Relations between Pakistan and the GDR until 1973

This is a trans­lat­ed ver­sion of the 2019 MIDA Archival Reflex­i­con entry “Die Beziehun­gen zwis­chen Pak­istan und der DDR bis 1973”. The text was trans­lat­ed by Rekha Rajan.

Table of Con­tents
Ear­ly Con­tacts | The Path to Recog­ni­tion | After Recog­ni­tion | Sources | End­notes

While the rela­tions of the two Ger­man states with India have already been the sub­ject of sev­er­al pub­li­ca­tions, their engage­ment with the sec­ond-largest nation of the sub­con­ti­nent has been com­plete­ly ignored by his­to­ri­ans so far. Until it offi­cial­ly recog­nised the Ger­man Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic (GDR) on 8 Octo­ber 1972, India, as one of the most impor­tant non-aligned nations, was indeed one of the main addressees of the Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Germany’s (FRG) Hall­stein-Doc­trine, and could always be assured of equal atten­tion from both the inter­na­tion­al­ly com­pet­ing Ger­man states.

This applied to a less­er extent to Pak­istan, which was polit­i­cal­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly not so sig­nif­i­cant inter­na­tion­al­ly, espe­cial­ly since as India’s arch-ene­my, it had com­mit­ted itself ear­ly on and unequiv­o­cal­ly to the US-led alliance sys­tem by becom­ing a mem­ber of the inter­na­tion­al defence alliances CENTO and SEATO. For the GDR, Pak­istan must have appeared to be a “lost cause” to some extent, where it was hard­ly worth­while to fight for recog­ni­tion. In its deal­ings with India, and lat­er with Bangladesh, which had become inde­pen­dent from Pak­istan, the GDR tried to win sup­port with this fact. Only a week before Pak­istan also recog­nised the GDR, on 15 Novem­ber 1972, the then exter­nal affairs min­is­ter of the GDR, Otto Winz­er, reit­er­at­ed in a con­ver­sa­tion with his coun­ter­part from Bangladesh, Abdus Samad Azad, that Pakistan’s attempts to estab­lish con­tacts with the GDR had always been reject­ed. How­ev­er, con­tacts with Pak­istan went back much fur­ther than the chief diplo­mat of the GDR was will­ing to admit at the time, and the GDR had cer­tain­ly played an active role in this.

Early Contacts

Pak­istan had already shown inter­est in bilat­er­al trade with the GDR in the mid-1950s. How­ev­er, on the “Ger­man ques­tion”, which was deci­sive for the GDR, Pak­istan, in keep­ing with its West­ern alliance pact, clear­ly sup­port­ed the stand­point of the FRG much to the regret of the East Berlin Min­istry for Exter­nal Affairs (MfAA). How­ev­er, when the Indo-Chi­na bor­der con­flict of 1962 led to Pakistan’s prox­im­i­ty with the Peo­ples’ Repub­lic of Chi­na, the MfAA saw this as a gen­er­al course cor­rec­tion of the Pak­istani gov­ern­ment towards the social­ist alliance sys­tem. Although they were aware of the per­sist­ing dif­fer­ences between the GDR and Pak­istan (like the Sovi­et Union, the GDR sup­port­ed India on the Kash­mir ques­tion), the diplo­mats in East Berlin felt that a win­dow had opened up for strength­en­ing rela­tions with Pak­istan, if not also for estab­lish­ing diplo­mat­ic relations.

The MfAA moved into action. In the sum­mer of 1963, a first GDR trade del­e­ga­tion vis­it­ed Pak­istan, albeit unof­fi­cial­ly, en route to India and offered Pak­istan a trade agree­ment sim­i­lar to the one that they had with India. In the same year, a del­e­ga­tion of the GDR Min­istry for For­eign and Intra-Ger­man Trade (MAI) vis­it­ed Pak­istan to explore the pos­si­bil­i­ties for ini­ti­at­ing bilat­er­al rela­tions between the two coun­tries. How­ev­er, the MfAA strong­ly rec­om­mend­ed that the del­e­ga­tion pro­ceed with dis­cre­tion: “The del­e­ga­tion must endeav­our to avoid pub­li­ciz­ing its stay and nego­ti­a­tions in the Pak­istani press in order to pre­vent any pos­si­ble inter­ven­tion by West Ger­many in the process of nego­ti­a­tions. Press con­fer­ences and inter­views are to be refrained from.” The GDR was also very con­scious of its own con­flict of inter­est with Pak­istan: “The del­e­ga­tion must avoid com­ment­ing on the Kash­mir ques­tion, even if it is direct­ly asked to do so by the Pak­istani side.”[1] How­ev­er, all these efforts by the GDR to engage with Pak­istan through offi­cial chan­nels, soon came to nothing.

From the mid-1960s things appeared to start mov­ing, at least at the lev­el of civ­il soci­ety. In Feb­ru­ary 1968, a book exhi­bi­tion on the GDR was organ­ised in Karachi and an office of the Leipzig Trade Fair, head­ed by a Pak­istani, was opened. In addi­tion, from 1969 onwards, a num­ber of inde­pen­dent Pak­istan-GDR Friend­ship Soci­eties were found­ed with­out the active involve­ment of the GDR. These soci­eties, how­ev­er, could not always be con­trolled by the GDR as desired, which occa­sion­al­ly led to con­sid­er­able fric­tion. In the spring of 1970, for exam­ple, Pak­istani stu­dents set up a Pak­istan-GDR Friend­ship Soci­ety on their own ini­tia­tive, and its rep­re­sen­ta­tives com­plained bit­ter­ly about the lack of sup­port and unwant­ed instruc­tions from East Berlin: “I want to make you very clear that we do not, don’t want and will nev­er take any instruc­tion from you. We are edu­cat­ed enough to pre­pare our plans inde­pen­dent­ly.”[2] How­ev­er, the efforts of these self- con­fi­dent Friend­ship Soci­eties did not bear fruit.

In May 1970, the GDR once again told the gov­ern­ment of Pak­istan that it was will­ing to estab­lish offi­cial state rela­tions and, towards this end, pro­posed the final­i­sa­tion of a bilat­er­al trade and pay­ments agree­ment as well as the set­ting up of state-run trade mis­sions. The tim­ing was well cho­sen: The GDR mis­sions in India were con­vert­ed into gen­er­al con­sulates in the sum­mer of 1970. Soon after, the West Ger­man ambas­sador in Del­hi was quot­ed in the press say­ing that the FRG gov­ern­ment would not only not impose sanc­tions because of this step, but in fact it would increase the devel­op­ment aid to India. There­upon, the Pak­istani gov­ern­ment also began to test the Hall­stein- Doc­trine and at the very least indi­cat­ed to the West Ger­man gov­ern­ment that it want­ed to for­malise rela­tions with East Berlin.

Despite the gen­er­al­ly sym­pa­thet­ic atti­tude of the gov­ern­ment of Pak­istan towards the FRG, it now became appar­ent that the For­eign Office (Auswär­tiges Amt) was ready for a deter­mined effort to safe­guard its own inter-Ger­man polit­i­cal inter­ests in Pak­istan. When the then West Ger­man ambas­sador in Islam­abad, Nor­bert Berg­er, found out from the local press at the end of Jan­u­ary 1971 that an offi­cial atlas of the GDR showed the dis­put­ed region of Kash­mir as part of India, he request­ed the AA head­quar­ters in Bonn to send him a copy of the map so that he could sub­mit it to the Pak­istani For­eign Min­istry. As an unam­bigu­ous expla­na­tion he added: “This map could per­haps influ­ence the plans of the For­eign Min­istry here to grant per­mis­sion for a GDR trade mis­sion.”[3]

The GDR’s response in the con­flict over East Pak­istan, lat­er Bangladesh, which erupt­ed at the end of March 1971, in which it quick­ly and unequiv­o­cal­ly took a stand in favour of the Indi­an-backed sep­a­ratists, did lit­tle to arouse Pak­istani sym­pa­thies. After the end of the Indo-Pak War in Decem­ber 1971 and the GDR’s offi­cial recog­ni­tion of Bangladesh in Jan­u­ary 1972, the plans to estab­lish diplo­mat­ic ties between the GDR and Pak­istan were put on hold for the time being.

The Path to Recognition

This only changed with India’s diplo­mat­ic recog­ni­tion of the GDR on 8 Octo­ber 1972. A good one week lat­er, the Pak­istani ambas­sador in Bonn vis­it­ed the AA to enquire about the impli­ca­tions of this step by India on inter-Ger­man affairs. The infor­ma­tion he received appears to have reas­sured him. On 21 Octo­ber 1972, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Pak­istan for­eign office informed the West Ger­man ambas­sador Berg­er that Pak­istan would also “in the near future estab­lish diplo­mat­ic ties with the GDR.” Pak­istan could no longer wait “to keep pace with devel­op­ments.”[4]

The FRG gov­ern­ment react­ed prompt­ly and indig­nant­ly. On the same day, it direct­ed its rep­re­sen­ta­tive in Islam­abad to con­vey to the gov­ern­ment of Pak­istan that this announce­ment, com­ing only a day after the sign­ing of two impor­tant cap­i­tal and debt-restruc­tur­ing agree­ments, had “led to con­sid­er­able irri­ta­tion” in Bonn. For its part, the FRG gov­ern­ment had at least con­sult­ed the Pak­istan gov­ern­ment and giv­en rea­sons for its deci­sion to grant recog­ni­tion to Bangladesh in Feb­ru­ary 1972, a step which was unde­sir­able from Pakistan’s point of view. One would, there­fore, expect Pak­istan to at least do the same. Oth­er­wise, the FRG gov­ern­ment “could not rule out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a shad­ow falling on the future nature of Ger­man-Pak­istan rela­tions that had hith­er­to been close and friend­ly.”[5] On the fol­low­ing day this threat was backed up by the instruc­tion to con­vey this mes­sage to the Pak­istani gov­ern­ment before the pro­to­cols to the agree­ments were signed. It was signed in the expec­ta­tion that the Pak­istan gov­ern­ment would “refrain from the announced step vis-à-vis the GDR until the nego­ti­a­tions of the basic treaty in the mat­ter have been con­clud­ed.”[6]

Bonn’s efforts were effec­tive. Ambas­sador Berg­er was pla­cat­ing­ly told that “the expres­sion ‘in the near future’ did not mean that recog­ni­tion would hap­pen ‘the day after tomor­row’”.[7] It was announced that the ear­li­est date for recog­ni­tion of the GDR was now 15 Novem­ber 1972. Pak­istan had indeed wait­ed until the basic treaty had been initialled.

After Recognition

On 24 Jan­u­ary 1973, the Embassy of the GDR in Pak­istan began its activ­i­ties with the arrival of the chargé d’af­faires. Wal­ter Schmidt was the first rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the GDR in Pak­istan[8] who was suc­ceed­ed at the end of April 1973 by the first reg­u­lar ambas­sador, Hans Maret­z­ki. On 6 April 1973, Pak­istan opened its embassy in the GDR. In mid-May 1973, the gov­ern­ment of Pak­istan appoint­ed Jamshed K.A. Mark­er, its for­mer ambas­sador in Ottawa, as its first ambas­sador in East Berlin. The appoint­ment of this dis­tin­guished diplo­mat, who had ear­li­er been Pakistan’s ambas­sador to the USSR, was gen­er­al­ly seen by the MfAA to be a pos­i­tive sign of the high regard in which Pak­istan held the GDR.

In Bonn, the recog­ni­tion of the GDR was not accept­ed with­out objec­tions, despite Pakistan’s con­ces­sion. The FRG did not allow this mat­ter to pre­vent the sign­ing of an agree­ment on sci­en­tif­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal coop­er­a­tion with Pak­istan on 30 Novem­ber 1972. How­ev­er, the planned trip of State Sec­re­tary Paul Frank to Pak­istan for inter-gov­ern­men­tal con­sul­ta­tions was post­poned indef­i­nite­ly. The AA head­quar­ters in Bonn also decid­ed that for the time being it would not grant Pakistan’s wish for a lift­ing of the arms embar­go on the sub­con­ti­nent that was imposed after the last Indo-Pak con­flict. In India, on the oth­er hand, the estab­lish­ment of diplo­mat­ic rela­tions between the GDR and Pak­istan did not evoke any media response, con­trary to the fears in East Berlin.

The first note­wor­thy action of the GDR in Pak­istan was the found­ing of a Pak­istan-GDR Friend­ship Soci­ety in Peshawar, near the Afghan bor­der at the end of June 1973. Accord­ing to the assess­ment of the FRG embassy, the main pur­pose of this soci­ety was to sup­port the insur­gent Pash­tuns in this noto­ri­ous­ly ungovern­able part of the coun­try on behalf of the Sovi­et Union – a coun­try that Pak­istan regard­ed with sus­pi­cion. Apart from this Friend­ship Soci­ety and the pre­vi­ous­ly men­tioned small­er groups, how­ev­er, there was still no cen­tral Friend­ship Soci­ety in Pak­istan. In any case, a col­lab­o­ra­tion between the GDR embassy and the Friend­ship Soci­ety in Lahore, for exam­ple, was ham­pered by the fact that the Pak­istani gov­ern­ment refused the nec­es­sary approval for the activ­i­ties of such Friend­ship Soci­eties in the coun­try and demand­ed that invi­ta­tions already extend­ed to vis­it the GDR be with­drawn. Nev­er­the­less, Pak­istan soon began to make demands of the GDR as Maret­z­ki report­ed: “With regard to the devel­op­ment of rela­tions Pak­istan has high expec­ta­tions which, although not yet for­mu­lat­ed con­crete­ly, pre­sume unre­al­is­tic eco­nom­ic and sci­en­tif­ic-tech­no­log­i­cal help from the GDR.”[9] How­ev­er, the GDR was not inter­est­ed in pay­ing out sub­stan­tial devel­op­ment aid to Pakistan.

After diplo­mat­ic rela­tions were estab­lished, the GDR was less inter­est­ed in play­ing an eco­nom­ic role in the pol­i­tics of the Indi­an sub­con­ti­nent than in improv­ing its vis­i­bil­i­ty in the host coun­try. Already at the begin­ning of 1973, Wal­ter Schmidt, the first rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the GDR in Pak­istan, realised that this was not par­tic­u­lar­ly good: “The first offi­cial and unof­fi­cial con­tacts with Pak­ista­nis shows that the GDR as a state is com­plete­ly unknown and that as far as this is con­cerned, we have to begin from scratch. Even the Speak­er of the Par­lia­ment […] wel­comed me warm­ly, but then want­ed to show me that he already knows the names of some politi­cians in my coun­try and named Ade­nauer, Erhardt, Kiesinger and Brandt.”[10]

After estab­lish­ing diplo­mat­ic ties with Pak­istan, the GDR first of all, adopt­ed the for­eign pol­i­cy con­cerns of the Sovi­et Union by prop­a­gat­ing the “cre­ation of a col­lec­tive secu­ri­ty sys­tem in Asia”. Any bilat­er­al goals of the GDR had to take a sec­ondary place. Thus, a trade agree­ment, for exam­ple, could not be con­clud­ed imme­di­ate­ly after diplo­mat­ic ties were set up. One of the main rea­sons for this was that the GDR did not want to be bound to con­crete com­mit­ments on the scope of this trade by Pak­istan. It was only in 1974 that the GDR con­clud­ed a trade and pay­ments agree­ment as well as a cul­tur­al agree­ment with Pak­istan. Apart from this, per­son­al con­tacts and mutu­al vis­its between the GDR and Pak­istan remained spo­radic and the effec­tive­ness of the dif­fer­ent Friend­ship Soci­eties remained lim­it­ed. The GDR was now offi­cial­ly rep­re­sent­ed in Pak­istan, but it hard­ly left its mark there.

Sources         

While rela­tions of both the Ger­man states with India have already received con­sid­er­able aca­d­e­m­ic atten­tion with Johannes Voigt’s Die Indi­en­poli­tik der DDR. Von den Anfän­gen bis zur Anerken­nung (1952–1972) [Kӧln/Weimar/Wien: Bӧh­lau Ver­lag, 2008] and Amit Das Gupta’s Han­del, Hil­fe, Hall­stein-Dok­trin. Die bun­des­deutsche Südasien­poli­tik unter Ade­nauer und Erhard, 1945–1966 [Husum: Matthiesen Ver­lag, 2004], there is no sec­ondary lit­er­a­ture what­so­ev­er on the exchange between the FRG or the GDR with Pak­istan. As long as Pakistan’s archives con­tin­ue to remain closed to for­eign­ers, his­to­ri­ans inter­est­ed in Ger­many-Pak­istan diplo­mat­ic his­to­ry are com­pelled to car­ry out pri­ma­ry source research in Ger­man archives. These would be the Polit­i­cal Archives of the For­eign Office (Poli­tis­ches Archiv des Auswär­ti­gen Amts, PA AA) in Berlin and the Fed­er­al Archives (Bun­de­sarchiv, BArch) in Berlin and Koblenz.

For the peri­od till 1979, the archival hold­ing of the MfAA in the PA AA is organ­ised the­mat­i­cal­ly accord­ing to the prin­ci­ple of per­ti­nence. All inter­nal MfAA cor­re­spon­dence and reports per­tain­ing to Pak­istan are in the PA AA in the hold­ing M1-Zen­tralarchiv. Archival doc­u­ments cov­er­ing the time-peri­od until 1966 have a sig­na­ture begin­ning with A, while the sig­na­ture of the doc­u­ments belong­ing to a lat­er peri­od begins with C. Beyond the MfAA hold­ing, how­ev­er, the assess­ments of the “oth­er side” are of course also informative.

The West Ger­man AA organ­ised its archival doc­u­ments from the begin­ning accord­ing to the prin­ci­ple of prove­nance. The files of the coun­try desk “IB 5 Süd- und Ostasien, Aus­tralien, Neusee­land und Ozeanien” (IB 5- South and East Asia, Aus­tralia, New Zealand, and Ocea­nia), which also han­dled the bilat­er­al polit­i­cal rela­tions of the FRG to Pak­istan are found in the hold­ing B 37. A curi­ous fact is that the PA AA has evi­dent­ly wrong­ly clas­si­fied a file belong­ing to the coun­try desk IB 5: the vol­ume 306 deals with rela­tions of the GDR to Pak­istan, but instead of being in the B37 hold­ing, it is in hold­ing B 38 – Berlin und Wiedervere­ini­gungs­fra­gen (Berlin and Issues of Reuni­fi­ca­tion). In addi­tion, the rel­e­vant cor­re­spon­dence and reports of the FRG embassy in Islam­abad are found in the hold­ing “AV Neues Amt” (New Office) under the abbre­vi­a­tion ISLA. As part of the “rela­tions of the host coun­try with third coun­tries”, reg­u­lar reports of the diplo­mat­ic mis­sions abroad always also dealt with the exchange between the host coun­try and the GDR.

Final­ly, in the Fed­er­al Archive (B Arch) in Berlin, in the hold­ing “DY 13 Liga für Völk­er­fre­und­schaft der DDR” (League of the GDR for Friend­ship among the Peo­ples), the umbrel­la organ­i­sa­tion for the nation­al Friend­ship Soci­eties in the GDR, there are doc­u­ments of an inde­pen­dent­ly oper­at­ing Pak­istan-GDR Friend­ship Soci­ety request­ing the com­pe­tent Ger­man-South­east Asian Soci­ety of the GDR for sup­port (main­ly financial).

Endnotes

[1]	Schwab in “Außen­poli­tis­che Direk­tive für den Besuch der Del­e­ga­tion des Min­is­teri­ums für Außen­han­del und Innerdeutschen Han­del in Pak­istan”, 30 Octo­ber 1963, PA AA M 1, A 13948.
[2]	Parvez Masud Baig to the Ger­man-South­east Asian Soci­ety, 9 Decem­ber 1971, BArch, DY 13/2240.
[3]	Berg­er to the AA, 25 Jan­u­ary 1971, PA AA, B 37, Vol. 634.
[4]	Berg­er to the AA, 23 Octo­ber 1972, PA AA, ISLA, Vol. 8149.
[5]	Diesel to the embassy in Rawalpin­di, 23 Octo­ber 1972, PA AA, ISLA, Vol. 8149.
[6]	Van Well to the embassy in Rawalpin­di, 24 Octo­ber 1972, PA AA, ISLA, Vol. 8149.
[7]	Berg­er to the AA, 26 Octo­ber 1972, PA AA, ISLA, Vol. 8149.
[8]	Berg­er to the AA, 25 Jan­u­ary 1973, PA AA, B 37, Vol. 100303.
[9]	Maret­z­ki to Willerding/MfAA, 27 June 1973, PA AA, M 1, C 89/78.
[10]	Schmidt to Radde/MfAA, 8 Feb­ru­ary 1973, PA AA, M1, C 97/98.

Alexan­der Benatar, Evan­ge­lis­che Zen­tral­stelle für Weltan­schau­ungs­fra­gen (EZW)