Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsNew Labour's Sandline shame
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 25 January 2009
This riveting book contains a smoking gun. "The Sandline Affair" (Chapter 4) reveals for the first time that in 1998 the Prime Minister had no objection to British mercenaries breaching UN sanctions by selling arms to Sierra Leone. Despite a thick dossier from Customs & Excise recommending prosecutions, the Crown Prosecution Service decided to take no action - without even reading the papers. As Craig Murray notes, "this was the first major instance of the corruption of the legal process that was to be a hallmark of the Blair years." His account has authority: he was then the most senior FCO official whose sole responsibility was West Africa.
Most of this memoir, including the delightful discovery that provides the title, covers Craig's subsequent posting to Accra. He was number two in a High Commission at the centre of two key African issues: democracy and development. He also acted as midwife for the safe delivery of the Lomé peace agreement over Sierra Leone, dealing with extraordinary people like Colonel Isaac, a boy soldier forced at age eight to kill his own mother and father.
For all its vivid anecdotes, this is a thoughtful account of why effective diplomacy requires far more than mechanical implementation of directives from Whitehall. There is much here that other diplomats will recognise: why it is sometimes not wise (even if much cheaper) to entrust visa work to local employees; and concern at how UK development aid has become primarily a matter of direct budgetary support. There is valuable documentary evidence in several footnotes.
This book is for anyone for whom Africa matters - and for those drawing up the charge sheets against Blair.
