There has been no respite in the last five years in US bombongs killing civilians in Southern Afghanistan. The country’s legendary fierce nationalist resistance of all invaders is sufficient in itself to explain the continual heavy fighting. But the rejection of Western values is made certain, when the most obvious display of those values is the continued indiscriminate mass killing of civilians.

The 120 civilians killed by US bombs in one Afghan village this week, is what happens day in and day out. It is a slightly larger death toll that ordinary, but the most unusual feature is that it got at least a tiny, tiny bit of media coverage in the West.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hvWEqwq3CrRvaQCmt21MfoYhjZJQD9811D1G0

Meantime a humanitarian disaster is unfolding as the Pakistani army and air force boms and shells its way into the Swat Valley. This has no military value – the Taliban have left a rearguard to inflict maximum casualties, but have mostly already drifted up into the mountains. But it has displaced a million people, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees today. How many have been killed by bombs and shells, we do not have any idea at present.

All of which has cemented the notion that the Pakistani government is a murderous US puppet in the minds of the inhabitants of the North of the country. The cause of the rash Pakistani Army action is US goading.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/04/hillary_and_pak.html#comments

We can see the massive exodus of wretched people. We cannot be sure of the civilian casualty figures; but we can be sure that this week has recruited 10,000 more fighters to the Taliban cause. That is a disaster.

Both the US bombing and the Pakistani army assault are equally products of Obama’s policy of trying to crush the discontents of Central Asia by brute force. Obama’s meeting with Zirdari and Karzai this week – two of the most corrupt men in the world – was meant to highlight his grip on the region. I fear Afghanistan and Pakistan will be the defining disaster of the Obama Presidency.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=22023

Gordon Brown had the kind of Auschwitz photo-call this week that I have always found in dubious taste. I say that with consideration because I have attended and even set up a lot of Auschwitz photo-calls, as I will explain.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/gordon-brown/5237879/Gordon-Brown-pledges-funds-for-Holocaust-memorial-during-tour-of-Auschwitz.html

Two days before Brown’s photocall, Gerd Honsik, an Austrian author, had been jailed for five years for holocaust denial.

In 1994 I was studying Polish language and culture at the Catholic University of Lublin. With a small group of other students I went one day to the Majdanek concentration camp. There is much less to see than at Auschwitz, but Majdanek has a bleak starkness.

When we first arrived, there were only the eight of us and our guide in the place. I was overcome by the horror of it and withdrew to sit by myself on a bank and think. Then a couple of tourist buses drew up. One was full of American seniors and one of French children, but both were the same in terms of happy chatter and clicking of lenses. It just felt deeply wrong.

After I had learnt some Polish and started work in the British Embassy in Warsaw, I found that my duties frequently involved escorting official visitors to the camps, particularly but not always Auschwitz. When they were politicians, I also had to oversee the organisation of press-calls for them. That never felt right. Nor did familiarity ever make me feel any better about walking around these places. I seemed to pick up on the evil in them – I know that sounds stupid.

I was involved in the events to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the camps. One of the things that did, was to bring me into contact with survivors, and also with eye witnesses to the liberation, from a variety of countries. In this and in other ways I received first hand information on the camps. I understood that the Jews were only the largest of the groups subject to mass murder – over a million Poles, other Slavs, gypsies, gays, communists.

There was (and remains) a peculiar tension over the running of Auschwitz, with frequent arguments over the emphasis of commemoration between its Polish and Jewish victims.

The German administration at Auschwitz was based in Oswiecim castle. When the camp was liberated, many of the surviving gypsies were settled locally by the Communist authorities. I once had a meeting with the seven Romany Kings of Poland, in their headquarters which is actually inside Oswiecim castle. I was meeting them because of Home Office fears that, once Poland joined the EU, the UK would be inundated with Polish gypsies.

The layers of irony were extraordinary – that the meeting was in that place, and that it was motivated (in my view) by continuing racial prejudice in the UK Home Office, though obviously of a less vicious kind. I learnt a lot from them about the problems of gypsies, and was able to give them some realistic information on the UK.

I have met people who were in the death camps, and people who liberated them. I view people who deny that the industrialised murder happened as cranky, and I don’t think disputes over precise numbers are of much importance.

But neither do I think holocaust denial should be a crime. It should be met with ridicule and social sanction, not with prison. From reports Honsik seems a nasty bit of work, whose holocaust denial is motivated by Nazi sympathy. But he is given a spurious glamour by his imprisonment, and more attention than he deserves.

Politicians like Brown should avoid being seen to milk the holocaust. Mass murder is not a photo-op. If people want to go and pay their respects, they should do so quietly, with reverence and without publicity.

There is nothing to be gained by Holocaust tourism if we view it as a crime perpetrated by evil cartoon Nazis unconnected to ourselves. Did Brown reflect that he too had the blood of hundreds of thousands on his hands for his part of the attack on Iraq? Did he think about the widespread policy of torture in which the UK and US are complicit?

No. He was too busy thinking about his photo-call.

Taking a break from patronising the working classes here, Polly Toynbee and Harriet Harman flew to Ghana to patronise some black people. Toynbee’s hack piece – which could have been churned out before leaving, being the standard rant against IMF conditionalities – is printed in today’s Guardian.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/18/ghana-economy-imf-polly-toynbee

Those who have read The Catholic Orangemen of Togo will know of my deep love for Ghana. Indeed, I was there last week. Among other things, I spent a delightful evening with my old friend Kwabena Duffour, now the new Finance Minister, and his extremely intelligent and well-informed family. We talked over the macro-economic situation in some detail.

Plainly Toynbee has not read “The Catholic Orangemen” or her article would not contain so many basic errors.

The first thing to say is that Ghana’s revenue base is very strong. In fact, contrary to what Toynbee says, the “credit crunch” has had very little effect on Ghana so far. It had little exposure to toxic debt and, unlike ours, its economy was not based on a series of Ponzi schemes.

Toynbee is right to note the problem of high inflation, in particular in world food prices, but quite wrong to link this to the credit crunch. Third world food inflation has been an escalating problem for at least four years. The credit crunch may actually ameliorate it. Of course falling demand in the World economy and lack of availability of commercial credit must start to show some effect. But Ghana, unlike the UK, should not go into recession.

There is no structural problem. The rather sad fact is that the Ghanaian government is facing a liquidity crisis due to what may be politely described as fiscal racklessness, but I would more bluntly describe as looting, by the outgoing government.

I say that with a heavy heart because President Kufuor and several senior ministers were good friends of mine, but they seemed unable to control corruption in the last couple of years – which is generally agreed to be a major factor in why they lost the election.

I agree with Toynbee absolutely on the question of water metering for the poor in third world countries. I rail against it in The Catholic Orangemen and it was a Malthusian example of the neo-con control of the IMF. But actually we won that one a few years ago. Still, an easy Aunt Sally for Toynbee’s lazy piece.

It is worth noting that Toynbee will have been paid more for her turgid outpourings in the Guardian just this week, than the ladies of the credit union she touchingly describes will see in ten years.

Toynbee is simply wrong when she writes that “The IMF wants subsidies for electricity removed, again hitting the poorest hardest”. Ghana provides electricity to all its users at below the cost of production. The situation has got worse as the availability of hydro-electric power reduces due to climate change. Electricity is subsidised by the Ghanain taxpayer. Taxation in Ghana falls most heavily on the poor: – it is not very progressive, with VAT the major contributor. So the poor are paying for the subsidy.

But the poor use very little electricity. The electricity subsidy is probably worth no more than a few dollars a year to the ladies she patronised with their cash in a biscuit tin under a tree. By contrast, the US Embassy, with its two vast office buildings, Ambassador’s Residence, compound, school and scores of staff houses, receives an electricity subsidy of over a quarter of a million dollars a year from the Ghanaian taxpayer.

Electricity subsidy disproportionately benefits the rich at the expense of the poor. The solution is a social tariff to help the poor, not the continuation of blanket subsidy. Toynbee is fighting the IMF of ten years ago – perhaps understandable at her age. The IMF in fact has a pretty open mind on the matter. I have discussed it with them directly – unlike the lazy Toynbee.

Toynbee is a dull New Labour hack, an apologist for war criminals, and a well-paid patrician from a wealthy family who likes to cluck around showing how sorry she is for the poor. Just like Harman, in fact. Neither of them know anything about Africa. They do as much good for Africa as the stunts of Madonna.

Toynbee thinks she can fly in for a few days and suddenly become an expert on Ghana. Yet she has cheer-led for New Labour for twelve solid years without noticing they have been a disaster for social mobility, education, civil liberties and international law.

Polly Toynbee, self-appointed guardian of the poor of the world – and stupid muddled-headed old bat.

Texting death crash peer jailed for 12 weeks and banned for one year

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/south_yorkshire/7909510.stm

Texting death crash woman jailed for 21 months and banned for three years

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7865114.stm

Note that in neither case is it true – contrary to propaganda – that the texting was several minutes before the crash. In the case of the woman, the prosecution is appealing because the sentence was too lenient!

With thanks to Alaric.

The attacks in Mumbai are appalling, but the truth is that to date the numbers killed are small by the standards of inter-communal religious violence in India.

But this time Westerners are involved, so there is far more media attention than when it is “Only Indians”.

This is yet another illustration that the “War on Terror” has been entirely counter-productive and has made the World a much more dangerous place for the very Westerners it was supposed to protect. The apparent al-Qaida copycat motivation of the attackers is a further sign that the “War on Terror” threatens to destabilise not just Pakistan but the whole sub-continent.

William Dalrymple’s excellent “The Last Moghul” details the religous tolerance of old India, and its systematic destruction by the British. These events must be seen in their context, not just of the hideous and violent blundering of Bush and Blair, but of four hundred years of history.

None of which excuses the stupidity of the acts of religiously motivated violence unfolding before us. I am sorry to be obliged to concede that the evidence is strong that we live in a global age of renewed irrationality, where religious impulses can easily be channeled to violence and hate. Important groups of Muslims, Jews, Christians and Hindus seem all prone to the infection. The Christians have commanded the most firepower to date. I do not in the least despise religous faith – it can lead to self-knowledge and to concern for societal good. But Richard Dawkins is quite right about its capacity for evil.

There is a highly sensible article in today’s Times by Patrick Mercer MP about the possible death of Rashid Rauf (whose family are denying his demise).

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article5233272.ece

New Labour remains so bent on its simple minded pursuit of a foreign policy based on brute violence, that questions of legality are simply ignored. The Conservatives – in this case Mr Mercer – must again be congratulated for resisting simple populism and standing up for the fabric of legality that must underpin freedom.

To put it bluntly, if Rashid Rauf was indeed killed by US action in Pakistan. then he was murdered. He was killed on no legal authority. US attacks into Pakistan and Syria (which Obama supports) have no legal basis. Rauf was a UK citizen. We do not have the death penalty. Does New Labour accept as a matter of policy that the US can simply murder British citizens abroad at will? The government must be pressed hard on this question.

If Rauf has been killed, the question arises as to why. He was the primary source for information on the famous so-called liquid bomb plot to blow up airlines, which sparked the greatest over-reaction of government measures in the entire debacle of the War on Terror. Ultimately 80% of those arrested in connection with the “Liquid bomb plot” were released without charge, and the jury found that, while a small group did have terrorist intentions, there was no organised plan or airline bomb plot.

That is extraordinary, but even more extraordinary is that the prime informant, the alleged major al-Qaida terrorist, Rashid Rauf, “escaped” from the custody of the Pakistani intelligence services and MI6, apparently by simply walking out of his cell.

Let us add to this the further strangenesss that Rauf had originally left the UK after a warrant was issued for his arrest as a suspect in the murder of his uncle, a death with no apparent political or terrorist motive. Yet the UK authorities failed to request his extradition from Pakistan when he was in custody there, even though they were involved in his interrogation, and he was still wanted for murder in the UK.

So if Rauf was murdered (and his family are denying his death) was it because he was a terror suspect, or because the intelligence agencies were covering their tracks? Was the reason that the UK government did not want to extradite him to testify in the UK, the same reason he had to be silenced by his murder?

Here is a picture of Tim Spicer. And here is some of the work of his company.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=499399687545634893

The scariest thing about this is that an official US government investigation into this video by an Aegis employee found that these shootings by Aegis followed correct operating procedure.

Download file

Schillings are a firm of libel lawyers dedicated to prevent the truth from being known about some deeply unlovely people. They managed temporarily to close down this blog (and several others) to keep information quiet about the criminal record of Alisher Usmanov. Now they are attempting to block the publication of my new book in the interests of mercenary commander Tim Spicer, one of those who has made a fortune from the Iraq War. It is sad but perhaps predictable that private profits from the illegal Iraq war, in which hundreds of thousands of innocent people have died, are providing the funding to try to silence my book.

Libel law in the UK is a remarkable thing – Schillings can go for an injunction when I haven’t published anything about Spicer yet and they haven’t seen what I intend to publish. People might conclude that Spicer has something to hide. You will see that they also are attempting to censor not only the book, but what I say at the Edinburgh Book Festival on 12 August. I can assure you that they will find it impossible to affect what I say about Spicer at that event.

Nor will they prevent me from publishing the truth about Spicer, one way or another.

I am addressing the Cambridge Union on Monday 21 January, which should be fun.

http://www.cambridge-union.org/index.php?page=ZXZlbnQ=&eventid=334

I have just spoken to Jahongir who is expecting to be deported this evening, so we still have a few hours to try to stop this. An article 39 application to the European Court of Human Rights is being worked on, but not safe at this short notice. Meantime please contact your MP, any media contacts you have, anyone who might help. Both Tom Porteous of Human Rights Watch and myself worked the media yesterday, but to little apparent effect.

One of the many gross aspects of this case is that Jahongir’s case has been “fast tracked” and gone through hearing and appeal to deportation in just a fortnight. His solicitor had less than a week to prepare his appeal – and unfortunately I was in Africa all that week and could not appear as a witness. The judge dismissed requests for a postponement on the grounds she could see no valid reason why witnesses could not get to court. She also dismissed a letter from Uzbek opposition leader Mohammed Salih as not genuine – even though I know for sure it was genuine. This case points up the farce of our asylum system and the cruelty of the “Fast Track” process.

These are Jahongir’s Home Office references:

Home Office ref. ?” S2185191

Port ref. ?” BGT/188094

DMS ref. ?” 67823

Jahongir is currently in Harmondsworth Detention Centre.

Jahongir’s deportation is, beyond any possible dispute, illegal under international law. The UK is a State Party to the UN Convention Against Torture, which states at Article 3:

Article 3

1. No State Party shall expel, return (“refouler”) or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.

2. For the purpose of determining whether there are such grounds, the competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the State concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights.

it is quite impossible to argue, by the standard given, that it is admissible to return Jahongir to Uzbekistan. As a nation we appear to have abandoned all pretence at legality.

http://www.ohchr.org/english/law/cat.htm

From the Evening Standard, an article about Alisher Usmanov and me that is almost entirely wrong.

Arsenal billionaire in Red and White rumpus

07.09.07

A legal row has blown up between billionaire Alisher Usmanov, the man who has bought a ’75million stake in Arsenal, and the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan.

Craig Murray, who became a fierce critic of the Uzbek government after being the ambassador to the country from 2002 to 2004, was yesterday forced to remove a series of critical comments about Usmanov from his personal website.

The former diplomat penned a piece about Usmanov after his company Red and White bought ex-Arsenal vice-chairman David Dein’s 14.58% stake in the club last week.

Usmanov was born in Uzbekistan before moving to Russia and Murray made a number of allegations about the tycoon’s links with the Uzbek regime.

Usmanov has instructed solicitors to take action against media outlets making any damaging claims about the businessman and they threatened to sue Murray unless the article was removed.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/sport/article-23411391-details/Arsenal+billionaire+in+Red+and+White+rumpus/article.do

In fact, I have received no communication of any kind from Usmanov or his solicitors. the opposite is true; I telephoned Schillings and asked them to sue me, but they didn’t seem keen.

I know lawyers who would be delighted to have the chance to quiz Usmanov in the witness stand (if we can find one wide enough), about his criminal conviction in the Soviet Union, how he secured his pardon, his relationship with President Islam Karimov, Gulnara Karimova and Gafur Rakhimov, the sources of his wealth and the doings of Gazprom Investholdings. I should be interested in his views on the mysterious fall from a window of his employee Igor Safronov.

I know several people who would like to take the witness stand themselves.

To many people it might seem strange that somebody should need to get expensive libel lawyers to write to all newspapers, before anyone had published anything, threatening to take them to court if they did. Some people might conclude that indicates something to hide.

My earlier post was removed by my web server after the webhost was threatened with legal action. I have heard nothing – a cowardly way of proceeding, in my view. I support the webhost’s decision to remove the article rather than have the site, and other valuable sites, perhaps closed down. But once the truth has escaped onto the internet, it is out there, despite all their frantic efforts.

Everyone, whatever their crimes, deserves legal representation in the criminal law. But lawyers who, for money, work on suppressing the truth for people like Usmanov, are themselves slugs.

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

Where, exactly, might he have been concealing a bomb and have been in imminent danger of detonating it? Remember both 7 July and 21 July bombs were bulky productions contained in large backpacks.

An excellent article by Felicity Arbuthnot:

Arms from the US., have been flowing in to Israel, with Britain’s backing, to kill Palestinians at crossings, children going to school, families picnicking on beaches. Heavy machinery has demolished family homes, trashed municipal offices, villages, so foreign settlers or multinational businesses can ‘legally’ steal and build on ancient land, the heritage of families, handed down over generations; machinery which destroys their farms, citrus and olive groves. Where has been ‘peace envoy’ Blair’s unequivocal condemnation? Where has been even a bleat of protest? Did he read recent reports of a village where Bedouin have lived for sixty years, where Israeli forces were in such a hurry to demolish for more settlers, they allegedly even dragged babies out of homes, still in their play pens?

‘ “A true friend of the State of Israel,” said Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of his outgoing British counterpart Tony Blair “Tony Blair is a very well-appreciated figure in Israel,” said Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. According to an Israeli government statement, Israel “will provide [him] with all necessary assistance in order for him to carry out his duties.” , writes Arjan El Fassad (Electronic Intifada) You bet. Moreover: ‘In his speech at the Annual Reception of Labour Friends of Israel in September 2006, Blair said: “I have never actually found it hard to be a friend of Israel, I am proud to be a friend of Israel.” ‘ No doubt his role to ‘advise’ on ‘institutional reform’ in Palestine will provide him with a front row seat at the sort of ‘reform’ he has been party to in his invasions – destruction of life, limb and that left of Palestine’s civil society.

He should be quite at home in another invading, occupying country, which has also divided Palestine as he and Bush planned to divide Iraq – and where, like Iraq, communities are walled off from each other by the policies of ‘democracy’. The Messianic Blair, having bought lock, stock and barrel in to the neo-cons ‘crusade’, ‘clash of civlisations’, has never openly backed off from some seriously disturbing bedfellows.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6286

For those of you who have read Murder in Samarkand, you might be interested in an update on what has happened to Nadira, now over a year since the ending of the book.

Well, we are still very happy together. Nadira completed a course at Rose Bruford College, then last year did both summer schools at RADA and this week finishes her postgraduate acting course at Drama Studio London. Next week ahe discovers if she has passed her BA at Trinity College, London. She has obtained her RADA Bronze Shakespeare Certificate, and takes her Silver in the summer. As many actors who are native English speakers have difficulty with these, I am terribly proud of her.

But now, of course, she faces the acid test for any young actor; whetherr she can make a living in the profession. She has already had a couple of small professional parts on TV, but the next few months will be crucial. At this stage you need luck as well as talent and hard work.

Stalin had a word for it: Kompromat. it is now being used against Angus MacNeil, the Scottish Nationalist MP who launched the “Cash for Honours” scandal that may well put some of Blair’s top aides in jail, probably for their destruction of evidence.

This account from the “This is London” website makes the parallel with the smear campaign against me. I would add that, after a four month investigation loaded against me in every possible way, I was found not guilty of all the allegations against me.

For American readers, the age of consent in the UK is 16, so MacNeil is not accused of anything illegal. MacNeil has come clean and said he was “Wrong and stupid” to romp with the girls. That is a question of personal morality. Having seen their photos, I think he is a lucky man with excellent taste.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23392190-details/Is%20’sleazebuster’%20MP%20who%20romped%20with%20two%20teen%20girls%20the%20victim%20of%20a%20’smear%20campaign’/article.do

The MP who triggered the police investigation into cash-for-peerages is the suspected victim of a sinister smear campaign, it has been claimed.

Scottish Nationalist MP Angus Macneil was forced to apologise to his wife and family after admitting to a ‘drunken romp’ with two teenage girls.

But in a dramatic twist, SNP party leader Alex Salmond suggested the MP had been spied on by MI5 as a result of the honours inquiry.

Mr Salmond said Mr Macneil had made the ‘most extraordinary powerful enemies’ after the inquiry probed the highest levels of Downing Street.

His complaint to the Metropolitan Police has triggered a 13-month probe which has seen Tony Blair interviewed twice by detectives and fundraiser Lord Levy and top No10 aide Ruth Turner arrested.

Two police forces confirmed they had investigated complaints of ‘intense intrusion’ against Mr Macneil but said no crimes had been detected.

The Metropolitan Police revealed it had investigated an allegation of a break-in to Mr Macneil’s Commons office after claims it had been ‘swept’ in a covert spying operation, but found no evidence.

Yet the alleged incidents bear striking similiarities to the treatment of former ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, who claimed he was the victim of dirty tricks by MI6 after speaking out against US foreign policy in the former Soviet state.

After he accused Britain of being complicit in the torture of terrorist suspects by American forces, stories emerged of Mr Murray’s affair with a 22-year-old dancer, which the diplomat admitted, and accusations that he offered visas in return for sex, which he denied.

A Sunday newspaper revealed that Mr Macneil ‘kissed and fondled’ two teenage girls in a hotel room in July 2005.

Let me start by saying that I am not querying the coordinates (29 degrees 50.36 minutes North 048 degrees 43.08 minutes East) for the Indian merchant vessel given by the UK MOD. In the British version the incident took place at that vessel. They said that the Indian vessel was anchored at these coordinates for two days.

By contrast the Iranian government has given four different coordinates, allegedly referring not to a single incident but to the course of the Royal Naval vessels.

My point has been all along that the precise coordinates are a red herring, because the maritime boundary has never been agreed. There is therefore no clear “line” you can be one side or the other of.

But I have been contacted now by three independent people – two claiming experience as mariners – to make the following point. To the best of my ability I have checked it out, but I am not a qualified navigator. I am not claiming that the following is correct – it is put forward as a problem, not a solution. I am appealing for assistance from those technically equipped to throw any light on this problem.

The MOD claimed that the Indian merchant vessel was anchored “in the channel”. But these coordinates are over a nautical mile further West (ie towards Iraq) than the channel. That bit I am quite certain of.

The mystery is this. On British nautical maps, 29 degrees 50.36 minutes North 048 degrees 43.08 minutes East is 100 yards above the low water line. That is to say it dries out at low tide. The vessel pictured by the MOD is a substantial merchant vessel. No captain of such a vessel would knowingly take his vessel to such a position, let alone anchor it there for two days.

In fact legally those coordinates are on land.

As always, it is a bit more complex than that. British charts use the Lowest Astronomical Tide – that is the furthest the tide normally goes out in a year. So on British charts the vessel is 100 yards above the low water mark when the tide is at its lowest. US charts, which show a more normal low tide, show it as being just below the low water line. But that still puts it in very shallow water indeed.

Consider this. There is very little tide in the Gulf. The highest tidal range there is a vertical fall of only nine feet, and that is closer to the Arabian sea. Perhaps someone can find the draught of the Indian vessel when it left port (Lloyds List should have this). But it was laden with cars. I cannot conceive of it having a draught of less than twelve feet, possibly a good lot more.

In short, unless I am missing something very important, it looks like it would be very hard to get that Indian vessel to those coordinates at high tide, and it would certainly ground at low tide, pretty well at any time of year.

Before we leap to any conclusions, I can see at least three other possible explanations:

The mud and sands have shifted substantially since the charts were made, or it has been radically dredged

Sea levels in the Gulf at the time in question were, for some reason, unusually high; perhaps with some very local effect from very high outflow from the rivers

Neither the people who contacted me nor I can read a chart properly

What I am looking for are technical contributions to explain the alleged problem. Until we have clarified that, I would be grateful if the political pundits could hold fire. I am not saying that the coordinates were wrong, or that the ship could not be in that position.