In many ways – certainly not all – Aurangzeb and Gorbachev were much better rulers than their predecessors. They failed because things were too rotten. Similar is the case with Obama. Will he succeed or will he prove an Aurangzeb or Gorbachev of his country? SOROOR AHMED poses this billion-dollar question.
It is often felt that diplomacy is the last refuge of the weak and cowards. When they are strong – or presume to be so – they make statements like: “You are with us or you are against us.” When they are powerful, their secret agencies get killed Presidents and Prime Ministers at the drop of a hat. When they are mighty, they send planes to bomb country after country to the stone age.
But when they are caught in a no-win situation – not to speak of actually losing – in a fight with amorphous non-state actors, they start blurting that military power alone is not the only solution. They start talking about withdrawal of army, mutual respect, the commonality among different religions and cultures. And finally they start making distinction between the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ within the enemy ranks.
Barack Husain Obama is not the first person in human history to adopt such diction – be it in Arabic, Persian, Turkish or Spanish – nor is he the last. In just over six months he had not only reached out to the Muslim world but to the overwhelmingly Christianised Latin Americans too – and literally in different languages. While addressing for the first time from the rampart of the White House on January 20 he asked Muslims to open the fist so that the West can shake hand with them. While addressing the Turkish Parliament he said that his country would never be at war with Islam. He surprised Iran by greeting the countrymen and women on the occasion of their New Year’s Day. The Iranian leadership was, however, cautious in its response.
Finally on June 4 he, while addressing in Cairo University, offered: assalaamu alaykum –obviously peace or olive branch – to the Muslim world. He talked about what Islam is and what it is not. He quoted from the Qur’ān and praised the Muslims and their faith. He spoke about sharing common principles and preached tolerance.
In the first tour of the region after taking over the presidency he met the aging 81-year old President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and equally old King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Mind it, if the United States media reports are to be believed, all the 19 suicide bombers of the 9/11 came from these two countries.
Obama called for the solution in all those places where the Americans are directly dragged into for example Arab-Israel disputes, Afghanistan-Pakistan battleground and called for the withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan by 2012. He deliberately chose not to speak a single word on Kashmir because it was not affecting the Americans directly – though remotely it may be. He once again offered talks with Iran but made it clear that there would be no compromise on the nuclear issue. During his speech he also clarified that all the mistrusts cannot be eradicated by one speech.
What is strange is that he did not use the word terrorist a single time, though day in and day out his country’s establishment claims that it has been fighting with them for the last eight years. Now his administration sees good Taliban also and wants to separate them from bad ones. They have coined their own definition of good and bad. Good Taliban are those who want to impose Shariah within the boundary of the country and the bad ones are those who want to export it.
No doubt these steps are a significant departure from the past when the lone Super Power of the world was on the ‘crusading’ mission to civilize the mountain people of Central Asia and tribes of the Arabian and Iraqi deserts.
The verbal as well as the body language have changed not only in dealing with the Muslim world, but also while handling the Christianized soft-underbelly called Latin America. President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela ceased to remain the Enemy Number-one in the western hemisphere. He was literally and metaphorically embraced by Obama and greeted in Spanish when he came to attend a conference of North and South American counties.
The other anti-American nations of the region are being wooed. Obama is fully aware that it was in the Latin American countries that the people celebrated the most the 9/11 destruction of Twin Towers and a block of Pentagon. Though they are almost cent per cent Christians – overwhelmingly Catholics – their hostility towards the US can be measured from this action of theirs.
After all the CIA has played nasty games in almost all the countries down south – from Mexico to southern tip of Argentina. In the last over a century and a half the Americans have wreaked havoc. They got killed a number of Presidents and Prime Ministers not to speak of common folks, who were massacred like vermin. Salvador Allende of Chile was killed on September 11, 1973 – 9/11 of that country – because he was remotely a Socialist and wanted to toe an independent line.
Obama, no doubt, is on a mission to undo the past. He openly concedes this fact. He is not dim-witted like his immediate predecessor, George Bush, who had a very poor grasp of history and geography – not to speak of politics. Obama is aware of the fate of a person called Mikhail Gorbachev. He was the last great ruler of the tottering empire of Soviet Union. A sensible man, he tried to open up his economy, revamp the age-old bureaucratic Communist structure of his country and announced withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan. He did everything best for the country and was hailed in the western media. But he failed to stem the rot. The Soviet Union got dismembered, just as the Mughal empire in India simply withered away after Aurangzeb’s death in 1707. The British simply walked into the disintegrated country a few years later.
In many ways – certainly not all – Aurangzeb and Gorbachev were much better rulers than their predecessors. They failed because things were too rotten. Similar is the case with Obama. Will he succeed or will he prove an Aurangzeb or Gorbachev of his country?