Pakistani expert and Assistant Professor at Center for Peace and Security Studies, Georgetown University, Christine Fair, said on Monday that veteran State Department diplomat and longtime Pakistani expert Robin Raphel merely executed U.S. policy as a diplomat.
Fair said that Raphel, who is under federal investigation as part of a counter intelligence probe, was executing state policy during most of her career with respect to India and Pakistan.
She also said that she was "flabbergasted" by how Raphel was characterized in Indian media.
"I am very flabbergasted by the ways in which several of the Indian writers and television have really characterized her role," said Fair.
"This idea that she is somehow like the mastermind of the U.S. policy towards South-Asia is absolutely preposterous and I can't say anymore clearly, she executed U.S. policy," she asserted.
A Pakistani columnist Raza Rumi also emphasized that Raphel was carrying out the U.S. policies as a diplomat.
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"Raphel was an advocate of constructive engagement with the country and she argues like a trained diplomat with 40 years of career asking for a constructive engagement not a destructive or any kind of a punitive engagement," added Rumi.
Raphel, a fixture in Washington's diplomatic and think-tank circles, has been placed on administrative leave since last month, and her contract with the State Department was allowed to expire this week.
The longtime diplomat was among the U.S. government's most senior advisers on Pakistan and South Asian issues. She is a former assistant secretary of state for South Asia and a former ambassador to Tunisia.
At the time of the FBI search of her house, she had retired from the Foreign Service but was working for the State Department on renewable, limited contracts that depended in part on her security clearances.