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The Catholic Orangemen of Togo and Other Conflicts I Have Known
 Author’s Preface
I spent the eve of the Millennium in my garden, on the spacious lawnsof Devonshire House in Accra, hosting a seven course meal for 120people, with dancing, fireworks and unlimited champagne. Despite thehysterical rubbish with which the Foreign and Commonwealth Office had been bombarding me for weeks, the World’s computers didn’t crash, andthe future looked bright.Osama Bin Laden doesn’t use the Christian calendar so wasn’t celebrat-ing that night. He had already accepted the idea – not originally his – ofsuicide attacks involving hijacked aircraft. His al-Qaida network hadabout 180 members. Al Gore looked pretty safe to win the democraticnomination and the Presidency.
1
George Bush was a blip on the horizonwhose record as a Vietnam draft-dodger would surely scupper hischances.The World was on the brink of unhappier times. But we didn’t know it,and I was happily immersed in what remains my first and abiding con-cern: the freedom and development of AfricaSix years later, when I first published
 Murder in Samarkand,
I faced acredibility problem. Many people simply did not believe that the US andUK governments had been willing to resort to the most stark and brutalforms of torture of helpless prisoners as part of the War on Terror. An ac-cumulation of indisputable evidence from hundreds of sources has sinceforced acceptance upon the media and thus awareness upon the public.
 Murder in Samarkand
in essence is a simple tale. The British governmentwas actively complicit in torture; I opposed this internally, and so I gotsacked.That book’s interest comes from its detailed documentation of the ter-rible oppression of the Uzbek people, of Western collusion with that op-pression, and of the heroic work of some Uzbek individuals against thatoppression. I also found that people reacted well to my frank account of
1Which, of course, in truth he was to do1
 
The Catholic Orangemen of Togo and Other Conflicts I Have Known
myself. Autobiography is a form in which individuals recount highly ed-ited versions of their own lives, in which they observe sharply the failingsof others, but are themselves near-perfect.
 Murder in Samarkand
showed aman warts and all. In doing so, I hope it illustrated that it is not alwaysthe man society finds most respectable who is likely to try to do what isright.Emboldened by the strong response I received, I now write this furthermemoir,
The Catholic Orangemen of Togo and Other Conflicts I have Known,
which I hope may shed some light on some well known foreign policyquestions in which I was involved. I hope it will also give some food forthought on the future of Africa, and perhaps show that freedom and pro-gress there are not impossible.This book should also explain further why I acted as I did in Uzbek-istan. Hundreds, if not thousands, of senior British diplomats, civil ser-vants and members of the military knew of our policy of acceptance oftorture. A great many were much more actively involved, particularly inextraordinary rendition, than I.Why they did nothing to stop it is, in fact, not the difficult question.Thousands of good, nice Germans were caught up at least tangentially inthe administration of the concentration camps. They did nothing. Doingnothing is the norm, when it safeguards your life, your family and yourlivelihood. The difficult question is why was Craig Murray, by no meansa conventionally good man, one of the tiny handful of those involved notto go along with the torture policy of the Bush and Blair years? Thisdelve deeper into my past is an opportunity for us both to look for an-swers.Doubtless some reviewers will again seize on the fact that I made mis-takes, particularly in my private life. Well, I have news for you – I knowthat already. I had no illusion that I am perfect. The conflicts of the titleare intended to embrace those internal ones with which we all struggle,and the conflicts in my personal life, as well as the obvious external ones.But, as one perceptive blog commenter said of US reviews of
 Murder inSamarkand
(or
Dirty Diplomacy,
to give its US title)
 ,
you don’t have to be asaint to call torture when you see it.
2
 
The Catholic Orangemen of Togo and Other Conflicts I Have Known
The thing that I did differently from other diplomats was that I cared.Diplomats rather pride themselves on not caring. The culture of the For-eign and Commonwealth Office has been perceptively described byCarne Ross as “A cult of Machiavellianism”. Carne and I quit in the Bush/Blair years because we both cared passionately about those values whichare meant to be fundamental to British policy, whichever party happensto be in power. I care for human rights, democracy and international de-velopment. I care for freedom. I care passionately for Africa.The strange thing is that this is exactly the same list of things that TonyBlair declared, at every possible opportunity, that he was passionate abouttoo. I was one of the very few in the FCO who was delighted by the an-nouncement of an “Ethical foreign policy” by Robin Cook when New La- bour took office. I had spent the first thirteen years of my career workingfor Conservative governments which I viewed with varying degrees ofdistaste.How extraordinary to find that those Conservative governments weremuch more honourable in their pragmatism than the reckless neo-conser-vative contempt for international law that Blair was about to introduce asthis story begins. Blair believed he alone was the judge of right, and did-n’t care how many had to die to prove it. I hope that this book illustratesthat, in his very first year of office, Blair's role in the “Arms to Africa af-fair” displayed the cavalier disregard for the United Nations and for in-ternational law that was to do such huge damage to the United King-dom's international reputation when applied to Iraq and the “War on Ter-ror”.Blair’s policy of “Projection of Hard Power” was simply the return offormal Imperialism. His motives had not changed from Kipling’s “Whiteman’s burden.” We should establish protectorates over dusky peopleswho don’t know much at all. It’s for their own good. However many wekill now, in time they will come to thank us.I apologise to my many friends in Ghana, including very good peoplewith whom I worked in the High Commission, who are not mentioned inthe book. That does not in any way mean that I did not value your com-pany, or your contribution. A few names have been changed wherepeople requested it or to protect the guilty.
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