With the war in Afghanistan spilling over into Pakistan, where the CIA has launched numerous drone attacks on insurgents, the Obama administration selected Cameron Munter, a veteran diplomat with experience in Iraq, to run the U.S. embassy in Islamabad. Munter also is used to working in countries undergoing some kind of political transition, although all of those previous assignments took place in Europe. Munter was sworn in as U.S. ambassador to Pakistan on October 6, 2010. 

 

The son of Helen-Jeanne and Leonard Munter, Cameron Munter was born in Claremont, California, in 1954. Munter attended Claremont High School, where he distinguished himself as a distance runner on the cross country and track teams. His college education took place at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and the universities in Freiburg and Marburg in Germany. He received a doctoral degree in modern European history in 1983 from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. 

 

Munter began his career as a college professor, teaching European history at the University of California, Los Angeles from 1982-1984. He directed European studies at the Twentieth Century Fund in New York (1984-1985) before joining the Foreign Service.

 

His first overseas assignment took him to Warsaw, Poland (1986-1988). He returned to Washington, DC, in 1988 to serve as a staff assistant in the State Department’s Bureau of European Affairs and then as country director for Czechoslovakia. In 1991, he was a Dean Rusk Fellow at Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy.

 

The following year he was sent to Prague in the Czech Republic, serving there until 1995. It was then onto Bonn, Germany (1995-1997), before becoming chief of staff in the NATO Enlargement Ratification Office.

 

In 1998, Munter was director of the Northern European Initiative and then executive assistant to the counselor of the State Department (1998-1999). He served as director for Central Europe at the National Security Council until 2001.

 

Beginning in 2002, Munter began taking on larger roles in U.S. embassies, first as deputy chief of mission in Warsaw until 2005 and then in Prague from 2005 to 2007.

 

In 2006, he led the first Provincial Reconstruction Team in Mosul, Iraq.

 

His first ambassador assignment was in Belgrade, Serbia, from 2007 to 2009. The posting was not without difficulties, as Serbian rioters upset over the American position on Kosovo, set fire to the embassy in 2008. The protests sparked a strong response from Munter, who warned the Serbian government not to allow any more attacks on the diplomatic mission.

 

He returned to Iraq in 2009, this time at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. He served as political-military minister-counselor, then as deputy chief of mission for the first half of 2010, directing strategic planning and American civil-military coordination during the military pullout.

 

Munter’s wife, Marilyn Wyatt, is the author of A Handbook of NGO Governance. She has served as Director of Communications at the Aspen Institute and Director of Global Programs as BoardSource. The couple has a son, Daniel, and a daughter, Anna.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Official Biography (State Department)

Cameron Munter ‘New US Ambassador’ (by Baqir Sajjad Syed, Dawn.com)

U.S. Ambassador Warns Serbia's Leaders to Prevent More Violence (by Slobodan lekic, Associated Press)