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Diplomacy

The Quiet Liberator

Pakistan, a young nation barely five years old, began actively supporting independence movements worldwide and took on the role of a liberation diplomat, supporting the independence movements of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia

By Mariam Khan | August 2026

Pakistan’s recent role as a mediator between Iran and the United States — facilitating the highest-level in-person contact between the two countries in 47 years — has drawn global attention. Commentators have described the intervention as key to saving “a whole civilisation” from obliteration. Pakistan’s diplomatic engagement has rarely been so visible, so praised, or so consequential.

Yet for those who know its history, none of this should come as a surprise. What the world is only now noticing is something Pakistan practised quietly, more than seven decades ago. Through a historical lens, one can trace Pakistan’s largely undocumented role in supporting the independence movements of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia — interventions that helped put new nations on the map long before the term “soft power” was even coined.

The country was barely five years old when it began acting on principle on the world stage. Its infancy was no excuse for inaction.

A Pakistani Passport That Changed History
In 1952, Morocco was still under French colonial rule. Sultan Muhammad V, who was spearheading the independence movement, dispatched Ahmed Balafrej — a senior Moroccan freedom leader — to address the UN Security Council. The French colonisers blocked his address because Morocco was a French territory, and Balafrej, therefore, had no standing to speak independently.

It was at this moment that Pakistan intervened. Sir Zafarullah Khan, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister, was leading the Pakistani delegation at the UNSC session. According to the Pakistan–Morocco relations section on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website, Khan ordered the Pakistani embassy to open that very night and a Pakistani passport was issued to Balafrej. The next morning, Balafrej addressed the Security Council as a Pakistani citizen. The intervention helped crystallise Morocco’s case for independence internationally; the country achieved it in March 1956.

Balafrej went on to become Morocco’s first Prime Minister. For years afterwards, visitors to his office would notice a framed souvenir: a Pakistani passport. It was not nostalgia. It was a reminder of principles and solidarity diplomacy that paved the way towards a nation’s independence.

Opening Doors in Karachi: The Algerian Revolution
Pakistan’s engagement with Algeria’s independence movement predated formal recognition, as Pakistan was a vocal supporter of Algerian self-determination. When the Provisional Government of the Republic of Algeria was declared in exile on 19 September 1958, under the Prime Ministership of Ferhat Abbas, Pakistan was among the first countries to recognise it and permitted it to open a mission in Karachi, then Pakistan’s capital, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) website.

Some historical records also indicate that Pakistan issued diplomatic passports to leaders of the Algerian revolution, one of whom was Ahmed Ben Bella, who would go on to become Algeria’s first President. Karachi, in this period, was briefly a hub of anti-colonial diplomatic activity, hosting revolutionary offices, receiving North African leaders, and projecting Pakistani influence into the Arab and African worlds.

There is also the story of Eqbal Ahmad, a prolific Pakistani writer and activist whom renowned physicist Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy has written about as a “highly unusual” Friend of the Algerian Revolution — the sole Pakistani known to have actively fought alongside Algerians for liberation from French rule.

Pakistan at the UN for Tunisia
In 1956, Tunisia also gained independence — and again, Pakistani diplomats were instrumental. On the 70th anniversary of Tunisian independence, Ambassador (Retd.) Khalid Mahmood, Chairman of the Board of Governors at the Institute of Strategic Studies, Islamabad, recalled the historic bond between the two nations and Pakistan’s consistent support for Tunisian self-determination at the United Nations.


It was at the UN that Sir Zafarullah Khan delivered what those present described as a landmark address, directly countering a French propaganda campaign against Tunisian independence. The speech was of such sustained force that the President of the UN General Assembly, Sir Leslie Munro, was moved to remark: “This is the first time in my life that I have sat motionless in my seat for three hours, because I did not wish to miss a single word of your speech.”

Pakistan in 2026 faces a foreign policy environment defined by economic vulnerability, regional instability, and great-power competition. In some respects, the structural pressures are not unlike those of the 1950s.

The relationship endures: an important road in Tunis — Nahaj Ahmed Bukhari — is named after Patras Bukhari, or Syed Ahmed Shah Bukhari, a tribute to Pakistan’s diplomatic solidarity with Tunisia.

Soft Power Before the Term Existed
When scholars discuss soft power in International Relations, the concept is typically attributed to large, resource-rich Western states — countries with the luxury, as the theory goes, of conducting principled, interest-free diplomacy. Pakistan in the 1950s was, by any measure, in no such position. Newly independent, economically fragile, geopolitically uncertain — and yet it deployed diplomatic influence across North Africa with remarkable confidence and effect.

Dr Ali Ehsan, a non-resident research fellow in the research and analysis department of the Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI) and an Assistant Professor at DHA Suffa University, Karachi, suggests that the framing of “soft power” may itself be anachronistic. “The term was not introduced until 1989 by Joseph Nye (the late American political scientist),” he states. “Pakistan exercised deep cultural, religious and diplomatic influence, and it had a reason to do that. It gained independence as a Muslim country, so it considered offering support to brotherly Muslim countries under the spirit of anti-colonial solidarity.”

Speaking of soft power at the strategic level, Ehsan notes, “At the strategic level, soft power is less about immediate outcomes and more about shaping the environment in which outcomes become possible

In other words, Pakistan was not operating from a strategic playbook; it was acting on identity. “These states were engaged in anti-colonial movements, and so we supported them,” Dr Ali says. “History is shaped by circumstances — you cannot relate to what was possible in the 1950s as a possibility now.”

Majid Ehsan, Retired Lieutenant General and President of IPRI, frames the diplomatic achievements of that era in institutional terms. “Pakistan has achieved innumerable achievements in foreign policy and international relations without any involvement of military power,” he says. “The credit for all diplomatic achievements goes to our vibrant and highly competent diplomats working hard at MOFA.”

Speaking of soft power at the strategic level, Ehsan notes, “At the strategic level, soft power is less about immediate outcomes and more about shaping the environment in which outcomes become possible. That’s what has always been the preference for using soft power at the strategic level. But you have to understand the difference between a hard state and soft power”.

For Ehsan, recovering that kind of proactive strategic vision requires more than nostalgia. “No single institution, person, or group can solve the entire nation’s problems. It has to be a whole-of-nation approach. Every institution, working perfectly with dedication and honesty in its own capacity, can cumulatively benefit national development. But that, unfortunately, is not happening in our case, and this results in interference.”

What a Generation Inherits
Pakistan in 2026 faces a foreign policy environment defined by economic vulnerability, regional instability, and great-power competition. In some respects, the structural pressures are not unlike those of the 1950s. What has changed — or what needs to be recovered — is the strategic confidence to act on principle anyway.

SouthAsia Magazine asked Dr Ali whether, when he shares this history with his students, he senses an appetite among the next generation of IR scholars to reclaim this kind of identity for Pakistan — and what it would take to translate that appetite into actual foreign policy practice.

Dr Ali turns to the Hegelian dialectical process to answer the question — one of the most influential frameworks in Western thought, built on the idea that progress emerges not through smooth transitions but through the dynamic tension and resolution of opposing forces. It is, he suggests, an apt lens for a country still working through its own contradictions. “Foreign policy is designed to attain and fulfil a purpose, primarily the core national objectives, which are not constant and keep changing,” he says. “Yes, my students are the generation that will lead Pakistan, and I can only hope that the mistakes our generation committed are not committed by them.”

Perhaps the most powerful lesson of the 1950s is the simplest one: that a small, young, resource-constrained country can still shape history if it knows what it stands for.

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