Daily Times

President Barack Hussein Obama has made an up-front attempt at making up with the Muslim world. His recent interview with an Arabic news channel suggests as much, as does his administration’s desire to open diplomatic dialogue with Iran and close down Gitmo. But this does not mean that US policy about many issues important to Muslims is going to change in any big way.
The first, and perhaps the most important issue for me, is that of American Muslims. Sadly, racial and ethnic profiling will continue. The Patriot Act is still around and Muslim congregations and charities will remain under suspicion, being guilty unless proven otherwise. Muslims, even if they are citizens, will continue to be harassed at airports and other points of entry.
Whatever President Obama might say or really want, the US has a large law enforcement community that needs ‘threats’ to justify its own relevance and financial support. Where there was once the war on drugs, the war on Medicare fraud and abuse and the war on organised crime, we now have a war against terror. If President Obama wants to call the war on terror by another name, the reality of it will stay much the same.
The second problem is of the Palestinians. Nothing much can be expected to change in the short term. Unfortunately, all the big names that could have led either side in the Israeli-Palestinian equation towards some sort of compromise are gone. What we have now are small men and women on both sides incapable of making major decisions.
Ehud Barak, as prime minister of Israel, tried to make a deal with Yasser Arafat a decade ago but did not succeed, and he and his Labour Party are now relegated to playing second fiddle to the Kadima Party. On the Palestinian side, nobody now speaks for the Palestinians as Arafat once did.
If in the upcoming Israeli elections scheduled for next month Binyamin Netanyahu and his Likud party win over Tzipi Livni’s Kadima and its allies, then things will become entirely unpredictable. As it is, there are many staunch pro-Israeli/anti-Palestinian figures around President Obama and what role that they will play remains to be seen.
President Obama is not likely to make any important decisions in his first administration about the Palestinian situation, especially if they are against the position of the next Israeli government, Senator George Mitchell notwithstanding. If he does, he will probably have a hard time getting re-elected. And, if it ever comes to his second administration, it will probably be much too late as it was for Bill Clinton.
The third problem is, of course, Iraq. Clearly President Obama would like to get US forces out of there as soon as possible. But under what conditions the US gets out depends to a great degree on Iran. Obviously, Iran would like to extract a price from the US before it lets the latter get out with its ‘honour’ intact. The worst nightmare for the US would be a Saigon-like evacuation from Baghdad.
To prevent that from happening some sort of a ‘deal’ with Iran might become necessary. Ultimately, the US will have to deal with the Shia mullahs running Iran, and, as everybody knows, it is not the Iranian president but rather the ‘Supreme Leader’ Ayatollah Khamenei who decides Iranian foreign policy. The question then is whether a US president with the middle name Hussein can actually find some common ground with the Supreme Leader of Iran.
Of the other countries in that area, Syria is a conundrum and as one of the most ‘controlled’ dictatorships, it will be difficult for the US to develop some sort of an open relationship with it. However, peace between the Palestinians and Israel will require some level of Syrian cooperation.
The other three major players in the area, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt will essentially do whatever the US asks them to do. Turkey is, however, an important variable and cannot be taken for granted.
Moving further east, we come to Afghanistan. President Obama has already made Afghanistan his next big foreign policy challenge. Occupation or forceful pacification of Afghanistan is impossible and the British and the Russians learned it the hard way. Unfortunately, it seems that President Obama would rather learn from his own mistakes than from history and the mistakes of others.
Before I get down to the Pakistani and the Indian scenarios, let me first move towards the east. Malaysia and Indonesia are two Muslim majority countries that the US loves, sans Mahathir Muhammad. President Obama has said that he will give his first foreign address in a Muslim country and it is a safe bet that it will be Indonesia. His childhood as well as the fact that Indonesia is much too far away from any terrorist hot spots is good reason.
About Pakistan and India, Obama said before he became president that Afghanistan and the problem of terrorism in the subcontinent cannot be solved without solving the Kashmir problem. Originally, his representative to this part of the world, Richard Holbrooke, was also going to get involved in trying to mediate between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. But under Indian pressure, Kashmir was taken off the table.
Holbrooke can fly between Islamabad and Kabul until kingdom come, but it is Kashmir that he will have to deal with if he and his president want to get things settled down in this part of the world.
Sadly, Pakistan will become the one Muslim country that the US under president Obama will keep pressing to prove that he is neither beholden to Muslims or to his middle name. Calls to ‘do more’ will be what Pakistan can expect to hear for another four years.

Syed Mansoor Hussain has practised and taught medicine in the US. He can be reached at smhmbbs70@yahoo.com