The lawn is suffering in the garden of the Pakistani Foreign Ministry.

The sun is burning, 42 degrees Celsius.

A whiff of moisture drifts in from a bubbling fountain on the concrete driveway.

It also keeps alive the small pine tree that eket out its existence at the edge of the brown-green lawn.

The tree is reminiscent of Foreign Minister Heiko Maas.

A rectangular stone in front of it says that Maas planted it on August 31 last year.

Peter Carstens

Political correspondent in Berlin

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It should be a sign, green hope, climate change stoppers and so on.

Pakistan is reforesting.

Other visitors have also planted trees, mainly Europeans, such as Denmark's foreign minister.

Some come from former Pakistani foreign ministers.

They are about ten times the size of the knee-high Meuse pine.

The tree that Uzbek Foreign Minister Yeyhun Bayramov planted in January last year is at least three times larger than the one in Maas.

Does the size of the trees have anything to do with the importance of the planters from a Pakistani perspective or with the generosity of the guests?

Is Germany stingy?

Maas was "His Excellency", Baerbock just "Ms."

A diplomat from the German Embassy assures that one has no influence on the selection of the tree to be planted.

That is entirely in the hands of the Pakistani protocol.

When asked why the Danes and Germans are planting pine trees, but not the country's Chinese premium partners, a confidante replies: The Chinese tend to plant coal-fired power plants here in Pakistan.

In any case, only that of Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó is smaller than Maas' tree.

Apparently he didn't have a power plant with him either.

Next to the Meuse pine, someone planted something in the bone-dry ground, from which only a five-foot stalk with exactly two dried leaves remained.

A memorial stone is missing.

A sad sight.

Maybe it was the US Secretary of State.

A stout palm tree grows a little further away, framed by a rectangle of white-painted stones—perhaps the political grave of a former foreign minister.

On Tuesday, Annalena Baerbock also planted one of the endangered pine trees in Islamabad.

Green hope from the Green Foreign Minister.

However, hers is even a bit more squishy than Maas's.

But it can still grow.

Your predecessor is addressed on his memorial stone with HE, i.e. "His Excellency", like all other male colleagues.

Baerbock, on the other hand, only has the abbreviation “Ms.” for “woman” before the name.

Is "excellence" a male privilege in Islamabad?

The trees are transplanted

After planting, Mrs. Baerbock watered her pine tree together with her Pakistani colleague Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, hand in hand at a can.

The plant may have seen a watering can for the first and last time.

The Islamabad pines do not seem to bring German foreign ministers too much luck: Maas was away from the window three weeks after the tree was planted, Baerbock found out an hour later that she had Corona.

A confidante of the ministry reveals that the guest trees are always planted in the same spot in the same hole.

Later they are dug up again and they find their actual place elsewhere.

Maas' pine tree, for example, now stands very inconspicuously next to the gatekeeper's wooden hut, and there is also some rubbish lying around.

The well is quite far away.

Perhaps every now and then one of the uniformed guards who protect the Ministry will take pity and pour some of the tea water on Maas, Baerbock and the others.