place

High Commission of the United Kingdom, Islamabad

Diplomatic Enclave, IslamabadDiplomatic missions in IslamabadDiplomatic missions of the United KingdomPakistan–United Kingdom relationsUse British English from July 2021

The British High Commission in Islamabad is the chief diplomatic mission of the United Kingdom in Pakistan. It is located in the Diplomatic Enclave in Islamabad. The current British High Commissioner to Pakistan is Jane Marriott, and the Deputy High Commissioner is Alison Blackburne. The UK also has a Deputy High Commission in Karachi and a Trade and Investment Office in Lahore.The British High Commission oversees matters pertaining to the bilateral relationship between the UK and Pakistan, and provides consular services to British citizens in Pakistan.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article High Commission of the United Kingdom, Islamabad (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors).

High Commission of the United Kingdom, Islamabad
Street 8, Islamabad G-5

Geographical coordinates (GPS) Address Nearby Places
placeShow on map

Wikipedia: High Commission of the United Kingdom, IslamabadContinue reading on Wikipedia

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 33.719722222222 ° E 73.1085 °
placeShow on map

Address

British High Commission Club

Street 8
44010 Islamabad, G-5
Islamabad Capital Territory, Pakistan
mapOpen on Google Maps

Share experience

Nearby Places

1979 U.S. embassy burning in Islamabad

Beginning at 12:00 p.m. on 21 November 1979, a large mob of Pakistani citizens violently stormed the Embassy of the United States in Islamabad and subsequently burned it down in a coordinated attack. The riot was led by local Islamists aligned with the right-wing Pakistani political party Jamaat-i-Islami, and the mob primarily comprised students from Quaid-i-Azam University. Lasting for almost 24 hours, the riot had been incited by Iranian religious cleric Ruhollah Khomeini, who was leading the Islamic Revolution at the time, after he falsely claimed in a widespread Iranian radio broadcast that the then-ongoing Grand Mosque seizure in Saudi Arabia had been orchestrated by the United States and Israel, prompting many anti-American riots throughout the Muslim world. During the attack, the Pakistani rioters took several American diplomats as hostages with the intent of carrying out sham trials and public executions. In addition to Islamabad, there were similarly large riots in Karachi, Lahore, and Rawalpindi, where a number of American cultural centres were attacked and burned down.Four embassy personnel were killed in the attack: a U.S. Marine Security Guard, a U.S. Army warrant officer, and two local Pakistani employees. The American ambassador Arthur W. Hummel Jr. was outside of the embassy at the time of the attack and therefore was able to escape from the rioters before being harmed. Shortly after the riots began, American president Jimmy Carter contacted Pakistani president Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq by phone to warn him against allowing the embassy employees' safety to be compromised. However, Zia proved reluctant to dispatch troops to disperse the crowd. By the morning of 22 November, the Pakistan Army moved in to retake the embassy grounds: two of the rioting students were killed and as many as 70 additional rioters were injured. According to witnesses at the nearby British High Commission, well over 1,500 people took part in the attack on the embassy. The burning of the embassy in Islamabad played into Khomeini's Islamic Revolution export propaganda amidst the Iran hostage crisis, and Khomeini himself later publicly praised the Pakistani rioters' actions after hearing about the attack. Zia condemned the embassy burning as "not in keeping with lofty Islamic traditions" while refraining from overtly criticizing Jamaat-i-Islami, which had been a political ally in his Islamization of Pakistan.