The Exit from ‘AfPak’: Don’t Blame Pakistan

http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2012/06/27/the-exit-from-afpak-dont-blame-pakistan/

by Ali Ahmed

June 27, 2012

New Delhi — At its Chicago summit, NATO read out what has been the writing on the wall all through Obama’s first term. It is that its departure from Afghanistan is inevitable, with the addition being that it is now imminent. That this has not unfolded according to script is cause for some hand wringing among commentators. Ashley Tellis, Christine Fair and Robert Kaplan have in quick succession sought to point to Pakistan as spoilsport, with the former dwelling on Pakistan’s impending strategic defeat. Will his hope materialize?

All through the war in its vicinity, Pakistan has been scalded, but has avoided being burnt. The much reviled Musharraf took a wise decision by siding with the west. In retrospect, it seems as though it was the only choice he had. The blame for the west’s inability to push through its agenda of peace-building has been laid at Pakistan’s door. Its provision of sanctuary to the Taliban is taken as a willful challenge. Yet again Pakistan may have had little choice in this since it would have been unable in any case to wrap up the Taliban and their Pakistani affiliates. If the west could not succeed despite the ‘surge’, it is too much to expect of the Pakistan army to have had a better showing. From these two strategic choices made by the Pakistan army, based on a clear understanding of its limitations, it is clear that Pakistan can be credited with doing at least some things right.

So where does the responsibility lie? It is with Obama’s inability to convert the military surge into political gain. The surge was meant to represent the stick as part of a carrot and stick policy. It was to be supplemented by Pakistani army actions on its side of the Durand line, thereby choking the Taliban. In the event, the Taliban by forging a joint front with its ethnic fellows in Pakistan and Punjabi extremists, has been able to confront Pakistan with a dilemma: the more close it got to finishing the Taliban off in keeping with the desires of the west, the less stable it would get. The terror bombings in the later part of the last decade suggest as much. Pakistan, valuing its own survival above any doles the west could spare for its efforts, chose strategic prudence. Its holding out for an apology over the killings of 24 of its soldiers by U.S. forces at best provides a cover.

The gratuitous advice it has been at the receiving end of assumes that it could have gone the distance in taking on the Taliban. The west had got India on board to wind down tensions over time, after the spike in wake of the 26/11 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India. This was to enable Pakistan to transfer its attention to the western front. Could the Pakistan army have succeeded as per western expectations?

Firstly, the terrain is forbidding. It has been seen in Kashmir where the going is easier and the foe is less formidable, that it takes considerable troop strength. Pakistan does not have those levels of troops, even if it could spare them entirely from the eastern border. Secondly, the tentacles that the Taliban has acquired due to anti-Americanism in Pakistan and religious extremism enable it to expand the arc of instability at will to include Lahore and Karachi. This would have stretched Pakistan’s suppressive capabilities to the extent of challenging their institutional integrity by internal ethnic and ideological fissures. If the Pakistan army cracked, then Pakistan could have gone under, there being no forces of equivalent strength in polity. This would have been to the advantage of extremists. That the Pakistan army judged the possible outcome and refrained from provoking it, is to its credit.

The expectation that Pakistan not playing ball has led to dissipation of the promise of the surge is therefore not a fair one. If Pakistan could arrive at a conclusion that it could at best be supportive and not hyperactive, the possibility should not have escaped Pentagon planners. To compensate they really should have weighed the carrot part of the strategy appropriately. This means that the peace process needed to have been an equally significant prong of strategy. It was instead geared to create fissures in the Taliban between the ‘good’ and irreconcilable Taliban. It was outsourced to the Karzai regime, with its notable legitimacy deficit as far as the intended interlocutors, the Taliban, were concerned. Their attitude was evident from the efforts of Karzai’s pointsman, Burhanuddin Rabbani, being rewarded with assassination. Only later, did U.S. special envoy Marc Grossman, the successor to Richard Holbrooke, get into the act; a case of too little too late. While it cannot be said for certain that the Taliban would have proved responsive, persistence with the military option, in the tradition of the actions post 9/11, foreclosed any possibility of finding out.

The US was either a victim of its own hubris or strategically ineffective due to its internal politics and institutional fights. Obama, having wound down the Iraq war, perhaps needed an arena to prove he was tough. The bureaucratic tussle, set off by the reaction to 9/11, between Foggy Bottom, Langley and Pentagon, played out in dysfunctional policies towards ‘AfPak’. The responsibility for a suboptimal outcome can hardly be laid at Pakistan’s door, even if, in election year, Obama needs a fall guy.

Highlighting this is important, since the refrain in the commentaries cited and extant largely is that Pakistan has stabbed the west in the back, despite receiving $ 20 billion as incentive. A consensus over the consequence for such double dealing is being built up in terms of pushing Pakistan over the brink, the euphemisms used being ‘containing’, ‘isolating’ etc. Pakistan needs being wary of an embarrassed superpower.  It can safely be predicted that the ability of the army to hold steady despite internal political disarray, demonstrated in weathering a decade long storm along both its external and internal axes, will now be sorely tested.

ISSUE BRIEF

2011 and beyond: Visualising Af-Pak

Ali Ahmed

December 23, 2009

Getting the hard core Taliban to concede the fight without loss of face is preferable to destroying them. The latter course is rendered risky by the linkages between the Afghan Taliban, Pakistani Taliban and Punjabi Taliban and their penetration of the Pakistani state and society.

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The Coming Escalation in Obama’s War

by Ali Ahmed

http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2010/06/04/the-coming-escalation-in-obamas-war/

June 4, 2010

Six months on and Obama’s War is nowhere nearer the end state he outlined in his West Point speech of December last year. He has merely a year to deliver on his promise of beginning to pull back troops by July next year. This is only seemingly a setback. The ‘AfPak strategy’ can be expected to have planned for this contingency.  Escalating the war this military campaigning season is therefore possible given US presidential election-related deadlines of 2012.

The political prong of strategy has not delivered the ‘good’ Taliban yet. The ongoing jirga is the latest effort to this end. With the hostiles staying away and terrorists attacking it, it is a non-starter. US allies are in disarray. The German President has had to resign over controversial remarks and the new UK dispensation has promised a review. Pakistan appears to have gained space for its position of having a ‘say’ in Afghanistan after its strategic dialogue with the US of February. Nevertheless, Secretary Clinton felt it necessary to administer a warning of unspecified action in case of a successful repeat of the Times Square plot. Relations between the US and Karzai are back on an even keel, but the military operation in Kandahar looms large ahead.

Militarily, US casualties have crossed 1000 even as US troops in Afghanistan finally exceeded their numbers in Iraq. Drones have been an effective weapon; but have drawn adverse attention from the UN on their use viewed through the prism of laws of war. Operation Mostarak, launched in the Taliban heartland of Marjah in Helmand in February, would have been studied for any lessons for application in the forthcoming campaign, and in particular how to avoid killing civilians. The link between the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani Taliban has deepened, with the Pakistani Taliban demonstrating repeatedly their ability and intent by taking terror into Punjabi heartland best signaled by the Friday massacres in the two Ahmadiya mosques in Lahore. Hakimullah Mehsud has resurfaced.

The course of the future can be seen in the constellation of the present. Pakistan has conducted its conventional exercises Azm e Nau involving 40,000 troops. The exercise gives it the self-confidence to take on any Indian attack in case a future terrorist provocation was to cross the Indian threshold of tolerance. Operation Rah-e-Nijat to clear South Waziristan having ended last year, the army has had a breather. The operations over the past two years have not borne out the apprehension that an ethnic divide would open up in the Pakistan Army. Therefore, the Army is ready for the summer campaign. It is being pressured to go into North Waziristan to knock out the base of the Haqqani faction there. Kayani’s extension as Chief being virtually certain, the Pakistan Army may well do so, in conjunction with launch of the long delayed operations in Kandahar by US troops. Feelers for talks through declarations of Karzai, the Arabs, Pakistanis, the UN and possibly the UK, have not yielded results. This is seen as legitimizing the military option. This is the escalation predicted in the immediate future.

The intent would be to degrade the Taliban further. If the Taliban has not come to talk thus far, it is because it has apparently not felt pressured enough. A concerted operation on both sides of the Durand line could influence its decision and, in any case, contain its presence and military capacity. While military success can be predicted in light of the experience gained and preparatory time thus far, the possible asymmetric response options compel a pause.

Two possible outcomes can be envisaged. First is the worst case scenario in which the Punjabi portion of Pakistani Taliban escalates forays into mainland Pakistan. This would increase their unpopularity and enable legitimacy for military operations underway. However, two factors merit attention. One is whether the Pakistani state and society would be able to bear an extended terrorist onslaught. This concern is occasioned by the fact that both Zardari and the US are not popular even in mainstream Pakistan. The Punjabi Taliban has identified the Pakistani state with the US. A repeat of the situation in Algeria in the early nineties that resulted in over a hundred thousand dead eventually is a plausible scenario. Next, is the impact on cohesion of the Pakistan Army. The consensus among the Corps Commanders could come under considerable strain. Fears of this had led Pakistan to suggest to its partner, the US, a reaching out to the Taliban. With Mullah Omar still holding out, the fears may yet come true. Added to this is the wild card of terror directed at India and the US.

The second scenario is one in which the low intensity war continues, with the Taliban considerably inconvenienced, but still reckonable as a military foe and political presence. Obama has the choice to follow the set schedule without the situation stabilizing to desired levels, but with both Kayani and Karzai having the capacity to manage the degraded Taliban. This can transpire if the Pakistani state and society display the capacity to withstand the inevitable spike in violence. For this, Pakistan would require considerable support. Additionally, even as the operations are ongoing, another Arabian or Pakistani-led initiative to get the Taliban on board needs initiation. In case the violence crescendo reaches Iraq-like levels, then a shift of gears to the much neglected political prong would be possible. In any case, persistence with this over the following period as the political prong of strategy may be necessary, perhaps a replay of the Kai Eide dialogue by the UN. Even if a surrender is to be negotiated, holding out the possibility through maintaining contacts makes strategic sense.

It is more than just a timely coincidence, then, that India is poised to restart the composite dialogue. With the Pakistani state able to claim credit for movement on Kashmir, it would gain the space it needs to combat its internal enemies. The resumption would decrease the threat of anti-India terror attacks. With Pakistan taking on the Taliban finally, India’s concerns would be met considerably. In retrospect it would be perhaps be possible to trace India’s role in pressure in concert with the US on Pakistan to take on the terrorists.

While the military escalation is set to occur, preemption of the worst case possibility must be the focus. Keeping Pakistan on an even keel is a strategic necessity, since it is on the frontline. The Pakistani Taliban, in both its Pukhtun and Punjabi variants, would want to profit from instability. The resilience of Pakistan would be finally tested. Past experience suggests it could use whatever support possible, including, paradoxically, from India.

Reconciling the Af-Pak Conundrum

by Ali Ahmed

April 18, 2010

http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2010/04/18/reconciling-the-af-pak-conundrum/

The meeting in Washington DC on nuclear security indicates the concern with the fallout of Bush’s Global War on Terror. It can reasonably have been expected that such a threat should have receded. Instead, the threat exists. This article discusses how the perceived threat can be made to recede further through ending sensibly what Bush began.

Any such consideration should begin by taking into account outcomes unacceptable to those involved. For Americans, leaving Af-Pak to triumphalist Islamists is unthinkable. For NATO countries with populations sceptical of the future in Af-Pak, an increase in the terror threat in Europe due to further degeneration of the situation is avoidable. Pakistan would prefer that the ‘blow back’ it has been suffering from over the past year, due in part to its actions against terror groups in NWFP and FATA, dissipate. India would not like an unreformed Taliban regime taking over power in Kabul. The Taliban for its part would not like to be eliminated. The Al Qaeda would like to outlive the war.

Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai, U.S. President Barack Obama, and Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari

Next, the preferences of these players are of consequence since they inform respective aims. Americans would like to end the war – if not depart the region – by rendering it stable under a regime that would not provide sanctuary to al Qaeda. NATO countries would like to leave the region soon without increasing the threat to homeland security. Pakistan would like to preserve itself to the maximum extent possible from spill-over of instability in the region into the Punjabi heartland and Karachi. India would like to see that any future regime in Kabul does not assist terrorists against India. The Taliban would like to end the war at the most favourable position possible in Kabul. Al Qaeda would like to see that Pakistan is destabilised in order to profit from the resulting radicalism.

A look at aims remains. American aims as spelt out by Obama are to ‘disrupt, dismantle, and defeat’ al Qaeda. With respect to the Taliban, the aim is to reverse the Taliban’s momentum. The aim of the other NATO states is to exit to avoid increased radicalism. Pakistan aims to create space for the Taliban so as to have a stake in Kabul. India seeks to constrict Pakistan space so as to influence its attitude to terror directed at India. The Taliban aims to return to Kabul. Al Qaeda aims at self-preservation in first place.

In the present discourse, the blame for the disturbed situation is being offloaded on corruption in the Karzai government. The regime is engaged in preventing the Taliban from exposing its current vulnerability through high profile terror attacks. It has sent out feelers that it is open to negotiation with the Taliban. A jirga is impending on this score. It has already evoked interest, with the Haqqani group biting. The ANA is under training for progressive employment in operations.

What are the criteria for evaluating the conundrum? Firstly, is measuring the prospects of success of each of the players against their own yardstick. Second, is on the manner the options impact the Afghan people.

By the first yardstick, all players fall short of their own aims, obviously since none is strong enough to prevail. US-NATO combine is unlikely to be allowed to prevail. The Taliban will not be permitted access to Kabul until it promises to verifiably reinvent itself. Elimination of the al Qaeda is difficult since its course is dependent on what happens in the Middle East rather than in South Asia. Care must be taken to preserve South Asia from expanding instability in any vain attempt to preserve stability in the Middle East. By the second yardstick, all players in their pursuing self-interest are oblivious to the continuing impact of the war on those they are purportedly out to help, the Afghan people.

Clearly, the war needs to end. But not on a note that brings an unreformed Taliban back to power. How can this be done? The answer is to privilege the political prong of strategy.

Keeping the war on in this region, so that America can remain safe is not reasonable eight years since the war began. It would be premature to ask for US vacation of the region. This implies that even while McChrystal goes about his irreversible pursuit of a gaining militarily a position of strength, Americans need to progress the political prong of their strategy with greater rigour. They need to engage the ‘hard core’ Taliban. American military power can remain in location but held in abeyance. NATO needs to depart. However, the EU is welcome to contribute to reconstruction.

Preserving Pakistan from instability and further radicalisation amounts to being an immutable ‘terms of reference’: Pakistan being a nuclear weapons state. Therefore, in exchange for permitting some space, Pakistan requires bringing the Taliban around, but at a price. In return for gaining Taliban access to power, it needs to extract a promise of moderation from the Taliban. This is necessary to preserve the gains from the Bonn process made thus far.

The ‘surge’ was to impress on the Taliban that winning is not possible. The Obama timetable assures them of US exit.  The promise of reconstruction and reintegration is a sweetener. The question is whether the Taliban are strategic beings. Even if the Taliban do not bite, not to attempt engaging them is inexcusable and the risk is worth taking. Al Qaeda has been whittled considerably. The US could now rethink strategy. It has little to do with South Asia. Therefore, South Asia should cease to be the locale of US action.

India needs to keep engaged in Afghanistan in its developmental effort. This soft power is more than adequate to balance any gains Pakistan may seek to make. The Taliban’s feelers towards India need to be capitalised on by India. In return for assistance with reconstruction, the Taliban need to assure India on anti-India activity.

Pursuit of self-interest has not taken any of these players far in any case. It’s time a criteria other than self-interest is used to assess action. How much does each self-confessed supporter do to help preserve the Afghan people from further violence is the criterion. By this yardstick all players fall short.

Obama and the Limitations of Conventional Strategy

http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2009/10/17/obama-and-the-limitations-of-conventional-strategy/

by Ali Ahmed

October 17, 2009

Finding solutions for the developing situation in South Asia through the lens of conventional strategising is a formidable challenge today. In itself, ‘conflict’ is unpredictable and the outcome always uncertain. Conventional strategy, never daunted by complications of geography and history, has its answers ready. The threat of Islamism is to be undercut away from the areas of consequence for energy security of the West. The Af-Pak region serves as a remote enough battle ground to defuse the threat posed by the Arab-centric Al Qaeda to the oil rich regimes of Middle East. Energy security is thus preserved even as the battle is taken to the Al Qaeda. The hitch is in an uncooperative Taliban. How to negotiate this impasse is the preoccupation of the surprise Nobel prize winner, President Barak Obama.

His commanding general in Afghanistan, Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal, has recommended another troop surge. His Vice President, J Biden, has suggested a ‘Pakistan First’ strategy in which Pakistan, suitably incentivised through the sweeteners in the Kerry-Lugar bill, is pressurised to go after the Taliban-Al Qaeda combine, even as the US conducts stand off technology intensive operations. A South Asian expert of Indian origin, Ashley Tellis, has advised the US to ‘invest and endure’ as against ‘improve and exit’. Thus, conventional strategy has come up with a solution: a greater exertion of power. In other words, ‘more of the same’; with the Bush determined trajectory for the region being taken to its logical conclusion. This exercise of power would impress the ‘moderate’ Taliban to break ranks; gain a ‘position of strength’ and also convey to the Pakistanis that the US means to stay the course.

The situation Obama is faced with is reminiscent of the one faced by his democrat forebear who once carried an equal burden of expectations on his young shoulders, John F Kennedy. Can Obama trust conventional strategy that has once again come up with the same answer to a strategic conundrum as in the run up to Vietnam: ‘more is better’?

Indian analysts, working in the same analytical paradigm, have come up with equally predictable answers. The Kabul embassy attack only reinforces their recommendation. India’s Foreign Secretary, Ms Nirupama Rao, averred to foreign fingerprints during her visit to the damaged embassy. The Afghan foreign minister blamed Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ISI. Pakistani protestations of like Indian interference in Afghanistan, that found mention in the McChrystal report, and in Baluchistan, that worked their way into the Sharm es Sheikh joint statement between the two states, indicate that a contest between intelligence agencies is underway. India is hoping its strategic partner, the US, would follow through on a military solution. To India, any opening up to the Taliban, in the words of Ms. Rao, amounts to ‘facile efforts at a Faustian bargain’. A military solution has value. The Taliban would be kept occupied. The possibility of the violence destabilising Pakistan is not one seen as being averse to Indian interests.

Pakistan too is working in the same power paradigm. If Pakistani interests are to be preserved in Afghanistan, then the Taliban, earlier nurtured and later harboured by Pakistan, requires to be inserted into power equations in Kabul. This may require convincing the US that messing with the Taliban would be a step on a slippery slope. Therefore, accommodation is presented as possible, with the Taliban disengaging from international terrorists in return from a share in power. Pakistan has therefore resisted all efforts to get them to ‘do more’. Instead, a section in the Pakistani establishment has connived to strengthen the Taliban in order to make their power appear unmistakable to the US. The Taliban have duly obliged by mounting a daring raid at the very heart of Pakistan, its Army Headquarters. This is to moderate any pro-US inclinations of Pakistan Army Chief of Staff Asfaq Kayani. The divide in Pakistan is now in the open.

What lies at the interface of outcomes of strategising in the conventional mode in the three countries? Should Obama follow the advice received, additional troops would come into the theatre and Pakistan would be leaned on. Pakistan, though willing to play along as in the Musharraf years, would likely encounter an internal cleavage along pro-US and anti-US lines. Unwilling to commit national suicide in a civil war, it would tend towards the more powerful, anti-US side. Unable to make Pakistan budge, the US would rely on India. India, sighting a strategic opportunity, would lend itself to containment. Pakistan, using a strategic tool it has not quite rolled back despite Indian entreaties since the Mumbai attacks, would strike back. The confrontation could acquire a military dimension, with nationalism aroused publics on both sides getting into the act.

Obama is currently in the midst of critical decision making. The influences on this decision are not South Asia specific. They are anchored in the fortunes of the Democrats in congressional elections next year, in his own re-election prospects two years down the road and in American public opinion increasingly inclined to view the war negatively. These decisions are less likely to be based on the likelihood or otherwise of nuclear war in South Asia, the inevitability of populations that would be displaced, the dangers of destabilising a nuclear armed state, the likelihood of right wing formations gaining ground and the continuing ill effects of conflict on Afghans.

Nevertheless, South Asia awaits the decision with bated breath. Obama has earned reputation through this Prague and Cairo speeches for departing from the conventional. Escaping the confines of conventional strategy would require political wisdom. Can Obama rise to his potential, borne witness to by non less than the Nobel Prize committee?

The Obama Decision Making Model
http://www.ipcs.org/article/us-south-asia/the-obama-decision-making-model-3019.html

Obama has been criticized not only for what he has decided but also for the manner he arrived at his decision. In both cases the major critique is on the time element. His decision has been faulted for the deadline set for beginning the troop pullout. The manner he took the decision has, over the past three months of his deliberations, been equated to ‘dithering’. In the event, Obama attempted to dispel both criticism on stage in front the corps of cadets at Westpoint. While his decision has drawn considerable comment, this article suggests that the Obama model is a worthy case study in strategic decision making.

Countering his critics, Obama said, “As your Commander-in-Chief, I owe you a mission that is clearly defined, and worthy of your service. And that's why…I insisted on a thorough review of our strategy…There has never been an option before me that called for troop deployments before 2010, so there has been no delay or denial of resources necessary for the conduct of the war during this review period. Instead, the review has allowed me to ask the hard questions, and to explore all the different options, along with my national security team, our military and civilian leadership in Afghanistan, and our key partners. And given the stakes involved, I owed the American people -- and our troops -- no less. This review is now complete.”

Contrast Obama’s deliberateness with the Global War on Terror unleashed and waged by his predecessor, George W Bush. First was the naming of the operation initially as ‘Infinite Justice’. It does not take the perspicacity of an Arundhati Roy to point out the intrinsic hubris. To its credit the US settled for ‘Enduring Freedom’. Second, the aims and objectives were speedily arrived at, dispelling any possibility of negotiated settlement. Thus the good offices of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia were not utilised to force the Taliban to hand over the Al Qaeda leadership. The military course was virtually predetermined, as indeed had been the case with Iraq War I that Bush Sr. had fought. Third, the resulting hurry led to inadequate appreciation of the military consequences, provisioning of forces and requirements of stabilisation. Fourth, Iraq War II was unleashed with a casus belli that turned out to be false. The UK has an ongoing enquiry on the antecedents of the war; not so the US. The fallout has been in increasing credibility of the cynical view that the war was a neo-con conspiracy to take over oil resources at the expense of the American narrative. The lesson is that hurry stymies reflection on and the bureaucratic counter pressures that can serve a balancing function and help flesh out plans or provide alternatives.

Obama has demonstrated the other method of conducting deliberations on war. Churchill’s relations with his commanders through Alan Brooke and Roosevelt’s handling of Eisenhower and MacArthur through George C Marshall are now case studies at training institutions of politico-strategic level decision making. As with Bob Woodward’s ‘Bush at War’, a study of the interaction of the relatively inexperienced Obama with his formidable military team of Mullen-Petraeus-MacChrystal is bestseller material. This is irrespective of whether retrospect reveals the Obama’s exit strategy as successful or otherwise.

Firstly, Bush had used an address at West Point in June 2002 to declare the questionable policy of pre-emption. Obama has reverted the criteria to a strategic rationality along lines of desirability, affordability, feasibility and political, legal and moral sustainability. Secondly, the choice of locale and choreography of the event sensibly brought out Obama’s oratorical strengths and reinforced his stature as supreme commander. This was necessary after the contretemps around the leak of the MacChrystal report in which defence secretary Gates had to take an adverse view. The leak of the report was to force the president’s hand through headlines as ‘Is it Amateur Hour at White House?’ Third, the speech contained all the requirements for proceeding at the strategic level. It set out the aim for the commanders in theatre. It discoursed on the three prongs of strategy: training of the ANA; the civilian side; and the requirements of Pakistan. It set, if controversially, a deadline. It kept open the option of a negotiated end to the conflict. The rationale given potentially helps shore up the home front, the need for which was the major lesson of Vietnam. Fourth, Obama had over seven sittings with his advisers. It enabled him get a measure of the Chinese and Indian positions through his meetings with their leaders. The visits of Clinton and Mullen to Pakistan no doubt helped get their consequential viewpoint on board. The consultation helped bring balance to his decision. It makes it easier to sell to his European allies, evident from their promise of 5000 troops. It is now no longer only ‘Obama’s War’.

India’s performance in Operation Parakram, particularly lack of strategic direction at mobilization and during its extension, indicates that the Obama model has much to offer in the Cold Start scenario.