Obama's Nobel puzzles Pakistanis living close to war

While Obama is seen as an improvement over Bush, many Pakistanis feel the president hasn't done enough to merit the peace prize. They are still wary of Obama and his policies.

1:06 PM PDT, October 9, 2009

Reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan

For Pakistanis, President Obama represents a marked improvement over his predecessor, George W. Bush. He believes in tackling world problems through consensus-building rather than unilateral action, they say.

But the way many Pakistanis see it, that doesn't mean he's done nearly enough to deserve the Nobel Peace Prize.

"Maybe if you compare him to Bush, you can say Obama is a bit better when it comes to dealing with Muslim countries," said Ajmal Khan, a 55-year-old mechanical engineer while taking a stroll through one of Islamabad's busy marketplaces. "Otherwise, I don't think he deserves the peace prize. Has he done anything special to bring peace in the world? Killing goes on in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and in other countries."

Pakistanis still haven't fully made up their mind about Obama. When they compare him to Bush, they like that he has reached out to the Muslim community and appears genuinely interested in what other world players have to say.

But Pakistanis still are wary of Obama and his policies toward their part of the world. They worry Obama won't solve the conflict in Afghanistan, an eight-year war on Pakistan's doorstep.

"If the category is peace, he doesn't deserve the peace prize," says Nadeem Umtaz, 49, a salesman at a women's clothing store at the Jinnah Super Market in Islamabad. "The situation keeps getting worse in Pakistan and Afghanistan. I think he got the prize because he's a powerful man, that's all."

For Pakistanis, a key yardstick for measuring Obama's ability to bring about peace lies in how he deals with the volatile tribal areas along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, where Taliban militants and Al Qaeda fighters are entrenched. And Pakistanis vehemently oppose Obama's reliance on pilotless drone missile strikes to take out militants, because they say those strikes also kill civilians.

"There's no end to death and destruction in Pakistan and Afghanistan," said Ayaz Wazir, a security analyst and expert on Pakistan's tribal areas.

alex.rodriguez@latimes.com