Private diplomacy

The extent of foreign interference in Pakistan has turned our country into Swiss cheese. The ostensible meeting that a US diplomat organized at her private residence between an Indian diplomat and several senior Pakistani government officials is the latest sign of how dangerously soft the Pakistani state has become. The Foreign Office was obviously pushed by other departments of the government to issue a subtle warning to bureaucrats to intimate the government if foreign diplomats approach them and try to conduct private diplomacy outside regular channels. The conduct of 'private diplomacy' has become so prevalent in the past three years – and the profile of those involved so high – that it is bound to have serious implications for national security.

While there is nothing strange about foreign diplomats in Islamabad relying on cocktail parties for information gathering because they can no longer move freely due to security, especially for US diplomats, there is still a huge question mark over this particular incident. Except for the Indian diplomat, no other foreigners were invited to meet the senior Pakistani bureaucrats, among them a senior member of the prime minister's secretariat.

The subtle reminder by the Foreign Office to government officials is a good idea but is not enough. This reminder has to expand to include powerful people, party leaders and politicians. Over the past three years, and right under the noses of our intelligence agencies, a foreign government has organized all-expense-paid trips for mayors and district-level officials in Balochistan, NWFP and Sindh to the United States. These were not your average get-to-know visits. They included meetings with US government officials and military-linked representatives whose jobs do not involve any mayoral or city-government concerns.

This was not limited to mayors and district officials. Leaders from major Pakistani political parties have been conducting private

diplomacy without the knowledge of the government, and without any protest from the Pakistani side. The problem with these contacts is that no one knows what part of the foreign government is organizing this effort. Last August something stunning happened in this regard when the US State Department discovered that Washington's envoy to the UN Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad was directly in contact with the head of a major Pakistani political party, now our president, often speaking to him more than once every week, without the Department knowing anything about it.

The stunning part is that while the Pakistani government had no problem with this, it was the US government that protested. "What sort of channel is this, governmental, private, personnel?" A senior US government officer questioned Mr Khalilzad. "Please advise and help me so that I understand what's going on here." The fact that Mr Khalilzad's answer was not made public adds to the mystery and should have raised concerns in Islamabad as well. But it didn't.

To be fair, Pakistani politicians may not have exactly started this. The original sin was committed by a military man, former President Pervez Musharraf, who in late 2006 allowed two junior foreign diplomats – America's Richard Boucher and Britain's Peter Lyall Grant – to engineer domestic Pakistani politics. This was the beginning of overt foreign interference in Pakistani affairs. The overt examples of private diplomacy flourished after that.

Political parties and individual officials have no right to conduct private diplomacy with foreign governments. But after Mr Musharraf's indiscretion, serious transgressions have gone unnoticed. In another serious incident, our ambassador to Washington actually bypassed the Foreign Office to arrange in March in Dubai a secret meeting between our president and a much junior US government officer. Why our president consented to this is another question but the real concern here is how a Pakistani diplomat can do this with impunity.

The political parties act needs to be amended to proscribe direct contact between politicians and foreign governments without the presence of a government representative. To do this the mindset in Islamabad needs to be changed top to bottom. A nuclear-armed nation on a strategically precarious rollercoaster can ill afford to become exposed like a Swiss cheese.



The writer works for Geo TV. Email: aq@ahmedquraishi.com