Obama’s onerous tasks

After his huge and undoubtedly historic victory in the American presidential election, Barrack Obama has his challenging and onerous tasks cut out for him. Indeed, what confronts him is as awesome as his long journey from obscurity to the White House. To put it in a nutshell, he has to reverse the pernicious legacy of George W Bush during the latter’s reign over eight disastrous years. The Bush era has been nothing short of catastrophic both for the US and the world at large, notwithstanding W’s exceptional friendship for India. The global surge for Obama during the long and hard election campaign and the worldwide welcome to his victory bespeak of the high hopes pinned on him, and in his superb acceptance speech he has promised “a new dawn of American leadership”. First of all, he has to rescue his country and the world from the global economic meltdown. In broad brushstrokes he has spelt out his approach. After his inauguration on January 20, he will have to be more specific.

In the realm of foreign policy, President Obama has got to honour his commitment to “end the war in Iraq in a phased and responsible manner” and this has to be done within a reasonable timeframe. In any case, the UN sanction for the American military presence ends in December. The Bush administration has been working furiously to come to an agreement with the Iraqi government to enable American troops to stay in that luckless country indefinitely, supposedly at Iraqi request. The new President must put paid to this disgraceful subterfuge. Closely allied with the end of the Iraq war is the issue of terminating the steady ratcheting of threats of military action against Iran that was a staple of the Bush presidency. All through the election campaign Obama advocated a dialogue with Tehran and stuck to this position even when the rival Republican candidate, John McCain, and his disastrous running mate, Sarah Palin, taunted Obama for being ready to “sit down and talk with terrorists”. This dialogue should be across-the-board. If pursued sincerely, it could resolve the current dispute over Iran’s nuclear programme and alleged ambitions. No less importantly, there can be no peace or stability in the wider Middle East unless there is a change in America’s long-standing policy of total partisanship for Israel and indulgence to Israeli occupation of, and crimes against, Palestine. Obama enjoys strong Jewish support and has often supported the Zionist cause. But if he is to be true to his credo he would have to be even-handed between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Only then can there be any hope of implementing the two-states solution agreed to at Oslo as far back as 1993.

Afghanistan, the starting point of America’s war on terror, has become more of a problem for it than even Iraq. Commanders of British troops there have been saying openly what American generals have been admitting privately: that the war in Afghanistan cannot be won. Showing awareness of this predicament, Obama has been advocating a surge in US troops in Afghanistan. This can only be a temporary palliative because fundamental problems are acute. The Karzai regime is corrupt and unpopular, and the Afghan President’s brother is the country’s biggest drug lord. Secondly, there is no end to the support and sanctuary that Taliban and al-Qaeda get in Pakistan’s tribal lands for mounting assaults on Afghanistan. After a lot of bickering, America has started acting unilaterally, targeting the Taliban in Pakistan with unmanned aircraft called drones. Sometimes, American Special Forces have also landed on Pakistani soil. This has become the subject of a big dispute between the US and Pakistan, though both countries badly need each other.

Consequently, Obama has come up with an idea that runs totally contrary to Indian interests and is becoming a cause of increasing concern to New Delhi. In order to persuade Pakistan to focus on the problem on its western frontier with Afghanistan, Obama has thought of getting the Kashmir dispute resolved so that Pakistan has no worry about its eastern border. And to get the Kashmir dispute settled he considers a proactive American role essential. So much so, that he has even sounded out Bill Clinton to be a Special Envoy for this purpose. There is nothing new or novel in this idea. Successive American administrations – largely Democratic ones – have made the same effort in the past, almost always with disastrous results. No government in New Delhi can accept Obama’s proposal, if only because every third-party attempt to ‘mediate’ in the Kashmir issue has made things worse. Sadly, the Obama plan could not be more ill timed.

Jammu and Kashmir state is in the process of going to the polls. The separatist and secessionist elements in the state, already hell-bent on intimidating the people to boycott the elections, have been greatly emboldened by the renewed expectation of American support to their cause. In the 1990s, the militants playing havoc in J&K had felt similarly bucked up by the sympathy for them displayed by Robin Raphael, assistant secretary of state for South Asia in the first Clinton administration. She had done a lot to help the formation of Hurriyat, a hotchpotch separatist organization that is masterminding current activities to obstruct the Kashmir poll. The Indian government has no alternative but to tell both Obama and former president Clinton that this country would not like any American mediation through a special envoy or otherwise. Clinton should know, even if Obama doesn’t, that when the former president had offered to mediate in the Kargil war, the then Indian Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, had courteously declined. Clinton had phoned while a scared Nawaz Sharif was holding talks with him.

A peace process between this country and Pakistan has gone on for more than four years, and a composite dialogue was interrupted last year only because of the internal crisis in Pakistan. The former Pakistani president, General Musharraf’s foreign minister, Khursheed Kasuri, had publicly said: “Progress has been made in back channel talks”. The decisions taken so far are still on the table. Indeed, the new Pakistani president, Asif Ali Zardari, has promised to resume the threads of talks. It is in the interest of all concerned that the bilateral process be allowed to proceed. There is no room in it for any third party either as mediator or ‘facilitator’.