Reversing previous policies concerning the Muslim world, US President Barack Obama makes it clear that the leading lights in his administration convey signs that are, at last, not so difficult to read, writes Gamal Nkrumah Do you watch the pan-Arab television satellite channel Al-Arabiya? I am not a particularly big fan myself, partly because I rarely have time. Millions of Muslims and Arabs, however, are. The Dubai-based satellite network is Saudi funded -- an open secret I hasten to add. That is in itself significant, and extremely so. Mannerly Al-Arabiya has a radically different style of presentation than its abrasive chief rival Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based leading pan-Arab satellite network that is far more contentious albeit self-assured than Al-Arabiya in an industry that has been tearing along for most of the past decade. Whatever the case, it was a terrific surprise that United States President Barack Obama acceded to grant his first formal television interview as leader of America, the Free World, to Al-Arabiya. He told the dumbfounded Arab audience, "I want to convey to Americans that the Islamic world is full of ordinary people who want to live their lives in peace." The Bush administration had inflamed passions across the Arab and Muslim worlds. "I also want to assure the Muslims that the Americans are not your enemies. Sometimes we make mistakes. There is no reason not to set the record straight," the US president enucleated. Ironically, ex-president George W Bush, who scrupulously shunned any public association with the mainstream Arab media, owes much of his personal fortune to Saudi oil largesse generously provided when his Carlyle Group was on the rocks. His failing oil company was given a new "lease" on life before he shot to governor of Texas and on to the presidency. On 12 September 2001 he arranged to have an entire planeload of Bin Laden family members whisked out of the US before they could be manhandled by angry Americans. This adds extra punch to Obama's non- conspiratorial reaching out to a Saudi audience. This was yet another delightful contrast with the previous tenant of the White House. President Obama is enormously proud of his heritage -- American, African-American, international and Democratic. He understands that as US president, there's a certain limit to his internationalism, but of all the American presidents that preceded him he comes closest to the accolade. Younger and more progressive Americans and especially Europeans are happiest with the cosmopolitan sophisticate with universal appeal. Others are less enthusiastic and this is particularly so where religion, rather than race, is the animating factor of an individual's identity. A practising Christian hailing from a Muslim familial background and with Muslim relations does not impress or delight traditionalists of either religion -- the Christian fundamentalists, because he was born a Muslim, and the Muslim fundamentalists, because he is technically an apostate. Such an individual is the very antithesis of the man in precisely the mould that the Prophet Mohamed had intended. That, however, is where cultural barriers are constructed and contradictory cultural perceptions misconstrued. "I lived in the largest Muslim country, Indonesia. I have Muslim members of my family," President Obama confided to his viewers as if that would endear him to his Muslim audience. That, of course, is the naiveté of Western cultural misconceptions of Islam and Muslim sensibilities. Rather than being an overture it might well be a turn-off. Still, it is not personal relations that matter. In the final analysis it is solutions to intractable international challenges that count. And, Obama is the sort of man, I suppose, that takes any blow with grace. "Now my job is to communicate the fact that the US has a stake in the well-being of the Muslim world, that the language we use has to be a language of respect." When an interview is watched by nearly one million viewers, it ceases to be just an entertaining interview. It metamorphoses into a statement of intent. He spoke of the need for America to "start listening" and to drop the nasty habit of "dictating things". America had destroyed its reputation and eroded its moral standing in its dubious war against international terrorism. "The cause of peace in the Middle East is important to the US and our national interests. It is important to me personally," Obama stressed. "All too often the US starts by dictating and we don't always know all the factors that are involved. So let us listen," he concluded. Still, he also cautioned militant Muslims -- he did not actually use that particular term -- against being hardliners. He urged them to "unclench their fists". Obama's interview was conducted soon after he dispatched his Middle East Chief Envoy George Mitchell to Egypt and six other Middle Eastern destinations to kick-start the Arab-Israeli peace process. This last move, made at a time of heightened tensions and pent up passions in the Middle East because of the universal condemnation of the ferocity of the Israeli onslaught on Gaza, requires all the political acumen he can muster. Another Obama appointment was no less significant. Africa is equally significant in the calculations of the Obama administration. The appointment of Susan Rice was warmly welcomed at the United Nations and in many African capitals. Rice was assistant of state for African affairs during the second term of president Bill Clinton. Her appointment signals that Africa, or the Horn of Africa to be more precise, would feature prominently in the foreign policy of President Obama. Rice was Clinton's protégé from October 1997- January 2001 but she's unlikely to be Hillary's man Friday. She will be taking orders directly from the White House, and not from her immediate superior Hillary Rodham Clinton. Rice is a woman with strong views, especially concerning African affairs. "Anything is better than Mobutu," she was reported as saying after the fall of the Congolese strongman, for nearly four decades one of Washington's closest allies in Africa. However, is there more scope for the protagonists in the Horn of Africa to settle their differences? "We need to let the Sudanese government know we are serious. We have to speak the language the Sudanese will understand," she recently warned. She is often dismissed by African Americans as a particularly high-profile member of "Washington's assimilationist black elite". Rice is a Rhodes Scholar who quickly rose through the ranks to become assistant secretary of state for African affairs in 1997. In true African fashion, when she stepped down from office, a friend gave her a Zulu shield. Like Obama, she is in danger of being dismissed by the very people she is eagerly courting as an imperialist stooge. Whether Rice's appointment paves the way for a lasting settlement to the Sudanese conundrum is currently unclear. Remember Hillary Clinton's It takes a Village? Perhaps the Obamas will take a "leaf" from her bestseller and embark on a grand tour, as Hillary did with Chelsea in her six-nation safari in 1997. It is hard to be a biased party and a peace broker simultaneously, especially in intractable African conflicts. Obama's shift to diplomatic mediation via listening rather than giving orders could help overcome any "misunderestimation" -- in the lexicon of his predecessor -- Obama's own oratorical skills.
