Daily Times

President Barack Obama’s recent visit to India has been talked about and analysed in some detail by commentators in Pakistan. In my opinion, there is no reason to grudge this growing bonhomie between the president and India’s Hindu nationalist Prime Minister (PM) Modi. India and the US share a common strategic vision vis-à-vis Asia in general and China in particular. Underneath the warm glow of friendship is the calculus of geopolitics and economics. Geopolitics and economics being paramount, rightly so, in US policy were also the reasons President Obama cut short his Indian trip to pay homage to two kings of Saudi Arabia, the one recently deceased and his successor.

Yet Obama is going to be out of office in less than 23 months and already he must have begun putting together a balance sheet. Sure, he won the Nobel Peace Prize but what has his presidency — one that started with so much promise and optimism — brought about for the world? Pakistan, the country he visited as a young college student, was said to be one of his biggest headaches in his years in office. He has had a hard time negotiating with its complex power brokers in an equally complicated country. It is therefore Pakistan where he must cement his legacy. And what a time it would be at. Pakistan’s democratic government continues to hang on against tremendous odds both domestically and internationally. For the first time in a decade there seems to be resolve and national consensus on terrorism. The country has gone through a multitude of tragedies and is the number one victim of terrorism in the world today having laid down more than 50,000 lives. Yet its people are resilient and still standing, still going through the motions and still trying to lead normal lives every day. Very early on in his presidency, Obama had noted this overarching character of the ordinary Pakistani: his or her ability to overcome tremendous odds.

Sure, Pakistan may not exactly enjoy the place China, India or Saudi Arabia do in the broader geopolitical and economic equation at the moment but it is and will continue to be the most important country in the world. The battle that defines Islam’s internal struggle is played out daily in Pakistan’s street corners. Amidst misogynist and bigoted rhetoric emanating from the pulpit, the women of Pakistan continue to enter the workforce in greater numbers than before. Despite attempts by the orthodoxy to impose its own narrow version of Islam through terror force and violence, Pakistan continues to be home to more different sects of Islam, including the world’s second largest Shia population. Its officially five percent non-Muslim minorities in real terms constitute a population larger than many countries and it is one of the few Muslim countries that is — however flawed — a constitutional democracy with a compact between the governing and the governed. Much, though not all, of what is wrong with the country did not emanate from below but was imposed from the top by a military dictator who was backed by the US for its own political gains. It was the US’s war against the Soviet Union that ripped through the basic fabric of Pakistani society converting it from a moderate Muslim majority nation to one brimming with religious extremism, discriminatory legislation and terrorism. No matter how you look at it, the US cannot escape responsibility for the damage done to Pakistan.

President Obama, therefore, needs to play the part to reverse the trend set by his predecessors. The last two US presidents visited Pakistan when it was under a military dictator, i.e. General Musharraf. Before that the closest thing we had to a presidential visit was a visit by US First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy who visited President Ayub Khan, another military dictator. That familiar road led to a gaping hole and culminated into Abbottabad. Does it not make sense then that the first US president to break through the invisible glass ceiling of race in the US is also the first US president to visit Pakistan when it is under a democratic dispensation? Would it not be a coup de grace for the forces of democracy, human rights and civil rights in Pakistan? Would he not smash with the same blow the conspiracy theorists who claim that US-India alignment constitutes a clear and present danger to Pakistan’s integrity and sovereignty? At the very least the US president would have a great opportunity to convince a country that during his presidency has been at loggerheads with the US that he stands with the people of Pakistan in their long and arduous battle against terrorism and extremism?

And how better to convince us, the people of Pakistan, but to come to Pakistan and address the joint session of our parliament or to meet our press in a live session and answer questions, difficult questions, including questions about Raymond Davis, drones and Kashmir? For too long, Pakistani and US leaders have met behind closed doors. In addressing the people of Pakistan he may yet have a lasting legacy, the legacy of bridging the gap not just between two suspicious allies but two worlds and two social orders. This is the stuff great presidencies of the past were made of. It may just be the most important thing President Obama could do, not just for US-Pakistan relations but his own legacy.

The writer is a lawyer based in Lahore and the author of the book Mr Jinnah: Myth and Reality. He can be contacted via twitter @therealylh and through his email address yasser.hamdani@gmail.com