After a long break (exhaustion) we return to working our way through Craig Murray’s Murder in Samarkand.

Chapters 5 and 6 give us a lively account of Craig’s first major foray deep into Uzbekistan (the Ferghana Valley), complete with accompanying local KGB-style minders. He stays in dirty, basic hotels ("I felt that more respect should be shown to a British Ambassador") and drinks vodka with local officials. One hotel receptionist has studied in the UK under an official Uzbek scholarship programme, only to be allocated this lowly job on his return.

He also visits various factories and projects, including a major EBRD-supported wool factory which looks like a major corruption exercise (Note: unclear what if anything Craig subsequently did to raise his concerns on this score with Whitehall/EBRD).

He meets a human rights activist who tells him that there are nearly 400 Muslim dissidents/activists imprisoned from Ferghana city, many from HuT (Hizb-ut-Tehrir), an organisation wanting to establish a single Caliphate over all Muslim lands. As Craig describes them, HuT are "against violence but also against democracy and participation in politics", and (he argues) a growing force in Uzbekistan because the regime is so repressive and offers few genuine ways of letting different voices be heard. He offers to buy the activist a taxpayer-funded PC, apparently on the strength of this one first meeting.

My theory of diplomacy is that every hour a diplomat spends in an Embassy is time wasted. You are paid by the taxpayer to live in a foreign country, so get out there and see it, returning to the Embassy only to get your reports out.

So Craig does well here to make such an effort to have a good open-minded look round early in his posting, including by showing that he is ready to talk openly with people whom the regime must dislike.

Professional Judgement Rating: 8/10. Commendably thorough early ‘hands-on’ tour to regions rarely visited by Western officials. Good range of people and factories/enterprises included. Need to keep an eye on the late-night socialising (creates a strange impression if overdone) and on cross-checking the credentials of new possibilities for small-scale Embassy support. Risks of local human rights activists being persecuted for meeting him after Craig has left the area?