ISLAMABAD: British High Commissioner Dr Christian Turner has said the issuance rate of British student visas from Pakistan is 97pc, which meant 97pc of the applicants get the visa.

Refuting the perception that British student visa was the hardest to get, Dr Turner said they had issued 23,500 student visas which doubled from the time he arrived in Pakistan three years ago.

Dr Turner, who arrived in December 2019, will cease to be the high commissioner to Pakistan this week. However, he told Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif that he would now become “an ambassador for Pakistan”.

He has been recalled to serve in London as the foreign ministry’s under-secretary of state, which requires coordinating foreign policy across the world

Talking to Dawn, the outgoing high commissioner said during his tenure, his mission worked on strengthening people-to-people connections between the UK and Pakistan.

“We have ‘UK-Pak Dosti - Hum Ek Saath Hain’, which is massive. Where else in the world do you have 1.6 million of British Pakistanis, which is about 2pc of our population, and 100,000 British nationals in Pakistan,” he said, adding that, “we issued nearly 100,000 visit visas last year and student visas went up 242pc with almost a 100pc acceptance rate”.

“Everything I do, the opportunity, trade, the risks, it all comes back to that we are connected as two countries. I feel privileged to sit in the middle of that, like curating a relationship,” Dr Turner said.

“I have been quite clear that external perceptions of Pakistan are misplaced. When my parents first came here, they had an amazing time traveling around the country - Lahore and Multan,” he said.

The high commissioner said the slightly negative connotation of the country came from a lot of things and his job was to challenge some of those stereotypes and perceptions and travel advisories were some of the notable things he did, including getting back British Airways and Virgin to establish better links.

Some of the things he would remember were deep areas of work for the British High Commission, working through the pandemic together, all the difficulties around the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, and the shared security concerns, the work on the floods for which the British government contributed 91 million pounds as humanitarian aid, adaptation and finance support to Pakistan with an additional 35 million pounds of money that came from the British people through charity appeal.

However, he always wanted to talk more about economy and trade.

“In August, we announced a new developing countries trading scheme that gave duty free access to the UK market to over 94pc of Pakistani goods and services. Covid probably held the UK government back on that agenda but I have been ambitious about increasing trade volume,” the high commissioner said.

In the list of things that Dr Turner did was giving importance to education, inclusion, girls education besides human rights and freedom of media.

“It’s really substantive amount of work. This embassy is one of the largest in the world because we do all that business here,” he said.

The high commissioner believed that at a personal level, diplomacy was a contact sport.

“Central part of my job is to engage. I hope people saw my intent to try to listen, learn and struggle with my Urdu. As a result, it allowed me to get Pakistan under my skin. If I arrived as an ambassador and a long-term admirer of Pakistan, three years later I leave as a friend. When this week, I stop being an ambassador to Pakistan and become an ambassador for Pakistan.”

About the rise in terrorism, Dr Turner said Pakistan did not get enough credit for what it had done since 2015, the lives lost, the sacrifices made.

“As British high commissioner here, I was privileged to get involved in, add influence and our voice to these really important issues. When I came here I was excited of the opportunity for investment, companies, trade and inclusive economic growth. The world has changed, drastically in the last three to five years. For 15 years, war on terror defined our international engagement,” he said.

“If we only allow ourselves to see Pakistan through the lens of security and terrorism, I think we are failing. As the economy matters, I support the policy that saw security and economy intertwined. It is in our interest to invest in economy and make it inclusive,” he emphasised, adding the threat from TTP did need countering.

Dr Turner insisted on talking about economy, human capital, climate change, things that mattered.

In his views on Pakistan’s political developments, the high commissioner refrained from getting involved. “It’s not our job. What I would observe that at the heart of politics, which is all about disagreements, there is compromise, listening to one another, respecting opponents.”

He said serving in Pakistan was the highlight of his career. Besides standing with Pakistan during floods, some of the best moments were to see England team back to Pakistan for which he reached the stadium in a colourful rickshaw and became the talk of the town.

“It was a really difficult moment, rebuilding confidence from very low point and coming back to extremely awesome T20 finals and the test matches were some of my happiest moments,” Dr Turner said.

Published in Dawn, january 8th, 2023