Dirty Diplomacy

Craig Murray, who served as British ambassador in Uzbekistan (2004-2006), resigned from service and published a provocatively revealing memoir, Dirty Diplomacy (2006). In this candid and insightful work, he details how London and Washington collaborated or condoned the use of torture in complicity with the Uzbek regime of the time. Murray exposed the double speak of the UK and the U.S administrations: publicly championing human rights, democracy, and justice while violating them in practice.

Shadowed diplomatic negotiation room with maps and ceasefire documents
Editorial visual for diplomacy, backchannel bargaining, and moral ambiguity.

The US-Israel, Iran and Lebanon war mirrors this dirty diplomacy. Under the garb of extended ceasefire in pursuit of peace, the U.S engages Lebanon, Iran and even Hizballah - a “terrorist organization.” The American president publicly announced that he spoke to Hizballah, because the resistance group appears to be hurting Israel, as the death toll of Israeli troops and civilians increases.

Yet Israel continues to grab land in Lebanon, Gaza, Syria and the West Bank and constantly bombs, maims and kills thousands in these territories. The irony is that the Arab world is showing deafening silence; nobody in the world is calling for Israel to vacate aggression, withdraw to 1967 borders, and shelve its ambitions of “Greater Israel.” And yet, the dirty diplomacy continues in a different era, place, and locale.