Will Obama Change U.S. Pakistan Policy?

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 5, 2008 -- Next to his milky tea, the flies covering his bread and the flickering TV with election results in the corner, even 24-year-old Ghulam Jaffer appreciated the moment.

Sitting in a small restaurant next to a bus stop, Jaffer put his food to the side long enough to talk about the man on the TV screen, the black man with the Muslim middle name who was waving to the crowd. Barack Hussein Obama had just been declared the 44th president of the United States.

"All our Muslim prayers are for Obama so he can bring a change in policies, especially President Bush's anti-Islamic policies in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan," he said. "Every Pakistani is happy."

In this, the second largest Muslim country in the world, millions of Pakistanis hope the son of a Kenyan Muslim will remake U.S. policy here, which has become deeply controversial.

The United States has given Pakistan $13 billion since Sept. 11, 2001, but almost all of it has gone to the military and most Pakistanis have not seen a dime of difference. And in the last three months, the United States has launched an unprecedented number of drone attacks inside Pakistan that have targeted senior militants, but have also caused civilian casualties and irritated the country.

"There's a belief that Obama will certainly pursue policies that will move the United States away from the policies pursued by the Bush Administration in broad terms," said Tariq Fatmi, a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States. "We need to redefine the terms of engagement between Pakistan and the United States. Our importance should not be confined merely to the war on terror."

Osama bin Laden and his top deputies are believed to be hiding in Pakistan's tribal areas, and militants use the mostly ungoverned districts to launch attacks inside Pakistan as well as on American troops in Afghanistan.

But most diplomats and members of the elite here believe Obama will focus as much on helping Pakistan reconstruct its miserable economy and trying to provide a better future to people living in the tribal areas as on the war on terror. Vice President-elect Joe Biden is proposing a massive aid bill that bolsters the Pakistani frontier corps but also helps develop jobs, schools and clinics in Pakistan.