I don’t think that withdrawing the charges necessarily makes them all bogus. The man celebrates his love of the sauce and broke up his marriage for a young Uzbek woman. Expats often do unsavory things. I find none of the charges hard to believe. I also don’t find it hard to believe that the FO decided to drop charges because poor, persecuted Craig was fast becoming a media darling.

I think know that the key US concerns in Uzbekistan are security, strengthening the state, and encouraging economic and political liberalization (which tie back to strengthening the state). I’m sure that we’d exploit oil if we could, but we just can’t cut it in Uzbekistan. Taking oil and gas rights from Russia is simply not going to happen without an Uzbek-Russian falling out. They signed a contract and we cannot offer a better deal (and it’s probably not even worth the trouble in Uzbekistan anyway).

In media terms Murray got “loudest”, surely, after October 2004 when he was withdrawn from Tashkent following the memo leak. The 18 bogus disciplinary charges had been dropped in January 2004. It just doesn’t add up.

What does seem plausible is that having 18 bogus charges brought against him actually radicalised Craig Murray, and set him on the course that he’s now chosen.

Does the UK Foreign Office’s handling of all this not seem in the least bizarre/incompentent?

So what do you think are the key US concerns in Uzbekistan? Are there no moves to get the oil out of Russian hands?

I never said the particular charge is true, but that it looks an awful lot that way. Murray got loudest when he was up for disciplinary charges. Could be coincidence.

As for US policy being motivated chiefly by economic interests, I’ll say prove it. US economic involvement in Uzbekistan doesn’t hold a candle to Russian. South Korea may be more involved (they are more visible, but I’m not sure how much $$$ changes hands). I’ve heard baroque explanations for how the military base is all about stabilizing the region to get Turkmen or Kazakh or Azeri oil or whatever. The problem I have with all this is that Russia keeps coming out on top. And, Uzbekistan doesn’t have much that really interests us all that much. They compete with our cotton producers, don’t have a lot of oil, and what gas and oil they do have will be extracted almost solely by Russian companies. I would think that if we were motivated by economic interests, we’d have, you know, something to show for it.

I think it’s unfortunate that you keep using these abusive terms like “masturbatory”. It’s also unfortunate that you’ve made several claims about Murray that are factually untrue; eg. this idea that he’s doing what he’s doing to distract attention from disciplinary charges which were long ago been shown to be bogus. Putting out this kind of disinformation just makes you look biased.

Your beef with Murray really seems to come down to the fact that you don’t like his style and you disagree with him over the possibility of “constructive engagement” in Uzbekistan.

Surely there are arguments on both sides in this debate, and it would be more productive to have a discussion based on facts rather than smears?

Murray’s view seems to be that US policy in Uzbekistan is motivated chiefly by its national economic interests rather than by genuine humanitarian or security concerns. It seems a coherent view to me, and I’d be interested in your thoughts on it.

Additionally, the “I spent at least four more months than you in Uzbekistan, making my opinion clearly exponentially more insightful and genuine than yours” is a total hoot.

Best of luck in your run against Mr. Straw. I look forward to you siphoning enough votes off from the far left so that the Tories have a fighting chance.

If you’re going to play the high school debater game, back up those assertions. If you want evidence, don’t resort to multiple outs as an argumentative style. I’m not particularly interested in having a formal high school policy debate in here because I got thoroughly sick of the people who engage in them when I was a coach.

There also was a reduction in the number of political and religious prisoners over the past year by about 1,000. Check the State Department report.

Uzbekistan has offered amnesty to members of Islamist terror groups such as the IMU. I’ve never seen a number of the total who have taken the offer, but I’ve seen reports of dribs and drabs of IMU members leaving Pakistan to live a normal life in Uzbekistan.

May not seem like much to you, but the black market and official exchange rates are much closer than when I was there. Kind of a macro-change, but it’s good.

Outside investigators have been increasingly allowed to visit Uzbek prisons and investigate human rights cases.

Look, I said these are minor and I’d like to see more.

Uzbekistan is a closed society?

As in, you can’t do an accurate, methodologically sound survey of public opinion or get much of a sense of the public mood from the press. Lots of people told me they were dissatisfied too. Did you take it to the next step and ask if Karimov should be overthrown? Like I said, they always seemed timid about change.

You’re right, the Uzbek government should open society. They do tolerate some legitimate dissent, but don’t let it have much of a voice or take part in elections. I certainly think we should push harder for loosening of controls.

Actually, I’ve clarified this, and what actually happened is that the IREX employee helped a gentleman who was translating the Koran set up his computer. This was outside of and unrelated to his IREX responsibilities. The main point stands, though.

Uzbekistan is a closed society? If you speak Russian or Uzbek and live there, it’s not closed at all. My experience in conversing with Uzbeks is that roughly 90% of them are extremely dissatisfied with the regime, and they don’t hesitate to say this.

“but I get a strong impression that as much as Uzbeks want a change, they are worried about a chaotic transition.”

True, Karimov is a bastard, but he’s the bastard we know, and the next one might be worse. I think Uzbeks are going to be watching Kyrgyzstan closely to see what sort of possible positive or negative outcomes can come from a revolution. At the same time, clearly the GOU could prepare the ground for moderate successors by loosening control of the media and tolerating legitimate opposition. By controlling everyone and everything, the GOU is forcing opposition underground and fostering conditions conducive to extremism.