How they see us: CIA agents overrun Pakistan

The Americans have gone into superpower bully mode to rescue a CIA agent in Pakistan, said Khalid Iqbal in the Lahore Nation. Raymond Davis, a CIA contractor who used to work for the notorious mercenary firm Blackwater, blew his cover when he shot dead two Pakistanis in Lahore in January and was arrested by Pakistani police. The U.S. government immediately launched a heavy campaign of “coercive diplomacy.” President Obama disingenuously declared Davis to be a diplomat with immunity and demanded his return. The U.S. press was “forbidden to mention the killer’s connection to the CIA,” and it meekly complied until the British media reported it. When Pakistani authorities began asking probing questions about why this so-called diplomat was roaming the streets armed, the U.S. State Department became “extremely arrogant, harsh, and bullying.” It suspended all high-level contacts with Islamabad, canceled ministerial meetings, and even threatened our ambassador with expulsion. But Pakistan “has not buckled under intense U.S. pressure.” Pakistanis are furious at the thought of an American agent on a “killing spree,” and they demand he be prosecuted.

The specific question is whether Davis has diplomatic immunity from prosecution, said Baqir Sajjad Syed in the Karachi Dawn. When he first entered Pakistan, in 2010, the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad listed him as an employee, which meant that he would have full immunity unless the Pakistani Foreign Office raised an objection. But once he was arrested, the embassy panicked and made a “serious mistake.” It told the Foreign Office that Davis was an employee of the U.S. consulate in Lahore. Consular employees enjoy only limited immunity, and can be prosecuted for serious crimes like murder.

The fate of Davis isn’t the point, said Yousuf Nazar in the Karachi Express Tribune. Whether one CIA agent gets diplomatic immunity on some legal technicality is immaterial. The important thing is “to find out what hundreds of CIA agents are doing in Pakistan.” The Pakistani liberal elite has long pooh-poohed rumors of a vast CIA presence here “as right-wing conspiracy theories.” But now that Davis has been arrested and reporters everywhere are asking questions, U.S. officials have confirmed that Pakistan is the site of one of “the most blatant and biggest CIA covert operations” in history. The question for Pakistanis is: Did Pakistan’s spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, know about this? Or was it so incompetent that it had no idea its territory had been so fully penetrated by a foreign spy agency?

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The ISI has now self-importantly demanded that the Americans “come clean” about the number of operatives they have in Pakistan, said the Karachi News in an editorial. Of course, “the likelihood of this happening is measured in a minus-number.” The Americans will keep their spy network covert, and they will continue to operate here. But they should take care that their agents don’t commit murder on public streets. “Uncle Sam does not have the right to roam at will, and if he thinks he does, he may find himself pondering his folly inside a jail cell.”