4 April 2011. A World to Win News Service. Raymond A. Davis killed two men on a crowded street in Lahore, Pakistan. The two youths were riding together on a motorbike. Davis shot one from his car and then got out and pursued and shot the other. Witnesses say he photographed their bodies. A second car rushing to pick him after the shooting crushed and killed a third man, a market vendor.
Davis was arrested on the spot. He claimed self-defence – that he had been driving alone when the two men tried to rob him. He was held in prison in Lahore for about six weeks before being released on 16 March. Instead of murder, he was convicted of illegal possession of a weapon and sentenced to the time he had already served and a fine of 350 dollars.
The incident itself revealed much about CIA covert operations in Pakistan, but his release shed even more light on the relations between the US and Pakistani governments.
The US government demanded that he be released immediately and allowed to leave the country. American officials insisted that Davis was a civilian working for the US embassy and thus had diplomatic immunity from Pakistani law. The Pakistani media almost immediately identified him as a CIA agent, but at the request of American officials British and American newspapers concealed this fact. Finally the US admitted that he was part of a covert, CIA-led team operating in Pakistan.
His release came after weeks of negotiations between officials of the two countries, or in other words, the two countries' secret agencies services (CIA-ISI). Finally, it was agreed that 2.3 million dollars would be paid as blood money to the families of the victims, who would then pardon him. In this way religious law (Sharia) would take precedence over civil law and he would not be charged with murder. No charges were filed against the men in the car that killed the market vendor. His widow committed suicide to protest government disinterest in justice for her husband.
Both sides were desperate to resolve the differences by negotiations before the Lahore High Court decided whether or not the CIA agent should be granted diplomatic immunity. Pakistan officials are said to have pressured the High Court to delay the decision on the Davis case so that the issue could be settled through negotiations. It is also believed that officials forced the families to change their lawyer to reduce the possibility of leaks or a scandal. It is known that when the lawyer who first represented the two families came to court, he was detained and not allowed to enter the courtroom or meet with his clients.
One obvious reason why this result suited the US is because it meant that there would be no court discussion of what really happened on that street and what that CIA team was doing in Pakistan. But there was even more to it than that.
Holding the negotiations behind closed doors was beneficial to both sides for many reasons. If the court had denied the CIA agent diplomatic immunity, that would have been unacceptable to the US. The Pakistani government could not afford to let that happen because of what it would mean for its relations with the US. And if the court had granted Davis diplomatic immunity, that would have been so absurd that it would be hard to claim that the Lahore High Court and the Pakistani government as a whole have much independence from US dictates. So resolving the matter through negotiations not only satisfied the US but was also meant to allow the Pakistani authorities to save face.
Also, in the unlikely case that the court had denied diplomatic immunity to a CIA agent, the US was worried that a precedent would be set for other countries where the CIA operates.
The whole issue and especially Davis' release infuriated different sections of the Pakistani people. In order to justify their actions, Pakistani officials argued that in return for this cooperation the CIA had pledged to scale back covert operations in Pakistan and give the Pakistani government a list of American spies operating in the country.
But the secrecy of the negotiations was such that even Pakistan's mainstream political parties objected. The total blackout makes it clear that whatever the content of the agreement, it was reached between the US negotiators and the ISI, and not Pakistan's civilian government. While the US has made much of its support for elections in Pakistan, and cried crocodile tears when presidential candidate Benazir Bhutto was assassinated, it has often ignored the subsequent civilian government led by her husband, Asif Ali Zadari, preferring to deal directly with the military and its ISI.
Dawn, a daily newspaper published in Karachi, wrote, "No one among the political leadership is sure about what was secured and what was conceded by the two agencies... Unlike the past where few questions were asked about secret pacts with the US, including the one on drones, there is this time a growing chorus within the country demanding full disclosure of the new CIA-ISI understanding, which is being broadly defined as 'redefinition of the cooperation parameters' or 'discussions on the contours of engagement'". (18 March 2011)
What frustrated and enraged Pakistanis even more was that less than 24 hours after the spy was released and flown out of the country to Kabul, the US hit the Northern tribal area of Pakistan with drone strikes. This air raid killed more civilians (45) than any previous one. It brought even more discredit on the Pakistani negotiators and government. Popular anger caused government officials and in particular General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the Pakistan military chief, to condemn the attack in unusually strong words. However this was attributed by many inside Pakistan to domestic compulsion.
This is reflected in an article on the air strike in Dawn: "One, Thursday's drone strike killed many non-militant tribals, including khasadars, who had gathered to resolve a local dispute. Two, the strike was a deliberate and provocative message from the US to the Pakistan Army. Three, the domestic criticism of the army in the wake of the release of Raymond Davis has played some part in General Kayani's condemnation of the drone strike." (19 March 2011)
The US strike against civilians was an embarrassment to the Army, the ISI and the Pakistan government. It gave the lie to the claim that in return for the release of Davis the US had promised to scale back its covert operations, or that these negotiations had redefined the relationship between the US and Pakistan in favour of Pakistani sovereignty. The strike a day after Davis' release showed that on the contrary they might have redefined the relationship in order to even further increase the US's freedom to carry out operations inside Pakistan.
In fact, the freeing of the CIA spy who had killed two Pakistanis was already a humiliation to Pakistan, but the drone strike left no doubt that the US was sending a clear message that hardly anyone has failed to pick up. As Brig Shah, the head of security for the tribal regions in Pakistan said, "This is an arrogant US response. Twelve missiles in one day is not routine. The message was clear and categorical: we will do what we want." (Dawn, 19 March 2011) And this is what defines the relationship between the rulers of the US and Pakistan.
Davis' activities in Pakistan
What was Davis doing in Lahore? "The CIA team Mr. Davis worked with, according to American officials, had among its assignments the task of secretly gathering intelligence about Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant 'Army of the Pure'. Pakistan's security establishment has nurtured Lashkar for years as a proxy force to attack targets and enemies in India and in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir." (The New York Times, 12 March 2011)
But what the Davis affair revealed was not just that American spy network is operating in Pakistan. It shed light on a much broader activities than that. The CIA is running numerous covert programmes in Pakistan without even informing the government, army or ISI.
"A Pakistani intelligence official confirmed that CIA operatives were using their own local agents to target Qaeda-linked militants with drones in Pakistan's tribal areas, and speculated that they could be trying to expand that campaign to reach other Pakistani militants and Afghan Taliban inside Pakistan." (NYT, 31 March 2011
In turn the whole affair brought out the real relationship between the US and the Pakistani army and government. The US deliberately humiliated them. They were so powerless in confronting the US that in the end they could not even save face in the public eye. American US officials went so far as to deny the Pakistan authorities' claims regarding the points of negotiation. "One American official said that Mr Panetta had made no concrete pledges to curtail agency operations in exchange for Mr. Davis' release." (NYT, 16 March 2011) This amounts to the US saying, Yes, we are running these operations and we will continue to do so.
In fact CIA operations in Pakistan have been stepped up dramatically over the last couple of years, as an extension of the US war in Afghanistan. Their mission may well involve more than spying on individuals and groups. It has been revealed that increasing numbers of Taliban leaders and commanders residing in Quetta and other Pakistani cities have been the target of assassinations during last year. For example, the NYT recently reported that "Three powerful Taliban commanders were killed in February in the south-western Pakistani city of Quetta." (31 March)
No one has taken responsibility for these assassinations but the American spy networks operating in Pakistan are one of the main suspects. This would be consistent with the present US strategy in Afghanistan, to wipe out the Taliban in their so-called "safe heavens" in Pakistan as a key to winning the war in Afghanistan. It also seems to be in line with their drone strikes that are mainly concentrated in Pakistan. Of course the Davis affair adds further reason to believe that the US may be waging a secret war in Pakistan on the ground as well as in the air.
Tensions between Pakistan and the US
The Davis affair highlights the relationship between the US and Pakistan as one between a bully dominant imperialist country and one under domination. But that is not to say there are no differences or conflicts between the ruling classes of the two countries. The point is that Pakistan is highly dependent on the US imperialists. It is no secret that Pakistan's very existence is very much tied to military, economic and financial aid from the US and other Western countries. But at the same time, in the present situation there are differences between the two countries due to different priorities in the region.
The US wants to have a full control over Afghanistan, and, at least at present, sees any destabilizing element such as Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in the region as not in their favour. It may have concluded that the time of those groups is up. The US sees India as no longer a regional threat to its interests. However Pakistan's priority is being able to confront or defend itself from India. It sees every threat as from that side. This is not just paranoia; India is definitely working hard to bring Afghanistan further under its influence, leaving Pakistan surrounded.
This difference in interests has so far prevented Pakistan from fully cooperating with the US's goals in Afghanistan and the region and is a main source of tensions between the two countries. This difference is something that the US has been able tolerate so far and Washington might not even be keen to resolve it. But at the same time this difference has consequences. It also has the potential to drive the whole region into even greater turmoil.
In fact the war in Afghanistan and the changes that it has caused in the region have already brought a certain level of crisis to Pakistan. Even the existence of Pakistan as a country could be brought into question, and that is what the Pakistan's rules are struggling to confront. At the same time, they are dependent on the US, the imperialist power whose actions are most responsible for Pakistan's woes.
This is a dangerous situation for the rulers of Pakistani, and a much worse one for the Pakistani people.
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