On a recent visit to Washington DC, Ambassador Rizwan Saeed hosted a “samosa and tea” at the Pakistan Embassy for a group of Americans.
The Ambassador was kind enough to host the event at my request for a specific audience.
The guests had one thing in common; they had all lived in Pakistan in their pre-teen and teenage years and had attended the various US embassy linked schools in Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi.
The event was delightful and the guests loved being on “Pakistan’s soil” after 45 years.
“Why host them”? Somebody asked me.
My response was “So we can engage one of our best assets in the US to advocate for Pakistan”.
Pakistan realizes that it needs substantial advocacy in the US, more than ever before. The task is Herculean given the low starting point of the prevailing misperceptions about Pakistan and the biases prevalent in the new US regime. However, I believe that it is highly possible to change these bad perceptions if Pakistan is strategic and engages all the resources at its disposal – resources beyond the “paid” lobbyist who charge a king’s ransom yet their efficacy is questionable. From my perspective, there are four main categories of advocates that are available to Pakistan in the US. They need to be organized and engaged as suggested in the subsequent discourse.
The first category is the “Pakistani-Americans”. These are the foundation of the Pakistani Diaspora in the the US. Some informal estimates suggest that this population may currently be over 1 million. They mostly dwell in NY city area, DC, Houston, Dallas, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Chicago and Atlanta. They have formed various groupings including Pakistan-America associations, medical associations, advocacy groups and organizations that support education and economic support.
The majority of the Pakistanis belonging to this category that I have labeled “Pakistani-Americans” have tremendous utility: they send remittances to Pakistan, they work at the grass roots in the US, they have electoral muscle in some of the key US constituencies and overall can make “noise” for Pakistan at appropriate times. However, Pakistan needs to educate and guide them towards specific national interests, because left up to themselves and barring guidance, they end up wasting their energies, and get divided into rival political groups. Pakistan also needs to realize that their reach to the powerful circles in the US is relatively limited and they don’t usually speak to power in the US in a language that is understood. After all, they speak as “Pakistanis” who are mostly less understanding of the caveats of US power politics and what to push for that would be heard.
The second category of the Pakistani heritage in the US is the “Americanized-Pakistanis”. These may only be 5% of the Pakistani bloodline in the US, but they are Americanized as the title goes and for advocacy purposes, they can punch way above their weight. They may be serving within the US government, political offices, law firms, US corporations, MNCs, etc. For the most part they see Pakistan both through the American and the Pakistani eyes, are not apologists for either country, and hence can find the convergence of interests and the potential of a close partnership between Pakistan and the US – the 3rd and the 5th largest countries of the world.
The third category is what I call the “Gora-Pakistanis”. This category is the one that the Ambassador hosted for the “samosa and tea”, and it consists of the alumni of international schools in Pakistan. They typically lived in Pakistan for 2-5 years and understand Pakistan. They know that Pakistan is a beautiful place, they have close ties to the people and culture, and they are clear eyed about the security misconceptions about Pakistan. I would be bold enough to say that many of them have a deep fondness, if not love, for Pakistan and long to come back. Because they are progeny of parents who worked at the US embassy, agencies, USAID, development organizations, US MNCs, etc, and got the best education in the elite international schools of the world, they have ended up in key positions in the US, such as departments of State, Treasury and Justice. They have also risen to become authors, academics and business persons. Essentially, they have been or are in positions of political influence or thought leadership and we are remiss in not tapping into their knowledge and fondness for Pakistan, and their influence in the US. They have been studying and leaving Pakistan since 1960s and are in tens of thousands in number.
The last category is the Americans who have served in Pakistan in official capacity. They have served in the embassy, development agencies, economic partnership creation and even covert agencies and the military (including contractors). Most of them have gone back to the US and are now heading think tanks or holding other important positions. As an illustration, the South Asian heads of think tanks like Wilson Centre, Stimpson Centre and the Albright-Stone Group are all former residents of Pakistan. They can be valuable advocates for Pakistan and we should utilize their historic ties and knowledge. We have a lot of resources in the US to support Pakistan, we simply need to identify, guide, support and mobilize them!
—The writer is a former Senior Advisor to the Government of Pakistan .
