Office politics

The absence of a full-time foreign minister has caused incessant furore in the country and its lack is frequently touted as failure of Pakistan’s foreign policy, never taking into account other vital aspects of foreign relations. Undoubtedly, the Foreign Ministry is a ‘great’ office of the state and its transcendental prestige is usually the vantage point from where a political career could be catapulted to the highest office in the land, an eventuality top-of-the ladder politicians have always remained wary of. It is now apparent that PM Nawaz Sharif had eluded a request of his one-time alter-ego Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan for the Foreign Affairs portfolio.

It is generally acknowledged that since the middle of the 1950s contours of foreign policy have been excessively intertwined with security considerations and foreign office mandarins have been constrained to obtain guidelines from the security apparatus. The political leadership is restricted to strategizing possible options and formulating foreign policy independently. The duo of Sartaj Aziz and Tariq Fatemi was therefore kept to perform the roles of ‘good cop, bad cop’ as the prime minister tried popping in some of his foreign policy ideas but kept withdrawal options open.

In India, Pandit Nehru retained the portfolio of foreign affairs for the entirety of his 17 years as PM. Out of 14 prime ministers of India, nine held this office at some point in their political careers: Nehru, Shastri, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, VP Singh, Narasimha Rao, (Jhelum born) IK Gujral, Vajpayee and (Chakwal born) Manmohan Singh. In contrast, out of 16 prime ministers of Pakistan four kept charge of the FO with them in addition to being prime minister: Liaquat Ali Khan, Mohammad Ali Bogra, Feroz Khan Noon and ZA Bhutto.

The Pakistani political class, and even military rulers, quickly realised the perils of handing over the FO to independent personalities as an able technocrat-turned-politician of the British era Sir Zafarullah Khan, the first foreign minister, ruled the roost with such panache that despite the opposition of most elected members of the constituent assembly from West Pakistan and all from East Pakistan, he signed the Manila Pact (SEATO) committing Pakistan firmly to the western alliance. His robust credentials as a stalwart of the Pakistan Movement served him in good stead and he survived upheavals such as the assassination of Liaquat Ali Khan and the dismissal of PM Khwaja Nazimuddin. Even his Ahmadi faith could not dislodge him even though anti-Ahmadi riots ripped through Punjab necessitating the imposition of Pakistan’s first martial law.

Zia-ul-Haq too was acutely aware of the magnetic pull of the foreign office and stringently controlled it through bureaucrat Agha Shahi, an aloof bachelor, and groomed a general to take it over, which Sahibzada Yaqub Khan, the superb linguist, eventually did and retained it for second longest time in Pakistan

The political game of musical chairs saw the sudden elevation as prime minister of Muhammad Ali Bogra, an elected politician from Barisal in East Pakistan who was relegated to a diplomatic career and was serving as Ambassador in Washington from where he was prematurely recalled. Mindful of the dominance of Sir Zafarullah Khan, he retained the portfolio of foreign ministry and his participation in the Bandung Conference in 1955 paved the way for Pak-China contacts although mainland China was then treated as a pariah by the western world that recognised Formosa (later Taiwan) as China. He visited India twice (August 1953 and May 1955) and on both occasions was accompanied by a different wife! His second marriage to the Lebanese Aliya Saddy led to widespread protests against polygamy by women activists in the country.

Bogra was followed by another Bengali non-entity from district Feni (home to a majority of current domestic Bengali workers in Pakistan), Hamidul Haq Chaudhry, whose flair for journalism made him launch the Pakistan Observer in 1949. He was succeeded by Feroz Khan Noon just as the military began asserting its influence on foreign policy and soon relegated him to oblivion as the last prime minister before Ayub Khan took the reins.

The beginning of the Ayub era witnessed Manzur Qadir (son of Sir Abdul Qadir, a prominent Muslim leader who led Anjuman-e-Himayat-e-Islam and the son-in-law of Mian Fazl-e-Hussain, Unionist Chief Minister of a United Punjab), a brilliant lawyer head the foreign office but Ayub Khan, for all intents and purposes, was his own foreign minister.  Ayub also employed constitutional juggler Sharifuddin Pirzada, (later elected unanimously as Secretary General of (the funnily titled!) Organisation of Islamic Conference) and Mian Arshad Hussain, a bureaucrat—but they paled in comparison to ZA Bhutto.

Ayub initially kept Bhutto at arm’s length, rotating him to the inconsequential mining and commerce portfolios till he succumbed to his charm, and committing the cardinal mistake of his reign, brought his future nemesis to the foreign office. ZAB’s ascendance reduced the intense pro-western orientation of foreign policy, and while trying to tread an independent course, he misled Ayub to the disastrous 1965 war with India. General Yahya Khan kept the foreign affairs portfolio under his belt throughout his tumultuous presidency running it through bureaucrats, SM Yusuf and Sultan Mohammad Khan.

As expected, Premier Bhutto would not allow the inherent strength of this office to be exploited by anyone else and he ran a tight ship with assistance of Aziz Ahmed, a bureaucrat, who consequently had the longest of tenures as foreign minister. ZAB affected a turnaround in Pakistan’s policy towards the Middle East that was hitherto considered a wasteland by policy makers. The prevailing disdain was amply reflected by the oft-quoted fetid remark of PM HS Suhrawardy, declaring the future prospects of the region zero-plus-zero-is-equal to zero. Bhutto’s efforts, however, netted a windfall of foreign remittances by expatriate Pakistani workers that four decades on is still sustaining Pakistan’s economy.

Zia-ul-Haq too was acutely aware of the magnetic pull of the foreign office and stringently controlled it through bureaucrat Agha Shahi, an aloof bachelor, and groomed a general to take it over, which Sahibzada Yaqub Khan, the superb linguist, eventually did and retained it for second longest time in Pakistan (both blocks of the Foreign Office are named after them). Their era as foreign policy czars entangled Pakistan in a violent regional religious imbroglio that seems never ending.

The reservations of both the military and political leadership about the self-perpetuating nature of this office were not out of place as subsequent political appointees tried to carve out a niche for themselves once made foreign ministers. PM Mohammad Khan Junejo tolerated Sahibzada Yaqub Khan but tagged him with Zain Noorani, a political infighter from Karachi as minister of state who gloated prematurely as ‘conqueror of Geneva’ when he signed the Geneva Accords in 1988, bringing about badly needed disengagement in Afghanistan against the designs of Zia who never wanted a pacifist solution to the Afghan war. Zia promptly and ignominiously sacked the Junejo government.

As an unwittingly surprising pick of Benazir Bhutto, Sardar Assef Ahmed Ali, a very average politician, tried to project himself a national personality far higher than his stature.  Gohar Ayub Khan was also entrusted with this responsibility but he was never comfortable as the late Siddique Khan Kanju, known as the ‘cotton king’ from Kahror Pucca in district Lodhran, was hemmed in as junior minister to frustrate him. Sartaj Aziz held this portfolio in the second administration of Nawaz Sharif and it was quite a treat to watch this financial wizard regurgitate diplomatic clichés effortlessly. Khurshid Kasuri, a singularly uncharismatic politician served in the dummy government of Shaukat Aziz under the aegis of Gen Musharraf, having no impact on foreign policy and ending up publishing a voluminously peevish account of his days in office largely reliant on foreign office records.

The unscrupulous ambition of Shah Mahmood Qureshi was given a fillip when his childish remark surprisingly tickled the fancy of the dour Hillary Clinton and he tried to jump above his station only to be brutally brought to ground by his erstwhile mentor, Asif Zardari, who hated being upstaged. Hina Rabbani Khar’s brief sojourn catapulted her on to the international stage, and though her style and sophistication dazzled the Indians during her visit there (the Chinese largely ignored her) her move to grant most-favoured nation status to India fell flat, and after shooting herself in the foot, she was cut down to size by a suspicious President Zardari, compelling her to retire from active politics.

Like other most important offices of state in Pakistan, the Foreign Office was also periodically managed by bureaucrats-turned-ministers such as the pedagogically bland Abdul Sattar unabashedly parroting the ‘security before cooperation’ mantra and the intellectually brilliant Inam-ul-Haq who impressed Pervez Musharraf with his pragmatism but failed to take along the rest of  his hawkish team.

Ali Siddiqi is a former bureaucrat and runs an academic training outfit in Karachi. He can be reached at tviuk@hotmail.com