The
Wall Street Journal Online has a useful map of where the violence in Mumbai has occurred. The terrorists' orchestrated attacks involve the killing of more than 100 people and the taking of
five Jewish families as hostages, including Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, at a community center. The
Wall Street Journal notes that "it remains unclear who was responsible for Wednesday's terrorist attacks in Mumbai. But by Thursday, Indian officials had voiced suspicions that some of the terrorists were from Pakistan." Pakistani officials condemned the attacks, yet the training involved in an orchestrated assault could not have taken place in India. Also, "one of the attackers reportedly spoke with a Pakistani accent in a phone call to India TV."
It seems more than coincidental that the attack comes weeks after the election of Senator Barack Obama to the presidency. Even during the election, Joe Biden stated that an Obama victory would stimulate terrorist assaults. The question that comes to my mind is whether President-elect Obama will be capable of handling violence in Pakistan and India. Incompetence would not be a first for American presidents--Presidents Carter and Clinton were both inept at handling terrorists. However, there is an additional issue with respect to President-elect Obama.
In 2007 then-Senator Obama claimed that he would take a hard line on Pakistan. This position had the flavor of psychological compensation. Mr. Obama has long had close ties to Pakistan, and there are serious reasons to consider whether he will be morally capable of impartially responding to Islamic terrorism in ways that reflect American interests. Some might argue that the psychological force of cognitive dissonance, the need to resolve conflicting psychological forces, might impel President-elect Obama to be more aggressive than necessary with respect to Pakistan. However, cognitive dissonance is notoriously difficult to predict, and the response could go in the opposite direction as well--or none at all.
According to Amir Mir, of the Pakistani
Rupee News, who quotes an article by Umar Chema:
"Chairman (of the Pakistani) Senate Muhammadmian Soomro may be having a friend in White House if Barak Hussain Obama finally succeeds in his presidential bid. Hardly a few people know about Soomro’s link with Obama, which he never discussed it in public. But in private interactions with influential Pakistanis here in the US, Obama disclosed that Soomro’s father was his host when he went on a hunting expedition in Jacobabad during his visit to Pakistan in 1981.""Many say that Obama visited Pakistan: Didn’t learn anything!
"While in Karachi, Obama had stayed at the residence of his college friend, Hassan Chandio. In Jacobabad, he was the guest of Soomro family. Muhammadmian Soomro confirmed this information and said it was his first meeting with Obama.
“Yes, he had been our guest and spent three days in Jacobabad,” he told The News. Soomro, presently in the US, his second home, said an American friend had told his father, Ahmadmian Soomro, about Obama’s arrival in Pakistan and asked him to look after the American. Soomro’s father was the deputy speaker of West Pakistan Assembly and had also later served in the Senate.
"By the time Soomro’s father had hosted Obama, he was only a college student who went to Pakistan on his way from Indonesia where his mother was working with the Ford Foundation’s micro credit finance project. Also Obama’s mother was a frequent traveller to Pakistan and according to Time Magazine, she had a little bit proficiency in speaking Urdu.
"Although, Obama has not disclosed his link with Soomro, he mentioned it during his canvassing campaign while talking to a Pakistani American, Shahid Ahmad Khan, member of Board of Trustees Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
"Obama’s war mongering should be repudiated not encouraged. During the 2008 elections Senator Barack Obama listened to the hawkish members of the Bush Administration and threatened Pakistan...Pakistani Americans are a powerful lobby in the US. Pakistani-Americans ask Obama to ease rhetoric about bombing targets in Pakistan.
"...According to news reports Mr. Obama visited Pakistan. His mother had visited the country so many times that she had a working knowledge of Urdu-the national language of Pakistan as well as many Muslims in the Subcontinent.
"He had travelled with a college friend whose family used to live in Karachi.” As a matter of fact, Obama had travelled to Pakistan after leaving Occidental College in Los Angeles in 1981 to transfer to the Columbia University in New York.
"The Afghan war was at its peak at that time and the US State Department had already issued a warning for Americans travelling to Pakistan.An August 14, 2008 report by the Associated Press even alleged that Obama had actually travelled to Pakistan under his Muslim name-Barry Soetero-while using an Indonesian passport.
"As a matter of fact, Barack Obama Junior was born to Barack Obama Senior, a black Kenyan, and Ann Dunham, a white American. Barack Obama Senior and Mrs Ann Dunham were divorced when their son Obama was two.
"Obama Senior, who had died in a car accident in 1982, met his son only once after the divorce. Ann Dunham later married Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian Muslim.
"A news report carried by a US-based website www.pakistaniat.com http://www.pakistaniat.com/ in Sept 2008 stated while quoting the US media that Barack Obama had many Pakistani friends during his college days, and it was friendship that brought him to Pakistan. In his memoir, Dreams from My Father, Obama talks of having a Pakistani roommate when he moved to New York, a man he calls Sadik (his 1982 roommate at an apartment at a sixth-floor walkup on East 94th Street). Obama describes Sadik as a short, well-built Pakistani who smoked marijuana, snorted cocaine and liked to party. During his years at the Occidental College, Barack befriended Wahid Hamid, a fellow student and an immigrant from Pakistan. Wahid Hamid is now a vice president at Pepsico in New York. His third Pakistani friend was Imad Husain, a Pakistani, who is now a Boston-based banker.
"According to www.pakistaniat.com , during his Pakistan visit, Obama stayed in Karachi with the family of his college friend Hassan Chandeo. Now a self employed financial consultant living in Armonk in Westchester County of New York, Hassan Chandeo took his African-American college friend on traditional partridge hunting trips to Hyderabad, Larkana, Shikarpur and Jacobabad districts. Partridge hunting is considered a symbol of good hospitality in Sindh. Barack Obama made friends with a Sindhi politician Muhammadmian Soomro as well, who hails from the Shikarpur district of Sindh and is Senate Chairman. The newly elected American president reportedly lived at Muhammad Ali Society residence of Ahmad Mian Soomro, the father of Muhammadmian Soomro.
"Another US-based website www.freerepublic.com quoted Time Magazine on September 1, 2008, stating that Obama may have visited Pakistan again in the second half of 1980 and stayed there for a month with his mother who was an employee of the Ford Foundation and posted in Gujranwala as a microfinance consultant for an Asian Development Bank micro-credit finance project that ran from 1987 to 1992.
"The report said Mrs Dunham, who died in Hawaii-Obama’s birth place-in 1995 from ovarian cancer, used to stay at Hilton International Hotel in Lahore. She travelled daily from Lahore to Gujranwala and Obama stayed with her in the same hotel which has been already renamed as Avari Hotel, the report added."
To what degree does Obama's background color his attitudes about Pakistan? Amir Mir is uncertain. So am I.
