Murder in Samarkand, by Craig Murray

This is the account by the British ambassador to Uzbekistan in 2002-2004 of his time there. This was a period when the US considered this former Soviet dictatorship as a key ally in the "War on Terror", and Britain was friendly by transitivity. I remember that a frequent point made by Blair's opponents was that he kept friends like the dissident-boiling President Karimov, and the story opens with a newly posted Murray receiving the photographs of boiled dissidents which it seems this epithet came to be based on.

What follows is an entertaining and depressing tale of politics and diplomacy, which often reads more like an adventure novel or spy thriller. Murray takes great pride in recounting his active approach to the job, racing around the country to talk to and occasionally help those who've fallen foul of the regime, and to make his disapproval clear to its rulers. The Foreign Office back home quickly realise how "off-message" he is, and much of the story ends up being about their eventually successful attempts to get rid of him. His personal life, including an affair with a local which ends up splitting his marriage, is also presented in some detail. Altogether, it makes for a surprisingly entertaining read. The writing is unexceptional but perfectly adequate.

The tale has two villains: the Uzbek government, and the British government/establishment. It was interesting to see again this ignoble period in British history from a new perspective. I remember how betrayed I felt by the Blair government's siding with Bush, most critically in the war of aggression on Iraq and all the lies involved in justifying it, but also in their failure to condemn torture and their involvement in it via the "extraordinary rendition" programme. All of these play a role in this story, and Murray clearly felt similarly betrayed. In using his powers as Ambassador to represent the country he wished existed rather than the one which did, he made an enemy of the establishment. He lost his power as a result, but not his fury... in fact he's currently in jail for pissing off the Scottish government and judiciary. The fact that he fell out so conclusively with the Foreign Office means that he has no compunction over revealing many details of the inner workings of high-level diplomacy which I suspect would have been politely elided by anyone who cared about retaining their favour.

The other villain of the piece was also interesting. Striking to me was the description of how Uzbekistan's command economy was (and I assume still is) used as a tool of oppression. I tend to consider "economic freedom" as code for the rights of private capital and the rentier class to squeeze society, and as little more than a rhetorical trick to conflate it with the genuinely important social freedoms. But seeing how the almost complete lack of a private sector meant that dissidents could be punished by ensuring that they and their families would not be able to work, makes it clear that economic control really is tied to social control. Not that I needed convincing that a top-down command economy was a bad idea, and the widespread use of forced labour on the cotton plantations also described in the book give a clearer indication of how it can go wrong. But it's interesting to see that my reflex response to privatisation is not always correct -- even if it mostly is in the case of social democracies, where privatisation tends to mean the destruction of valuable public services.

In conclusion: this was an enjoyable and thought-provoking book, much exceeding my expectations. Recommended.