Student, Diplomat, Soldier: Asker ’13

Of the 90 recently accepted Wilson School concentrators, one is entering the policy school with a yearlong diplomacy credit already to his name. Swedish international student David Asker ’13 is not just an avid cross-country skier and a studied martial artist, but also a trained military interrogator, soldier and former diplomat at only 22.

While most students spend their freshman spring and sophomore fall semesters contemplating courses and choosing a major, Asker used his advanced standing credits to take two semesters off to serve in a diplomatic post in Kabul as the Third Secretary to the Swedish Embassy.

Upon graduation from high school in the spring of 2008, Asker applied to and was accepted to the University. Adhering to Sweden’s former conscription rules, he deferred for a year to fulfill his state-mandated year of military service.

Placed in the intelligence branch, Asker was required to learn a language. Though the choices had previously comprised only Russian and Arabic, the war in Afghanistan had prompted the addition of Persian, which Asker was assigned to learn.

“I wasn’t too happy about it at the beginning,” Asker said. “It sounds like a small language ... [it] sounds irrelevant.”

Despite serving in the intelligence branch, Asker still had to go through the essentials of training to be a soldier: basic training, combat training and simulations in addition to language and culture classes and intelligence training.

“I was overwhelmed,” he said. “It’s like moving into a new world. I had lived in different countries before and had seen different lifestyles, but none were comparable to the transition from a civilian to a military lifestyle. It’s an understatement that it takes over your life.”

Asker admitted that his days were sometimes taxing, not just physically, but also mentally and emotionally.

“The way they teach things, it’s a very militaristic style of teaching things in that it’s not really teaching,” he said. “It’s basically them telling you to learn something and then you have to learn it. Every Friday morning we would have a language test. If anyone ever failed a language test, they were kicked out. It creates a very oppressive environment ... It’s an effective, but by no means pleasant, way of learning things.”

At the end of his term of service, Asker was handed a military contract giving him the option to serve as a soldier in the small mountain province of Sar-e Pol in Afghanistan. Though he desired to put his newly acquired language and physical training to use, Asker chose to attend the University instead of going to war.

“After I decided not to go, I wasn’t very happy about it,” he explained. “A lot of my platoon mates were in Afghanistan while I was going through my freshman fall at Princeton. They were telling me all these stories and having this formative experience, and, here I was, studying political theory. I wasn’t sure I had made the right decision.”

During winter break of his freshman year, while at home in Sweden with his family, David got a second chance.

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

“I got an email about this job, sent to the four of us who had gone through the Persian language training and yet were not in Afghanistan. It turned out all of us were interested,” he recalled.

Although the email said little other than that the chosen candidate would be serving as a diplomat to the Swedish Embassy in Afghanistan, Asker felt that the opportunity was too good to pass up.

“I feel like this is sort of history being made; this is history at the source,” Asker said of his reasons for applying. “This is going to be world history in 50 years. It really appealed to me to see these things unfold on the ground.”

After a formal application process, complete with an interview with the minister of foreign affairs, which was conducted during his winter break in Sweden, Asker was selected to fill the post. The news of his placement, the full details of which he still did not know, came during his first finals period.

“Everything happened extremely fast, within just a few weeks,” he said. “As I should have been studying for my finals, I was getting my leave of absence in order. I was preparing to take advanced standing. Within a month after having first heard of this job, I was in Stockholm, training.”

After three weeks of a “crash course in how to be a diplomat,” Asker left for Kabul, where he was put up in the Swedish Embassy’s apartment complex. Despite the grandiosity of his abode, and the cleaning lady that came with it, Asker’s new lifestyle lacked many comforts.

Grocery shopping, for example, was an ordeal in itself.

“We would usually go in a group of people to minimize exposure, especially to the Western-style grocery stores, because they’re very high-profile targets for insurgents. We would go in an armored car, usually with a bodyguard, wearing bulletproof vests under our jackets, go in, get what we needed and get out.”

To put the daily dangers of his Afghan life into perspective, Asker noted that the grocery store he once frequented was destroyed in a suicide blast a few weeks ago.

“It was a very real risk, which also made it more complicated,” he said.

Asker’s main function at the embassy was to handle consular services: in essence, aiding Swedish citizens in Afghanistan in an emergency situation. Common situations included violent civil disputes over land ownership and young girls forcibly being married off to Afghan men seeking Swedish citizenship.

Resolving the situation of a young Swedish female who had been promised to an Afghan male against her will was “one of the most intense work-related things I had to,” Asker recalled. “It was very rewarding. We were successful in getting her out.”

Although Asker was working with a high-ranked counselor, some of the “trickiest situations happened when she was on vacation,” Asker said. His job function also included assuming the responsibilities of anyone who was on leave.

“It contributed to making the job a lot more rewarding,” he noted. “I got a little bit of insight into the different fields of what you can do as a diplomat. I did everything from representing Sweden at an international UNESCO conference to opening mail.”

Asker’s daily life also allowed him to practice his Persian, not just with embassy staff, but also in situations requiring an interpreter.

“I got to be in a lot of meetings where I had no business [being present], with high-up people, and listen in on what’s going on ... it goes back to the whole being a part of history thing.”

Both his military training and diplomatic experience have left profound marks on Asker’s perception of life and people, he said.

“It made me careful about trusting people. I didn’t realize how many people try to trick you and how many people try to take advantage of you,” he noted.

Asker also learned how to handle prejudicial antagonism.

“I met some people in Afghanistan who outright hated me,” he said. “I had people yell at me they wanted to cut my hand off, that they were going to kill me, or that they were going to kill themselves because of me. This happens in different situations, sometimes when I had to refuse people visas or asylum, or when I was perceived as an occupying imperialist responsible for civilian killings.”

Though he expected the sort of racial conflicts he encountered, Asker said, he wasn’t fully prepared for the mental implications of such resistance.

“I thought I would be able to deal with that kind of stuff by simply knowing that I was doing the right thing, that I was somehow morally on the right side ... This was not enough,” he said. “You can be convinced you’re doing the right thing, but you still feel like crap when people say they will commit suicide because of you. What really makes you feel better is having other people on your side, having friends support you. That experience has made me less of an individualist and more of a team player.”

On a more optimistic note, Asker said, he learned to appreciate life itself.

“They say you want to live your life like tomorrow is your last day on Earth, but you can’t do that; it’s unrealistic,” he noted. “But [this type of experience] forces you to appreciate everyday things in life in a different way.”

The effects of his time in Afghanistan can also be seen in his academic choices. “I was interested in Afghanistan before, but, when you’ve been there and seen it and developed a relationship with the place, you feel personally involved with what happens,” he said.

His time in Afghanistan influenced his decision to take Arabic, as well as other courses concerning the Middle East. It also played a large part in his applying to the Wilson School. Asker has already thought about returning to the country, not as a diplomat but instead as an aid worker.

“Doing field work for an NGO, being at the grassroots level out in the provinces, doing something very applied would be very cool,” he explained.

Currently, Asker is actively looking into placements within the Swedish Foreign Ministry in which he could serve in a similar position somewhere other than Afghanistan. As for a future career in diplomacy, Asker is reluctant to commit himself.

“I don’t want to do it all my life,” he said. “The people who spend their entire lives as diplomat, those I’ve spoken to, are disillusioned. It’s a very unstable lifestyle. I don’t think I could do it for a lifetime career.”

For now, Asker said he is happy to simply be a Princeton student, relieved from the burden of worrying about the dangers of simply walking out the front door, with a newfound appreciation for the freedom and comfort and ease of his life here.

“I think I’m even happier being back at Princeton this time than I was the first time when I arrived here as a freshman. The feeling of relief is so much greater,” he explained.

Still, Asker said he couldn’t get the situation in Afghanistan out of his head. “I think about it all the time,” he said.