Monthly archives: April 2007

Sunday Morning Blues

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I am unreasonably depressed that Murder in Samarkand has not even made the longlist of 20 for the BBC Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction.

Surprisingly, Stephen Grey’s Ghost Plane isn’t there either. It is a tremendous and meticulously researched investigation that cuts right into the CIA’s extraordinary rendition programme. It is scrupulously fair, and gives the CIA’s reasons and version of events. It never indulges in speculation or goes beyond what can be proved. But it carefully builds up a picture that is shocking and damning – a truly great bit of investigative journalism, that forced George Bush to admit the system of secret CIA prisons abroad. It is indefensible that it is not on the BBC list.

One thing you can say about the list is that it is safe. The only book about the “War on Terror” is safely pro-Iraq war. Occupational Hazards by Rory Stewart takes the neo-con line that invading Iraq was the right thing to do, but we did not kill enough people, sorry, use enough troops with robust enough terms of engagement and provide “greater security”. Stewart seems to see himself as a right wing mystic in the mould of Francis Younghusband.

There is a book about living under a regime with a terrible human rights record. Naturally that turns out to be Iran.

I haven’t read all twenty books, but I warmly recommend The Last Mughal by William Dalrymple. It resonates for me because I saw so much of the remnants of Timurid civilisation at the Uzbek end. The book is not a biography of Zafar but a local study of the Mutiny in Delhi in 1857, and an elegy for the elegance of a lost civilisation and for the death of religious tolerance in India.

The resonances are astonishing. The ruthlessness of the evangelical christians, massacring for Christ, and the role of Mujahedin and Jihadis, cannot fail to make you think deeply.

I am a great fan of Dalrymple, but the claims made in reviews that the book is revolutionary historiography are overblown. Certainly it is very well researched, and Dalrymple has unearthed Indian sources which are insufficiently used. But close reading of the footnotes shows that these were not quite as virgin sources as Dalrymple might have us believe. It must also be said that Dalrymple himself does not give us as much of this new material as he might. For example, having discovered vast quantities of petitions to the Emperor from ordinary people, he quotes very little from them.

I enjoyed greatly his little dig at the Subaltern Studies school and their tendency to cloak a lack of genuine research by etymological obfuscation and a continual use of abstract terminology. As Dalrymple demonstrates, the subaltern voice can be recovered, but it involves moving your fat arse off the seat of your luxurious office provided by your well-paid American university post, and searching through dusty archives in India. One piece of genuine history is worth a thousand pieces of theorising introspection from the field of post-colonial studies. It is a great irony that characters like Spivak and Bhabha enshrine the imputed qualities of self-serving over-clever deviousness that led the colonisers to hold the “Educated Baboo” in contempt.

Mourning the passing of cultures is what Dalrymple does so well. From the Holy Mountain is a great example. But here he is also mourning the passing of the dynasty of Timur. I wonder what there is about the passing of royal dynasties that touches such an irrational chord? The Stuarts are surrounded by a mystic glow. Richard III and the Plantagenets have their active advocates, and it is this aura that permeates CJ Sansom’s current bestseller, Sovereign. The literature around the only English king of all England, Harold, is immense. In France the yearning for the Merovingians led to the whole nonsense of the Holy Blood and the Holy Grail and the Da Vinci Code.

The common theme, perhaps best exemplified in the Arthur mythology, is that everything would somehow have been better had a true dynasty survived. Perhaps this is just “Good Old Days” nostalgia, but its permeation through literature over the centuries is massive. It has no relationship to truth. The Stuarts lost their crown because they were both arrogant and stupid. Richard III did depose his nephews.

The result of the Indian Mutiny was by no means a foregone conclusion. Indeed, the British hold was very precarious. One new point I learnt from Dalrymple’s book is that, on at least three occasions, the simple lack of physical courage by Zafar or his sons turned the tide at crucial moments.

Having seen all the nauseating stuff about chinless drunk groper Prince William and parasitic Kate Middleton – whose job is a “fashion accessory purchaser for designers” – the sooner we get rid of the monarchy the better. That will give authors something to really get nostalgic about.

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Norman Baker on David Kelly

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Below is an article from The Argus on Norman Baker MPs campaign over the death of David Kelly.

I was convinced that Kelly was murdered from the moment I heard of his death. Since then we learn that so much that was put out was simply untrue, particularly about having ingested a lot of painkillers. It is very difficult indeed to die of slashed wrists in the open air and, as Baker notes, the paramedics at the scene were adamant there was not enough blood. The points Baker makes are all good. But for me, it has always been highly improbable that a chemical weapons specialist could not have killed himself with less pain, had he wanted to.

There remains no evidence at all that Kelly did want to die.

The Argus – 2007-04-13

The greatest British conspiracy theory of the modern age was unveiled this week. Lewes MP Norman Baker set out in detail for the first time why he believes the secret service murdered the Government scientist Dr David Kelly.

MILES GODFREY and KATYA MIRA report on a one-man crusade for the truth which has catapulted an unassuming Parliamentarian into the international spotlight.

It was the start of 2006 and the time was right to bring down the British Government. In March last year Norman Baker, serial thorn in the side of the establishment and by his own admission “not the Prime Minister’s favourite person”, resigned his role as a frontbench MP for the Liberal Democrats.

It was a typically low-key announcement, timed to coincide with the anointment of the party’s new leader Sir Menzies Campbell.

The time had come, the MP said, for a new man to take over. But to those who knew Norman Baker, the decision to resign was made for another reason.

It would allow him more time to do what he does best: investigate, challenge, push, probe – specifically into the death of weapons expert Dr David Kelly. He was about to embark on an amazing investigation into the murky world of secret service agents, national security and the death of the man who very nearly halted the start of the war in Iraq.

If he could prove conclusively that members of the Government had conspired to get rid of Dr Kelly, it would have been – and still could be – the biggest single scandal this country has ever known.

The official report into the death of Dr David Kelly concluded he committed suicide after a row between the BBC and the Government over the “sexed up” dossier on Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction thrust the normally private scientist into the glare of the limelight.

But Mr Baker didn’t believe a word of it. He said at the time: “The public out there can smell a rat and they don’t think it’s finished business either.”

The scientist’s death was, the MP said, just too convenient, too riddled with inconsistencies and so unlike a man like Dr Kelly.

His year-long investigation culminated on Wednesday night at a meeting at which he proclaimed Dr Kelly had been murdered and set out his evidence. Mr Baker told a packed community hall in Lewes: “I am convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that this could not be suicide. The medical evidence does not support it and David Kelly’s state of mind and personality suggests otherwise. It was not an accident so I am left with the conclusion that it is murder.”

He told of how the world’s leading WMD expert had spent the morning before his death sending “upbeat emails” and even booking himself a flight to Iraq from his rural home in Southmoor, near Oxford.

Mr Baker questioned the cause of death – a haemorrhage caused by cuts to the ulnar artery in the wrist.

He said such wounds were “matchstick thick” and hidden, difficult to get to, as well as rarely leading to death.

The knife said to have been used was a gardening pruner Dr Kelly had kept since childhood – an unlikely and blunt choice.

Paramedics have said he had lost little blood and was “incredibly unlikely” to have died from the wound they saw.

Police said 29 tablets of the painkiller Coproxamol were missing from his home but all that was found in Dr Kelly’s stomach was the equivalent of one fifth of a tablet.

The MP told The Argus: “It has taken more than a year to investigate and it has been an incredible and fascinating journey which has taken a large number of twists and turns.

“I have met experts on weapons of mass destruction in Brussels and uncovered more evidence about the lies the Government told about weapons of mass destruction before the war.”

Along the way Mr Baker has had personal run-ins with high-profile Government figures, not least Tony Blair.

He said: “I wouldn’t say it has been easy, certainly the Foreign Office has done a lot to put obstacles in my way and other people have too. It has been hard work but at the same time it has been extremely worthwhile.”

He has also been hugely encouraged by the public, who he claims can see Dr Kelly’s death for what he says it was. Mr Baker said: “There is a world in Westminster and the rest of the world and I think most people in the public world can see that Dr Kelly was murdered.

“He was the world’s foremost expert on weapons of mass destruction who could single-handedly destroy the Government’s case for war so it was no wonder he was killed. “It may have also been intended as a message to other people out there who speak to the press when the Government doesn’t want you to. “I was appalled at his death and at the Hutton Inquiry into it. It was a procedural disaster from start to finish and I felt compelled to look into it.”

Mr Baker has signed a book deal to explain in greater detail his findings on Dr Kelly’s death and he expects to publish it later this year.

But the MP insists he will continue to investigate.

He has nagging doubts about the official line taken over the recent Navy hostages taken in Iran and over the death of Robin Cook, the MP who resigned in protest at the Iraq war.

He said: “Robin Cook was on Ministry of Defence land, I believe, when he died and certainly I have doubts over what happened.”

There are those, of course, who doubt Norman Baker’s theories.

But for every person out there who does there are an equal number for whom the MP has become a beacon of truth in an increasingly murky world.

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The Olympia Refugees and the Bastards at Tesco Insurance

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I seem to be one of those people fated to have strange things happen to them, more often than they generally happen to people.

I haven’t been blogging because at 11 pm on Wednesday there was a tremendous hammering at the door of our flat. When I opened it a fireman burst in, wearing full breathing gear, and yelled “Get out! Get out, now!” So we did.

Nadira was particularly disappointed as she had hoped at first it was a stripogram.

An underground gas main was ruptured, and our flats had been slowly filling with gas which had reached explosive levels. Our neighbour Sonia had been in her hall when the gas there exploded and brought the hall crashing down around her. Sonia is an improbably beautiful young Spanish film director, and she emerged from a cloud of plaster dust not only unscathed, but without a speck of dust having settled on her. She is one of those kind of people.

The whole of Sinclair Gardens was evacuated and the residents herded up the street, some in their pyjamas, some clutching pets. I had that afternoon received a large bundle of documents couriered from a third country for safekeeping from an Uzbek claiming asylum. I picked this up as I left. As the hours were to pass, I was to have some difficulty persuading my family that it was a good thing that their father’s first thought was for a poor refugee, rather than something more practical like picking up my wallet and credit cards.

We immediately took refuge in the foyer of the K West hotel. This is a very unlikely but very popular celebrity haunt. You are more likely to run into Noel Gallagher or Girls Aloud there than at Nobu Berkeley St. Which is why, despite living just round the corner, I never go in.

Sinclair Gardens is a street best described as Bohemian. The residents are strongly multi-cultural with distinct artistic and eccentric tendencies. Even so, and in their nightwear, they looked much better dressed than the average denizen of the K-West hotel. I should say that the staff were perfectly charming and helpful, as exploited East Europeans generally are, but the management were most upset at this irruption of the real world into their celebrity spot and started to pressurise the police to kick us out. As we had pretty well all by this stage bought drinks at the bar, this gave the police (of whom there were now scores) something of a headache.

Hammersmith and Fulham Council’s emergency plan was swung into action and three double decker buses arrived, on which we were ordered to sit and register. But nobody wanted to. We had a bar, and the great fun of annoying the hotel management. Besides which, I rather suspect that many of the inhabitants of the street are not conscientious Council Tax payers, and were disinclined to register.

About 2am it was announced we were definitely not going to be allowed back in to our homes, and we were being chucked out of the hotel. Of the inhabitants of about 200 evacuated flats, some 80 people went on the buses to Hammersmith Town Hall, where about sixty single inflatable mattresses were provided between them. We used up the money I chanced to have in my pocket on a taxi to my brother’s flat in Leyton, and slept on the floor.

After an uncomfortable night, and re-dressing in dirty clothes, we started to get a bit grumpy. We phoned the Council who said they could not predict if the evacuation would last several hours or several days.

I had a few months ago taken out home contents insurance from Tesco (after the trauma of splitting up with my wife, I had given her the house and not got round to organising that sort of thing for my little flat). I seemed to recall something on alternative accommodation, so I looked up the policy on the internet. Indeed there it was – up to 20% of the value of Contents cover for alternative accommodation.

So I phoned to make a claim. After being put on hold for an age, I was told I was not covered because this event was not one of the insured risks, which were fire, theft, vandalism, explosion…

Hang on, I interrupted. This was an explosion. It is insured. Back on hold, more silly music. Then I was told that I was not insured because the explosion had not taken place in my own flat. I was getting angry by now and pointed out that I had been forced by the police and fire services to leave my home because of an explosion. Nowhere in the policy did it specify the explosion had to be in your own home. I was put on hold again.

This time I was put through to the Technical department. A patronising young man told me that this was a contents policy, and therefore the alternative accommodation provision only came in to force if it was needed because of damage to the contents of my home.

As it happens, the first “proper” job I ever had was as an underwriting clerk at Guardian Royal Exchange insurance in Edinburgh. I pointed out to him that very plainly the policy was not written that way. Damage to contents and alternative accommodation were separate and equal sections. He replied that they were not accepting the claim, and I could write and complain if I wished. He refused to put me through to anybody senior to him.

I am furious about this. I have no doubt that Tesco were simply refusing a claim without good cause. In the event, we got back into our home late that evening, many hours after the rest of the street, as ours and the house next door were the worst affected. So I did not incur further accommodation costs. But this offhand system of refusing claims is a disgrace. I strongly suggest, if you are insured with Tesco, you change now before you have to make a claim.

Which brings another thought. The old national grid for gas distribution is now privatised. Transco is a profit making company with shareholders, dividends, and fat executive bonuses. In the old days when it was a service provided to the public by the government, I would take this kind of incident as just one of those things. But I can see no reason why, having disrupted my life, caused great discomfort to my family and I, and caused me to lose a day’s work, Transco should not pay compensation. I shall pursue this, but strongly suspect that we will find that in privatisation the government granted them protection from liability for the consequences of their cash-reaping activities.

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Iraq: An ever-worsening crisis

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Yesterday, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) published a report on the dire and deteriorating humanitarian situation in Iraq.

Geneva (ICRC) ‘ In a report issued today in Geneva, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) expresses alarm about the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Iraq and calls for urgent action to better protect civilians against the continuing violence.

The report entitled Civilians without protection ‘ The ever-worsening crisis in Iraq deplores the daily acts of violence such as shootings, bombings, abductions, murders and military operations that directly target Iraqi civilians in clear violation of international humanitarian law and other applicable legal standards. While it argues that the current crisis directly or indirectly affects all Iraqis, the report focuses on the problems of vulnerable groups such as the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis forced to flee their homes and the families that host them.

The report documents the alarming state of Iraqi health-care facilities suffering critical shortages of staff and supplies. Many doctors, nurses and patients no longer dare to go to hospitals and clinics because they are targeted or threatened. The report also underlines that much of Iraq’s vital water, sewage and electricity infrastructure is in a critical condition owing to lack of maintenance and because security constraints have impeded repair work.

“The suffering that Iraqi men, women and children are enduring today is unbearable and unacceptable. Their lives and dignity are continuously under threat,” said the ICRC’s director of operations, Pierre Kr’henb’hl. “The ICRC calls on all those who can influence the situation on the ground to act now to ensure that the lives of ordinary people are spared and protected. This is an obligation under international humanitarian law for both States and non-State actors.”

Their report can be downloaded from here

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New Labour Sex Smears a Dissident (Again)

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Stalin had a word for it: Kompromat. it is now being used against Angus MacNeil, the Scottish Nationalist MP who launched the “Cash for Honours” scandal that may well put some of Blair’s top aides in jail, probably for their destruction of evidence.

This account from the “This is London” website makes the parallel with the smear campaign against me. I would add that, after a four month investigation loaded against me in every possible way, I was found not guilty of all the allegations against me.

For American readers, the age of consent in the UK is 16, so MacNeil is not accused of anything illegal. MacNeil has come clean and said he was “Wrong and stupid” to romp with the girls. That is a question of personal morality. Having seen their photos, I think he is a lucky man with excellent taste.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23392190-details/Is%20’sleazebuster’%20MP%20who%20romped%20with%20two%20teen%20girls%20the%20victim%20of%20a%20’smear%20campaign’/article.do

The MP who triggered the police investigation into cash-for-peerages is the suspected victim of a sinister smear campaign, it has been claimed.

Scottish Nationalist MP Angus Macneil was forced to apologise to his wife and family after admitting to a ‘drunken romp’ with two teenage girls.

But in a dramatic twist, SNP party leader Alex Salmond suggested the MP had been spied on by MI5 as a result of the honours inquiry.

Mr Salmond said Mr Macneil had made the ‘most extraordinary powerful enemies’ after the inquiry probed the highest levels of Downing Street.

His complaint to the Metropolitan Police has triggered a 13-month probe which has seen Tony Blair interviewed twice by detectives and fundraiser Lord Levy and top No10 aide Ruth Turner arrested.

Two police forces confirmed they had investigated complaints of ‘intense intrusion’ against Mr Macneil but said no crimes had been detected.

The Metropolitan Police revealed it had investigated an allegation of a break-in to Mr Macneil’s Commons office after claims it had been ‘swept’ in a covert spying operation, but found no evidence.

Yet the alleged incidents bear striking similiarities to the treatment of former ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, who claimed he was the victim of dirty tricks by MI6 after speaking out against US foreign policy in the former Soviet state.

After he accused Britain of being complicit in the torture of terrorist suspects by American forces, stories emerged of Mr Murray’s affair with a 22-year-old dancer, which the diplomat admitted, and accusations that he offered visas in return for sex, which he denied.

A Sunday newspaper revealed that Mr Macneil ‘kissed and fondled’ two teenage girls in a hotel room in July 2005.

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US Involvement in Secret Interrogations in Africa

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From The Guardian

Ethiopia Secret Prisons Under Scrutiny

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) – Ethiopia was under pressure Thursday to release details on detainees from 19 countries held at secret prisons in the country where U.S. agents have carried out interrogations in the hunt for al-Qaida in the Horn of Africa.

Canada, Eritrea and Sweden were lobbying for information about their citizens. Human rights groups say hundreds of prisoners, including women and children, have been transferred secretly and illegally to the prisons in Ethiopia. An investigation by The Associated Press found that CIA and FBI agents have been interrogating the detainees.

Officials from Ethiopia were not immediately available for comment, but in the past have refused to acknowledge the existence of the prisons.

Ethiopia has a long history of human rights abuses. In recent years, it has also been a key U.S. ally in the fight against al-Qaida, which has been trying to sink roots among Muslims in the Horn of Africa.

The full article can be read here

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Want to Earn Ten Years’ Salary? Get Captured.

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The government is introducing a new incentive scheme for the military. If you get captured you can immediately make a quarter of a miilion pounds, maybe much more.

There is so much that can be said about this turning of the Iran captivity into an extension of the Big Brother house. The most important thing to say is that it stinks. It is, of course, a merging of the propaganda of those who want war on Iran, with the moronic celebrity culture that made a star of Jade Goody.

It is worth noting that the MOD have announced that the ex-captives will be “Advised” by MOD press officers in writing their stories, which will be subject to approval by their commanding officer, Both the MOD, the ex-captives and the tabloids will have an interest in exaggerating the horror of their captivity. It is worth remembering now that the senior officer with the party said explicitly at their press conference that they were not subject to mock execution. Despite the newspapers giving the impression they were blindfold all the time, one of them said that they had blindfolds put on when they were led to the toilet. I am sure it was all a horrible experience. Perhaps it is the confidence of having myself on several occasions had cocked weapons pointed at my head while I was in government service, including by drugged-up Sierra Leonean rebels, that lets me point out that it wasn’t that terrible.

In particular, it wasn’t that terrible compared to the horrible deaths of eight British servicemen since these others were captured. Nobody is offering hundreds of thousands of pounds for the story of the families of the dead.

Blair’s appalling Middle East policy has led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands. This government-led trivialisation of that stark fact into spin and tabloid entertainment is the apotheosis of New Labour.

I resigned from the Diplomatic Service and published Murder in Samarkand to blow the whistle on government complicity in torture and the use of the resulting false intelligence and false flag bombings to ramp up the “War on Terror”. I was a British Ambassador and writing from direct personal experience, as an eye witness.

The government did everything possible to stop me publishing. They stalled for ten months haggling over the text, then said it was banned. I decided to call their bluff and publish anyway. The result was a stream of threatening letters from Treasury solicitors and a series of publishers pulling out. My royalty payments do not yet exceed what I owe the eventual publisher for covering the legal bills. I am not sure they ever will. In the end, we had to publish the most sensitive material to the web, with urls given in the footnotes of the book where material has been cut out.

Thus the government tries to bury the truth. As a rule of thumb, if the government wants you to know it, it probably isn’t true.

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Nick Cohen and the Effects of Alcohol

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The Observer publish a column by me in their “My week” series.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/7days/story/0,,2052388,00.html

It is interesting to compare what they published with what I submitted. Shortened for length, obviously, but the editing makes it look like my comments on alcohol were a jibe at Muslims, when in fact they were a jibe at Nick Cohen. It is perhaps understandable that the Observer have taken out criticism of their long-standing columnist and new neo-con pin-up. Slightly more worrying that they didn’t think my attack on the appointment of an appalling New Labour hack as chairman of the BBC was worth printing:

Anyway, here is what I originally wrote:

Nadira is studying a postgraduate acting course at Drama Studio London, an acting school of very high reputation. They have just broken up for Easter, and I go along to their end of term karaoke party. I feel inspirited by these young people. I would like to sing but Nadira only took me along after I promised I wouldn’t. Interestingly they all choose songs from my generation, not theirs. I learn that a song I have heard on a hundred radios, but didn’t know the title, is called ‘La Isla Bonita’ or sometimes, on this karaoke machine, ‘La Isla Bontia’. Does the Guardian do karaoke machines? Anyway one line in this song had always startled me. ‘I fell in love with some dago’ had always seemed a strange thing to sing, even in less politically correct times. I now see on the machine it was San Pedro she fell in love with: presumably a place not a holy old fisherman.

I also discovered that the Abba line from Super Trouper is not the improbable ‘Since I called you last night from Tesco’ but rather ‘Glasgow’.

Which is, of course, even less romantic.

I have spent a great deal of the week dashing between television and radio studios to give interviews about the Iran captives. I used to be head of the Maritime Section of the Foreign Office. In the first Gulf War I lived, quite literally, in an underground bunker working in the Embargo Surveillance Centre. I worked with Naval staff and was very heavily involved in the real time direction of Gulf interdiction operations. So I really know about this stuff.

There were farcical elements to the whole incident. Neither the British, Iraqis nor Iranians could say whose waters they were in, as the boundaries have never been agreed outside the Shatt-al-Arab. The military failure was due to the fact we have nothing in the area between a warship and a rubber dinghy; it reminded me of the Cod War with Iceland all over again (we lost that one too). Still less can I understand why we have warships attempting to collect Iraqi vehicle excise duty. These patrols, maintained at enormous expense to the British taxpayer, have made precisely zero seizures of significant quantities of explosives or guns. Up the Gulf by ship is not how the insurgents are supplied. The looting of thousands of tonnes of munitions from the disbanded Iraqi army was enough to keep them going for many years.

An extraordinary thing is the disconnect between the BBC presentation and what ordinary people can see. I think I can honestly claim that, unless you happened to catch me being interviewed, nothing else in hundreds of hours of BBC TV coverage would give a stranger the slightest clue that the majority of British people do not think our troops and Navy should be there in the first place. I am genuinely sorry for the ideal of these young people, but nobody can pretend it was a patch on extraordinary rendition to an Uzbek dungeon, on Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib or the regular beating of Iraqi prisoners by British troops, of which the hideous murder of Baha Musa is just one very bad example. There was infinitely more focus on the rejoicing families of our returned captives than there was thought for the grieving families of the four men and women just killed. Having sent those young people to their useless deaths, Blair’s only thought was to use them to bang the drum further for war against Iran,

Ask yourself – when is the last time you saw an anti-war voice, as opposed to a pro-war “military” or “security” expert, asked by the BBC to comment on a Middle East development? Yet the majority of people in this country are against the war. If they want an ex-diplomat, they go for pro war cheerleaders Pauline Neville Jones or Christopher Meyer, even though eight out of ten ex British Ambassadors are against the war.

Amazingly, Sky News is much more open to dissent, and gives much fairer representation to anti-war voices, than the BBC. I see that a New Labour apparatchik and mate of Gordon Brown has just been appointed to chair that august body. There would be no danger now of any unfortunate outbreak of the truth on the BBC, as when Andrew Gilligan told the nation there were no Iraqi WMD.

Lunch with Michael Winterbottom and Andrew Eaton to discuss the latest developments in producing the film of Murder in Samarkand, the book of my time in Uzbekistan. Paramount are funding the project and it is good to discuss filming locations and casting with a pretty open budget. There has been a change of writer since we last met, and Michael himself has drawn up the ‘treatment.’ We agree that the drama has to be griping, the sex erotic and the humour hilarious. Michael has a passion for authenticity which could cause problems. He is very insistent, for example, that Uzbeks should play Uzbeks and Russians play Russians. I point out that this is no problem provided we can find actors with no objection to be executed or murdered by their governments once the film is shown.

Steve Coogan is to play me. He is, of course, not nearly good looking enough. But then, who is?

This week I read ‘An Honourable Deception’ by Clare Short, and ‘What’s Left’ by Nick Cohen. I confess to being a fan of Clare Short. Unfortunately her on/off resignation did huge damage to her standing, and probably to the sales of this book. That is a great pity because what it has to say about the sickness at the heart of New Labour is quite devastating.

Let me summarise Nick Cohen’s book for you. ‘If you are against eating Muslim babies, you are a supporter of Islamofascism. If you are perturbed by Guantanamo Bay, you would not have fought in the Spanish Civil War, are probably a fan of Hitler and have no right to call yourself a Liberal. Neo-Conservatism is the New Left.’

There, now you don’t have to read it. Believe me, I have done you a favour.

I have never been much attracted to Islam myself as my hobbies are drinking whisky and chasing women. Contrary to Cohen’s argument, the very many British Muslims I know, some of them very radical, have no problems with my lifestyle or any intention of imposing their religion on the rest of the UK.

I think the fight against neo-puritanism is very important. The mineral water at lunch crew are a fundamental threat to civilisation. I have always maintained stoutly that it is possible to drink a great deal without any impairment of the mental faculties. I fear Cohen’s book may be disproving that.

I am making arrangements to get to Ghana for the funeral of my friend, Hawa Yakubu. Hawa was a woman of quite extraordinary influence across West Africa. She was on the closest terms with almost every major African Head of State over thirty years. I recall late one night we were struggling with ideas in the negotiations for the Sierra Leone peace treaty, and she simply phoned President Obasanjo of Nigeria at 2am to ask him to put pressure on Charles Taylor. It says volumes about Hawa that he was delighted to be awoken by his old friend.

Hawa did huge amounts for women’s development, for African integration, for conservation, and for the poverty-stricken West African Savannah Belt. She was completely non-corrupt and leaves no personal fortune. Her influence was absolutely vital in helping Ghana become a democracy after Rawlings. She never held more than junior ministerial office because she found it too limiting. One of the most positive influences bringing hope to modern Africa, she is mourned by an extraordinary number of powerful people on several continents. It says much of our modern remoteness from African affairs that no British media have noted her passing.

Good Friday is Nadira’s birthday. Foxy, our cat, gave birth to four kittens. Last year on Nadira’s birthday Foxy gave birth to one, Chocolate, who we still have. Nadira goes all gooey-eyed on me and insists we must keep the kittens. I point out that our long-suffering landlord, Mr Dash, has already put up with two cats when our lease clearly states that we are allowed no pets.

‘But you don’t have any money to pay the rent anyway, so why would he worry about a few kittens?’ Nadira asks. I don’t see how to argue with that.

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Murder in Samarkand – Interview With Michael Winterbottom

 in The Film by | View Comments

This is an extract from an interview with Michael Winterbottom published in El Pais on 23 March. It is translated from the Spanish by me, so may not be perfect.

Winterbottom always has three or four projects in hand. This day in March is no exception. A monitor in his London office is showing rushes of A Mighty Heart, about the murder in Pakistan of the Wall Street Journal correspondent Danny Pearl. The film is based on the reconstruction of the facts published by his widow, Marianne, played by Angelina Jolie. The director is also supervising details of the imminent filming of Genova, to be shot on location in Italy with Colin Firth. And meanwhile he looks toward the future, to 2008, when he expects to complete a trilogy with the actor Steve Coogan. The English humorist performs a triple role in Tristram Shandy and is the narrator of 24 Hour Party People, the frantic exploration by Winterbottom of the musical insanity of eighties Manchester.

“We want to do a comedy about torture”, he states, without avoiding the boldness of his objective. He is working already on the script, based on Murder in Samarkand, the biography of Craig Murray, the British ambassador to Uzbekistan who lost his job and diplomatic career to denounce the connivance of Tony Blair’s government in cases of torture of terrorist subjects.

“There is a connection among these three movies, that relates to aspects of Steve. The structure, the form and the tone of the narrative are similar. Also the feverish passion for people, the love of ideas and a sense of humor that pricks pomposity”, Winterbottom explains.

As a person, Tristram Shandy has entered the English popular vocabulary to describe people of brimming imagination and absurd ideas. The book was also viewed as unfilmable. In “A Cock and Bull Story” Winterbottom resolves the problem by making a film about a film, that is to say, about a group of filmmakers who try to adapt the novel.

“The book is not based on a traditional concept of narrative. It disperses in multiple directions, with no straight line, and interspersed with passages very tangential to the central story. It is one of the aspects that most attracted me to the project. Movies, in general, are incredibly conservative as to structure and form. Here I deliberately avoid falling into a lineal structure, as I also did in 24 Hour Party People and I want to do again in Murder in Samarkand”, explains the director.

Lourdes Gomez, El Pais, 23/3/07

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Video Killed the Radio Star

 in War and Iran? by | View Comments

I had the interesting experience of sitting on set at BBC News 24 for over an hour today, intermittently talking and intermittently on camera. I had come in to discuss both the maritime boundaries issue and the question of the behind the scenes diplomatic negotiations. As Oliver Miles said today, there were at least ten bilateral discussions between Iran and British ambassadors, ministers and No 10 officials. Tony Blair might claim there were no negotiations, but they weren’t discussing the weather.

Anyway, I was on air when the hostages arrived by helicopter and were reunited with their families. Thus I found myself being asked for an hour questions such as “How do you think the families are feeling?”

I should say that the presenters were really nice, and the hectic atmosphere of a newsroom on a big live breaking story is great fun. I found myself involved in an interesting game of offering deadpan expert analysis, but interspersing it with subversive comment. I didn’t want to push that too hard or I was pretty plain I would have got yanked off. So over the course of an hour I first slipped in the observation that, as a taxpayer, I was not too keen on financing very expensive warships steaming around the Gulf allegedly to collect vehicle excise duty. Later I was able to say that, while I shared the unalloyed delight at the return of the 15, I was thinking rather more about the families of the four British servicemen who had been killed in Iraq today, and their civilian interpreter. Before they could recover from the shock of that burst through the reverential coverage, I added the 70 Iraqi civilians who on average die every day.

You should understand that over the long broadcast I mostly talked about the return of the captives and had no difficulty in being genuinely upbeat and happy about that. But the reunion of captives and families probably had the largest live news audience for many months; it did not escape the No 10 spin doctors’ attention that their “Triumph for Tony” moment was being jeopardised by a dissident having been allowed on the BBC.

Ask yourself – when is the last time you saw an anti-war voice, as opposed to a pro-war “military” or “security” expert, asked by the BBC to comment on a Middle East development? Yet the majority of people in this country are against the war. If they want an ex-diplomat, they go for pro war cheerleaders Pauline Neville Jones or Christopher Meyer, even though eight out of ten ex British Ambassadors are against the war.

Anyway the outraged phone calls from the government to the BBC started coming in. As a result, having been introduced as “Former Head of the Foreign Office Maritime Section and Former British Ambassador…” the first time, I was reintroduced as “Craig Murray, who was sacked as British Ambassador to Uzbekistan for opposing British government policy”. The poor presenters, with whom I had been getting on well for an hour, seemed embarassed.

I therefore decided the gloves were off, and introduced “the elephant in the room – that the large majority of the British people don’t believe that our servicemen should be in Iraq and in harm’s way in the first place.”

There is no doubt at all that when you make anti-war or anti-government points on the BBC the whole body language and line of questioning indicates that you are some sort of isolated extremist. Of course, our so called opposition parties fail to make any such points, and the BBC’s normal pool of experts are hand picked to be reliably right wing on these issues. The absolutely astonishing thing is that I then whizzed off to Sky News (Fox affiliate) and there, in the heart of the Murdoch Empire, the atmosphere is totally different.

I was asked open questions if anything leading me on to be overtly critical of the war, Tony Blair and John Bolton. This is not unusual. Tony Benn, George Galloway and I all get far easier access to Sky than the BBC. Sky does seem to maintain a modicum of journalistic integrity. The BBC has totally lost it since Gilligan, Dyke and Hussey were sacked for telling the truth about Iraqi WMD, and David Kelly was murdered.

Anyway, after Sky I went to buy a birthday present for Nadira. A lady outside the shop told me that she had just seen me on the TV. “I used to listen to you on Radio 4” she said, “You looked a lot better on the radio.”

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Conditions Worsen at Guantanamo bay

 in Rendition by | View Comments

From Amnesty International

In a new report published today (5 April), Amnesty International says that 80% of detainees at the US military prison at Guant’namo Bay in Cuba are being held in solitary confinement, often in harsh and inhumane conditions.

The report, published days after UK resident Bisher al-Rawi was returned from Guant’namo after over four years in detention – some of it in solitary confinement, calls for an end to the routine use of extended solitary confinement by the US authorities and for independent medical experts to be allowed to examine the prisoners.

Amnesty International has long called for the entire camp to be closed, with plans for unfair ‘military commission’ trials to be abandoned. Last month the organisation published a 103-page report condemning the military commissions as a ‘travesty of justice’.

Amnesty International UK Director Kate Allen said: ‘The entire process at Guant’namo is a travesty of justice, but we have particular concerns over the widespread use of solitary confinement in harsh conditions at the camp.

‘With many prisoners already in despair at being held in indefinite detention on a remote island prison, some are dangerously close to full-blown mental and physical breakdown after years of solitary confinement.

‘The US authorities should immediately stop pushing people to the edge with extreme isolation techniques and allow proper access for independent medical experts and human rights groups.’

There are approximately 385 men held at Guant’namo Bay and, after an apparent hardening of US operational detention policy in January, around 300 of these are now being held in three units with minimal contact with other prisoners or even prison guards. These units – known as Camp 5, Camp 6 and Camp Echo – are comparable to so-called ‘super-max’ high security units in the United States.

Unlike mainland super-max prisoners, however, Guant’namo detainees are held indefinitely as ‘enemy combatants’, face either no trial at all or an unfair one, have no family visits and no independent expert examinations.

The Red Cross, the only independent monitoring organisation allowed to inspect the detention facilities at Guant’namo, has described conditions at Camp Echo as ‘extremely harsh’. Prisoners are kept in their windowless cells for 23 or 24 hours a day, and – in the absence of any natural light whatsoever – fluorescent lighting is kept on 24 hours a day. Meanwhile, Camp 6 has been described by one detainee as a ‘dungeon above the ground’…

The full press release is available here and the report (pdf) can be downloaded here

The AI petition calling for the return of all the British residents held at Gauntanamo can be signed here

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The Last Word

 in War and Iran? / War in Iraq by | View Comments

I just heard the Iraqi Foreign Minister on BBC Radio “The World at One”.

He said “That border is disputed. It has been for many years. It has moved. That is why we had this war of maps…We have agreed with Iran that our technical levels will fix this border including in the Shatt-al-Arab.”‘

Interestingly he said that the Iraqi government had asked the US government, several weeks ago, to release the five Iranians captured by US troops. The US is “reviewing the request”.

There could be no clearer illustration that the idea that Iraq has a sovereign government is a sham. That the Iraqi government is not able to stop the US, against its will, capturing and imprisoning foreigners on the territory of Iraq, is sufficient proof that Iraq remains a state under hostile occupation.

How do those who claim that we are in Iraq under a UN mandate to assist the Iraqi government, square this with the exercise of physical force and deprival of liberty by US forces against the express will of the so-called government of the country?

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No Winners Here

 in War and Iran? by | View Comments

Any life saved is a victory, and I am delighted that the maritime incident has been resolved with nobody being killed or even injured. That is the right perspective on this.

Today four more unfortunate British serviceman died in Southern Iraq as a result of Blair’s crass Middle Eastern policy. Think of them and their families, and the seventy Iraqi civilians who on average will be killed today. Yes, rejoice at the fifteen who came home safely today, but remember those who did not, and their families.

Less than a week before this fifteen were captured, the media received the confirmation that British government scientists believed that 655,000 dead in Iraq a year ago was a good estimate. That received almost no press coverage. The detention of fifteen Britons for ten days is more important than the agonising deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

There was a revelatory moment on BBC Breakfast TV this morning when Admiral Sir Alan West said he was sure we had been in “our” waters. He corrected himself afterwards to “Iraqi waters” but the slip reveals the mindset of the occupying forces.

It is an extraordinarily wide interpretation of the UN occupation mandate to use it to interdict neutral merchant shipping in the Gulf. For me one of the most amazing things about this sorry dispute is that HMS Cornwall was, by the MOD’s own account and according to the embedded journalists on board, attempting to prevent the smuggling of cars. Am I really paying my taxes for incredibly sophisticated warships to be involved in the collection of Iraqi vehicle excise duty?

The Iranian release caught the UK on the hop and was a political coup, but followed British diplomacy offering technical talks on the disputed boundary area and the conduct of future operations. I hope that in the not too distant future Iran and Iraq will negotiate their maritime border; but thanks to us Iraq has a government that controls a tiny proportion of its land, let alone its seas.

Let us hope that the safe return of the fifteen shall be followed swiftly by the safe return of all our forces. They should never have been there in the first place.

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Lessons learned: Iran’s release of British prisoners

 in War and Iran? by | View Comments

csmonitor discusses the consequences and lessons from the anticipated British detainee release.

“The release of 15 British naval personnel Wednesday, coming after several days of intensified negotiations, was welcomed in Britain as evidence that a “softly, softly” approach could prove effective with Iran ‘ as it did in a similar prisoner crisis three years ago….”

Go here for the full article

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British Embassy No Longer Protects The Oppressed

 in The Book / Uzbekistan by | View Comments

Just after blogging yesterday that I had received 317 emails from people who had read “Murder in Samarkand”, I received the 318th. This one is unusual in that it is from someone I know slightly, an Uzbek I tried to help four years ago. I publish it because I think it is important, not least in what it says about the British Embassy in Tashkent no longer helping the oppressed. I have removed all details that may help the Uzbek government identify the sender.

Dear Mr Murray,

My name is… I wonder if you still remember me. I met you in Uzbekistan in … I was uzbek student who studied … I remember I came to you desperately seeking for help from aggressive and abusive actions of uzbek police and you helped me that time. You even went to police station with me trying to protect me from possible physical abuse. … I can not speak against uzbek authorities because my relatives and friends are in Uzbekistan and they have been threatened by bloody snb, that they all would have a huge problems if I am going to act like a decedent.

So, since then I am keeping myself quite, keeping all of the anger inside me. Here I met Andijan tragedy, and other abusive and terrible actions of uzbek terrorist government. Would you believe or not I did not even have any contacts with uzbek people in … I distanced myself from everything linked with Uzbekistan.

And then I bought your book and memorable emotions filled my head. I read whole your book in just 2 days. Every time I turned pages tears were on my eyes. Everything came to my memory, my childhood, my university ages, my friends, my parents and then my problems. I remembered neighbourhood where I lived in … gathering with my friends. It is terrible what regime did to people. At least I am alive and live in … dream for many uzbek people. I did not know, that regime was behaving so badly with foreign diplomats as well. I thought only Uzbeks deserved such brutal behaviour. I knew, that you were brave person, but when I read your book, I could not believe how much brave you are. You did more for uzbek people than any uzbek ever did. You gave us hope, that regime is not something which has unlimited power, that people can strike against this terrible persons.

After you have been sacked, British Embassy is not a place for desperate people anymore. Nobody cares about torture. Embassy became the same place it was before you. Of course after your experience nobody will want to have the same troubles with FCO. Now they are paying the price. Labours’ rating is the lowest as it ever was. They betrayed the person who really did a lot to increase British prestige among the most of uzbek people. There were even uneducated people who knew there is some place in Tashkent where they can find a protection, where they at least can be listened. So it was, but it worse now. NGOs have been closed, talented students do not have chance to study abroad anymore, instead they should study BLOODY karimov’s books, this lie, this hypocrisy.

Thinking about all of these, I do not regret that I left Uzbekistan, even those, I live here alone without any relatives or friends. I regret only about how mane more people will become victims of this terrible, brutal, inhuman regime. How many more people should suffer, or being killed before this BUSTARD karimov and his BLOODY dogs will go. I spoke with some people here about this, but nobody knows. One thing is certain, that it can not last forever. My situation is much better now. I have more or less good job, probably the best that immigrant refugee can get…. I am working as ….

I just dream, that one day we, I mean Uzbeks, can live free without being threatened. But, I do not know when, and how to make these days happened. I have spoken with …by the way big hello to you from him, and he told me that it would be very bloody way to get rid of regime. This conversation was even before Andijan tragedy, and history proved his opinion. He also was terrified after Andijan and said that it was too much blood for nothing.

I do not know if you were drinking alcohol, or having sex with women, but one thing is certain, is that you were the best diplomat UK could ever have. You cared about Human values of freedom and life, and cared about foreign non-British people when you saw, what a disaster is around them. You were doing the same things UK and US governments were talking about before Iraq invasion, that they were going to protect Iraqis from tyranny and gave them freedom. But instead that sacked their diplomat who was trying to implement this programme. What a hypocrisy.

I am sorry for my long letter, full of emotions. Two years I tried to forget about all of these and then suddenly bought your book and remembered everything.

I live in .. will be one day and will…wish to meet, I would be very happy. It will be very big honour for me to meet with you. Thank you very much for everything you did and still doing for uzbek people and for me personally.

Yours respectfully,

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Turning the Tide in the Gulf

 in War and Iran? by | View Comments

We really do seem to have turned the media tide on this one. The maritime law experts now feel it is safe to pop out of the woodwork and make plain there is no clear boundary, and the politicos are waking up to the fact that the disputed boundary gives you the diplomatic solution.

From Reuters today:

By Luke Baker

Tue Apr 3, 10:10 AM ET

LONDON (Reuters) – Shifting sands and a poorly defined maritime border could give Britain and Iran enough room to save face in their 12-day stand-off over a group of detained British sailors and marines, border experts say.

Because the maritime boundaries off the Shatt al-Arab waterway, drawn up in 1975 but not updated since, are open to a certain degree of interpretation, Britain and Iran could “agree to disagree” over exactly who crossed into whose territory.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Tuesday the next 48 hours could prove critical as both the British and Iranian governments have sought to moderate their positions after several days of heightened tension.

“It’s certainly not an irresolvable dispute,” said Martin Pratt, the director of the International Boundaries Research Unit at Britain’s Durham University.

“The fact that the coastline is constantly shifting means more issues would need to be taken into consideration than if the coastlines were more stable and there was agreement on exactly where the baselines along the coast were.”

Both the Iranian and British governments appear to have softened their stances in the past 24 hours, with each highlighting their desire to reach a negotiated solution.

Pratt said that suggested both realized they couldn’t afford to be too insistent about an issue that comes down to who says where exactly an incident occurred on a disputed boundary.

“You can’t be dogmatic about a maritime boundary that hasn’t been properly agreed,” he said.

Maritime lawyers said they expected British and Iranian officials to be able to sort out the wording of any agreement themselves, without turning to an outside arbiter such as the United Nations, which has handled maritime disputes in the past.

On Monday, Ali Larijani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, called for a “delegation” to determine whether the British sailors were in Iran or not, but didn’t define what sort of delegation.

“I think there’s plenty of scope in the uncertainty of the situation to be able to craft some kind of solution,” said Richard Harvey, the head of admiralty and casualty practice at law firm Reed, Smith, Richards, Butler.

“It strikes me that a) there is a lot of scope for disagreement and therefore b) quite a lot of scope for agreement.”

Ends

I know from my FCO moles that we are now adopting this line in the diplomacy. As long as they can stop Blair saying anything else stupid for a couple of days, I do think we can hope to see the captives home before too long.

It is amazing that it is only four days since I was denounced quite widely as a “Traitor” and “Scum” (and several still worse things – see the Harry’s Place blog. Or don’t – its nauseating) for saying what now everyone is coming to accept as the truth. There is no clear boundary in these waters. We were stupid to pretend, for propaganda and spin, that there is.

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Back to Normal

 in Dundee Uni by | View Comments

It has been a very hectic few days, but they have been productive. I seem to have helped convince the mainstream media of the obvious truth that the maritime boundaries in this part of the Gulf are disputed and fuzzy, and that the real situation is much less clear than the British map. The BBC has at last started routinely to refer to the boundary as disputed and unclear. The support from the Mail on Sunday and Daily Mail helped enormously to turn the tide, as did the serious piece in the New York Times.

Last night I did Newsnight, BBC News 24 and a pre-record for this morning’s Breakfast TV. In all cases the BBC introduction stated that the border was disputed and complex as reported fact before I started, which made it much easier.

This morning Richard Dalton, former British Ambassador to Iran, said clearly on BBC Breakfast TV that nobody could be certain whose waters they were in, that the boundary is not agreed and negotiating such boundaries is very complex. That is the first open confirmation of this from an “Establishment” figure since the Blair spin about being “utterly certain” we were in Iraqi waters.

Furthermore, both the FCO and MOD appear to have cottoned on that accepting this as all a muddle is the wiggle room for diplomacy to get us out of this dispute with neither side losing too much face, and the way to get our people back quickly.

There is always something of a price to pay for standing up to the government. I am Rector of the University of Dundee. The local newspaper, the Courier and Advertiser, yesterday published an article giving a highly tendentious account of my views, making me out to support the Iranian detention of the sailors. I wrote a letter to the Editor for publication to correct this, in mild terms, and telephoned yesterday afternoon to check they had received it. They did not publish my letter, but today published an article saying that students were calling for my resignation over my views on Iran. They still have made no effort to talk to me or get my view.

This is the letter I sent to the Courier.

Sir,

I feel your report today (2 April) was remiss in not noting that I am calling for Iran to hand the captives back immediately, and have made that call consistently since the incident started. You seem to wish to portray me as supporting Iran in this affair, which is completely unfair. I want both sides to see sense and solve this peacefully and very quickly.

There is no agreed Iran/Iraq boundary in the Gulf south of the Shatt al Arab river. That is not a “claim” by me, it is an undeniable fact. Maritime boundaries are established by treaty, and there has never been one. Doubtless the Law department of the University, which had always been very good on international maritime law, can confirm that for you.

The incident took place in disputed waters. That is all we can say. It is also all we were saying. Commodore Tim Lambert on HMS Cornwall stated just after the incident: “There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that we were in Iraqi territorital waters. Equally the Iranians may well claim that they were in their territorial waters. The extent and definition of territorial waters in this part of the world is very complicated.”

Commodore Lambert summed the real situation up perfectly. But then the Number 10 spin doctors got to work and Tony Blair made the fatuous claim that he was “Utterly certain” that the incident was in Iraqi territorial waters. The MOD backed this up by producing a map showing a boundary in bright red lines. That boundary does not exist – it was drawn up by the MOD.

By publishing a map purporting to set the boundary in the Gulf, we closed the door on the obvious way to resolve this dispute and turned an incident into a crisis. The government’s desire to make hay out of jingoistic propaganda exceeded its desire to find a solution which would see our personnel returned.

The Iranians have legitimate claims in these seas – as do the Iraqis. it is not for us to decide the boundary between them. For the Iranians to make a practical demonstration of their claim against a foreign power boarding vessels in what they claim as “their” waters is arguably justifiable. But given the waters are disputed, they should behave with much greater circumspection, and to hold captives is bellicose and unjustified.

Both governments have painted themselves into corners. Both have to back down. The way to do that is to admit what everybody knew until they forgot it last week, that these waters are disputed and nobody knows for sure where the boundary is. We make plain that we had no intention of straying into Iranian territorial waters. The Iranians let our people go.

This should not be difficult to solve if the governments involved act reasonably. Both countries have leaderships which are deeply unpopular at home. The danger in those circumstances is that politicians welcome a chance to bang the drum of jingoism to win votes at homee, and are disinclined to compromise. I see elements of that here, and fear for our captives.

One element of this political trick is to pretend there are only two positions, and that anyone who queries is a “traitor” and on the side of the “enemy”. I am on the side of humanity.

Craig Murray

On the brighter side, I always find Jeremy Paxman instinctively likeable when I meet him. I realise that is not a universal view. Just before we went on air, he said that since I last met him he had read, and greatly enjoyed, Murder in Samarkand. I always feel a real thrill when anyone says they read it. I can’t quite explain why – it feels like they must really know me, so we have got through at least one side of several year’s worth of making friends before we start.

I confess to being a bit disappointed by sales of the book. It has sold some 8,000 in hardback, while the paperback has only been out for six weeks so it is a bit early to tell. I had unrealistic dreams of selling huge quantities – everyone tells me that 8,000 hardbacks for non-fiction is really good. But it certainly isn’t enought to live on – I get around 8% of the cover price, minus the costs of the map, index, some legal costs etc. Work it out.

What I find hard to reconcile is the astonishingly positive reaction from those who have read it, with the fairly low sales. I say astonishingly postive because so far 317 complete strangers (yes, I know, I am very nerdish to keep count) who have read Murder in Samarkand have emailed me to say what a huge impact it had on them. There seem two main themes – people did not realise how dark and despicable the heart of our government really is, and people relate to the open account of my own faults and eventual disintegration. Especially the letters indicate anyone who has ever suffered injustice from government or an unfair employer, seems to find those emotional wounds reopened.

But the book does not tell you how to contact me. I don’t think it would ever occur to me to contact the author of a book I had read. Yet 317 people who, with a very few exceptions, appear perfectly sane, have read Murder in Samarkand and then gone to the length of looking up my website, finding my contact details, and then writing to give me their reactions to my book.

The other thing that seems very positive is the number of very famous people who have now read it. I can only name those I happen to know have done so – until last night, for example, I had no idea Jeremy Paxman had. This is a bit of unashamed name-dropping, but among those I know have read Murder in Samarkand are: Noam Chomsky, Harold Pinter, David Owen, Brad Pitt, Tony Benn, David Frost, Jeremy Paxman, Bianca Jagger, David Hare and Steve Coogan.

So I am left wondering why it is not selling better. I think that part of the problem is marketing. If you go into Waterstones or Borders, you will probably find a copy, but you will have to go up or down to the politics department and poke around the bottom shelves until you find a single copy, spine-on. To sell well nowadays, a book has to be on tables in a “3 for 2” promotion or similar. For that your publisher has to do a deal with the bookstore – one of the disastrous results of independent booksellers being replaced by big chains. My publisher, Mainstream, uses Random House for its distribution and marketing. When asked why they didn’t make more effort to promote the book, Random House replied (I paraphrase, but not much) “Because nobody’s ever heard of Craig Murray”.

All of which is very frustrating. But the book is out there, and spreading solely by word of mouth. The emails keep coming in, and keep my spirits up hugely.

I am now finishing off a short book called “Influence not Power – Foreign Policy for an Independent Scotland”, to be published by Polygon/Birlinn of Edinburgh.

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Possible problems with Position of Indian Ship?

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Let me start by saying that I am not querying the coordinates (29 degrees 50.36 minutes North 048 degrees 43.08 minutes East) for the Indian merchant vessel given by the UK MOD. In the British version the incident took place at that vessel. They said that the Indian vessel was anchored at these coordinates for two days.

By contrast the Iranian government has given four different coordinates, allegedly referring not to a single incident but to the course of the Royal Naval vessels.

My point has been all along that the precise coordinates are a red herring, because the maritime boundary has never been agreed. There is therefore no clear “line” you can be one side or the other of.

But I have been contacted now by three independent people – two claiming experience as mariners – to make the following point. To the best of my ability I have checked it out, but I am not a qualified navigator. I am not claiming that the following is correct – it is put forward as a problem, not a solution. I am appealing for assistance from those technically equipped to throw any light on this problem.

The MOD claimed that the Indian merchant vessel was anchored “in the channel”. But these coordinates are over a nautical mile further West (ie towards Iraq) than the channel. That bit I am quite certain of.

The mystery is this. On British nautical maps, 29 degrees 50.36 minutes North 048 degrees 43.08 minutes East is 100 yards above the low water line. That is to say it dries out at low tide. The vessel pictured by the MOD is a substantial merchant vessel. No captain of such a vessel would knowingly take his vessel to such a position, let alone anchor it there for two days.

In fact legally those coordinates are on land.

As always, it is a bit more complex than that. British charts use the Lowest Astronomical Tide – that is the furthest the tide normally goes out in a year. So on British charts the vessel is 100 yards above the low water mark when the tide is at its lowest. US charts, which show a more normal low tide, show it as being just below the low water line. But that still puts it in very shallow water indeed.

Consider this. There is very little tide in the Gulf. The highest tidal range there is a vertical fall of only nine feet, and that is closer to the Arabian sea. Perhaps someone can find the draught of the Indian vessel when it left port (Lloyds List should have this). But it was laden with cars. I cannot conceive of it having a draught of less than twelve feet, possibly a good lot more.

In short, unless I am missing something very important, it looks like it would be very hard to get that Indian vessel to those coordinates at high tide, and it would certainly ground at low tide, pretty well at any time of year.

Before we leap to any conclusions, I can see at least three other possible explanations:

The mud and sands have shifted substantially since the charts were made, or it has been radically dredged

Sea levels in the Gulf at the time in question were, for some reason, unusually high; perhaps with some very local effect from very high outflow from the rivers

Neither the people who contacted me nor I can read a chart properly

What I am looking for are technical contributions to explain the alleged problem. Until we have clarified that, I would be grateful if the political pundits could hold fire. I am not saying that the coordinates were wrong, or that the ship could not be in that position.

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