President Islam Karimov: ‘He may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch’

Islam Karimov, President of Uzbekistan from 1990 – 2016, died yesterday following a stroke. Here’s what Daniel Hannan wrote about him in 2003:

A strange little row has been bubbling away over the past two months concerning our ambassador to Tashkent. You may have seen the odd headline about it in the inside pages of the broadsheets but, unless you have a particular interest in diplomatic affairs, I suspect your eye will quickly have skipped on to the next story. Why, after all, should we be especially interested in Uzbekistan? A tremendously important region for Britain during the Great Game, of course, but hardly of vital strategic interest today.

Yet the curious recall of Craig Murray ought to interest us for two reasons: first, it tells us a great deal about how the Foreign Office operates; and second, it raises serious questions about our conduct of the war on terror.

Before we come to that, though, I ought to declare an interest.