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COMMENTARY
Musharraf wrestles with a
Turkish solution
By K Gajendra Singh
At his very first press conference
after taking over as Pakistan's chief executive on October
12, 1999, General Pervez Musharraf spotted some
journalists from Turkey. Musharraf, speaking in fluent
Turkish, told them he was a great admirer of Kemal Ataturk, the
founder of the Turkish Republic and its first president.
"As a model, Kemal Ataturk did a great deal for
Turkey. I have his biography. We will see what I can do
for Pakistan." Not only is he more at home with Turkish
than Pakistan's national language, Urdu, Musharraf also
admires Turkey's generals and the country's political
model, having spent his most impressionable school years
in the early 1950s in Ankara, where his father was
posted as a junior diplomat.
Ataturk's legend of
forging a new, vibrant, modern and secular Turkey out of
the ashes of the decaying deadwood of the Ottoman Empire
left an indelible mark on young Pervez, as evidenced by
his remarks at the press conference and his subsequent
actions as leader of Pakistan.
However,
following his statements lauding Ataturk, the
Jamaat-i-Islami, the largest of Pakistan's religious
parties, immediately expressed its opposition to the
secular ideology of Kemalism being used to buttress
Musharraf's position. As a result, Musharraf now also
highlights the aborted vision for Pakistan of
Qaid-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the country's founding
father and first leader after independence in 1947.
Early days
Pervez Musharraf was born
on August 11, 1943, in an old haveli (mansion) in
Neharvali Street behind the Golcha cinema in Delhi. When
he was four years old his family - mother and father and
two brothers (his father hugging a box stuffed with
thousands of rupees) - migrated to Karachi in the new
Pakistan soon after it won independence from Britain in
August, 1947.
Non-Punjabi speaking immigrants
from India (Urdu was the home language of the
Musharrafs) are now mostly concentrated in the ghettoes
of Karachi and nearby Hyderabad, and are known as
Mohajirs (a name preferred by them to that of "refugee")
and they form over 8 percent of the population.
They have been openly discriminated against by
the ruling Punjabi elite and have, therefore,
established a political organization of Urdu-speaking
migrants, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), in
Karachi, whose leader, Altaf Hussain, now lives in
London.
Starting with president Iskender Mirza,
who was exiled by General Ayub Khan after the 1958 coup,
the tradition of exiling political leaders has been kept
up. Former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz
Sharif are the latest examples.
The Mohajirs,
led by the Karachi-born Jinnah of the Ismaili Bohra
community, who built up his legal practice and political
career in Bombay, now Mumbai, were primarily responsible
for the creation of Pakistan. Being generally better
educated, they had formed the ruling group in Pakistan's
then capital city of Karachi before the new capital and
power center was built up in the north in Islamabad in
the heartland of the Punjabis, who form about 60 percent
of the population.
After a stay of six years in
Ankara, where Pervez learned to speak and write Turkish
fluently, he completed his further education in English
medium schools in Karachi and Lahore. He joined the
Pakistan Military Academy in 1962 and finished second in
the class after Quli Khan.
The military has
always been a coveted profession in Pakistan, but its
officer class has traditionally been dominated by
Punjabis, with the Mohajirs actively discriminated
against. Nevertheless, Musharraf proved himself loyal
and diligent, especially with regard to Pakistan's
anti-India policy.
Other members of the
Musharraf family have sought greener pastures, though.
Except for his married daughter, Ayla, an architect, who
lives in Karachi, the oldest brother, Javed, is an
economist with the International Fund for Agricultural
Development in Rome. Another brother, Dr Naved
Musharraf, is based in Illinois, US, and is married to a
Filipino. Musharraf's son, Bilal, an actuary, is settled
in Boston, US, and even his father and mother, who
passed away a few months after Musharraf took power, had
become naturalized US citizens.
Raised by
parents who were moderately religious, modern and almost
secular in outlook, and well educated (his mother had a
masters degree in literature from Delhi and had worked
for the International Labor Organization in Karachi),
Pervez was reinforced in these tendencies during his
Ankara stay.
Outgoing and extrovert, Musharraf
is a caring family man, but somewhat authoritarian.
After a normal retirement as a lieutenant-general,
Musharraf would have perhaps divided his time between
Pakistan and the US. Even now, when on official visits,
he spends time with Bilal in Boston, while still
utilizing the time to promote Pakistan.
Destiny's wheel
But destiny had other
plans for Musharraf. Two things happened that catapulted
him to the top of the heap.
A thoughtless and
erratic prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, who twice came
into power in the musical chairs with Benazir Bhutto -
conducted by the Pakistan military after the air crash
death of dictator General Zia ul-Haq in 1988 - started
to go haywire after his 1997 election victory. After
winning a two-thirds majority, despite an abysmal
turnout of less than 30 percent, Sharif amended the
constitution, stripping the president of the power to
dismiss the government and made his power to appoint
military service chiefs and provincial governors
contingent on the "advice" of the prime minister.
Worse, in a rush of blood, he forced General
Musharraf's predecessor as head of the army, General
Jahangir Karamat, an able and apolitical general, to
resign. Karamat, after a lecture at the Pakistan Defense
Academy, had expressed the need for a National Security
Council (NSC) in view of the introduction of nuclear
weapons into Pakistan's arsenal.
Sharif, whose
family is of Indian Punjab origin and now settled in
Lahore, was a small-time businessman. He was groomed
(along with many other middle class Punjabis) by General
Zia (also from Indian Punjab) as a reliable rival to the
Sindhi Benazir Bhutto, and other feudal political
leaders.
Sharif had promoted Musharraf in
October 1998 to General and chief of Army staff,
thinking that being a Mohajir without a Punjabi support
base he would have no Bonapartist ambitions. Perhaps
Musharraf would have faded away after completing his
term. But at a time when the economic situation at home
was dismal, in another rush of blood and hoping to gain
absolute power and earn popularity, Sharif dismissed
Musharraf and attempted to replace him on October 12,
1999, with a family loyalist, the Director General of
the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI),
Lieutenant-General Ziauddin. Although Musharraf was out
of the country at the time, the army moved quickly to
depose Sharif in a bloodless coup.
Two days
before the coup, the Washington Post had noted that
"analysts said Sharif has little idea how to restore
confidence in a government that has lost credibility at
home and abroad - this deeply unpopular government is
facing its worst crisis since early 1997".
One
of the reasons that Sharif wanted to get rid of
Musharraf was because he had led the Pakistani forces in
the debacle at Kargil, in the summer of 1999.
Infiltrators from Pakistan occupied positions on the
Indian side of the Line of Control in the remote,
mountainous area of Kashmir near Kargil, threatening the
ability of India to supply its forces on the Siachen
Glacier.
Serious fighting flared in the Kargil
sector, but the infiltrators withdrew following a
meeting between Sharif and then president Bill Clinton
in July. Sharif was severely embarrassed by the
incident, although Sharif appeared to be in the loop and
would have happily reaped the benefit of popularity if
the adventure had succeeded. After Musharraf took over,
Sharif was charged with attempted murder and other
crimes.
A Gallup Poll taken a day after
Musharraf seized power revealed that most Pakistanis
wanted an unelected, interim government of "clean
technocrats" to rule for at least two years. Even
Benazir Bhutto said, "He [Musharraf] was a professional
soldier and I thought he was very courageous and brave.
He'd been a commando and one who is a commando can take
tremendous risks and think afterwards."
A
Pakistani editorial welcomed the coup, "This is
perfectly understandable. The political record of the
last decade of 'democracy' is dismal. Benazir Bhutto
blundered from pillar to post during 1988-90. Nawaz
Sharif plundered Pakistan (1990-93) as if there were no
tomorrow. Then Benazir was caught, along with her
husband, with her hands in the till instead of on the
steering wheel. So Sharif returned to lord it over a
bankrupt country. Then, obsessed with power, and
emboldened by an illusion of invincibility, he went for
the army's jugular and paid the price for his
recklessness."
Turkish connection
It
comes as no surprise that that Musharraf visited Ankara
within days of taking power, in November, 1999, to take
up a pre-coup invitation from Turkey's military chief of
general staff, who happened to be away when the
Pakistani general turned up.
But Musharraf s
main objective was to confer with General Kenan Evren,
who had seized power in 1980. Yet Musharraf found
himself a most unwelcome guest because both President
Suleyman Demirel and Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit, now
rehabilitated and back in power, had been imprisoned and
debarred from politics after Evren's coup. They advised
Musharraf to restore democracy at the earliest possible
chance.
The influential Turkish Daily News,
close to Demirel, castigated the visit as "untimely and
unnecessary so soon after grabbing power and jailing
elected prime minister Nawaz Sharif. The coup in
Pakistan or one in any other country can never be
accepted. Despite the role of the military in public
life in Turkey the general failed to realize the
sensitivity Turks feel towards coups and authoritarian
rule. He seemed to forget that Turks have now found out
that coups have not solved the problems of the country
and that, to the contrary, they have further complicated
things. The way the general praised former coup leader
General Evren was unnecessary."
So Musharraf met
his old friends in Ankara and lunched with the chief of
protocol, an old school mate. Musharraf did concede
before leaving that all countries must find their own
solutions.
Turkish political model
The
fascination of the Pakistani military with the Turkish
military's institutionalized role in politics through a
National Security Council (NSC) is abiding. It stems
from the days of General Zia ul-Haq, if not earlier,
with close interaction between the military brass as
Cold War allies of the US.
Many senior Pakistani
generals have been posted as ambassadors to Ankara. Zia
ul-Haq had wanted to create an NSC in the 1980s, but he
was dissuaded from doing so. President Farooq Leghari,
under military prodding, had even issued a decree in
January 1997 creating an NSC on the Turkish pattern, but
Sharif, on being elected in 1997, allowed it to lapse.
Following the Turkish coup in 1960, the
1961constitution transformed the earlier innocuous
National Defense High Council into the National Security
Council. The president of the republic, instead of the
prime minister, was made its chairperson, and the
"representatives" of the army, navy, air force and the
gendarmerie became its members, apart from the prime
minister and four other ministers. The council now
became a constitutional body and offered "information"
to the Council of Ministers (cabinet) concerning the
internal and the external security of the country. After
constitutional amendments following the 1971-73 military
intervention, it submitted its "recommendations" to the
Council of Ministers.
The 1982 constitution, a
less liberal product and the result of the 1980-1983
military intervention, further strengthened the NSC's
role by obliging the Council of Ministers to give
priority to its recommendations. Threats from the
military members of the NSC had made premier Demirel
resign in 1971, and the first-ever Islamist premier,
Necmettin Erbakan, was forced to leave in 1997, thus
avoiding direct military takeovers.
The Turkish
armed forces enjoy total autonomy in their affairs.
Their Chief of General Staff (CGS) ranks after only the
prime minister, and along with the president forms the
troika that rules the country.
Since the 1960
coup, Turkish politicians have slowly worked out a
modus vivendi with military leaders, with
incremental assertion of civilian supremacy. Since 1923,
except for President Celal Bayar (ousted in the 1960
coup), all Turkish presidents had been retired military
chiefs. But first Turgut Ozal (1989-1993) and then
Demirel (1993-2000) strengthened civilian ascendancy by
getting themselves elected as president. The current
President, Necdet Sezer, is a former chairman of the
Supreme Court.
In Pakistan, the position of the
army's CGS, originally based on the British colonial
pattern but modified after 55 years of experience since
independence in 1947, during which the military has
directly governed for more than half the period, is even
more decisive and certainly more arbitrary than the
Turkish equivalent.
In mooting an NSC in 1998,
with a say for the armed forces in decision-making, then
Pakistan army chief of staff Jehangir Karamat was only
stating a political reality which might have avoided
unsavory confrontation. It would have legalized the de
facto position of the military and made its role more
predictable and even accountable. Sharif was not amused,
and Karamat requested early retirement, which was
instantly approved.
After the 1971 Turkish coup,
with the top military command channeled into the NSC,
putsches by colonels, tried a few times in the 1960s,
disappeared in Turkey. The 1971 intervention was a
result of pressure from middle level officers. Like
Turkish politicians, Pakistanis will have to slowly work
out a modus vivendi with military leaders for an
incremental assertion of civilian supremacy.
This does not mean irrational dismissals, such
as those of Karamat (although he technically retired)
and Musharraf. But while the Turkish armed forces, a
bastion of secularism, annually expel officers suspected
of any Islamic proclivities, Pakistan's armed forces and
the ISI have become "Islamized" at the lower and middle
levels, and even higher.
In the short term,
Musharraf is following General Evren's "Qaida" (primer).
So soon after becoming the chief executive he created
the NSC (now to have 12 members), heavily weighted in
favor of the military, and formed a cabinet of
technocrats.
Before the 1980 Turkish coup,
political leaders such as premier Demirel and the leader
of the opposition, Ecevit, and others, totally abdicated
their political responsibilities. They went though
hundreds of rounds of voting without electing a new
president. Nearly a thousand Turks were killed in six
months in left against right violence prior to the coup.
So General Evren barred Demirel, Ecevit and
others from politics, and closed their parties.
Similarly, Musharraf has kept Benazir Bhutto out of
politics on corruption charges, and in a deal exiled
Sharif to Saudi Arabia in 2000. Benazir could be
arrested if she enters Pakistan, although she still
threatens from time to time to fight the October
elections. Her nomination papers for the polls have been
rejected by the courts.
Musharraf's army
constituency
From the outset, Musharraf has made
no secret of using referendums or amending the
constitution to institutionalize the military's role in
decision-making and to prolong and strengthen his hold
over power. General Evren had established a committee of
experts to recommend a new constitution, the approval of
which by referendum also granted him a seven-year term.
Musharraf has also chopped and changed the 1973
constitution, but the referendum in April this year to
grant himself five more years as head of state was not a
neat exercise (accusations of rigging). He could have
done better.
In the final analysis, Musharraf is
a representative of the armed forces, the most powerful
and best organized entity in Pakistan, with the ISI
doing its dirty work most of the time. This is his
internal constituency which he must cultivate and guard.
To date, he has succeeded in legalizing the
military's takeover in 1999 - the coup was endorsed by
the Supreme Court on the condition that elections be
held within three years - and he has institutionalized
its voice through the NSC. His mentor, General Evren,
after heading the NSC for two years, had himself elected
as president in a referendum for a new constitution. A
yes for the constitution was also a yes for another
seven years for him. To make it further sure, he forbade
any discussion of the vote on the constitution for many
weeks earlier. In the end, General Evren was head of
state for nine years. Musharraf has hinted that if his
version of "refined democracy" is not introduced, he
would be willing to continue.
Pakistan's
democracy
Throughout the Cold War, the so-called
democracy in Pakistan was basically a Western media myth
to put its ally on a par with India, which sat in the
other camp.
Barring perhaps Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto
(1972-77), after the military had been totally
discredited in 1971 when Bangladesh was carved from its
soil, the Pakistan armed forces have been de jure or de
facto rulers of the country. In the 11 years between
General Zia's death in 1988 and Musharraf's takeover,
Benazir Bhutto and Sharif were eased in and out of power
whenever they tried to interfere with the military's
autonomy or agenda, or their control of nuclear arms, or
the policy on Kashmir and foreign affairs. Constantly
squabbling with each other, they nevertheless remained
busy amassing huge fortunes by corrupt means.
The two politicians had the opportunity and
political support to lay the foundations for democracy,
but instead they chose despotic ways to steamroller the
institutions that provided the checks and balances in
the state. This highlights the inability of Pakistan in
general to accept the give and take of a democratic
administration.
For all the good copy that
Benazir still provides the Western media, she was
perhaps one of the most incompetent administrators in
Pakistan's history, with her husband, "Mr 10 percent"
Ali Zardari, making it worse.
She played a
seminal role in 1996 in promoting the stranglehold in
Pakistan of the Jamaat-i-Islami and other fundamentalist
groups, now hiding and biding their time in Pakistan and
Afghanistan; they are deeply entrenched in the Pakistan
armed forces, the ISI and the establishment, with the
potential for implosion.
Tacitly approved by the
US and with support from Saudi Arabia and other Arab
countries, Pakistan created the Taliban and other
jihadis to provide peace and security in Afghanistan so
that US oil giants could lay a pipeline from Central
Asia to South Asia.
Despite the ban by the
Taliban on growing opium, jihadis, resurgent warlords
and drug barons on both sides of the non-enforceable
Durand line that separates Pakistan and Afghanistan
financed themselves by the cultivation and export of
opium (75 percent of world production) and heroin. Too
many vested interests in and outside of Pakistan,
especially in the military, benefited from this
lucrative arrangement.
Pakistan is now deeply
infected with the virus of Islamic fundamentalism. The
sympathizers of democracy cannot wish it away with the
wave of a magic wand as the country has pursued the path
of Sharia law, religious intolerance and authoritarian
regimes.
A constitution does not a democracy
make. Even Turkey, perhaps the only Muslim democracy, 80
years after Ataturk's sweeping reforms with a secular
constitution in place since 1923, gets wobbly from time
to time. Even its moderate Islamic parties have to be
banned regularly. Its armed forces, a bastion of
secularism, are ever watchful.
Pakistan
polity
In any case, Pakistan began with weak
grassroots political organizations, with the British-era
civil servants strengthening the bureaucracy's control
over the polity and decision-making of the country.
Subsequently, the bureaucracy called for the military's
help, but soon the tail was wagging the dog.
In
the first seven years of Pakistan's existence, nine
provincial governments were dismissed. From 1951 to 1958
there was only one army commander in chief, two governor
generals, but seven prime ministers. The politicians had
wanted to further strengthen relations with the British,
their erstwhile rulers, but General Ayub Khan -
encouraged by the US military - formed closer
cooperation with the Pentagon. And in 1958 the military
took over power, with Ayub Khan exiling the governor
general, Iskender Mirza, to London.
A mere
colonel at partition in 1947, with experience mostly of
staff jobs, Ayub Khan became a general after only four
years. Later, he promoted himself to field marshal. Ayub
Khan eased out officers who did not fit into the
Anglo-Saxon scheme to use Pakistan's strategic position
against the evolving Cold War confrontation with the
communist block.
General Zia ul-Haq, meanwhile,
was a cunning schemer, veritably a mullah in uniform
who, while posted in Amman, helped plan the expulsion of
Yasser Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization
from Jordan in the 1970s. But he is more remembered for
having prayed at all the mosques of Amman, if not in the
whole of Jordan.
He seduced the north Indian
media with his gifts of tikka kebabs, and planned
Operation Topaz, which in 1989 fueled insurgency inside
Indian Kashmir, while at the same time trying to calm
the Indians with his goodwill visits to promote cricket
contacts between the countries.
His Islamization
of the country made the situation for women and
minorities untenable, while the judicial killing of
former leader Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1977 turned General
Zia into a pariah. But the 1979 Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan made him a US darling, restoring and fatally
strengthening the Pakistan military's link with the
Pentagon. This made the Pakistani military and the ISI's
hold pervasive, omnipotent and omniscient. This defense
alliance, the seeds of which were planted by Ayub Khan,
and the symbiotic relationship between the ISI and the
CIA bolstered by General Zia, was never really
dismantled and is unlikely to be disentangled.
Pakistan's external constituency: The
US
The form of government in a country has seldom
bothered the US in the pursuit of its national
interests. Otherwise, why would it embrace Pakistan, or
say Egypt, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia or any of the other
kingdoms and sheikhdoms and repressive regimes around
the world, and shun democratic India? Beginning with
Ayub Khan's unofficial visit to the US, the foundations
for bilateral cooperation in the military field were
laid. These have survived through thick and thin, like a
bad marriage where neither side can let go, and despite
bad patches, such as the takeovers by Zia ul-Haq and
Musharraf.
Like the 1979 Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan, September 11 revived the necessity, if not
the passion of the 1980s, for Pakistan and the US to
fully embrace one another. A divorce now, as naive
Indian policymakers and media propose, is wishful
thinking in the extreme.
The US needed Pakistan
to protect itself from a backlash of its earlier Afghan
policies of creating the mujahideen and supporting the
jihad in Afghanistan. Now, Washington desperately needed
to stop Pakistan's nuclear bombs or material from
falling into jihadi hands, and to eliminate, or at least
curtail, further damage to US interests.
The US
and others in the West will make pro forma noises in
favor of democracy, but there appears to be no
alternative to the Musharraf regime. Look at the
options. Forget about any democratic government now,
when the battle with the jihadis in the country has only
just begun.
Musharraf: Cool, calculating
commando
Musharraf, with his elite commando
training, is cool and calculating. He has handled
difficult and complex situations well. And in terms of
intelligence, opportunism and dedication, he is
professionally far ahead of the bluff and bumbling Ayub
Khan. Zia ul-Haq reversed human rights progress and
irreparably damaged Pakistan's polity. And there is not
much to write about the befuddled General Yahya Khan,
who presided over the breakaway of Bangladesh in 1971.
Musharraf seized on the invitation in June 2001
of Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to hold
talks and, prodded and blessed by the US, he anointed
himself president of Pakistan for five years (possibly
not for the last time), while retaining the all-powerful
army chief post. He thus became the first Mohajir head
of state of Pakistan. Some of his loyal generals
absented themselves from the swearing-in ceremony. They
were taken care of when he lined up with the US in its
war against terrorism after September 11.
In
July 2001, the Indian media and policymakers foolishly
thought that an emperor-like treatment would soften
Musharraf on Kashmir. But after his initial charm
offensive it was clear that for the Mohajir president,
the first priority was to establish credibility and
consolidate his position within the Pakistan armed
forces, its people, Kashmiri secessionists (by meeting
All-Hurriyat Conference leaders for tea in the Pakistan
High Commission in Delhi) and the jihadis.
Thus,
the centrality of the Kashmir dispute in relations with
India was maintained, which sent his popularity back
home soaring. After the unraveling of its two-decade
Afghan policy, Pakistan could not let go on Kashmir. The
nuclear threat option remains the only gain from the US
exploitation of Pakistan in its proxy war with the USSR
in Afghanistan, which has left behind millions of heroin
addicts, a Kalashnikov culture and a bankrupt economy.
Musharraf has tried to reform the economy and
reduce corruption. And while he might have gotten rid of
or relocated unreliable and Islamist generals (some
before his Indian visit, others after September 11), in
such situations the toss up is either thakt
(throne) or takhta (noose).
Ataturk as
a model
Ataturk boldly carried out modern
Western-style reforms against religious obscurantism and
dogma and forged the remnants of the Ottoman Empire with
a 99 percent Muslim population into the secular Republic
of Turkey, in the 1920s.
He kept his ambitions
in check, did not claim former Ottoman provinces lost in
World War I, and concentrated on building a new Turkey
from the bottom up. Musharraf, a child of these times,
has stepped down, after September 11, from the
fundamentalist tiger he was riding and had helped
nurture, and which is now baying and conspiring for his
blood and that of his US allies.
Delhi-born
Musharraf's family comes from east Uttar Pradesh
(India). Blue-eyed Ataturk was born in Salonika (Greece)
and his family came from Macedonia. Ataturk was able to
rally the world war-weary Turks, whose land had been
occupied by foreigners. At first he battled the Ottoman
Sultan's forces sent to kill him and then vanquished
friend turned foe rebel Ethem and his ragtag army, which
had helped fight off invading Greeks who had almost
reached Ankara. This was something like the various
jihadi forces and foot-loose groups that Musharraf now
faces.
Later, Ataturk ruthlessly crushed
religious revolts led by feudal Kurdish chiefs and
others. And to fulfill his destiny, he even neutralized
his earlier nationalist comrades, who were in favor of
continuing with the Caliphate. Musharraf, too, has
succeeded in sidelining many unreliable generals. But
the question remains, has he done enough?
Despite his belief in his avowed destiny, his
proclaimed good luck in escaping helicopter mishaps, not
being in the plane crash that killed Zia and victory in
the standoff with Sharif, his position remains
precarious, internally and externally.
Joining
the coalition against terror has helped prop up the
external sector, but fundamental weaknesses in
Pakistan's economy have been aggravated, and quite
clearly he is not fully in command on the home front,
with such things as suicide bombers killing foreigners
and Christians and senior officials being assassinated
apparently beyond his control.
He is now
tightening up, as with the recent arrests of ranking
al-Qaeda members in Karachi. But whether his childhood
Ataturk-inspired dream will come true is another matter.
Perhaps Musharraf is not ruthless enough, like Ataturk,
or maybe there are just too many cards stacked against
him.
K Gajendra Singh, Indian
ambassador (retired), served as ambassador to Turkey
from August 1992 to April 1996. Prior to that, he served
terms as ambassador to Jordan, Romania and Senegal.
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