Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #139650 in Books
• Published on: 2006-06-29
• Binding: Hardcover
• 400 pages

Sir Max Hastings, Sunday Times, 16 July 2006
Heroic. This darkly comic tale...rings horribly true. It helps explain the moral bankruptcy [of] the Blair government.

Justin Marozzi, The Spectator, 29 July 2006
An important and well-told story from a frontline of the war on terror. A very good thing indeed.

Adam Helliker, Sunday Express, July 30, 2006
Excellent.

Customer Reviews

Over simplified and self -satifying
Craig Murray documents his time as British Ambassador to the Republic of Uzbekistan from 2002-4. He highlights the problems he saw within the country and made a personal, "moral" judgement. He then explains and complains that he was removed from office after complaining a number of times to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office about the regime in Uzbekistan.

What exactly did he expect.. ??

From the moment Murray documents his arrival in Uzbekistan he highlights that he was constantly trying to expose the corruption and moral bankruptcy of the Karimov regime... This is pious drival... The Central Asian republics have a history of ardent traditionalism... suspicious of "benevolent" foreign influences and indeed of all western influences, this man documents how he strolled around the country passing judgement on any and all he found. In the end, the book becomes a constant re-itteration of self-congratulatory and pious bunk. And the valuble points he makes, and there are some, suffers because of this attitude and his rather dubious affair with an Uzbek native.

We all know that America and Britain support morally dubious regimes. This has happened before, happens now, and will continue to happen in the future. We, as in "The West", have to do this in order to guarantee the survival of democracy. The sooner wet, naive and frankly, wimpy people know this, the better.

Whisky, women and tea parties with fascists
Boiling people to death. Torture chambers. Rape and murder as institutionalised routine. President Karimov of Uzbekistan was the dictator of a pretty barbaric regime but such are our friends in this brave new world of the `War on Terror'. It was into this cauldron in 2002 that His Excellency, Ambassador Craig Murray was plunged. His mission: to promote British business interests and to encourage good relations betwixt Tony Blair's Britain and Karimov's Uzbekistan, a relationship deemed geostrategically vital.

Ambassador Murray was tipped for great things, if he would simply keep his mouth shut and follow the party line - a respectable career, a cushy posting to Brussels or Switzerland maybe, a knighthood at the end of the line. Instead, he ended up disowned by Jack Straw's Foreign Office and virtually bankrupt, buying stale bread from a garage forecourt and eating it toasted. His crime? Refusing to have a tea party with fascists and acting in defence of basic human rights. Murder in Samarkand describes in intimate detail Murray's journey in which he becomes a witness to a country being bled to death.

Craig Murray's good humour shines through in this terrific read. Out one night at a belly-dancing club, he jokingly comments that the dancer is wearing too many clothes for his taste. His companion says, "Don't worry - they wear a different costume for each dance." Murray keeps watching, only to discover that the dancers' wear progressively more clothes for each performance. He notes that he half expects to see the final dancer put on a hat and coat! Murray's taste for drinking and enjoying himself are one of the many charges that he had to fight when the Foreign and Commonwealth Office decided to drag his good name through the mud. He successfully defeated every charge but one: not to discuss any of the charges...

These brief shafts of humour provide all too few moments of relief amongst some tense situations: confronting Karimov's secret service in the middle of a field, with only two women and an old peasant woman they had been interviewing. The two burly agents threaten to rape and perhaps kill the women - a not uncommon event. Balding, pot-bellied Murray, hardly an imposing figure, confronts them head on without any backup or security.

Craig Murray by rights should have been celebrated by the New Labour government for defending essential virtues shared by our common humanity. After all, Britain was at the time following George Bush's lead in proclaiming that we were going to war against Afghanistan and Iraq in order to remove regimes that failed to meet our high moral standards. If ever there was testimony to this moral hypocrisy that has shamed the nations of those involved, none was as honest or eloquent as Murray's. Murder in Samarkand is an essential document and should these terrible events that Murray records be consigned to the black hole of history and the notoriously short-term memory of the West, Murray has included pictures of Bush smiling and shaking hands with the tyrant Karimov.

good read
I suppose the author is not your usual diplomat, but that makes the book only better. The impressions that I got from my only few visits to the country, including the conference that author describes, tie very well with the picture painted by the author. Massacre in Andijan that took place after Murray's departure only validated his views. If I'm not mistaken, eventual US and UK criticism of Andijan events lead to US air base in the country being closed by Karimov. Sadly, in spite of Murray's signals, mass killing of people had to take place before US and UK realised that Karimov used their war on terror to brutally supress Uzbekistan.