The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project Foreign Assistance Series
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The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project Foreign Assistance Series AMBASSADOR JONATHAN ADDLETON Interviewed by: Mark Tauber Interview date: December 11, 2017 Copyright 2019 ADST This oral history transcription was made possible through support provided by U.S. Agency for International Development, under terms of Cooperative Agreement No. AID-OAA-F-16-00101. The opinions expressed herein are those of the interviewee and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Agency for International Development or the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. INTERVIEW Q: Jonathan, where and when were you born? ADDLETON: I was born on June 27, 1957 in Murree, Pakistan, in the mountains of northern Pakistan overlooking Kashmir. Q: And what brought your family there? ADDLETON: When I look back over the years it seems that my connection with Pakistan was very improbable. My parents were missionaries. They arrived in Karachi by ocean freighter in 1956. They had both been born and raised in rural middle Georgia during the Great Depression. They ended up in Pakistan and their decision to become missionaries radically changed my own life. Q: Wow! So how long do you stay there with them from birth? ADDLETON: I lived in Pakistan from 1957 until 1975. I left in July 1975, shortly after my 18th birthday. It is different now but during those years missionary families typically would have four years overseas and then one year reporting to their constituency back in the United States. My first trip to the US was during 1960-1961. I have almost no memory of that year other than being in a green Plymouth dating from the mid-1950s, I would guess, and travelling somewhere at night. We did a lot of traveling, mostly to churches that supported my parents. There are other fleeting memories. I also accompanied my parents back to the US during 1965-1966 when I was in 3rd grade and 1 again during 1970-1971 when I was in 8th grade. Otherwise for all practical purposes, 15 of the first 18 years of my life were spent in Pakistan Q: Now describe the area you lived in in Pakistan. A lot of people don’t realize the variety of the topography and geography in Pakistan. ADDLETON: I really lived in two worlds. My parents worked in a small town in upper Sindh province called Ratodero. Later they lived in a larger town nearby called Shikarpur. Both towns were near areas where the Bhutto family historically owned land and had influence. So that part of my childhood had a lot of Sindhi connections. Sindh is a unique part of Pakistan that not many people know about. The Sindhi language has a well-developed literary tradition that is much older than that of Urdu. As it happens, Ratodero and Shikarpur are not that far from an archeological site called Mohenjo-Daro which was the center of the Indus Valley Civilization, dating back to hundreds of years B.C. Shikarpur was where my parents lived for most of the year. It was part of my world because my siblings and I spent our vacations there. My parents worked in the Sindhi language. My father became something of a Sindhi scholar, being one of the few foreigners to speak the Sindhi language. My other world was 800 miles to north for nine months of the year, centered around a ―hill station‖ called Murree. The town of Murree has changed radically over the years but at the time of Pakistan‘s independence had been a classic British hill station, along the lines of more familiar hill stations in India such as Shimla, Mussoorie and Darjeeling. Most of the colonial era hill stations were in India but a few such as Murree became part of Pakistan. I attended a tiny boarding school near Murree called Murree Christian School (MCS). I say ―tiny‖ because I had 15 students in my graduating class in 1975, the biggest graduating class that MCS up to that point had ever had. The high school during my time numbered around 32 students. I look back and think, ―Wow, what an endeavor it must have been to set up this school.‖ It was founded during the mid-1950s in an old Church of Scotland garrison chapel which had been deconsecrated and turned into classrooms with a central gym in what had been the middle of the church. Another British era building called Sandes Homes was located a mile away. If you read the history books from the British period, Sandes Home was the name given to a series of ―soldier‘s homes‖ built across India, endowed by a Lady Sandes as part of a charitable effort to provide a place for rest and recuperation for British soldiers who labored on behalf of the British Empire. Convalescent soldiers from the British Indian Army who were ailing because of tropical diseases, soldiers who had been injured in battle -- they would be given the opportunity to stay for a time in one these homes, beautifully situated 2 in the mountains. And the old Sandes Home at Jhika Gali near Murree became the MCS boarding hostel. Both Sandes Home and the Gharial garrison church were in a spectacular setting, In recent years Murree has become much more commercialized and is known as the ―honeymoon capital‖ of Pakistan. However, in those days MCS was on a quiet side of the hillside, a place where you could look one way and see Kashmir; looking the other way, on a clear day you could see Nanga Parbat, ―Naked Peak,‖ and the whole expanse of the Karakorum and Himalayas. I‘ve often thought that it is important to gift your children with a strong sense of physical beauty early on and I very much had that during the first 18 years of my life in Pakistan. Also, unlike my own children who had a Foreign Service childhood involving two years here and three years there, my childhood had a much stronger sense of stability and place. For me, school was always in one place in the mountains and that one place was my world. For nine months of the year, I was in boarding school in Murree and for three months of the year I was ―down in the plains‖, as we called it, living in Upper Sindh where my parents worked. Q: What was the school like? Was it just other missionary kids or were there Pakistanis? ADDLETON: At that time it was predominantly missionary kids; in fact, it was predominantly missionary kids from the United States, though some of the staff came from Australia, New Zealand, England, Scotland or various European countries. Some classmates came from those countries as well. Remarkably, MCS is still around. In this day and time, I sometimes wonder how much longer it can continue to operate. After 9/11 the school was the target of a terrorist attack. Fortunately, no kids were killed; unfortunately, several staff members were killed. After the attack MCS briefly moved to Chiang Mai in Thailand. Later it reopened back in Murree. Now Koreans are numbered among the students and staff, along with some Pakistani students. To some extent a Korean missionary endeavor replaced some of the Americans, who are much smaller in numbers than when I was growing up in Pakistan. During my time at MCS during the 1960s and early 1970s, MCS was small, very ecumenical in a missionary sense and at the more conservative end of the theological spectrum. Despite our small size, we played in sports competitions with international schools in Kabul, Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi where many students were the children of diplomats and business people. So that gave us a window on a different world, one that I would later join. MCS did have a few students from a non-missionary background. Given a high school population of around 30 students, when three such students came from a different background, this was 10 percent of the high school population and they left their mark. One such student from a non-missionary background was Andrew Chelchowski whose 3 father was from Poland and was part of the UN peacekeeping force that monitored the ceasefire line between Indian and Pakistani forces in Kashmir. Later Andrew became a policeman in Alexandria, VA. His sister also attended MCS. Before the international school in Islamabad was established, a few children of diplomats also attended MCS. For example, for a time the US military attaché‘s son who worked at the US Embassy in Islamabad attended MCS. The Canadian High Commissioner‘s daughter – he later served as the Canadian Ambassador to China where he himself had grown up as the child of missionaries – also attended. Another family who sent their children to MCS worked for one of the UN organizations. They liked the school so much that when they transferred to Egypt they continued to send their children to boarding school at MCS. Although most students came from families who lived in what was then called West Pakistan, some came from further afield. Before the birth of Bangladesh, some students came all the way from East Pakistan where their parents were missionaries. Other children had parents who were missionary doctors in the Middle East, in the United Arab Emirates at a time when the UAE was a very different place. Our small numbers also fostered a sense of closeness. I grew up with people who had older or younger brothers and sisters who were friends with my older brother and younger sister. As I mentioned, we had 15 students in my graduating class, the class of ―75.