You're reading: ​New Pakistan ambassador hopes to double civilian-sector trade with Ukraine

Pakistan has a long history of sending retired military officers to nations as ambassadors. Even more so in Ukraine, where defense trade dominates the bilateral relationship between the nations -- perhaps accounting for 75 percent of the $400 million in trade last year.

Ambassador Athar Abbas, a retired major general who has been in Ukraine since December, is no exception. “Except for the first one who was a foreign office career diplomat, the rest are military,” Abbas said of Pakistan’s ambassadors to Ukraine.

He joined the military in 1976, spent most of his career as a calvary officer (Pakistan Army Armoured Corps) and rose to become a two-star general. During the last more than four years of his military service, ending in 2012, he served as the military’s top spokesman.

The role put him in the spotlight nationally and internationally with daily news briefings since Pakistan is at the forefront of the international war against terrorism, fighting that has claimed the lives of more than 60,000 people in the nation of more than 190 million people by current estimates.

Despite his military background, however, Abbas said his priority is doubling civilian trade between Ukraine and Pakistan. He thinks it’s possible through agriculture, high technology and textile sectors. He thinks that deeper connections have to be formed through trade and cultural events, since the two nations have relatively little interaction on the civilian side.

About 1,500 Pakistanis live in Ukraine, he estimated, while far fewer Ukrainians live in Pakistan.

The Kyiv Post interviewed the ambassador as he was preparing for Pakistan Day, the March 23 national holiday to commemorate the Lahore Resolution of 1940 that paved the way for Pakistan’s independence in 1947 after the partition of British India. A celebration will be held on March 28 in Kyiv, another occasion to honor the founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the lawyer and politician who lived from 1876 to 1948.

In Pakistan, military parades are often held on this day. The military remains Pakistan’s strongest institution, with heavy reach in a society transitioning for decades to civilian political rule through democratic elections.

Still, Pakistan has fought four wars with India and also borders Iran and Afghanistan, putting the Islamic Republic in a tough neighborhood. The nuclear power, unsurprisingly, puts a premium on having a strong military and has found Ukraine to be a good supplier of hardware.

Large-scale Ukrainian arms sales to Pakistan started in the 1990s with a tank deal valued at $600 million. It continues today with Ukrainian sales of tanks, aircraft engines, helicopter engines and anti-tank weapons systems, Abbas said.

But all is not smooth with the relationship.

Pakistan is courting good relations with Russia and abstained in the United Nations resolution condemning the Kremlin’s forced annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014. Pakistan also refuses to go along with any economic sanctions to punish Russia’s two-year-old war against Ukraine.

An article in the Pakistani Dispatch News Desk from Sept. 11 highlights the issue, noting that “the work for any new Pakistani ambassador in Kyiv will not be as easy as it was in the past” because of Pakistan’s tilt towards Moscow. A Pakistan Defense News article from Feb. 10 says that Ukrainian Ambassador to Pakistan Volodymyr Lakomov will not likely succeed in increasing his country’s defense relationship with Pakistan. It also says that the time when Ukraine supplies were of “critical importance” to Pakistan is over. “Ukraine’s defense industry start is quickly fading in Pakistan due to domestic turmoil and Pakistan’s warming relationship with Russia,” the article says.

Abbas says that Pakistan is balancing its relationship with Ukraine and Russia. “Pakistan’s position is that the conflict must be bilaterally solved through peaceful means,” he said. Ukraine’s dramatic transition from Soviet to alignment with the West “requires not only time but also a peaceful environment,” he said. “If you get into a conflict, it multiplies the challenges many-fold.”