A diplomat in Pakistan: A family we cannot visit

IN February, I published an article titled “A Diplomat in Pakistan”. This is the second in the series. His writings are more apropos today as South Asia wrestles with the challenges of integration. To provide some context, in the past many months, I have been privileged to meet a diplomat whose good cheer and positivity make him easy to befriend. His South Asian heritage deepens these qualities further and having worked on Afghanistan, in Bangladesh and now in Pakistan, he cherishes and champions increased regional integration. I am sharing his reflections on his regional postings — in his words, kept as true to the original as possible. He writes: The genuine warmth I’ve experienced as a diplomat in Pakistan compels me to address the barriers that divide the people of South Asia. There is an unaccounted-for opportunity cost in human connections, a consequence of the political divisions between the countries of South Asia, a cost that is borne most acutely by the people of the region and humanity writ large. Anyone who has watched enough South Asian films knows an uncomfortable truth: the bitterest battles are fought within families, over shared and contested legacies. The dramatic tension comes not from fighting strangers but from conflicts between brothers, sisters and cousins over inheritance and belonging. The nations of modern South Asia are undeniably defined by a common colonial ancestry—mainly British. Today the regional rivalries are those of siblings and cousins, which we inherited. We need to be wiser than our ancestors and find a new narrative for the region—one where siblings learn to share the inheritance rather than destroy each other over it. I recently saw Pakistan’s pride in its shared inheritance at Lok Virsa, Islamabad. The museum’s galleries devoted to musical traditions make the case more eloquently than any diplomat can. There, mounted on the wall, are traditional instruments labeled in both Urdu and English: the ektara—a simple stringed instr