Monthly archives: August 2005

Sanctions against Uzbekistan would be disastrous? – Craig Murray explains his position

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A number of people have questioned me on the call in my recent Guardian article for sanctions against the Uzbek cotton industry. Several have pointed to the disastrous effects of sanctions against Iraq.

My proposal relates only to cotton, so is of course much more targeted than the sanctions against Iraq.

The Uzbek cotton industry is a disastrous aberration created by Soviet central planning. Over 80% of the loss of water from the Aral Sea is due to irrigation for the Uzbek cotton industry, so it is responsible for one of the World’s greatest environmental disasters. On most agricultural land in Uzbekistan, cotton has been grown as a monoculture for fifty years, with no rotation. This of course exhausts the soil and encourages pests. As a result the cotton industry employs massive quantities of pesticide and fertiliser. As a result it is not just that the Aral Sea is disappearing, but that and fertiliser.y years, with no rotation.the whole area of the former sea suffers appalling pollution, reflected in appalling levels of disease.

Uzbek farm workers are tied to the farm. They need a propusk (visa) to move away ‘ which they won’t get. The state farm worker normally gets two dollars a month. Their living and nutritional standards would improve greatly if, rather than grow cotton, they had a little area to grow subsistence crops. What follows is the executive summary from the International Crisis Group report on Central Asian cotton of March 2005.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The cotton industry in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan contributes to political repression, economic stagnation, widespread poverty and environmental degradation. Without structural reform in the industry, it will be extremely difficult to improve economic development, tackle poverty and social deprivation, and promote political liberalisation in the region. If those states, Western governments and international financial institutions (IFIs) do not do more to encourage a new approach to cotton, the pool of disaffected young men susceptible to extremist ideology will grow with potentially grave consequences for regional stability.

The economics of Central Asian cotton are simple and exploitative. Millions of the rural poor work for little or no reward growing and harvesting the crop. The considerable profits go either to the state or small elites with powerful political ties. Forced and child labour and other abuses are common.

This system can only work in an unreformed economy with little scope for competition, massive state intervention, uncertain or absent land ownership, and very limited rule of law. Given the benefits they enjoy, there is little incentive for powerful vested interests to engage in serious structural economic reform, which could undermine their lucrative business as well as eventually threaten their political power.

This system is only sustainable under conditions of political repression, which can be used to mobilise workers at less than market cost. Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are among the world’s most repressive states, with no free elections. Opposition activists and human rights defenders are subject to persecution. The lack of a free media allows many abuses to go unreported. Unelected local governments are usually complicit in abuses, since they have little or no accountability to the population. Cotton producers have an interest in continuing these corrupt and non-democratic regimes.

The industry relies on cheap labour. Schoolchildren are still regularly required to spend up to two months in the cotton fields in Uzbekistan. Despite official denials, child labour is still in use in Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. Students in all three countries must miss their classes to pick cotton. Little attention is paid to the conditions in which children and students work. Every year some fall ill or die.

Women do much of the hard manual labour in cotton fields, and reap almost none of the benefits. Cash wages are minimal, and often paid late or not at all. In most cotton-producing areas, growers are among the poorest elements in society. Not surprisingly, young men do everything to escape the cotton farms, forming a wave of migrants both to the cities and out of the region.

The environmental costs of the monoculture have been devastating. The depletion of the Aral Sea is the result of intensive irrigation to fuel cotton production. The region around the sea has appalling public health and ecological problems. Even further upstream, increased salinisation and desertification of land have a major impact on the environment. Disputes over water usage cause tension among Central Asian states.

Reforming the cotton sector is not easy. Structural change could encourage the growth of an industry that benefits rural farmers and the state equally but economic and political elites have resisted. Land reform has been blocked in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan and has moved too slowly in Tajikistan. Farmers still have no permanent ownership of the lands they work and no real say in the choice of crops they wish to grow or to whom they sell their produce.

Central Asian cotton is traded internationally by major European and U.S. corporations; its production is financed by Western banks, and the final product ends up in well-known clothes outlets in Western countries. But neither the international cotton trading companies nor the clothing manufacturers pay much attention to the conditions in which the cotton is produced. Nor have international organisations or IFIs done much to address the abuses. U.S. and EU subsidy regimes for their own farmers make long-term change more difficult by depressing world prices.

The cotton monoculture is more destructive to Central Asia’s future than the tons of heroin that regularly transit the region. Although the international community has invested millions of dollars in counter-narcotics programs, very little has been done to counteract the negative impact of the cotton industry. Changing the business of Central Asian cotton will take time, but a real reform of this sector of the economy would provide more hope for the stability of this strategic region than almost anything else the international community could offer.

RECOMMENDATIONS

To the Governments of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan:

1. Take urgent action to end child labour in cotton fields, by:

(a) adhering to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention C182 (1999), on the Prohibition and Immediate Action for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour;

(b) making clear public statements against the activity;

(c) punishing officials who continue to use or turn a blind eye to child labour; and

(d) establishing monitoring bodies including international, industry and government representatives, to ensure laws and declared policy against child labour are actually implemented.

2. End the use of students and government employees as forced labour in the cotton fields.

3. Invite the ILO to investigate labour abuses in the cotton industry.

To the Governments of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan:

4. Begin programs of land reform that would gradually develop the level of private farming and provide safeguards for property rights.

5. Reduce state interference in the agricultural sector, including the issuance of artificial production quotas, and particularly end the use of law enforcement agencies and local authorities to enforce such quotas and related orders.

6. Increase cotton procurement prices to approach the world price so as to alleviate rural poverty and provide market incentives to growers.

To the Government of Tajikistan:

7. Accelerate land reform and provide much more advice and legal protection to farmers, particularly in cotton-growing areas.

8. End government quotas for cotton, reduce state interference at local and central levels in farming, liberalise price-setting mechanisms, and aim to ensure reasonable minimum farmgate prices.

9. In coordination with local and international investors, conduct a thorough audit of investors’ claimed farm debts and develop a plan for resolution of farm debt that favours farmers.

10. Audit contracts between futures companies and farmers and halt the activities of companies engaged in dishonest or exploitative practices.

11. Implement agricultural policies that balance food security with production of hitherto prioritised export crops like cotton.

12. Suspend the policy of resettlement to cotton-growing regions until migrants can be guaranteed potable water, social services, and opportunities for off-farm income.

To international financial institutions and donors:

13. Create a joint working group, including, where possible, private foreign investors, to coordinate strategies on the Central Asian cotton industry.

14. Continue and expand programs that emphasise:

(a) legal assistance and human rights protection for farmers, including advocacy at government level;

(b) new forms of association for farmers, such as unions, rural credit associations, and marketing networks;

(c) alternative crop programs and new growing methods, such as organic cotton; and

(d) support for rural women, to provide employment alternatives to the cotton fields.

15. Support NGO and media outlets that are actively involved in uncovering abuses in the cotton industry.

To the European Union, its member states, and the U.S. Government:

16. Work within the WTO toward a phasing out or substantial reduction of subsidies in domestic cotton industries.

17. Work within and through the ILO to:

(a) achieve respect in the cotton industries of Central Asian states for Convention C182 (1999), on the Prohibition and Immediate Action for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour, and for related standards respecting student forced labour and other abuses; and

(b) encourage international cotton traders to implement a policy of social due diligence with regard to local middlemen and cotton producers, end business dealings with those shown to be engaged in abusive or exploitative practices, and engage with governments, NGOs, IFIs and international organisations in joint efforts to improve working conditions on cotton farms.

18. Further work within and through the ILO to encourage international clothing enterprises to:

(a) make available to customers information on the origins of cotton products;

(b) carry out social due diligence with regard to suppliers of cotton;

(c) seek assurances that cotton is picked in accordance with international labour norms;

(d) investigate the feasibility of a process of certification of cotton origin on clothes and other textile products; and

(e) expand fair trade programs to include cotton and cotton products.

It is fair to note that the ICG’s recommendations do not include a boycott. But I am afraid to say that there is politically no chance at all that the Karimov regime would voluntarily go along with any of the key recommendations. Compulsion is needed to force change, and a boycott is the way to attain that.

The object of a cotton boycott would be not just to obtain reform of the cotton industry, but to attack the income of the Karimov elite and thus break up their political alliances. I should be quite open about this ‘ action is needed to produce early political change in Uzbekistan.

See also my speech “The Trouble With Uzbekistan” on this website.

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Guantanamo trials ‘half-assed’

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From News24

Sydney – Leaked emails from two former prosecutors suggested the US military commissions to try detainees held at Guantanamo Bay are rigged, fraudulent and thin on evidence, Australian national radio reported on Monday.

In one of the emails obtained by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, prosecutor Major Robert Preston wrote to his supervisor in March last year that the process was perpetrating a fraud on the American people.

“I consider the insistence on pressing ahead with cases that would be marginal even if properly prepared to be a severe threat to the reputation of the military justice system and even a fraud on the American people,” Preston wrote, according to the ABC.

“Surely they don’t expect that this fairly half-assed effort is all that we have been able to put together after all this time.”

Captured

Of the 510 detainees being held at the Guantanamo Bay US naval base in Cuba, most of them captured during the US attack on Afghanistan in late 2001, a dozen have been declared eligible to be charged before the military commissions.

One of those facing trial is Australian David Hicks, who was allegedly fighting for the former Taliban rulers when he was captured in Afghanistan.

Preston said he could not continue to work on a process he considered morally, ethically and professionally intolerable, ABC reported, adding that he was transferred out of the Office of Military Commissions less than a month later.

A second email written by another prosecutor, Captain John Carr, who also ended up leaving the department, said the commissions appear to be rigged, ABC said.

Volunteered

“When I volunteered to assist with this process and was assigned to this office, I expected there would at least be a minimal effort to establish a fair process and diligently prepare cases against significant accused,” he was quoted as saying.

“Instead, I find a half-hearted and disorganised effort by a skeleton group of relatively inexperienced attorneys to prosecute fairly low-level accused in a process that appears to be rigged.”

Carr said the prosecutors had been told by the chief prosecutor that the panel sitting in judgement on the cases would be hand-picked to ensure convictions.

“You have repeatedly said to the office that the military panel will be hand-picked and will not acquit these detainees and that we only needed to worry about building a record for the review panel,” he wrote.

Hicks’s military lawyer Major Michael Mori told ABC the documents were highly significant.

“For the first time, we’re seeing that concerns about the fairness of the military commissions extend to the heart of the process,” Mori said.

Military

But Brigadier General Thomas Hemingway, legal adviser to the military commissions, told ABC that the Pentagon had conducted its own investigation and found no legal or ethical problems.

He said an inquiry had concluded that the comments by the prosecutors were the result of miscommunication, misunderstanding and personality conflicts.

“I think what we did is work on some restructuring in the office, there was some change in the way cases were processed but we found no evidence of any criminal misconduct, we found no evidence of any ethical violations,” he said.

Hemingway also denied that the commission panels were being hand-picked to ensure detainees were not acquitted.

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US challenged over ‘secret jails’

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Amnesty International has said that two Yemeni men claim they were held in secret, underground US jails for more than 18 months without being charged.

The human rights group has called on the US to reveal details of the alleged secret detention of suspects abroad. Amnesty fears the case is part of a “much broader picture” in which the US holds prisoners at secret locations. Both say they were tortured for four days by Jordanian intelligence services.

Alleged methods include being beaten on the feet while bound and suspended upside-down. One of the men claims he was threatened with sexual abuse and electric shocks. Each says he was then flown to an unnamed underground jail, where he was held in solitary confinement for six to eight months with no access to lawyers.

Both claim they were interrogated every day by US guards about their activities in Indonesia and Afghanistan.

For the full BBC article click here. To see the AI press release go here.

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Why the US won’t admit it was jilted

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Sanctions should be imposed on Uzbekistan’s repugnant regime

By Craig Murray writing in The Guardian

President Karimov of Uzbekistan has served notice to quit on the US base in his country. This completes a process of diplomatic revolution as Karimov turns away from the west and back into the embrace of Russia, with coy sideways glances at China. The US is trying to cover its retreat behind a smokescreen of belated concern for human-rights abuse in Uzbekistan. Suddenly one of their most intensively courted allies has been discovered – shock horror – to be an evil dictator. (Remember Saddam?) But the reality is much more complex.

The first and most obvious point is that the US didn’t jump, it was pushed. The Andijan massacre of May 13, in which at least 600 demonstrators were killed, was carried out by Uzbek forces that in 2002 alone received $120m in US aid for the army and $82m for the security services. Prior to Karimov kicking it out, there was no indication at all that the US was going to review its military links with Uzbekistan – in fact General Richard Myers had specifically stated that they would continue.

In March this year the British army sent a team to Samarkand to teach the Uzbek military marksmanship. We have not said we will stop either. Nor has there been any indication that we will stop the practice whereby the Uzbek security services share with the CIA and MI6 the so-called intelligence extracted from Karimov’s torture chambers. So much for the pretence of moral repugnance.

At Termez in southern Uzbekistan there is another, less noticed, western airbase. It is leased by Germany. The Germans are not seeking to withdraw. Of all western ministers, the most frequent guest in Uzbekistan, who most uncritically praises the regime, is Joschka Fischer, the trendy German foreign minister.

The EU general affairs council, chaired by Jack Straw, responded to the Andijan massacre by announcing that it would, for a short time, “suspend further deepening” of the EU-Uzbek cooperation agreement. I can recognise FCO drafting when I see it – such an elegant phrase. You have to read it twice to realise that it precisely means “do nothing”.

Karimov has never intended to move Uzbekistan towards democracy or the free market. His very limited experimentation with attracting western investment in the mid-1990s convinced him that western-style capitalism was incompatible with containing all economic clout in the hands of his family and immediate cronies. Since then he has turned to Russian and Chinese state companies for investment.

The writing was really on the wall for US influence in central Asia when, at the end of last year, Karimov finally came off the fence and opted for Russia’s Gazprom rather than US firms to develop Uzbekistan’s massive gas fields. The decision calls into question the viability of the hydrocarbons pipeline over Afghanistan to the Arabian Sea, which has been the holy grail of US policy in central Asia since before the Afghan war. The deal was concluded between Karimov’s notoriously grasping daughter, Gulnara Karimova, and Alisher Usmanov, the Uzbek-born Russian oligarch who bought heavily into Corus (formed by the merger of British Steel and the Dutch company Hoogovens in 1999).

Many believe that a Karimova-Usmanov alliance is Karimov’s preferred succession strategy. But certainly Moscow resident Gulnara has had a vital influence on the reorientation of Uzbek foreign policy. She cannot enter the US, where there is a warrant for her arrest for contempt of court following a disputed divorce case.

The other key factor has been the “colour revolutions” in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan. Eduard Shevardnadze visited Karimov on being ousted and warned him against Soros and other NGOs. Karimov immediately kicked out the Open Society Institute and put crippling restrictions on other NGOs, setting his face against even token democracy. This helped the increasingly warm relationship with Vladimir Putin.

Karimov was, on the face of it, an unlikely man for Putin to embrace. After independence he had encouraged anti-Russian nationalist sentiment, and 80% of ethnic Russians – more than 2 million people – fled Uzbekistan.

But Putin and Karimov have in common an intolerance of opposition, a contempt for free media, and a desire to stem the spread of democracy. Karimov’s policy of brutally eliminating opponents while accusing them all of Islamic extremism has obvious parallels with Putin’s policy in Chechnya.

Where does this leave the regional power game? Uzbekistan has half the population of central Asia, a dominant geostrategic position and the region’s largest and best-equipped armed forces. But to the north, Kazakhstan, under President Nazarbayev, has far outstripped Karimov in economic performance, and not only because of greater hydrocarbon resources. He has kept a balance between Russia and the west, and the economy is relatively open, with much more western investment.

The future of Kazakhstan looks relatively bright. In fact one of the key factors in Karimov’s soaring unpopularity is that Kazakhs, once despised poor cousins, are now much wealthier.

But the prospects for Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are bleak. They are tiny, mountainous countries with few viable natural resources. The US still has a viable airbase in Kyrgyzstan. Karimov, backed by Russia and China in the Shanghai cooperation council, is likely to exert massive pressure on them to also turn away from the west. If they are to be able to resist this, a huge effort will be required by western countries and international agencies.

So what happens now in Uzbekistan? As the world’s powers wheel and spin, the plight of the Uzbek population deepens. Karimov’s appalling policies keep his people in ever-greater poverty, effectively a slave-labour force working, most of them on state farms, for the enrichment of his family and cronies. The economy is heavily dependent on massive production of cotton, the revenue from which brings almost no economic benefit to the wretches who pick it in conditions of serfdom.

We should be seeking to shorten Uzbekistan’s misery, not to extend it. It is the world’s second largest exporter of cotton. Citing the use of child and serf labour, concerted trade sanctions against Uzbek cotton and textiles containing Uzbek cotton should be the way forward. Given the self-interest of the very powerful US cotton lobby and the new frost in US-Uzbek relations, this might even be achievable.

Craig Murray was the British ambassador to Uzbekistan between 2002 and 2004

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“One of them made cuts in my penis. I was in agony” – the truth about Extraordinary Rendition

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From today’s Guardian, by Stephen Grey and Ian Cobain: Suspect’s tale of travel and torture:

Alleged bomb plotter claims two and a half years of interrogation under US and UK supervision in ‘ghost prisons’ abroad.

A former London schoolboy accused of being a dedicated al-Qaida terrorist has given the first full account of the interrogation and alleged torture endured by so-called ghost detainees held at secret prisons around the world.

For two and a half years US authorities moved Benyam Mohammed around a series of prisons in Pakistan, Morocco and Afghanistan, before he was sent to Guantanamo Bay in September last year.

Mohammed, 26, who grew up in Notting Hill in west London, is alleged to be a key figure in terrorist plots intended to cause far greater loss of life than the suicide bombers of 7/7. One allegation, which he denies, is of planning to detonate a “dirty bomb” in a US city; another is that he and an accomplice planned to collapse a number of apartment blocks by renting ground-floor flats to seal, fill with gas from cooking appliances, and blow up with timed detonators.

In an statement given to his newly appointed lawyer, Mohammed has given an account of how he was tortured for more than two years after being questioned by US and British officials who he believes were from the FBI and MI6. As well as being beaten and subjected to loud music for long periods, he claims his genitals were sliced with scalpels.

He alleges that in Morocco he was shown photos of people he knew from a west London mosque, and was asked about information he was told was supplied by MI5. One interrogator, he says, was a woman who said she was Canadian.

Drawing on his notes, Mohammed’s lawyer has compiled a 28-page diary of his torture. This has been declassified by the Pentagon, and extracts are published in the Guardian today.

Recruits to some groups connected to al-Qaida are thought to be instructed to make allegations of torture after capture, and most of Mohammed’s claims cannot be independently verified. But his description of a prison near Rabat closely resembles the Temara torture centre identified in a report by the US-based Human Rights Watch last October.

Furthermore, this newspaper has obtained flight records showing executive jets operated by the CIA flew in and out of Morocco on July 22 2002 and January 22 2004, the dates he says he was taken to and from the country.

If true, his account adds weight to concerns that the US authorities are torturing by proxy. It also highlights the dilemma of British authorities when they seek information from detainees overseas who they know, or suspect, are tortured.

The lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, says: “This is outsourcing of torture, plain and simple. America knows torture is wrong but gets others to do its unconscionable dirty work.

“It’s clear from the evidence that UK officials knew about this rendition to Morocco before it happened. Our government’s responsibility must be to actively prevent the torture of our residents.”

Mohammed was born in Ethiopia and came to the UK aged 15 when his father sought asylum. After obtaining five GCSEs and an engineering diploma at the City of Westminster College in Paddington, he decided to stay in Britain when his father returned, and was given indefinite leave to remain. In his late teens he rediscovered Islam, prayed regularly at al-Manaar mosque in Notting Hill, and was a volunteer at its cultural centre. “He is remembered here as a very nice, quiet person, who never caused any trouble,” says Abdulkarim Khalil, its director.

He enjoyed football, and was thought good enough for a semi-professional career. “He was a quiet kid, he seemed deep thinking, although that might have been because his language skills weren’t great,” says Tyrone Forbes, his trainer.

In June 2001 Mohammed left his bedsit off Golborne Road, Notting Hill, and travelled to Afghanistan, via Pakistan. He maintains he wanted to see whether it was “a good Islamic country or not”. It appears likely that he spent time in a paramilitary training camp.

He returned to Pakistan sometime after 9/11, and remained at liberty until April 2002 – during which time, US authorities believe, he became involved in the dirty bomb and gas blast plots. His alleged accomplice, a Chicago-born convert to Islam, Jose Padilla, is detained in the US. Mohammed says interrogators repeatedly demanded he give evidence against him.

Mohammed was arrested in Karachi while trying to fly to Zurich – and thus entered a “ghost prison system” in which an unknown number of detainees are held at unregistered detention centres, and whose imprisonment is not admitted to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

His brother and sisters, who live in the US, say the FBI told them of his arrest in summer 2002, but they were unable to find out anything else until last February. In recent days the Bush administration is reported to have lobbied to block legislation, supported by some Republican senators, to prohibit the military engaging in “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment”, and hiding prisoners from the Red Cross.

Mohammed alleges he was held at two prisons in Pakistan over three months, hung from leather straps, beaten, and threatened with a firearm by Pakistanis. In repeated questioning by men he believes were FBI agents, he was told he was to go to an Arab country because “the Pakistanis can’t do exactly what we want them to”.

The torture stopped after a visit by two bearded Britons; he believes they were MI6 officers. He says they told him he was to be tortured by Arabs. At one point, he says, they gave him a cup of tea and told him to take plenty of sugar because “where you’re going you need a lot of sugar”.

He says he was flown on what he believes was a US aircraft to Morocco, while shackled, blindfolded and wearing earphones. It was, he says, in a jail near Rabat that his real ordeal began. After a fortnight of questioningand intimidation, his captors tortured him with beatings and noise, on and off, for 18 months. He says his torturers used scalpels to make shallow, inch-long incisions on his chest and genitals.

Throughout, he was accused of being a senior al-Qaida terrorist and accomplice of Padilla. He denies these allegations, though he says that while tortured he would say whatever he thought his captors wanted. He signed a statement about the dirty bomb plot. At one point, he says, interrogators told him his GCSE grades, and asked about named staff at the housing association that owns his bedsit and about a man who taught him kickboxing in Notting Hill.

After 18 months, he says, he was flown to Afghanistan, escorted by masked US soldiers who were visibly shocked by his condition and took photos of his wounds.

During five months in a darkened cell in Kabul, he says he was kept chained, subjected to loud music, and questioned by Americans. Only after he was moved to Bagram air base was he shown to the Red Cross. Four months later he was flown to Guantanamo.

Mr Stafford Smith was first allowed to see him two months ago. He said there were marks of his injuries, and he is pressing the US to release the photos taken in Morocco and Afghanistan.

Asked about the allegations, the Foreign Office said the UK “unreservedly condemns the use of torture”. After consulting with the Home Office, MI5, and MI6, a spokesman said: “The British government, including the security and intelligence services, never uses torture for any purpose. Nor would HMG instigate or condone the use of torture by third parties.

“Specific instructions are issued to all personnel of the UK security and intelligence services who are deployed to interview detainees, which include guidance on what to do if they considered that treatment in any way inappropriate.”

The FBI, the US justice department, the Moroccan interior ministry and the Moroccan embassy in London did not return calls. The CIA declined to comment.

Further extracts from the diary:

They cut off my clothes with some kind of doctor’s scalpel. I was naked. I tried to put on a brave face. But maybe I was going to be raped. Maybe they’d electrocute me. Maybe castrate me.

They took the scalpel to my right chest. It was only a small cut. Maybe an inch. At first I just screamed … I was just shocked, I wasn’t expecting … Then they cut my left chest. This time I didn’t want to scream because I knew it was coming.

One of them took my penis in his hand and began to make cuts. He did it once, and they stood still for maybe a minute, watching my reaction. I was in agony. They must have done this 20 to 30 times, in maybe two hours. There was blood all over. “I told you I was going to teach you who’s the man,” [one] eventually said.

They cut all over my private parts. One of them said it would be better just to cut it off, as I would only breed terrorists. I asked for a doctor.

Doctor No 1 carried a briefcase. “You’re all right, aren’t you? But I’m going to say a prayer for you.” Doctor No 2 gave me an Alka-Seltzer for the pain. I told him about my penis. “I need to see it. How did this happen?” I told him. He looked like it was just another patient. “Put this cream on it two times a day. Morning and night.” He gave me some kind of antibiotic.

I was in Morocco for 18 months. Once they began this, they would do it to me about once a month. One time I asked a guard: “What’s the point of this? I’ve got nothing I can say to them. I’ve told them everything I possibly could.”

“As far as I know, it’s just to degrade you. So when you leave here, you’ll have these scars and you’ll never forget. So you’ll always fear doing anything but what the US wants.”

Later, when a US airplane picked me up the following January, a female MP took pictures. She was one of the few Americans who ever showed me any sympathy. When she saw the injuries I had she gasped. They treated me and took more photos when I was in Kabul. Someone told me this was “to show Washington it’s healing”.

But in Morocco, there were even worse things. Too horrible to remember, let alone talk about. About once a week or even once every two weeks I would be taken for interrogation, where they would tell me what to say. They said if you say this story as we read it, you will just go to court as a witness and all this torture will stop. I eventually repeated what was read out to me.

When I got to Morocco they said some big people in al-Qaida were talking about me. They talked about Jose Padilla and they said I was going to testify against him and big people. They named Khalid Sheikh Mohamed, Abu Zubaidah and Ibn Sheikh al-Libi [all senior al-Qaida leaders who are now in US custody]. It was hard to pin down the exact story because what they wanted changed from Morocco to when later I was in the Dark Prison [a detention centre in Kabul with windowless cells and American staff], to Bagram and again in Guantanamo Bay.

They told me that I must plead guilty. I’d have to say I was an al-Qaida operations man, an ideas man. I kept insisting that I had only been in Afghanistan a short while. “We don’t care,” was all they’d say.

I was also questioned about my links with Britain. The interrogator told me: “We have photos of people given to us by MI5. Do you know these?” I realised that the British were sending questions to the Moroccans. I was at first surprised that the Brits were siding with the Americans.

On August 6, I thought I was going to be transferred out of there [the prison]. They came in and cuffed my hands behind my back.

But then three men came in with black masks. It seemed to go on for hours. I was in so much pain I’d fall to my knees. They’d pull me back up and hit me again. They’d kick me in my thighs as I got up. I vomited within the first few punches. I really didn’t speak at all though. I didn’t have the energy or will to say anything. I just wanted for it to end. After that, there was to be no more first-class treatment. No bathroom. No food for a while.

During September-October 2002, I was taken in a car to another place. The room was bigger, it had its own toilet, and a window which was opaque.

They gave me a toothbrush and Colgate toothpaste. I was allowed to recover from the scalpel for about two weeks, and the guards said nothing about it.

Then they cuffed me and put earphones on my head. They played hip-hop and rock music, very loud. I remember they played Meat Loaf and Aerosmith over and over. A couple of days later they did the same thing. Same music.

For 18 months, there was not one night when I could sleep well. Sometimes I would go 48 hours without sleep. At night, they would bang the metal doors, bang the flap on the door, or just come right in.

They continued with two or three interrogations a month. They weren’t really interrogations, more like training me what to say. The interrogator told me what was going on. “We’re going to change your brain,” he said.

I suffered the razor treatment about once a month for the remaining time I was in Morocco, even after I’d agreed to confess to whatever they wanted to hear. It became like a routine. They’d come in, tie me up, spend maybe an hour doing it. They never spoke to me. Then they’d tip some kind of liquid on me – the burning was like grasping a hot coal. The cutting, that was one kind of pain. The burning, that was another.

In all the 18 months I was there, I never went outside. I never saw the sun, not even once. I never saw any human being except the guards and my tormentors, unless you count the pictures they showed me.

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Publish and be damned? – Secrets and spies

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The Guardian 29th July

Gary Berntsen, a retired CIA officer, is having problems publishing his book about the Afghanistan war because his former employees are withholding their approval. Mr Bernsten reveals how US commanders knew Osama bin Laden was hiding in the remote Tora Bora mountains, apparently contradicting the White House’s version of how the al-Qaida chief was able, fatefully, to escape.

Mr Berntsen is unlucky. Several other one-time CIA men have written their memoirs recently: one is entitled Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror. But in Britain, the only spy stories we have heard are from renegades such as Richard Tomlinson of MI6, and Peter Wright of Spycatcher fame, or from the ex-MI5 chief, Stella Rimington, whose dreary and heavily vetted memoirs spilled very few clandestine beans.

But sensitivities abound outside the secret world too, as Sir Jeremy Greenstock, our man at the UN in the run-up to the Iraq war, has found to his cost. Sir Jeremy has called the war “politically illegitimate” and his book is being blocked.

Now Craig Murray, the former envoy to Uzbekistan, is facing difficulties printing his indiscreet but well-known objections to the use of intelligence obtained under torture. Surprisingly, there have been no problems for Sir Christopher Meyer, ambassador to the US after 9/11, whose DC Confidential records the undiplomatic order from Downing Street to “get up the White House’s arse and stay there”. But Alastair Campbell, that quintessential No 10 insider, is reportedly facing objections to his book.

Every government is entitled to expect a degree of confidentiality from its employees, but the public interest and human nature require flexibility. Any attempt to censor or ban books must show that the intention is not to prevent embarrassment because the secret and civil servants were right and the politicians wrong: that’s what Tony Blair and team should remember when they read on MI5’s website (with handy Arabic and Urdu translation), that our spooks now see the war in Iraq as “a dominant issue” motivating terrorists in this country.

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“The policy of constructive engagement was myopic, morally corrupting, visibly hypocritical and unsustainable” – Craig Murray

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Further thoughts on the US expulsion from Uzbekistan

The US will be keen to emphasise recent disagreement over Andizhan/refugees, to try to retain some dignity. But the causes in fact are much deeper, and relate to the failure of a policy of constructive engagement with a regime that is more recalcitrant even than Lukashenko, and was never going to reform.

The US tried for too long to paper over the cracks and argue in international fora that Karimov was reforming and just needed time. I believe that, for a while, wishful thinking led the US actually to believe this.

The result was a position, particularly on defence and intelligence co-operation, that became untenable and appeared to expose a massive hypocrisy at the centre of the Bush doctrine of spreading democracy and freedom.

It is I think important to realise that for Karimov it was the threat of economic freedom, not just political freedom, which turned him away from the US. Uzbekistan is much closer to a North Korean insular model than the South East Asian model that the US seemed to mistake it for.

The policy of constructive engagement (or “critical engagement” to use Jack Straw’s phrase) was myopic, morally corrupting, visibly hypocritical and unsustainable. Let us hope it is now buried.

Craig Murray

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Uzbekistan told US to close down airbase ‘after gas deal with Russia’ and get out

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By Andrew Osborn writing in the Independent

The United States has been given six months to shut its airbase in the central Asian state of Uzbekistan in an ultimatum that is a snub to Washington and a boost for Russia which has been deeply uneasy about the presence of the US military in an area it considers its back yard.

Washington was served notice at the weekend at its embassy in Tashkent, the Uzbek capital, and unless it can persuade the autocratic regime of Islam Karimov to change its mind it will have to close the base known as Karshi-Khanabad or “K2”, within 180 days and withdraw the thousands of military personnel. K2 was established after the 9/11 attacks in the US and is used to fly humanitarian and military missions into nearby Afghanistan.

America has paid $15m (‘8.5m) in rent since 2001 when it opened and it was keen to extend its lease. But Russia wants the US military out of the former Soviet central Asia.

And America has been under enormous pressure from human rights groups to condemn the Karimov regime for a massacre of opposition figures and ordinary civilians in May. The US State Department has irked Tashkent by calling for an international inquiry (Moscow says no such inquiry is necessary). But Britain’s former ambassador to Tashkent, Craig Murray, said the move was driven by a desire to keep control of the Uzbek economy in local and Russian hands.

“This is about the Karimov regime’s decision to turn to Gazprom and the Russians, not the US, to develop Uzbekistan’s oil and gas,” he said. “This deal was brokered between the President’s daughter, Gulnara Karimova, and Alisher Usmanov, the Uzbek-born Russian who bought 27 per cent of Corus [British Steel]).”

“They were concerned that Western companies could build centres of wealth not under their direct control. They have decided to turn to Russian and Chinese state companies for investment.”

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Uzbekistan kicks US out of military base

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The Pentagon has been given six months to quit as Washington’s relations with hardline dictator sour in wake of civilian massacre

By Nick Paton Walsh writing in The Guardian

Uzbekistan has given the US six months to close its military base there, in its first move to sever relations with its former sponsor.

The air base near the southern town of Khanabad, known as K2, was opened weeks after the September 11 attacks to provide vital logistical support for Operation Enduring Freedom in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Analysts have said that Uzbekistan agreed to the base, the first Pentagon presence in what is a former Soviet stronghold of central Asia, because of a large US aid package and Washington’s silence about the country’s appalling human rights record.

A US defence department spokesman said at the weekend: “We got a note at the US embassy in Tashkent on Friday; the gist of it was that we have 180 days to cease operations at the K2 airfield.”

He added that the defence and state departments were evaluating “the exact nature” of the request. “K2 has been an important asset for the war in Afghanistan,” he said. “We will have to evaluate what to do next.”

The US presence in Uzbekistan has been under intense moral scrutiny after the massacre by Uzbek troops of hundreds of civilians in the southern city of Andijan in May.

The White House was at first muted in its criticism of the massacre, but the state department has grown increasingly vocal in condemning the attack and calling for an independent investigation.

The Pentagon has sought to renew the leasing agreement for the base, for which it has paid $15m to the regime of President Islam Karimov since 2001.

Critics have accused the US of propping up one of the world’s most brutal regimes in exchange for the base’s short-term benefits. The Uzbek authorities are accused of killing and jailing ordinary Muslims under the guise of fighting religious extremism and terrorism, and the state department says torture is used by police in Uzbekistan as a “routine investigation technique”.

A former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, who was sacked after criticising western support for the Uzbek regime, said: “The US has managed to hand the dictator Karimov the propaganda coup of kicking out the world’s greatest power. Western policy towards Uzbekistan has been unsustainable for a long time.”

He said the Uzbek decision to curtail relations with Washington was “due to a change-around in economic policy. There has been no significant investment from the west for a while; it’s all Russian and Chinese state-owned companies.”

“Karimov took the decision years ago not to have democracy and capitalism, it just took the US a lot longer to work that out.

“If they had any dignity they would have jumped before they were pushed.”

He said the move would put pressure on other central Asian states to turn away from the west, towards China and Russia, because of their reliance on Uzbekistan’s resources.

Uzbekistan’s demand for the Americans to leave the base prompted a senior state department official to cancel a planned visit to the capital, Tashkent, according to the New York Times.

R Nicholas Burns, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, was due to hold negotiations about the future of the base with the Karimov regime, and was to echo demands for an international investigation into the Andijan massacre.

The Uzbek government continues to maintain that 187 people in Andijan, mostly criminals, were killed when troops suppressed a prison breakout. Human rights groups say unarmed protesters were fired on, the injured were killed, and that up to 800 people may have died.

The New York Times also quoted a senior state department official as saying that the Uzbek demand was connected to US support for neighbouring Kyrgyzstan’s refusal to send home those who had fled Uzbekistan after the Andijan massacre.

The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, has phoned the Kyrgyz government about 29 of those who fled, now being held in the southern city of Osh, and asked that they be ferried out by the UN to a neutral third country.

Her intervention sparked the Uzbek demand for the base to be closed, the official said.

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