The bad patches in our diplomacy

In the year 2001, when the Bangladesh Nationalist Party returned to power and the Awami League went back into opposition, the new government decided that the high commissioner to the United Kingdom would be transferred to Vietnam. Rather than accept his new appointment, the diplomat in question decided to resign and stay on in London, where his friends and well-wishers made arrangements for his necessary upkeep. He stayed put until the Awami League returned to power in 2009; and then he expected to be restored to his old position at the country’s mission in London. The government did not oblige him but offered him another capital. He declined the offer. That spelt the end of his diplomatic career.

In the 1970s, two Bengali diplomats who had in 1971 served the Yahya Khan regime loyally and one of whom even had the temerity http://viagravscialis-best.com/ to tell the Pakistani media, when he was on leave from cena cialis his duties in Delhi, that ‘miscreants’ in ‘East Pakistan’ were being tackled by the Pakistan army, found themselves accommodated in the Bangladesh Foreign Service. One of the two men further scaled the ladder of success, through becoming foreign secretary of a country whose freedom fighters he had denigrated as miscreants. He would move higher, through one day taking office as minister of state for foreign affairs. The other one, who had spent the months after December 1971 telling people in his Islamabad office that Bangladesh would not last, eventually como comprar cialis seguro found himself relieved of his responsibilities by the Bhutto regime. He would soon be part of the Foreign Office in Bangladesh.

As Bangladesh’s War of Liberation showed signs of reaching a decisive phase, a senior Bengali diplomat in the Pakistani Foreign Office accompanied Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to Beijing in November 1971 to solicit Chinese support for a beleaguered Pakistan against Bangladesh. He would, after Pakistan’s defeat, return to Bangladesh and, in the Ziaur Rahman regime, take over as Bangladesh’s foreign secretary. Another Bengali, reluctant to come back home from Pakistan to a free Bangladesh, happily served viagra i norge as Islamabad’s ambassador in some Latin American countries till 1977. He would come back to Dhaka in the Ershad years and serve as deputy speaker of the Jatiyo Sangsad.

There are all the other stories as well, those this nation should keep in iron-cast memory, should indeed record in its studies of history. Officers posted at the various wings of Bangladesh missions abroad in clandestine fashion have applied for settlement in the United States, in clear violation of the rules of service. Press ministers who have served at the missions in Delhi, London and Washington have returned home once their terms have come to an end, with one exception. The press minister sent to the London mission in 2000 did not return home after his appointment was terminated by a new government following the October 2001 election. He stayed on in Britain and at a certain point, after a lapse of several years, managed to acquire a British passport. Neither the Bangladesh nor the British government noticed that he had not returned home.

There have been ambassadors who have served Bangladesh abroad for years, without having to take the trouble of going for home postings. Lobbying proved useful – and it did not matter which party was in power at a given moment – for such diplomats. By the time they went into superannuation, they had made good arrangements for themselves and their families to stay on, in places such as New York and Virginia and elsewhere around the world. Having ‘served’ the country, having been at the receiving end of the nation’s scarce resources, these diplomats preferred to stay away from the country. They became citizens of other countries!

Patriotism is no one’s monopoly, but when your diplomats secretly inform themselves that there will hardly be any point for them to go back home, there are all the questions that call for answers. When an ambassador begins, from buy viagra canada day one at his job abroad, to look for ways and means of finding permanent residence for himself in the country he has been sent to in order to speak for the nation, you are inclined to ask who vetted his appointment at the Foreign Office in Shegun Bagicha.

We have had an ambassador recalled from Manila on the basis of charges that she engaged in financial wrongdoing. In recent times, the Philippine media have loudly condemned the activities of our present ambassador in Manila. There is the tale of an ambassador who did not live up to diplomatic norms while stationed in Kathmandu. Years ago, the ambassador in China had to be moved to Burma (as it was known then) over complaints by the Beijing authorities of behaviour not diplomatic. An ambassador in Berlin, in more recent times, was called back home on the basis of German cialiswomen-femalecialis complaints. A high commissioner in London was swiftly pushed aside when reports emerged of wrongdoing on his watch. In neither of the cases was any inquiry initiated. Indeed, both diplomats were sent off to newer destinations.

Ambassadors long gone into superannuation have been brought back into the limelight, to serve in important global capitals. The result has been growing disillusionment among serving diplomats ambitious of speaking for the country in those capitals. There have been ambassadors and high commissioners who have seen nothing wrong in seeking extensions of service through cosying up to the families of the powers that be. Sycophancy triumphs when an ambassador carries the suitcases of the relative of a powerful politician. Must he do that? Kowtowing for favours has seen another ambassador swim in a pool to impress a dictator, arrange to have a display of footwear for a prime minister and sing praises of another prime minister. All that is missing is embarrassment, for this diplomat.

Too many changes of high commissioners have taken place in the United Kingdom in the last fifteen years. In Pakistan, where Bangladesh is in huge need of the presence of a powerful and articulate high commissioner, our diplomacy has largely been a blank.

Scholar-diplomats have long been absent in our diplomacy. Political appointees have often been sent abroad as ambassadors by different governments, but intellectuals have been ignored. The generation of Khan Sarwar Murshid, A.R. Mallick, Khan Shamsur Rahman and Syed Najmuddin Hashim once lent brilliance to our articulation of the national interest abroad. They were the soul of a nation, in myriad ways.

We do not experience such brilliance as these men epitomized any more in our diplomacy.

Source: bdnew24