Fulfilling the Promises of Cairo

On June 4, U.S. President Barack Obama traveled to Cairo's distinguished Cairo University to deliver an historic address to the Muslim world.

According to a Pew Research Center public opinion poll released this summer, the euphoria that initially accompanied his speech has mostly dissipated in the region. There is a clear improvement in public opinion of the United States in certain influential Muslim countries, including Obama's former home, Indonesia, and confidence in the president himself is high. However, Obama's personal popularity has not translated into major improvement across the board in attitudes toward the United States.

Given that it may take much longer for the administration to offer up major foreign breakthroughs that will mitigate Muslim resentment against America, the White House should consider a policy of diplomatic, economic and social engagement to protect the president's down payment with the Muslim world.

The U.S. government must undertake major reforms to fulfill Obama's outreach to the 54 states comprising the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). It would require a massive retooling of the U.S. government and a major reallocation of foreign assistance. On the diplomatic front, the United States should appoint a full-time observer to the OIC and the 22-member Arab League. In a noticeable failure for U.S. diplomacy throughout the Muslim world, there has never been a sustained U.S. diplomatic engagement with these two major organizations.

With full-time observers, U.S diplomats would accelerate dialogue and plan new engagement opportunities with Muslim states, coordinate trade and development initiatives, and more effectively communicate Muslim views back to Washington from the secretariats of each organization. Moreover, Muslim states consider the OIC and the Arab League important organizations that reflect Muslim viewpoints on crucial matters of interest to Washington, such as Middle East peace, interfaith dialogue, and intra-Muslim state relations.

Moreover, through greater involvement with the OIC, the United States could better utilize the OIC's Jerusalem Committee to consider the future status of Muslim holy places in Jerusalem in tandem with a re-energized Israeli-Palestinian negotiation track. The White House should consider approaching the OIC to convene a joint U.S.-OIC White House summit to explore ways to expand interfaith dialogue and means to empower Islamic moderates.

The president clearly intends to leverage his Cairo speech to expand U.S. trade and development ties to enable the Muslim world to compete more effectively in a globalizing world. This will require education programs, training, reform, and foreign investment. One important step would be the creation of a joint U.S.-OIC Task Force to develop a Muslim-American Entrepreneurial Development Private-Public Partnership Fund. The goal of this fund would be to help train a new generation of Muslim youth in vocational and entrepreneurial skills. So many Muslim universities educate young Muslims in the "conservative arts" and not in business and vocational skills. The fund's goals would be to initially develop entrepreneurial and vocational educational material in the languages of each Muslim nation and provide U.S. and local entrepreneurial advisors to identify new sources of business funding and vocational training opportunities.

Improving the economic climate in poorer Muslim countries will also require trade reforms to attract more foreign investment and development. Toward that objective, the U.S. Trade Representative's office should establish a Muslim world task force to expedite negotiation of U.S. trade and investment framework agreements (TIFAs) with those Muslim nations that so far have not done so (32 OIC members). TIFAs set the stage for bilateral strategic dialogue on trade and investment expansion and have been used to resolve impediments to foreign investment and facilitate the negotiation of bilateral and regional free trade agreements with Muslim countries such as Morocco, Jordan, and Bahrain. These agreements have catalyzed increases in foreign investment, job creation, and market reforms.

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NAZIA

1:31 AM ET

November 24, 2009

Matter of lost trust.

Obama is not representative of Islamic world as he came from pure self made and democratic culture of America, groomed under christian environment.
We are not accepting anything from him as his arrival didn't create any effect on US war strategies on Muslim countries but if we carefully watch US have become more stubborn on military trespassing in all war areas.
Karzi illegitimate victory, sending of notorious US security agencies to Pakistan, increase in frequency of drone attacks on poor civilians along with pushing Pakistan army to continue force full attacks on border criminals, increased suicidal attacks on Iraq and Pakistan, Diverting abu gharib issues etc all are signs of more US aggression in affected areas.
Muslim areas are ghastly loosing their cultural heritage, true identity and faith on their political,religious and martial characters.In contrast to all. their sentiments of hate for US and western forces have increased many fold as we observed few years back
When a person burys all his love ones and looses all his belongings in single attack, either by drone o, mortar or shelling, the only sentiments left in his heart or brain is hate and aggression for other live creatures roaming around him.Now we have thousands of such characters in our system who have no meaningful goal and objective to live as normal human being and one can imagine that what will be fate of other co survivals of war living near to such sadistic beings in our culture.
When US announced war on terror our land is free of suicidal attacks and there are no traces of Taliban like characters in our urban and rural areas but now every where this haunted idea has got its roots .
US are quite notorious in her packages for education, health and food programs.As per history under such deals they paid off bribes to higher executives of developing nations and then got involved them and their respective countries into war games.
Why not they initiate such programs in their deprived states like California which is for the last 3 years is being declared as bank corrupt state and many education and medial facilities are being taken off to it citizens.Her nearest neighbor Mexico is under subjugation of poverty and drug trade industry for last century .Why they didn't help them to come out of curses like that and mostly focusing on Asian countries.
You Americans are traumatized by 911 and brain washed through you media that all planning was done in the stone age places like Afghanistan where people are living the lowest level of civility level. US govt was not made accountable with in country for such high profile security breach in 4 modern states of at a time.
I think Americans should more concentrate on their weakness instead of poking their head in Muslim world.If such illiterate, backward and far away living being can halt the super power in her area then they should review their STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURES.
First super power was overpowered by some savages and then US team of management ambushed the civilians of three major Muslim countries in search of handful of wanted criminals with full force and modern technology.
So who is bad boy acting like worst coup is quite obvious to world, only moral courage is required to accept it,

SMCI60652

4:20 PM ET

NaPakistan

I don't think anyone claimed that he was representative of the Islamic world. I think what people were arguing is that since his father's side of the family itself is Sunni Muslim dating back to the 1910's when his paternal grandfather converted to Islam during a deployment to India during the days of WWI, that he may have a little more insight into the sensativities of Muslims than say... George W. Bush. This in addition to him having lived in Sunni Indonesia with a Muslim step-father during his formative years which would have exposed him to some Muslim realities.

As to whether his arrival created any changes, you're absolutely right, in some instances they haven't. He has sent additional troops to Afghanistan and will shortly be announcing even more. In Iraq he has continued a policy of systematically drawing down US troop presence and I believe he is committed to withdrawing all combat troops by 2011.

Karzai's illegitimate victory has been protested by every government in NATO. I'm not sure how that shows American aggression? And the CIA is definitely notorious, but I think we all know that it operates in every corner of the globe and has for several decades now, so how that functions as a sign of aggression is questionable. If you're referring to the Tehrik e Taliban's propaganda swing that said Blackwater is operating in Pakistan, I think we just disagree on who we should really consider as sound sources of information. The drone attacks are unfortunate, but your government is allowing the use of its airfields and is providing the intel for the bombings, so take it up with them. As for 'pushing the Pakistani Army' to attack FATA and NWFP, it seems ridiculous that ANYONE would have to bribe your generals and plead with them to protect their own people from extremists. It's your cities that these fanatics were sending suicide bombers to, not ours.

Yes the insane and cyclical nature of these conflicts is producing more fanatics, and Iraq was arguably a mistake, but Afghanistan wasn't. You can deny and obfuscate all you want, and there's no shortage of 9/11 conspiracy theorists out there, but in the real world the fact of the matter remains that 19 murderers that were trained and funded by an international network that was based in Afghanistan hijacked and killed almost 3000 Americans in one day. So we have no apologies for invading Afghanistan. We'd screwed it up royally since then, but it was absolutely necessary to oust the Taliban and hunt down Al Qaeda to start with.

In the US we have many factions and points of view. We're constantly re-assessing our strategy and mistakes and recalibrating our actions to secure our peoples' safety. One would suggest that Pakistan starts doing the same instead of spending precious time concocting clever (and ultimately ludicrous) theories about how every one else in the world except for yourselves have driven your country into this abyss.

TOM G

6:59 AM ET

Prioritizing the Muslim World will.....

Prioritizing the Muslim world will only cause them to believe that you are interfering in their countries and trying to force your values onto them but trying to promote commerce with them will help change their opinions as they can work, feed and house their families because that is what the majority want, in some Muslim countries the only choice is to go and fight because there is nothing else for them.In the long run it would be better if they were helped not by trying to change them to be more like Americans but to help them escape poverty in doing so it will give them the self confidence and belief to change that mentality on their own.

AKW

10:52 AM ET

"It's stagnant Muslim regimes

"It's stagnant Muslim regimes and radical Muslim clerics who are failing their own people, not the U.S. president."

In light of that fact, why are you implying that Obama and the US should be doing all of the things you outlined? How are those things going to change the regimes and the clerics? Those are things that the Muslim people have to do themselves. The belief that if we are just nice enough and more accommodating enough the condition of many Muslims states will change is pure fantasy.

TAREK YOUSSEF

4:18 PM ET

I think the answer lies in

I think the answer lies in the first passage of the text. Obama did not fulfill his promises pledged in his Cairo speech, he did not translate them into a blueprint for action on Middle East policy. and in particular the issue that caused so much pain in the Arab and Muslim world for decades : the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, the inhuman conditions which the Palestinians have to endure in their daily lives. That the USA can be perceived as a champion of Justice, Human rights and freedom urges Israel to respect International law, UN resolutions regarding the illegal occupation and the 4th Geneva convention on the treatment of people under occupation.

the lack of Justice from the USA is the real problem.

RHYNO327

3:38 PM ET

November 25, 2009

???

LET THEM EAT CAKE!!!!

Foreign Policy Magazine

Inside National Security

Fulfilling the Promises of Cairo

Obama still hasn't turned his Cairo speech into a blueprint for action. Here's how he can take concrete steps to improve the United States' relationship with the Muslim world.

BY MARC GINSBERG | NOVEMBER 11, 2009

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