Profile | Meet this Year’s Senior Fellows: Mustafa Popal
A conversation with 2023–2024 ISD Senior State Department Fellow Mustafa M. Popal, a career Foreign Service Officer who most recently served as Chief of Staff to Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman.
Ryan Conner, Jarrett Dang, and Nicole Butler
This piece is part of ISD’s blog series, “A better diplomacy,” which highlights innovators and their ideas for how to make diplomacy more effective, resilient, and adaptive in the 21st century.
Mustafa M. Popal is a 2023–2024 Senior State Department Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy and a career Foreign Service Officer. He most recently served as Chief of Staff to former Deputy Secretary of State Wendy R. Sherman. Previously, he served as Deputy Executive Secretary in the Office of the Secretary of State from 2020–2021 and as Minister-Counselor for Political Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo from 2017–2019. Born in Afghanistan and raised in Virginia, Popal and his family immigrated to the United States during the Soviet-Afghan War.
Mustafa sat down with The Diplomatic Pouch’s Ryan Conner for a conversation about his path to joining the Foreign Service, the rewards and challenges of living as a diplomat, and his experience serving abroad.
Q: Could you tell us about your path to the Foreign Service, what led you to become a diplomat, and why you chose this career?
A: My path started at Georgetown when I was an undergraduate student at the School of Foreign Service. Growing up, I was always interested in world affairs, history, and cultures.
When I came to Georgetown, my academic studies reinforced my interest in the foreign service as a potential career. Being in Georgetown was a great opportunity because the school’s academic program prepares you for the Foreign Service exam. And so I found it a very useful set of tools and circumstances that allowed me to prepare for a career in the Foreign Service.
But it wasn’t until after graduate school that I joined the Foreign Service. After Georgetown, I worked for a year at a non-profit on Capitol Hill before attending the Fletcher School in Boston, where I majored in international relations. After passing the Foreign Service exam while at Fletcher, I worked at the Pentagon for a couple of years after graduate school before joining the Foreign Service in September of 2003.
Q: So over the past 20 years now or so, where has your career taken you so far? What have been some of the most rewarding and challenging postings, would you say?
A: My career has taken me to Afghanistan, Kuwait, Egypt, Iraq, to the White House twice — and at this point, I think I’ve done more time in Washington, D.C., which some describe as its own hardship assignment in many ways.
I think some of the key highlights that come to mind are from when I was on the ground in Afghanistan as a political officer at the U.S. embassy in 2004 for the country’s first-ever presidential election and birth of a new Afghan constitution after the fall of the Taliban. As an Afghan-American, I was able to use my Dari language and Afghan cultural expertise in support of our embassy in the country of my birth. I was born there in 1975 and fled after the Soviet invasion of 1979. To be there as an American diplomat was a great honor and experience.
I also served in Iraq from 2009–2010. I did some interesting work in Iraq covering the Iraq-Iran relationship, traveling around the country, and seeing our presence there on the ground. And when your daily commute involves a Blackhawk helicopter, it’s fascinating in itself but still a challenging assignment because of the hardships of serving in a war zone and away from your family.
After Iraq, I worked at the White House as NSC Director for Iran and the Gulf under President Obama where I got to see policymaking firsthand at a very high level and helped play a role in coordinating the interagency process as an NSC staff director.
My time a few years later as a special advisor to Vice President Biden, where I covered the Middle East and South and Central Asia, was equally very formative. Serving at the White House on these two separate occasions was a master class in foreign policy, particularly interacting regularly with then-Vice President Biden on issues like Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan.
And my recent assignment before returning to Georgetown as a Senior Fellow at ISD was as chief of staff to Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, the first woman to hold that position. Serving two and a half years as her chief of staff was enriching on many levels. I learned a great deal from her inspiring leadership, diplomacy, strategic problem-solving, and ability to connect with people. It was high stakes diplomacy given the multitude of global crises and opportunities we dealt with daily. The job was a culmination of different skills that I had been developing as a diplomat for 20 years.
Q: Could you say a bit more about how your time on the NSC compared to the work you did on the ground and in the embassies? How important is it to have both types of experience?
A: As a diplomat overseas, in my case largely in the Middle East and Central Asia, you do a lot of outreach–building new contacts, advocating for U.S. interests, analyzing developments, and providing local context for policymakers in Washington and official visitors including Members of Congress and their staff.
As a political officer in Baghdad, I analyzed the dynamic between Iraq and Iran and Iran’s objectives in Iraq. As an economic officer in Kuwait City, I analyzed economic developments in the banking sector and strengthened efforts to counter terrorism financing and money-laundering. As the head of the political section in Cairo, I was the principal advisor to our Chief of Mission on Egypt’s political situation and its foreign policy as they impacted U.S. interests in the region.
At the NSC staff, you bring your regional expertise to the job, and in my case it pertained to Iran and Gulf. The NSC’s main job is to coordinate policy among the interagency. My role as NSC staff director was to ensure the President’s policy priorities on Iran and the Gulf were well coordinated. As NSC staff director, you draft memos to the President and senior White House staff on your portfolio, attend meetings with foreign officials, and keep the interagency apprised. You also spend time as a consumer of diplomatic and intelligence reporting to stay well informed.
Q: Okay. And as you’ve gone through these postings, say, in the Middle East for example, how have you gone about preparing for them? How has that process changed over the course of your career?
A: As a Foreign Service officer we are generalists and you focus on different regions and issues that become your career “majors” or areas of concentration.
For example, the Middle East was my primary region. In my case, I studied Middle East affairs at Georgetown in addition to having spent almost a decade as a child living in the region. You cultivate additional expertise through your own personal readings and ahead of any assignment overseas, there may be language and regional studies training at the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute–our premier diplomatic training academy.
I had Arabic language training at the State Department prior to my postings in Kuwait, Iraq, and Egypt. Regional studies complement the language training, allowing you to become more familiar with some of the core dynamics of the country.
Prior to my assignment in Cairo as political counselor, I attended a special training seminar pertinent to the job.
Both prior to your arrival at your new posting and after, it’s important to read as much as you can in order to get immersed in the key policy issues of the day for the country. You should reach out to think tank experts before you go to get a sense of the diverse opinions on an issue set.
Once you’re in-country, you build off what your predecessor may have left, both in terms of handoff notes or contacts and you make the rounds and get to know as many people as you can to expand your understanding.
Q: So a lot of talking to people in-country, reading, doing background research, becoming familiar with the issue set that you’re going to be dealing with…
A: Yes, and if you speak the language, all the better because then you can actually read local media publications and engage with non-English speaking experts for more granular insights about trends in the country and why they matter for U.S. interests.
Q: And I’m sure since you already have the regional expertise from your education, it helps you ease into those postings. You know which analysts or organizations might be credible, which might not be credible, and go from there.
A: Yes, and, you know, as a section head, your primary job is to manage the team, but you’re also cultivating contacts, and you’re the political advisor to the ambassador or chief of mission. So your responsibility is to have a broad awareness of what’s happening in the country. You’re leading, managing, and learning from your political officers and the locally employed staff who are valuable fonts of knowledge about the country. And over time you build that expertise.
Q: The local staff in particular, I imagine, is a very good source of information because they’re there over extended periods of time. Shifting focus a bit to your year here at Georgetown, you’ve been team-teaching ISD’s Diplomatic and Military Statecraft course this fall. What have you found most rewarding or surprising about this experience?
A: I’ve always been interested in teaching, and it’s one thing that I thought about doing professionally after retirement from the Foreign Service. Having this opportunity now to teach at my alma mater Georgetown has been very gratifying.
The students we have in our class are graduate students, with very diverse and impressive backgrounds, and several of them are international students. And to see how they assess problem sets that we have grappled with in our careers has been very valuable for me.
Also just learning to teach is a new skill set for me. It’s not something that we as diplomats may know coming into this program. Some of my colleagues at ISD have impressive academic backgrounds, and I’ve learned from them as well.
Whenever you land in a new embassy abroad, you have to learn new skills and adapt quickly. And I’ve tried to do that here in my teaching role. I enjoy it tremendously — the ability to interact, the ability to mentor and coach students, is something that I also prioritized when I was leading teams at the State Department.
Q: And next semester you’ll be teaching a new capstone class with one of the other fellows on great power competition in the Indo-Pacific. It’s a new class, the first time that ISD will have a capstone jointly taught by one of its State Department fellows and one of its military fellows. What are you most looking forward to about the class?
A: I’m looking forward to the opportunity, both in my collaboration with my colleague Colonel Dan Oh, who brings a wealth of experience in the Indo-Pacific as a senior Army Foreign Affairs Officer.
He and I will pair up our respective experiences from the State Department and the Department of Defense on this critical region, and delve into some of these key issue sets with students who are interested in the Indo-Pacific and seeing what work they produce, both in terms of policy recommendations, their analysis of the region and the various countries that are key influencers.
This will be new and uncharted waters for many of us. I’m not a career Asia expert but I have been involved in some key aspects of our Indo-Pacific foreign policy over the years. I think it’s a critical region that will continue to shape the future of U.S. foreign policy this century.
Q: And looking ahead to your time after Georgetown, earlier you had mentioned an interest in teaching. Where do you anticipate your career will take you next?
A: If I have the opportunity to continue to play a role here in Georgetown and the State Department, that would be terrific. Whatever it is I do, I really enjoy having some element of mentoring and coaching in addition to the policy development piece.
And I’ve been fortunate that I’ve had a front-row seat the past 23 years in government on a variety of critical foreign policy issues. And I’m at that stage in my career where I want to continue to give back and to help the new generation of Foreign Service officers.
Q: And to close out on a personal note, I’m curious to know any books that have most influenced your career. Any that you’d recommend to those interested in working in foreign policy?
A: Yes, there are some great recent books, including Not for the Faint of Heart: Lessons in Courage, Power & Persistence, by Wendy Sherman about her storied diplomatic career.
The Backchannel by Bill Burns, a legendary career diplomat (and my former boss) currently serving as Director of the CIA.
And one other that comes to mind is American Statecraft: The History of the Foreign Service. It’s a pretty large volume, but essential for anyone who wants to delve deep into the history of American diplomacy.
While Mustafa Popal is a career U.S. diplomat, the views expressed here are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of State or the U.S. government.
