise – no explanation given for this surprise) with authority from the FCO to say some firm sentences on human rights. He describes well his encounter with President Karimov. 

Karimov is a Tough Egg, briefed to pretend to praise the UK on its long democratic traditions and lament the fact that Uzbekistan had fallen under Russian and not British imperial rule – a version of the usual rubbish line used by Bad Leaders to explain away the absence of basic democratic principles in their territory ("Pity poor us – struggling to catch up with you noble Brits, from so far behind!"). 

Karimov congratulates the UK on recent anti-terrorist legislation allowing suspects to be held without trial. Craig describes this as "a striking illustration of just how much encouragement New Labour’s attack on civil rights in the UK gives to dictators round the globe". 

Hmm. Not sure they need any such encouragement – and in any case a fraction of the due process available to prisoners under these British laws would go a long way to improve things in somewhere like Uzbekistan.

Karimov responds to Craig’s words on human rights with strong words of his own directed at Islamic militants and Russian influence – Uzbekistan had little choice but to respond in an authoritarian way. Craig admits that this speech makes an impression: "while he might be a thug, he was a complex and shrewd one with a profound grasp of detail."

Craig moves on to meet his EU colleagues.

The German Ambassador says that Uzbekistan offers only the illusion of progress. No mention here of Germany’s military airbase and political support for Uzbekistan. But the Germans have offered numerous Uzbeks political asylum.

The French Ambassador warns against rocking the boat – the Americans have the major interest in Uzbekistan.

The Italian Ambassador’s office is guarded by "three absolutely gorgeous young women … white low-buttoned blouses exposing a terrific amount of cleavage, hip-hugging black short skirts with stockings and shiny black high heels".

The Italian Ambassador – with hotty support staff like that, why not? – looks like "someone playing God in an old Jimmy Stewart film"; he accuses the Americans of failing to grasp the complexity of a situation, either at the time or in retrospect.

Craig first encounters his US colleague at a lunch he hosts for a visiting IMF delegation. The US Ambassador (supported by the French Ambassador) inclines to give the Uzbekistan authorities the benefit of the doubt on their so-called economic reform programmes. Awkwardness occurs when Craig as the newcomer albeit with some experts’ support argues that Uzbekistan statistics may not mean much, if anything:

The lunch established my reputation for being difficult and outspoken, while convincing me that the US were willing to bend any fact in defence of their ally, Karimov.

The next day Craig has a rather bruising private meeting with the US Ambassador, who does not welcome Craig’s concerns about human rights abuses. He argues that Karimov is the best available Uzbekistan leader, grappling with real problems caused by Taliban-style militants: "Extreme Islam is itself a kind of institutionalised violence". He gives an example of one case where his personal intervention helped secure convictions of three policemen for murdering a detainee.

Craig then has something of a row with the Uzbekistan Minister for Economic Affairs, arguing over the facts (or otherwise) of Uzbekistan’s reform programmes. He departs concluding (not unreasonably?) that the Minister had been talking ‘complete rubbish’. 

After these first briefing rounds and being in post and in the region only some 27 days(!), Craig reaches two far-reaching policy conclusions.

That the USA had got its Central Asian policy thoroughly wrong. And that HMG in turn were wrong to follow the US line:

I knew that as Ambassador it was my duty to inform Jack Straw and Whitehall of my view. But I was also aware that it would be acutely unpopular … saying what I wanted to say was likely to damage my career pretty severely…".

Craig then drafts a pair of telegrams advising in strong terms that HMG do not support more IMF money for Uzbekistan: Uzbekistan’s performance does not merit it, whatever political deal might have been done by the Americans to secure use of Uzbek air facilities. Without real economic reform poverty would get worse, breeding more Islamic fundamentalism:

You do not encourage real reform by applauding fake reform. The poor of Uzbekistan should not become the victims of September 11.

A second telegram weighs even more heavily into the morality of US support for the Karimov regime with its totalitarian controls and use of torture:

If Karimov is on ‘our’ side, then this war [on terror] cannot be simply between the forces of good and evil. It must be about more complex things, like securing the long-term US military presence in Uzbekistan … 11 September had also been the anniversary of the overthrow of the democratically elected President Allende of Chile … we should have moved on from the disastrous policy of US-backed dictatorships.

Craig knows that he was going ‘way out on a limb’. His junior colleague Christ Hurst wisely opines that this telegram was "pretty long for a resignation letter".

The telegrams issue. The text of a draft version of the first one is here. It is in fact rather better than Craig’s excited description in the book suggests.

A letter appears from Craig’s line manager in the FCO, Simon Butt. Craig is ‘overfocused on human rights’, plus discussing human rights cases on open phone lines likely to be monitored by the Uzbek security services. Craig’s performance is causing concern…

So we get closer to the heart of the book.

What is happening here?

A not so senior Ambassador, after less than a month in a new post in a region he has not served in previously, pops up and tells HMG in telegrams circulated far and wide round Whitehall and the British diplomatic network that they have got things seriously Wrong.

I think Craig gets it Wrong.

First, as he must have known well, such a noisy and abrupt opening shot was going to annoy more senior people than it persuaded.

Note: Yes, I know that Craig received many positive emails for these first telegrams, including indeed one from me.

But work which is praised by people with little to lose and/or not working on the problem is not always the same as work which, even if couched in robust terms critical of the current line, is seen by key people at HQ as basically reasonable and constructive.

Second, Craig projects no sense at all of explaining how, given the awfulness of the Uzbekistan regime, he thinks we might make practical if probably painfully incremental progress in changing it, and what HMG might lose if we decide to try that path.

Third, denouncing the Americans’ policy in such abusive terms while not explaining that eg our EU partner Germans too are doing their fair share of cosying up to Karimov is monochrome, even banal analysis. Plus it lacks operational credibility – if the Americans do have the main Western weight in Uzbekistan (and have just suffered 9/11) how to woo them in Washington and in Tashkent towards what we might see as a more ‘balanced’ policy? Is telling them that they’re blundering oafs really the way most likely to get the results Craig wants?

Fourth, there seems to be nothing said about Russian ambitions – maybe in the Greater Scheme of Things it is just better that Western governments engage busily with Karimov, hoping slowly to turn that society in a more pluralist direction, than that reactionary post-Soviet instincts emanating from Moscow recover their strength.

Finally, the world does not give us a choice between Good and Bad options. Often there looks to be only a range of Pretty Bad options available, some with longer-term implications than others. Maybe using an oppressive regime in Uzbekistan to hit hard at an even worse regime in Afghanistan is, for now, the Least Bad Option, and so good hard-headed diplomatic business?

In short, Craig throws himself in a tabloidy, unprofessional, unconvincing  way at a hugely complicated international bundle of issues, asserting (in effect) that there is a simple way forward.

Not too surprising that those in the policy chain in London were irritated at Craig’s implication that they too were a bunch of duffers missing all the obvious points, and that they quickly started to wonder what they were now dealing with?

Professional Judgement Rating: 2/10.  Makes numerous important points about the dire human rights situation in Uzbekistan, but shows no appreciation of how matters might be taken forward in a way likely to achieve better results on that front as well as on the many other key policy challenges HMG face in the region. Worrying tendency so early in a posting to get carried away with his own naive rhetoric, losing perspective.