Pakistan Foreign Service: The Service that Was! Part III
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada

 

ZAB’s primary motive in throwing open PFS to his cronies and cohorts was to politicize one Superior Service of Pakistan which, by the nature of its foreign orientation had remained, until then, largely unaffected and unpolluted by Pakistan’s political meandering. His intent was crystal clear; he wanted to lard the ranks of PFS with those whose loyalty would be, primarily, to him and only, secondarily, to the country he planned to rule for life.

So, it was quite in fitness of things that the over-riding attribute of Pakistan’s arcane political culture—its endemic and festering corruption—would come in tow with the ‘lateral entrants’ staking their share of greener pastures abroad.

The contagion of corruption, infecting most other Services of Pakistan, hadn’t reached the portals of PFS until ZAB took it to himself to pollute this insulated Service, too, with the virus of corruption.

ZAB complemented the opening of PFS to his loyalists with throwing open the doors to the outside world for ordinary Pakistanis. Until that point, a passport to travel out of Pakistan wasn’t accessible to the ordinary. It was hard to get a passport for most Pakistani citizens—a privilege for only a limited number of Pakistanis.

ZAB’s move to make it easier for Pakistani workers to obtain a passport to travel was a brilliant move. The job market in Pakistan’s vicinity was at the point of becoming a bonanza for Pakistani labor. Oil-rich Gulf countries were opening their doors to foreign labor. It was boom period for these countries and it was Manna for Pakistani workers, especially in the construction industry. So, ZAB’s move was a win-win for him. It was calculated to transform into something tangible from what, until then, had only been a slogan to propagate his credentials of being the people’s leader committed to revolutionizing their lives and liberate them from the shackles of grinding poverty.

But while the Gulf countries became an El-Dorado for Pakistani workers, a diplomatic assignment in one of those countries became a challenge for the mandarins of PFS.

Wholesale migration of Pakistani workers to the oil-rich and booming Gulf countries impacted the Foreign Service in ways never imagined before this wave hit the shores of Pakistan. The outside world was no longer a terra incognita, an unfamiliar or distant territory. My late father was opposed to my choice of Foreign Service which, in his words, was akin to a ‘peacock dancing in the woods, unseen by men.’ Who would know whatever you may be doing in a distant land, my father would argue. ‘Which of your childhood friend would see your pomp as a diplomat in a god-forsaken foreign land?’

But the ease of travel to foreign lands forever changed the whole context of the Foreign Service. The outside world was no longer alien. In other words, the world beyond Pakistan had adopted it, or Pakistan had adopted the outside world, whichever way one would describe the new phenomenon.

With this grass-root transformation, the whole concept of Foreign Service being exclusively devoted to representing Pakistan in foreign capitals changed overnight. In the context of the Gulf countries—with burgeoning numbers of Pakistani workers—diplomacy became secondary to serving the Pakistani diaspora. I learned this new definition of Foreign Service in all of its multiple dimensions in two postings in Kuwait: first, from 1978 to 1981, as Counsellor and Deputy Chief of our Embassy in Kuwait; and secondly, as Ambassador to Kuwait, from January 1992 to November 1996.

The burden of catering to the needs of Pakistani diaspora—with its heavy overlay of unskilled or semi-skilled and largely unlettered Pakistani workers and artisans—mutated the work of a diplomat from its classical description of ‘one lying abroad for the good of his country’ into a public servant catering to the needs of his countrymen. My job as Counsellor of our Embassy in Kuwait was also saddled with the onerous duties and obligations of a Deputy Commissioner.

My father’s description of me as a peacock dancing in the woods was no longer apposite. I was, now, a public servant in the strict sense of the term. The traditional sense of a bureaucrat confined to his office, and largely invisible to the common man had disappeared. The new norm of a diplomat, in a Gulf country, was that of a ‘Light House’ visible even from afar and one that was looked up to by men in distress.

Men-in-distress succinctly encapsulated the new description and function of a Pakistani diplomat in a worker-intensive oil-rich Gulf country. Our workers, hard-working and diligent, were looked down upon by the nouveau riche local employers. They were treated as trash by arrogant bosses and pay-masters. Contracts, signed by the hiring agency in Pakistan—a requirement of our government—were trashed and violated with impunity once the poor workers would start working for their employers and contractors. Invariably, contractual terms were changed in the interest of the local employer, and against the interest of the Pakistani wage-earner.

The labor laws in every Gulf country were heavily loaded in favor of the local Kafil or Employer. In such a scenario, their Embassy was their ultimate refuge for Pakistani workers, a veritable Light House to sailors buffeted by ill-winds.

But whilst this new job-description of their posting in a Gulf country was a challenge to a conventional Pakistani Foreign Service officer, it was a bonanza for a ‘lateral entry’ officer. A posting in a Gulf country was avidly sought by a lateral entrant because that’s where the dough was. A diplomatic assignment in a Gulf country could well be a gold-mine for a gold-digger lateral entrant. Community welfare—an essential obligation in the work chart of a diplomatic officer—degenerated into exploitation of poor workers and welfare of officers tasked with that humanitarian obligation.

It was a shocking development for this hack, and others of my ilk, that bribes were demanded in return for routine consular services dispensed to unsuspecting Pakistani workers. The culture of corruption—part and parcel of public-dealing departments in Pakistan—was being rapidly transplanted in the oil-rich fertile soil of the Gulf.

As Pakistan’s Ambassador to Kuwait, it was almost routine for me to deal with local law enforcement holding an Afghan national in custody against charges of drug smuggling or drug-peddling. Invariably, that Afghan would be holding a Pakistani passport, issued to him in Pakistan. My standard practice in such cases was to withhold the Afghan’s Pakistani passport and refer him to the Embassy of Afghanistan.

Corruption pervaded, not only the ranks of lateral entrants but also travelled, upward, to the level of ambassadors appointed on political connections. There were instances where such ‘political appointees’ literally ransacked their government-provided and officially-furnished ‘Residence’ of its valuable furniture, furnishings, paintings et al. General Ziaul Haq, on his watch as President, mandated that an album of photographs of every piece of furniture and furnishing at Embassy Residence be compiled at the time of an ambassador taking charge of his office. The album would be tallied with the furnishings of the place before the ambassador departed from his post.

The seeds of corruption sowed in the infancy of benighted ‘lateral entry’ scheme didn’t take long before striking firm roots in Pakistan’s once impeccably clean Foreign Service. ZAB may have never suspected it, but his brain wave—entirely motivated by his insatiable thirst for absolute power—transformed the façade and erstwhile elegant structure of Foreign Service for good. The fabled peacock of my father’s imagination had been, perhaps inadvertently, preened off its once lustrous and colorful feathers. It was, now, as bald as an ostrich. (Continued next week) - K_K_ghori@hotmail.com

(The author is a former ambassador and career diplomat)