Edmund McWilliams (born February 18, 1947)Library of Congress: Interview with Edmund McWilliams
/ref> is an American diplomat and previous

United States Ambassador to Tajikistan This is a list of Ambassadors of the United States, United States ambassadors to Tajikistan. Until 1991, Tajikistan had been a constituent republic of the Soviet Union as the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic. On December 25, 1991, following the di ...

. McWilliams was born in Rhode Island to a father who was a mill worker and a mother who was a cafeteria aide. He majored in Southeast Asian Studies at the

University of Rhode Island The University of Rhode Island (URI) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Kingston, Rhode Island, United States. It is the flagship public research as well as the land-grant university of the state of Rhode Island ...

and joined several conservative groups on campus. After graduating he volunteered for the U.S. Army, learned Vietnamese, and was posted to Saigon as an intelligence officer in 1972, where he specialized in interrogations.

U.S. Foreign Service Postings

Ed McWilliams entered the U.S. Foreign Service in 1975 and served in

Vientiane Vientiane ( , ; lo, ວຽງຈັນ, ''Viangchan'', ) is the capital and largest city of Laos. Vientiane is divided administratively into 9 cities with a total area of only approx. 3,920 square kilometres and is located on the banks of ...

Bangkok, Thailand Bangkok, officially known in Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon and colloquially as Krung Thep, is the capital and most populous city of Thailand. The city occupies in the Chao Phraya River delta in central Thailand and has an estimated population ...

Moscow, Russia Moscow ( , American English, US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia. The city stands on t ...

Kabul, Afghanistan Kabul (; ps, , ; , ) is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. Located in the eastern half of the country, it is also a municipality, forming part of the Kabul Province; it is administratively divided into 22 municipal districts. Acco ...

Islamabad Islamabad (; ur, , ) is the capital city of Pakistan. It is the country's ninth-most populous city, with a population of over 1.2 million people, and is federally administered by the Pakistani government as part of the Islamabad Capital T ...

, Managua, Nicaragua. His service in Moscow began in 1983 and ended before 1986, when he was posted to Kabul, Afghanistan.

Pakistan & U.S. Afghanistan Policy Concerns

McWilliams was dispatched to Islamabad in 1988 as a semi-independent analyst of U.S. policy regarding the Afghan jihad in the wake of the Soviet withdrawal. His blistering criticism of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence and their patronage of radical Islamists led to an ultimately-baseless internal investigation regarding his integrity, spearheaded by Ambassador Robert Oakley and CIA Chief of Station Milt Bearden.

Opening U.S. Embassies in Post-Soviet Central Asia Embassies

In 1992, McWilliams opened the embassies in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan and Dushanbe, Tajikistan, and served as Chargé d'Affaires at each of them. He opened the embassy in Bishkek on February 1, and in Dushanbe on March 13, and he served as Chargé d'Affaires and interim ambassador in Dushanbe until October of that year.

Indonesia

From 1996 to 1999, he worked as the political counselor in

Jakarta Jakarta (; , bew, Jakarte), officially the Special Capital Region of Jakarta ( id, Daerah Khusus Ibukota Jakarta) is the capital and largest city of Indonesia. Lying on the northwest coast of Java, the world's most populous island, Jakarta ...

Awards

In 1998, McWilliams received the American Foreign Service Association's Christian Herter Award for creative dissent by a senior FSO. He also received four Superior Honor Awards, two Meritorious Service Awards, and on retirement in 2001 the Secretary's Award from Secretary of State Colin Powell. Later, he worked at the State Department in

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered on ...

on labor issues.

Post Diplomatic Career Humanitarian, Human Rights, Refugee & Veterans Efforts

Since he retired from the Foreign Service in 2001, McWilliams has been volunteering with U.S. and foreign human rights NGOs, including the West Papua Advocacy Team, for which he edits the monthly West Papua Report and the

East Timor and Indonesia Action Network The East Timor and Indonesia Action Network (ETAN) is a nonprofit US organization supporting human rights throughout Southeast Asia and Oceania. ETAN was founded in 1991 to support the right to self-determination of Timor-Leste. In 1999, that goal ...

(ETAN).

Sources

Tajikistan relations at U.S. State Dept.
1947 births Living people Ambassadors of the United States to Kyrgyzstan Ambassadors of the United States to Tajikistan 20th-century American diplomats {{US-diplomat-stub