Special Envoy Hobrooke Reporting for Duty

By: Jaya Spier

President Obama has recently added a new member to his growing club of foreign envoys. However, while Richard Holbrooke may be new to the Obama team, he is an old player when it comes to these games. Holbrooke has been involved with government since the beginning of his career in 1962 when he joined the Foreign Service after graduation from Brown University.

Since then he worked under President Johnson with Vietnam and then he served as a member of the American Delegation to the Paris Peace Talks. Later he became Peace Corps Director in Morocco and Managing Editor for Foreign Policy Magazine. In 1977 Holbrooke became the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs under President Carter. During the four years that he held this position, the United States and China secured a diplomatic accord.

Holbrooke was responsible for negotiating the Dayton peace accords to end the war in Bosnia and now he has been appointed the special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan. It seems that if anyone can help the situation, Holbrooke can. “Between them, the two countries contain unstable governments, insurgencies, corruption and a narcotics trade, nuclear material, refugees, resentment of American power, a resurgent Taliban, and in the shadows of the tribal region that joins the two countries, Al Qaeda and presumably Osama bin Laden.” (NY Times)

It is a lot to tackle and Holbrooke has not had a lot of involvement in South Asia. As he said during a security conference in Munich “I have never seen anything like the mess we have inherited…It is like no other problem we have confronted, and in my view it’s going to be much tougher than Iraq.”

Holbrooke has been given access to two of the countries that he referred to in his 2008 article in Foreign affairs as part of the five neighboring “the center of the arc of crisis that directly threatens the United States' national security” the other three were Turkey, Iraq and Iran. (Foreign Affairs)

During Hillary Clinton’s bid for Presidency Holbrook was one of her top foreign policy advisors. He also criticized the Bush administrations for its policy in both Pakistan and Afganistan. Now “he has taken on a task so difficult that merely averting disaster may be the only triumph.”(NY Times) Holbrooke is set on getting in there and making a difference. He is an expert in his field and has fresh ideas on how to handle the situation.

 "What is required in my view is new ideas, better coordination within the US government, better coordination with our NATO allies and other concerned countries, and the time to get it right…Countries bordering Afghanistan must also be drawn in as part of a solution…including Iran but particularly Pakistan, where the Taliban and its backers in Al-Qaeda and criminal gangs have rear bases…All the neighbours... play a direct role and we're going to look for more of a regional approach.” (France 24)

 It looks like Afghanistan and Pakistan have major obstacles confronting their present and future as Holbrooke begins his tour examining the pros and cons of the current political scene, forging ahead to create new alliances and crush anything that stands in his way.