Daily Times

In a remarkable development, Ms. Tehmina Janjua has been nominated the new Foreign Secretary of Pakistan. The development is remarkable because Tehmina is the first woman to be appointed to this prestigious and high-profile post. It is also highly commendable. Pakistan needs women role-models at every rung of its antediluvian, male-dominated structures. Tehmina is one of the most competent diplomats forged by the venerable Ministry of Foreign Affairs is beyond doubt. Cerebral, indefatigable and focused like a laser beam, she has earned the respect of her seniors, peers and juniors alike.

Her competence notwithstanding, she will need to cross five major rivers on assuming charge. This she will have to do both quickly and in ways that are acceptable to the relevant stakeholders. The first will be transitioning from the role of an Ambassador to developing a worldview of her own on all major global developments directly affecting Pakistan. India has been cantankerous since Mumbai and bilateral equilibrium has been sustained largely by the two neighbors’ reluctance to fight a costly war. Afghanistan is at loggerheads with us. The US, maladroitly mired in Afghanistan, has no good clue on its exit strategy. And the Foreign Office does not know Trump well.

To her relief, Tehmina will find in China a trustworthy and benevolent friend with sang-froid. However, she may wonder: How many in the Foreign Office understand China and can name top officials there except the President and possibly the Prime Minister? She will need to involve the Foreign Office in the management of CPEC, and perhaps even in its marketing within Pakistan. More important, she will need to tread a fine line between the interests of the US and China, a task that is bound to get more intricate with the passage of time.

Once she develops her own personal worldview on the US, India and Afghanistan, largely aided by analyses sent to her by hundreds of her Ambassadors and other diplomats (some crisp and thoughtful, others long-winded and desultory), she will face a new river to cross, having crossed the first river (to translate a famous Urdu verse). She will discover that the Foreign Office has lost its seat at the table over the last three decades. In fact, the Foreign Office does not really make foreign policy anymore, even though it gets to prepare briefs and talking points which few read. Winning back lost turf from more powerful and less generous stakeholders will test Tehmina’s mettle. These stakeholders include not only the Establishment but also the mighty media. As one diplomat confided in me recently “These media now rip us apart in two minutes on prime time and we cannot do much about it”.

Once Tehmina manages to convince her institutional rivals (the office of the Prime Minister, the Establishment, the TV and print media, the other political parties) that even though the cachet of the Foreign Office of the 1950s and 1960s cannot be recreated, her Foreign Office deserves at least a seat, however small, at the table, she will face a third river to cross. Its currents will be almost as strong as in the second. She will need to change no less than the very ethos of the Foreign Office.

Pakistan’s Foreign Office was invented long before the birth of Pakistan, at a time when diplomacy was left to diplomats because kings, and later prime ministers, found it prohibitively cumbersome to actually travel to the other country. Diplomats in turn came up with stylized formats of communication. One such format was country reports that contained prices of vegetables and eggs. Another was shipping a five hundred-page annual report that nobody with self-respect would read. Funnily, these practices are in vogue even now.

But things have changed. Take CPEC. It is a huge bilateral undertaking, worth perhaps more than USD 50 billion and may grow even further; the umbrella term of CPEC subsumes a large number of full-fledged projects. The Foreign Office however is threatened with exclusion from practically all of its aspects. CPEC needs project management skills, financial skills, engineering skills, legal skills, even language skills. Can the Foreign Office provide these? The Foreign Office still has some of the finest bureaucrats as its members but have they been properly trained? Even writing speeches has become a technical expertise rather than a general skill. Very soon, the Foreign Office will be facing the threat of seeming like a post office — protocol office combined in one.

But disparaging the Foreign Office is the last thing one should do — least of all this writer who learnt most of what he knows today from his generous seniors of this venerable institution. What Tehmina will thus need to do above all is somehow to motivate her people because the Foreign Secretary is, or should be, the Chief Human Resource Officer. I say this because in all my management experience, I have found that no one variable more important in accomplishing a task than motivating the workforce. But motivation will not come by augmenting the dollar amount each diplomat gets at the end of each month. Frederick Herzberg taught us half a century ago that until an employee enjoys autonomy and finds his or her work interesting, he or she will not be motivated. But this will only happen when the Foreign Office gets a seat at the table. The five rivers are in fact a complex delta.

Finally, Tehmina will need to let go of the very asset that catapulted her and many of her predecessors into this job — control over her domain. A great leader trains his successors. To make this happen, she or he needs to delegate work. Somehow, this might prove to be the most difficult river to cross because talented officers on reaching the pinnacle in the Ministry eventually stop trusting, and thus training, their subordinates.

I have not discussed Panama and its implications for the Foreign Office. For now, hats off to Tehmina for breaking the glass ceiling. We wish you the very best.

The writer has studied at Oxford, INSEAD and Cranfield. He was trained at the Foreign Office by Ambassadors Inamul Haque, Riaz Khokhar and Ashraf Qazi