Obama Renews This Expat's Pride

DELHI // A little more than 60 years ago a sharp-eyed, diminutive man with the tongue-twisting name of Jawaharlal brought the world’s most populous democracy into being with a stirring, landmark speech.

“Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny,” began Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, speaking in August 1947. “Now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially.”

Squeezed into a south Delhi cafe not far from where those words were spoken, a ragtag band of nearly 100 Barack Obama admirers – Indians as well as Americans and various other foreigners – watched the United States redeem not one but two pledges with Tuesday’s presidential election.

Subdued optimism gave way to unbridled glee when the results appeared on the big screen at 9.30am local time. People stood and cheered, hooted, hollered and whistled.

“Bush created a perception of what Americans are like – arrogant and unable to listen,” Rishi Jaitly said shortly after bear hugging anyone within reach. An American of Indian origin, he has been working in Delhi as a policy analyst for Google since early last year. “This reaffirms that we are an exceptional country; today I’m so proud to be an American.”

Whether the dream of Dr Martin Luther King Jr has come to pass – and African Americans can proclaim themselves “free at last” – is not yet clear. But never has the United States so boldly lived out its creed: that all men are created equal. Come Jan 20, Barack Hussein Obama, an African-American raised in near poverty by a single mother, will become the most powerful man on the planet. A more persuasive argument for American democracy is hard to imagine.

Of greater concern for the world’s six billion non-Americans are the values for which the US has long stood: fairness and morality, liberty and human dignity, values many believe George W Bush trashed with post -September 11 bullying.

“When Bush was elected for the second time – after the Iraq war and torture and that – America lost a lot of respect in the world,” said Miguel Alcalde, a 29-year-old Spaniard who has been in India for a year. “But this means that people have had enough. This is good for America.”

Working as a South Asia correspondent for the past few years, I have faced regular fallout from the Bush failures. The most cutting occurred this past May. I was walking towards the Red Mosque in Islamabad when I locked eyes with a gentle-looking, white-bearded man wearing a salwar kameez and a skullcap.

“What country are you from?” he asked, smiling and walking alongside me.

“I’m from the United States,” I said.

He winced as if in pain.

“Why are you coming here and killing us?” he asked.

“I’m not killing anyone, sir,” I said, forcing a smile.

“Well your president sure is, coming here, going to Iraq, killing Muslims,” he said, holding my arm for balance as we negotiated a series of awkward kerbs.

“Yeah, well, I think he’s trying to do something good but doesn’t know how to go about it,” I said sheepishly.

“He’s not doing anything good!” the man retorted, pausing as we reached his turning. “And I speak better English than he does.”

Such people as Mufti Omar see hope in Mr Obama.

In South Asia, Mr Bush is widely panned, and support for John McCain has been scarce. Mr Obama is seen as offering redemption, the possible renewal of those great American values. His tryst with the world is thus not just a historical precedent, but a crucial break from the recent past.

Still, the Indian government is already voicing concern that in an effort to shore up a still tense relationship with Pakistan, Mr Obama will force Delhi’s hand in Kashmir. Other countries are sure to have their own concerns and with Mr Obama’s record so slim, his career still in its infancy, it is impossible to predict how successful a president he will be.

Yet even before he settles into the Oval Office and makes his first decision, the progress is clear. His middle name, for instance, is gaining him fans in the Muslim world.

Henry Pedersen, 22, an American camel genetics researcher, recalls being asked when he visited Algeria this year: “You’re electing a Shia president?”

“They were absolutely shocked,” he said. “But they definitely dig it.”

Can Mr Obama’s skin colour and background offer hope for the world’s minorities and disadvantaged?

“This is about America opening up to the rest of the world,” said Himali Kapil, 32, a Delhi-based writer and filmmaker. “The identities that truly represent America are finding their voice – that’s what feels so positive about Obama.”

For those eager to see Mr Obama in office, nearly two years of campaigning has revealed a steady hand, a sharp mind and confident, deliberate leadership skills.

“The good thing about Obama is that he might talk to somebody before bombing the crap out of them,” said John Butler, a Briton doing voluntary work in India. “It’s nice to have hope in a politician again.”

Could it really be? That after eight years, there will be no more discomfort when talk turns to international politics? No more bullying, no more assaults on the English language from the leader of the free world? We shall see. For many Americans abroad, however, Nov 4 2008 will go down as the dawning of a bright, new morning for the US on the world stage.

-- published in The National (www.thenational.ae) on 6 Nov 2008.

Indian sailors strike for action against pirates

DELHI // Tired of paying the heaviest price for piracy, two leading Indian seafarers’ unions went on strike this week. More than 100,000 sailors refuse to work until their government provides an armed escort for all ships passing Somalia and frees the 18 Indian crew members of the hijacked Stolt Valor.

They may be in for a long wait.

“It’s been five weeks and still my husband is stuck on that ship,” said Seema Goyal, wife of Prabhat Kumar Goyal, the captain of the Japanese-owned, Hong Kong-registered Valour. “I worry about him constantly and our three children don’t understand what’s going on.”

Piracy off the coast of Somalia has more than doubled this year, with 74 attacks and counting. As the increasingly bold and well-armed sea bandits have snatched one after another of the cargo-laden ships passing through the Gulf of Aden, Indian citizens at home and at sea have borne the brunt of the hostilities.

“Because they are skilled and speak English, there are more seafarers from India than from any other nation,” said Sunil Nair, spokesman for the National Union of Seafarers of India. He said more than 150,000 Indian sailors work in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. “Because of this, Indians are at more risk as a result of all this piracy than anybody else.”

On Tuesday, the Somali coastguard freed an Indian cargo ship with two Indian crew members that had been hijacked near Socotra Island a few days prior. Last weekend, Somali pirates released the Deyanat after its Iranian owners paid a reduced ransom. Three emaciated Indian crew members arrived in Mumbai after seven weeks in captivity and related tales of food shortages, constant death threats and drug-addicted captors. And in Salaya, a Gujarati port town, locals are waiting to hear from three ships carrying 15 local seamen who lost radio contact from the region this week.

Mr Nair estimates that 17 of the 30 ships hijacked near Somalia this year have had Indian crew members.

One high-profile exception: there are no Indian sailors among the 20-member crew of the Faina, a tank-laden Ukrainian vessel captured a few weeks ago.

On Sept 15, about 35 pirates stormed aboard the Valor, a chemical tanker, off the coast of Yemen. The hijackers stripped the 22-member crew and confined them to the bridge, according to crew members who have been in phone contact. More than five weeks later, progress has been minimal, even as the ransom demand has dipped from US$6 million (Dh22m) to $2m.

Critics, such as the Hindustan Times, a popular national daily, said Delhi has been “pussyfooting on the issue”. That, however, may not be the case.

“In reality, there’s little the government can do,” said Roger Middleton, senior fellow at Chatham House, a London-based think tank, and author of a piracy study released this month. Mr Middleton said military force rarely works and that ransom ultimately resolves the majority of these incidents.

“It’s very possible that the Indian government is trying very hard to help negotiations behind the scenes,” he said. “We can’t know for sure, and beyond that, they can’t do much other than monitor the situation.”

A K Antony, the Indian defence minister, has repeatedly said India is unable to mount a military attack because it has no maritime agreement with Somalia – a point reiterated on Tuesday by the Somali ambassador to India. In the case of the Stolt Valor, armed aggression would be doubly risky because of the 24,000 tonnes of chemicals in the hull. And responsibility for hijacked ships falls first to the owner nation, then to the country where the ship is registered and finally to the country in whose waters the incident occurs.

“In cases such as this, it is normal for negotiations to take place between the proprietors of the ship and the hijackers themselves,” said Nagma Mullick, spokesman for the ministry of external affairs. “That’s what’s been happening here and our embassy has been working to facilitate those negotiations.”

On Saturday, Pranab Mukherjee, the Indian foreign minister, reassured the captive sailors’ families that their loved ones would return home safely.

That same day India rushed a warship to the Gulf of Aden to protect Indian shipping interests in the region. It is the first time an Indian Navy vessel has been authorised to patrol international waters, a move the navy said was not incident-specific. The patrol comes more than three weeks after the navy requested authorisation to pursue and use force against the Stolt Valor hijackers, but was refused.

Somalia’s caretaker government, battling an Islamist insurgency, lacks the resources to combat the problem. Thus, a flurry of hijackings along the coast has in recent weeks attracted a clutch of foreign military vessels. Still the problem festers. The pirates are holding 10 ships and nearly 200 crew. Some of the $20m to $30m paid to pirates in ransom this year, according to Chatham House, is funding Somalia’s Islamist insurgency and possibly wending its way into international terror networks.

“Operating in an area full of rich pickings and with enormous rewards on offer seems likely to point to a trajectory of increasing ruthlessness,” Mr Middleton wrote. “It is likely to be only a matter of time before more people are killed.”

Such fears may be strongest on the subcontinent, where security concerns have led to the sailors’ strike. When Mr Goyal, the captain of the Valour, spoke to his wife last week, he said the pirates were becoming “increasingly hostile."

-- this story published in The National, www.thenational.ae, on October 24