Obama remark angers Pakistan

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Obama remark angers Pakistan
Official: Threatened strike 'irresponsible'

By Mike Dorning, Washington Bureau Tribune reporter Noreen Ahmed-Ullah contributed from Chicago

August 4, 2007

WASHINGTON
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First Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was attacked by political rivals at home. Now he is under fire from abroad.

A senior Pakistani government official Friday criticized as "irresponsible" a threat Obama made this week to launch unilateral American military strikes against Al Qaeda havens in a remote border region of the Muslim nation.

Obama's comments also stirred street protests in Pakistan and criticism from Pakistani-Americans living in the Chicago area.

"It's a very irresponsible statement, that's all I can say," Pakistan's Foreign Minister Khusheed Kasuri told AP Television News. "As the election campaign in America is heating up we would not like American candidates to fight their elections and contest elections at our expense."

Obama's threat to attack the territory of a Muslim ally without the consent of its government also could have broader ramifications for his standing in international Islamic public opinion.

The worldly mixed-race presidential candidate, who spent part of his early childhood in the Muslim nation of Indonesia, has a life story that has excited interest among a global Muslim population that has been disillusioned by the Bush administration's policies in Iraq. Obama's middle name of Hussein, a negative to Americans familiar only with the deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, offers comfort to Muslims who recognize the name as that of a revered ancient imam associated with the cause of the oppressed.

Obama has promoted a counterterrorism policy that emphasizes attempts to win over Islamic public opinion in the struggle against fundamentalist extremists, and his advisers say he would be a powerful messenger for the U.S. in the Muslim world. In the same speech in which Obama threatened a military strike in Pakistan, he promised to go to a major Islamic forum within his first 100 days in office to "deliver an address to redefine our struggle" against Islamic extremists.

But the threat against Pakistan is likely to damage views of Obama in global Islamic opinion, though perhaps not irrevocably, said Vali Nasr, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who studies political Islam and is author of "The Shia Revival."

"There is the Obama promise. There is the Obama message. And now there are the Obama words," Nasr said. "They are not consistent with each other."

Sensitive subject

Nasr said global Islamic opinion is particularly sensitive to treatment of Pakistan because its tensions with India make it the second major spot in the world in which Muslims are in conflict with a nation of a foreign religion. The other is the Israeli-Arab conflict.

"Ultimately, the tenor of Obama's argument is that he is going treat Pakistan as an enemy country," Nasr said.

In a counterterrorism speech Wednesday, Obama said that as president he would order a strike against Al Qaeda leaders in tribal areas of Pakistan if President Pervez Musharraf does not eradicate their havens in the mountainous region on the border with Afghanistan.

"There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again," Obama said. "If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf will not act, we will."

On Thursday, Obama was asked whether there were any circumstances in which he would be willing to use nuclear weapons in Afghanistan or Pakistan. He said he thought such an action "would be a profound mistake," and then quickly amended that remark, saying, "there's been no discussion of nuclear weapons."

The Bush administration has tread carefully in its dealings with Musharraf, an important ally in the struggle against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. The White House has pressed Musharraf to take more aggressive steps against terrorist sanctuaries in the country, but Bush has been sensitive to Musharraf's precarious hold on power.

Street protest

Obama's comment added to public anger in Pakistan. And a Republican presidential candidate, Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado, further inflamed feelings by suggesting that the U.S. deter a nuclear terrorist attack by issuing a threat to retaliate by bombing the two holiest Islamic sites, Mecca and Medina.

In Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, about 150 people chanted slogans against the U.S., Obama and Tancredo at a demonstration organized by hard-line religious parties, according to The Associated Press.

In Miran Shah, a major town in the lawless region that borders Afghanistan, about 1,000 tribesmen condemned recent Pakistani military operations in the area and vowed to repel any U.S. attack, AP reported.

A State Department spokesman issued a rebuke to presidential candidates for complicating efforts to gain international cooperation in counterterrorism efforts.

"Those who wish to hold office can speak for themselves, and whoever ... comes into office in 2009 will then be in a position to talk about what they intend or plan to do," said deputy spokesman Tom Casey.

In Chicago, several Pakistani-Americans who had donated to Obama said they would no longer support him. Dr. Murtaza Arain, an Oak Brook surgeon who has attended two Obama fundraisers and donated money to the campaign, said he planned to switch his support to Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.).

"I don't want him to be my president if he doesn't understand all the ground realities in Pakistan," said Arain, pointing to Pakistan's efforts to root out terrorists. "To say you'll act if they don't is suspecting an ally and putting that ally down."