Why do ‘good people’ do wrong things?…This is a question that philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, and criminologists have grappled with for a long time. The overwhelming evidence in scientific literature indicates that any criminal behaviour involves a dense interplay of individual and environmental factors. But when individuals with some commonality, in terms of demographic backgrounds, gender, age or something such, exhibit the same paradigm of behaviours, one could attribute its cause or correlation to those specific commonalities – ‘Young people are reckless,’ ‘old people drive slow,’ and like. And while such a thought process runs the risk of stereotyping individuals, one could agree that all stereotypes carry a grain of truth.
Now, let’s look at something which has, for quite some time, been making news in every corner of the world – Pakistani diplomats worldwide have recently been indulging in antisocial and criminal behaviour. This phenomenon borders on the bizarre, given that a nation’s diplomatic cadre is meant to be the most exemplary reflection of its society and ethos. The very individuals who are carefully selected and groomed to embody the culture and values of their country. It must be added that Pakistan has had some fine diplomats over the years, but those increasingly schooled in the Pak Army dictated curriculum..make a sorry picture.
Evidence has been mounting against the Pakistani diplomatic community in the last few years. Incidences such as the expulsion of Farina Arshad, Second Secretary (Political) at the Pakistan High Commission at Dhaka, from Bangladesh for financing terror activities in 2015; Amir Zubair Siddiqui, a visa counsellor at Pakistan High Commission in Colombo being put on the terror watch list by NIA for indulging in espionage and terror activities in 2018; and the arrest and deportation of two employees of Pakistan Embassy for espionage from New Delhi in 2020, reflect a deep malaise eating away at the crème de la crème of the Pakistani State machinery. In fact, compared to all these instances, the case of the two diplomats who were caught stealing a hat worth $10.70 and chocolates for $1.7 in Yongsan (Korea) from end April 2021, might just be the best of culture and values of their parent country.
An isolated incident may reflect an individual’s character flaws, but such regular and repeated occurrence tells a different story about Pakistan and her diplomats. Perhaps, one needs to look beyond the bees and examine the hive.
It will not be too far-fetched to assume that Pakistan’s foreign policy, like everything else, is run from Rawalpindi, the headquarters of the all-powerful Pakistan Army. Evidence supports this view. The Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI) personnel are routinely deputed to Pakistani Missions abroad. They have been caught red-handed on several occasions while pursuing terrorism-related and other illegal activities. In 2001, Mohammad Arshad Cheema, First Secretary at the Pakistani Embassy in Kathmandu, was arrested for possessing 16kgs of RDX! While a diplomat being arrested for possessing RDX seems bizarre in any other context, everything seems possible in ‘Naya Pakistan’. In the same vein, Pakistani Defence Attaché (and ISI representative) in Colombo, Colonel Shaharyar Butt, was repatriated in 2014 because he kept ‘butting’ into the High Commission’s affairs.
The key to understanding the above phenomenon lies in recognizing that ISI nodes, present in almost all Pakistani Embassies, function as hotbeds of ISI’s toxic agenda. In their defence, one can surmise that one nation’s spy may be another nation’s hero – and in some misplaced context that Pakistan is all too used to – diplomats indulging in espionage and terrorism may be seen as ‘heroes’, just as the likes of Masood Azhar and Hafiz Saeed are seen as ‘patriots’. Be that as it may, it still does not forgive their conduct from violating the sacred essence of the profession of diplomacy. Perhaps, Pakistan has different standards for what it means to be a diplomat! And the world must watch out, the way United States did, between May 2018 – 2019, when it restricted the movement of Pakistani diplomats to a few square miles within the country.
However, even more alarming are the morally degraded acts that many Pakistani diplomats have been indulging in recently. No amount of patriotism can justify these acts, given the moral depravity at play – Allegations of domestic abuse against Munir Akram, Pakistan’s current Permanent Representative to UN; arrest of Mazhar Khan, the Assistant Visa Officer at Pakistan High Commission at Dhaka, for dealing in fake currencies in 2015; two Pakistani diplomats in the UK charged with child abduction and rape in 2014 – crimes so serious that Islamabad had voluntarily surrendered their diplomatic immunity; Waqas Ahmed, a Pakistani diplomat in Harare was arrested and imprisoned for human trafficking, money laundering, sexual harassment and even sexual misconduct with minors!
There is indeed overwhelming evidence which points at the seemingly irreparable moral degradation of the Pakistani diplomatic corps. In a country where an unchecked Army and its crony political heavyweights set the yardstick of morality, everyone else automatically lives in a laissez-faire ‘dog-eat-dog’ reality. Such an attitude of the diplomatic corps indicates that the edifice of Naya Pakistan is crumbling, and the distressing condition of their foreign service being the proverbial fruits of a poisonous tree.
Talking about fruits, and this also brings us to the question that why do ‘good people’ do wrong things – well, at times, it is not about a few bad apples…instead, the barrel itself has gone bad and needs a firm and resolute shaking up!
