The three alleged "terrorists" arrested in Germany, aimed to blow up US military airports, civil airports, bars, discos and other targets, according to the German authorities, motivated by a fanatical hatred of the United States.

They have been identified as coming from the "Islamic Jihad Union", an alleged offshoot of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. This organisation was first heard of in intelligence passed by the Uzbek intelligence services to the United States during alleged "Terror attacks" in Tashkent in spring 2004. Those attacks were in fact largely fake and almost certainly the work of the Uzbek security services, from my investigations on the spot at the time. These are detailed in pages 325 to 339 of Murder in Samarkand. These "attacks" were followed by the arrest of many hundred people in Tashkent, largely those with a little money and a Western lifestyle. From the torture chambers, hundreds confessed to membership of the Islamic Jihad Union. The United States, still an ally of Uzbekistan at that time, was keen to accept the narrative and moved succesfully to place the Islamic Jihad Union on the United Nations list of terrorist organisations.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1595387,00.html

In fact there was no evidence of the existence of this organisation other than that given by the Uzbek Security Services. There are, for example, no communications intercepts between senior terrorists referring to themselves as the Islamic Jihad Union.

Germany houses the biggest concentration of exiled Uzbek dissidents in the West, and in May of 2004 the Uzbek security services were already passing on alleged intelligence about attacks by the Islamic Jihad Union on US targets in Germany. Peculiarly, newspaper stories about these IJU plots in Germany have been surfacing regularly for the last two years, ahead of the recent arrests.

Germany is of course now Uzbekistan's major ally in the West. Germany has an airbase in Uzbekistan and still has very close security service coopertation with Uzbekistan. Germany has been pushing hard within the EU for the lifting of sanctions imposed on Uzbekistan following the massacre bu the Uzbek armed forces of at least 700 demonstrators at Andijan in May 2005. Germany's close relationship with Uzbekistan is based on the interests of Gazprom and its $8 billion Nordstream Russian/German joint venture for a Baltic pipeline to bring Russian and Uzbek gas to Germany. This was orchestrated by Gerhard Schroeder, now Chairman of Nordstream, and Alisher Usmanov, chairman of Gazprom Investholdings.
http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2007/05/uzbekistan_and.html

Germany therefore remains very open to the Uzbek security service agenda. It is in the light of these interests that the story being given about the latest arrests should be considered. There are some peculiar points about it: why are the German authorities connecting a Turk and two ethnic Germans, who allegedly trained in Pakistan, to an obscure and possibly non-existent Uzbek group?

I should make plain that regrettably it is a fact that there are those who commit violence, motivated by a fanatic version of their faith. Sadly the appalling aggression of US and allied war policy has made such reaction much more frequent. These men may or may not have been planning to commit explosions. But if they were, the question is who was really pulling their strings, and why?

Nadira playing Magdalene in The Women at the Tomb

Nadira is playing at the moment in a fringe production of The Women at the Tomb by Michael De Ghelderode, at the Lion and Unicorn theatre (above the pub) at 42 Gaisford St, Kentish Town, NW5. The play runs till 16 September if you want to go along and see it.
Details here:
http://www.actprovocateur.net/home.html

I am much shaken by the assassination of yet another of my Uzbek friends, the brave, talented and internationally renowned theatre director, Mark Weil.

Mark created and led an independent theatre company, the Ilkhom Theatre of Tashkent. They were the very first independent theatre company in the whole Soviet Union. Their artistic freedom, performance of previously banned works and tackling of social issues made them one of the sensations of the late Soviet Union, enabled by Glasnost. They became the toast of Moscow intellectual circles in the late 1980's.

As Mark described it to me, they then had the irony of being part of the destruction of the Soviet Union, only to be plunged into the even greater gloom and tyranny of Uzbekistan. But by then Mark, a native Uzbek of German stock, had built up the formidable international reputation that enabled Ilkhom to continue to flourish as a tiny, bright and incredibly unlikely beacon of light in Tashkent. They played to great acclaim on every continent, their last appearance in the UK being a sell out run at the Barbican last year. I had a long talk with Mark and his family afterwards and found him less optimistic, his cares heavier, than ever before. He was, however, determined to stay in Tashkent and battle it out.

Mark's style was always in public to deny breezily that he faced any particular problems, and to try to shelter everyone else - his company, his family, his loyal audiences - from them. He would avoid direct criticism of the regime, but allow his art to talk for him, still using his theatre to tackle challenging questions of Uzbek society - unemployment, drug addiction, freedom, homosexuality, religion - which are absolutely forbidden from discussion, both in Uzbekistan's 100% state controlled media, and in public. Typical of his style was his TV documentary on Tashkent's monumental architecture. Showing the change of monster iconography in bronze from Tsarist generals, through Lenin, Stalin and Marx to Karimov's use of the Tamerlaine cult, on the surface it was a paean to state progress, but the message that "Karimov too will pass" could not have been more clear. Mark was a great subverter.
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ft20070222a1.html

He was currently engaged in one of those collaborations with Western theatre companies which so worried the authorities, in this case a British company. He was also preparing for the opening tonight of Ilkhom's new season. Arriving back at his apartment block after final rehearsal last night, he was murdered by a group of men in T-shirts. Reports are confused as to stabbed or shot.

The method of killing is precisely that used in every one of the murderous assaults on Russian journalists I investigated earlier this year. In each case, they were ambushed on return home from work - the standard method of the security services. Mark had told his British collaborators he was under great pressure.
http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2007/06/russian_journal.html

What happens now is very predictable. Karimov will blame "Islamic militants" and there will be further arrests, and probably convictions, of dissidents in Tashkent as usual. With Mark a great talent dies, and one of the last flickering embers of freedom in Uzbekistan.

You may have noticed that the post regarding the less-than-salubrious nature of Alisher Usmanov has disappeared. This is at the instigation of Schillings, lawyers retained by Usmanov to brow-beat anyone who dares to show Alisher's true colours.

Pending legal advice which - as web host - I am unable to obtain prior to tomorrow, given Schilling's deadline and in light of Godfrey v Demon Internet, the post may or may not reappear. In the meantime, it is always now somewhere on the web. If you know where to look, you'll probably find it.

Cheers
Clive - webhost

via Bloggerheads

I have been delighted by the reaction of Arsenal fans - the large majority seem not to want Usmanov's money, and juging by yesterday's performance they don't need it.

I am most happy to give evidence to the Premier League if anyone can point me in the right direction. But I rather hope Usmanov's hyperactive and expensive lawyers will sue me for libel. Questioning Usmanov in a British court would bring a much fairer result than anything I expect from our tainted football authorities.

Sorry, that was a long break from blogging because of another visit to Ghana on energy projects, an appearance at the Edinburgh Book Festival, commitments at Dundee University and agreeing contracts for my next three books. I am also just finishing a play.

The Mail on Sunday is today carrying another one of my blasts.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23410665-details/

How+BAE+and+a+rather+mysterious+Labour+peer+get+rich+as+our+troops+die/article.do
As I have said before, I think the Mail deserves great praise for the range of opinion it is prepared to cover, more so than any other British mainstream newspaper. Strangely, the Mail website doesn't mention who wrote it. You can see the full article from the link, but to whet your appetite:

After the First World War, Stanley Baldwin surveyed the House of Commons of which he was soon to become Conservative Prime Minister. He was filled with disgust, dismissing the MPs as 'a lot of hard-faced men who looked as though they had done rather well out of the war'.

He had hit upon a universal truth.

To you and me, the Iraq and Afghan wars may look like unmitigated disasters. Hundreds of our young soldiers have died, as have untold thousands of local civilians, but to what end? Even the minority who supported the invasion of Iraq are inclined to agree that the subsequent occupation has been catastrophically handled.

Iraq is more than ever a failed state, with an abysmal decline in the most basic water, energy and health services for the majority of the population. Armed militias control their little fiefdoms, sometimes actually constituting the laughably named Iraqi security services. Nowhere is that more true than in Basra, now controlled from Tehran, while our troops hunker in ditches under mortar fire and take casualties whenever they venture out on patrol.

Last month, for the second time, the Iraqi governor of one of the provinces we had declared secure and 'handed over' to Iraqi forces was murdered, almost certainly not by Al Qaeda but by the very warring factions to whom we have handed control.

Meanwhile in Afghanistan, the drugs warlords we promoted to the Karzai government preside over massively increased opium harvests and busy heroin factories. The United Nations has just announced that this year the opium harvest is up 30 per cent, after a massive 60 per cent increase last year. Heroin production has increased more than tenfold since our invasion, while there are more men in arms against us than at any time since the conflict began.

It is hard to believe anybody can think our policy is a success.

Yet there are those who have indeed, in Baldwin's biting phrase, 'done rather well out of the war'. It has been waged at a great cost, not just in young soldiers' lives but in cash.

When we talk of the vast sums that have been spent - more than £250billion by the United States and at least £30billion by the UK - the eyes tend to glaze over. Strings of noughts, such as those in £30,000,000,000, look surreal, but it is very real cash indeed, taken from your pocket and mine. And very little of it goes to the poor bloody infantry, who get pitifully little extra pay for their daily heroism.

Their value in the grand scheme of things was well illustrated this week by the campaign for Ben Parkinson, the 23-year-old Lance Bombardier who lost both legs and sustained permanent brain damage from a landmine last year in Afghanistan. The Government valued the ruin of his life at a pathetic £152,150. Parkinson's mother denounced the compensation as 'contemptible', and she was absolutely right.

But his plight neatly illustrates an important truth. Even in the most extreme circumstances, our highly professional servicemen see only a minute fraction of the vast sums of money spent.

More than 90 per cent of it goes to private-sector firms who benefit from war, including arms manufacturers.

The Baldwin quote was pointed out by one of the commenters on an earlier post here, for which thanks. Keep commenting - I can recycle your comments and make money out of you!!!

From Stop the War

Gordon Brown will make a statement on the war in Iraq when parliament returns in October. Stop the War has begun organising a new mass campaign calling on Brown to bring all the British troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan immediately and to use his October statement to signal a break from George Bush's foreign policy. An open letter to the Prime Minister is printed below and you can add your name online now at: http://www.stopwar.org.uk.

On Monday 8 October, Stop the War is organising a national troops out protest at Parliament, at which MPs will again be lobbied to reflect the opinion of the vast majority of people in Britain.

The latest opinion polls show that two thirds of the British people want the troops out of Iraq now and only six per cent think the war in Afghanistan is being won. Leaders of the British military have made it clear that they think the game is up in Iraq, or as Major General Richard Dannatt puts it, "We should get ourselves out sometime soon because our presence exacerbates the security problems".

OPEN LETTER TO GORDON BROWN:

Dear Prime Minister
We urge you to use your October statement to signal a break from George Bush's foreign policy and to bring all the British troops out of Iraq immediately, regardless of US plans. It is clear the presence of British troops in Iraq is a pointless waste of life. The majority of Iraqis want them to go. Most soldiers have been withdrawn to base outside Basra where they play no active role but are coming under fire regularly and taking heavy casualties. It is time to go. The occupation of Afghanistan is sliding in to chaos so familiar from Iraq and the troops should be brought home. An attack on Iran would be a disaster for the population and would increase instability in the region.

We need a change of course.

If you would like to join us in helping to build the troops out now campaign, contact the Stop the War national office and we will explain how you can get involved: Telephone 020 7278 6694 or email office@stopwar.org.uk