Political India: Engaging America

From The Hindu

Richard Holbrooke, President Barack Obama’s Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, died on Monday evening here at George Washington University Hospital after undergoing two surgical procedures aimed at repairing a tear in his aorta. He was 69 years old.

Expressing grief at his passing Mr. Obama said, “Michelle and I are deeply saddened by the passing of Richard Holbrooke, a true giant of American foreign policy who has made America stronger, safer, and more respected.” Along with Mr. Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton extended her condolences to Mr. Holbrooke’s wife, Kati Marton and his family, describing him as a “true statesman.”

Other senior administration officials, including Vice President Joe Biden, U.S. Representative to the United Nations, Susan Rice, and Defence Secretary Robert Gates, issued statements of condolence too. Sympathy also poured in from the region of Mr. Holbrooke’s work, with Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari calling Ms. Marton to express condolences. In particular Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi recalled that Mr. Holbrooke “played an important role in upgrading the Pakistan-U.S. Strategic Dialogue to the Ministerial level and expanding the scope of Pakistan-U.S. relations.”

Mr. Holbrooke’s career both began and ended in the service of American diplomacy trapped within the perimeter of unrelenting wars of occupation. As a young Foreign Service officer he was assigned to the U.S. embassy in Vietnam in 1962, where he served for six years and made important policy contributions for economic development and local political reform. In this posting he was most remembered, however, for lending his expertise to the Paris peace talks of 1968, which ultimately helped end the war.

Twenty-four years later – following successful stints as the Director of the U.S. Peace Corps in Morocco (1970-72), as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs under President Jimmy Carter (1977-81) and as U.S. Ambassador to Germany (1993-94) – Mr. Holbrooke again found himself shaping the course of historically significant events.

In 1994, when Mr. Holbrooke took on the mantle of Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs, he headed the negotiation team that was responsible for resolving the Balkan crisis. For the seminal role he played as chief architect of the Dayton Peace Accords, in 1996 Mr. Holbrooke was awarded the Manfred Wörner Medal by the German Ministry of Defence for public figures rendering “special meritorious service to peace and freedom in Europe.”

Touted as a potential future candidate for the position of Secretary of State, Mr. Holbrooke was however sometimes caught out making gaffes including a statement he made earlier this year underplaying the fact that Indians had been targeted and killed in an attack in Kabul. The coordinated suicide attack of February 26 killed nine Indians in a building regularly used by Indian embassy and by Indians engaged in development work in Afghanistan.

Speaking to The Hindu Teresita Schaffer, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and a South Asia specialist who knew Mr. Holbrooke well said he was “extraordinarily gifted, insisted on control over all aspects of the foreign policy machinery, [was] a bureaucratic bulldozer, [and] alternately charming and abrasive.” Mr. Holbrooke was in fact nicknamed “the bulldozer,” and was quoted in media as saying that he had no qualms about “negotiating with people who do immoral things,” if it served efforts for peace.

Touching on his most recent role, Ms. Schaffer however said that Mr. Holbrooke recognised that Afghanistan was a tougher assignment, “in part because there were so many players, you couldn't put [the parties involved] in a room and force a solution.” This view was also corroborated by Lisa Curtis, Senior Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation think tank and a South Asia specialist who has served with the Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department.

Ms. Curtis said to The Hindu that even Mr. Holbrooke, who brought to bear some of the best diplomatic and negotiating skills that existed in the U.S. government, “was unable to get Pakistan on board to deal with Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan.” She added that along with the challenge of securing Pakistani cooperation, the biggest task facing any successor to Mr. Holbrooke would be to “figure out how to work in coordination with the [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai government rather than at cross-purposes.”

On the vacuum left by Mr. Holbrooke’s death, Ms. Schaffer noted that “Whoever succeeds him will probably not have the same larger-than-life quality, and won’t be able to control how funds get allocated, to micromanage what people get assigned to Afghanistan and Pakistan, in short to dominate U.S. civilian tools being used in those countries.”

Ms. Curtis said it would be important, at the very least, to appoint a successor who had significant regional experience, and potential candidates could include Frank Ruggiero, Mr. Holbrooke’s deputy, Richard Armitage, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Haass, former U.S. coordinator for policy toward the future of Afghanistan, or Bruce Riedel, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for Near East and South Asian Affairs.

The question of successors notwithstanding, the Obama administration has clearly lost a powerful personality who championed its cause, something that Vice President Joe Biden doubtless recognised when he quoted a mutual friend as saying, “If you’re not on the team and you’re in his way, God help you.”

Labels: death, Richard Holbrooke, U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan

From The Hindu

Richard Holbrooke, United States Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, remained in a critical condition on Sunday evening, the State Department said.

Mr. Holbrooke was admitted to George Washington University Hospital after collapsing during an official function on Friday. Earlier during the weekend State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said that doctors had completed surgery to repair a tear in Mr. Holbrooke’s aorta.

President Barack Obama expressed concern for Mr. Holbrooke too, saying in a statement that he had spoken to Mr. Holbrooke’s wife Kati Marton and told her that he and the First Lady were praying for Mr. Holbrooke.

Mr. Obama said, “Richard Holbrooke is a towering figure in American foreign policy, a critical member of my Afghanistan and Pakistan team, and a tireless public servant who has won the admiration of the American people and people around the world.”

He added that senior officials in his administration, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen and National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, had visited Mr. Holbrooke at the hospital.

On Sunday Mr. Holbrooke was said to have undergone an additional procedure to improve his circulation following the first surgical procedure.

In addition to Mr. Obama Ms. Marton received calls from Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari.

Labels: critical, Richard Holbrooke, U.S. Special Envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan

From The Hindu

Richard Holbrooke, United States Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, was said to be in critical condition on Saturday after he collapsed the day before during an official function.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said in a message that on Saturday doctors at George Washington University Hospital had completed surgery to repair a tear in Mr. Holbrooke’s aorta. However he remained critical, and “had been joined by his family,” Mr. Crowley said.

Labels: AfPak special envoy, Richard Holbrooke

From The Hindu

Scarcely three months after the Mumbai terror attacks, senior Indian officials expressed appreciation for the “remarkable” progress achieved with Pakistan in the context of the ensuing investigation.

The positive assessment of Pakistan’s contribution to the investigation, made by erstwhile Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon to the incoming United States Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrook, was revealed by the WikiLeaks whistleblower website. WikiLeaks began publicly publishing over 250,000 private State Department cables since the weekend.

Meeting with Mr. Holbrooke shortly after he assumed his role in January, Mr. Menon also sought to dispel reports of growing concerns in India that Mr. Holbrooke’s mandate included the Kashmir question. According to the cable Mr. Menon said the Indian government was aware of the “suspicions the media had created”, in this regard and he emphasised that “India has a huge stake” in Mr. Holbrooke’s success and promised to say so publicly.

On Pakistan’s role in investigating the Mumbai attacks, Mr. Menon had said at a media briefing in early January 2009, “Nobody has told us [about persons arrested in the case] officially yet from Pakistan... We have seen a similar thing when [Lashkar-e-Taiba] was declared a terrorist organisation after the attack on the Indian Parliament in December 2001. And within three months, they were back in business... So, frankly, what we have seen so far does not impress us.”

“Positive track”

However, in the meeting with Mr. Holbrooke, described in a U.S. embassy cable addressed to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and dated February 17, 2009, Mr. Menon described it as being on a “positive track” and said, “We haven’t reached the point of no return yet” for the Pakistani government to positively conclude the investigation.

He did note that Pakistan had further to go to bring the perpetrators of the attack to justice, speculating, for example, that many of the “30 questions” submitted by Pakistan were added post-investigation in response to domestic pressures. He also cautioned Mr. Holbrooke about the possibility that, similar to the Daniel Pearl case, the investigation could “recede when public pressure wanes.”

Using the opportunity to press the U.S. to exercise its influence, “"where it matters most”, Mr. Menon argued that most of the problems in Pakistan could be traced to the capacity and intentions of Pakistan’s military. These ought to be redirected from east to west and the military must also “cut its links to jihadi organisations” that had gone global over the past five years, he said.

Indian role in Afghanistan

In the conversation described by the cable, it was clear that Mr. Menon drew attention to India’s role in Afghanistan, in particular confiding in Mr. Holbrooke that India planned to tell Afghan Lower House Speaker Mohammad Yunis Qanuni, who was then in New Delhi, that wrangling over an exact date for the election should not be allowed “to bring the house down”.

To do so would only be in the Taliban’s interest, Mr. Menon added, and in reply, Mr. Holbrooke urged Mr. Menon to tell Mr. Qanuni to accept the August 20 election date. Mr. Menon also hinted that Iran ought to be included in a Core Group of countries consulting on Afghanistan. He further added that Iran had been “signalling to India” for four months that it was not interested in having China participate in such a group.

During their meeting Mr. Menon also debriefed Mr. Holbrooke on his attempts, during his time as Pakistan High Commissioner, to explain to President Pervez Musharraf exactly what India was doing in Afghanistan; but Pakistani officials, “not just Musharraf — have avoided it in every way,” Mr. Menon said.

Labels: 26/11 attacks, cablegate, mumbai terror, Pakistan Army, Richard Holbrooke, Shiv Shankar Menon, Wikileaks