In 2004, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan had named him as the head of the UN mission in Iraq where he helped co-ordinate humanitarian and reconstruction efforts.

Before that, he was Pakistan's High Commissioner to India since 1997 and ambassador to Syria (1986–88), East Germany (1990–91), Russia (1991–94), and later to China (1994–97).

[1] While at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Islamabad, he served as director of East Asia (1975–1978), director-general for Policy Planning, Afghanistan (1982–1986) and Additional Foreign Secretary for Policy Planning, Afghanistan, Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (1988–1990).

[5] His father belonged to the prominent Qazi family of Balochistan, whose notable members included Ashraf's paternal uncle, Qazi Muhammad Essa, a leading figure of the Pakistan Movement;[3] and Essa's son Qazi Faez Isa, a jurist who is the current Chief Justice of Pakistan and who formerly served as the Chief Justice of Balochistan High Court.

[6] Ashraf's parents met in England in 1939 while his father was studying philosophy at Oxford; they married in 1940, and settled in his paternal family's hometown of Pishin in Balochistan in 1947, from where his mother eventually came into Pakistani politics.