| US and Pakistan Square Off
M K Bhadrakumar
This is a portion of an excellent analysis by the seasoned diplomat/author. Islamabad is not impressed by the US's posturing. Even after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke to Pakistani army chief General Ashfaq Pervez Kiani on the sidelines of the 47th Munich security conference 10 days ago, Pakistan crossed the Rubicon with the decisive step to formally charge Davis in a court of law in Lahore with pre-meditated murder and on that basis got him remanded to prison for another 14 days for interrogation.
Again, the ousted Qureshi has plunged into the controversy without any foreplay, alleging that Clinton pressured him to "publicly confirm diplomatic immunity of Davis. However, I refused to do so because it was against the factual position in the case."
He said, "The kind of blanket immunity Washington is pressing for Davis is not endorsed by the official record of the Foreign Ministry," adding that Washington even "threatened that Hillary Clinton would not meet me at the Munich conference on February 6 if the request was not granted." Qureshi possibly has a motivation to link his removal as foreign minister with his firm stance on the Davis case, but the damage has been done.
Why are the stakes so heavily loaded? What raises eyebrows among observers in Delhi is that Davis, who as a highly trained operative killed two motorcyclists who were tailing his car in obtrusive intelligence work for over an hour, knowing full well who they were. As a former US special forces officer, Davis was knowledgeable enough to estimate that such obtrusive intelligence was not meant to be life-threatening but was intended to be intimidating and obstructive. In short, Davis lost his cool at some point when he found he couldn't shake off his "tail".
The Pakistani authorities have been leaking to the media that they knew Davis was in touch with the "Pakistani Taliban". The Washington Post quoted Pakistani intelligence officials to the effect that the two motor cyclists were warning Davis that he was crossing some "red line" (meaning, he was about to do something unacceptable to Pakistan's national security interests) and it was at that point he shot them.
Clearly, the US has every reason to believe that the Pakistani side knows much more than it is prepared to admit, and if Davis breaks down after sustained interrogation in police custody, he might spill explosive stuff. This explains the highly contradictory versions that the US has given about Davis' identity and the nature of his assignment in Pakistan.
What emerges from the pattern of the US reaction is that Davis' detention has sent alarm bells ringing all the way to the White House. The US is apprehensive that the Davis case has the potential to shake up the very foundations of its alliance with Pakistan. Therefore, it has done the most natural thing that most countries facing a grave predicament vis-a-vis a foreign country would do - take the high moral ground straightaway and place itself in denial mode, come what may.
So, what did Davis do for a living? From the adamant fashion in which Islamabad (despite being highly vulnerable to US aid cutoff) is reacting, it seems it has no real choices in the matter. This seems to be a situation in which, as someone once said, you only live once.
The heart of the matter is that Pakistan has been wondering for a long time who it is who could be instigating the so-called "Pakistani Taliban" to inflict such bloody wounds on the Pakistani military and weaken and incrementally destabilize the Pakistani state.
It has been convenient to point the finger from time to time at the Indians, but when Pakistani state institutions were attacked, especially the military and the Inter-Services Intelligence, as precise targets, Islamabad would have had deeper suspicions, especially asa the close links between the former Afghan intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh and the US security establishment was a fact known to Pakistani agencies.
Conventional wisdom, especially among Indian propagandists, has been that what is happening inside Pakistan is a kind of "blowback" of terrorism. Some Indian pundits even claimed that the "serpent" that the Pakistani state nurtured over the years (namely, extremist outfits) for poisoning India's environs has now turned against the Pakistani state itself.
While this thesis has its seductive power, it is based on simplistic assumptions regarding the processes going on within Pakistan, especially the dialectics involving the vehicles of militancy and extremism and the state security apparatus. The Pakistani military and its highly efficient intelligence set-up could have concluded a long time ago that under the cover of the "Pakistani Taliban", all sorts of free-wheeling forces were at work. Washington is openly doing hero-worshipping of Amrullah Saleh even months after Afghan President Hamid Karzai sacked the spymaster almost as a prerequisite for improving Afghan-Pakistan relations.
Davis can most certainly provide the proverbial "missing link" to Pakistan to connect several dots on an intriguing chessboard. Conceivably, he will be sent back home at some point, but by then he may be a "burnt-out case" and Pakistan would have gained a far better understanding of the US's regional policies.
With over 100,000 American troops out on a limb in Afghanistan and the snow melting on the Hindu Kush mountains and a new "fighting season" just round the corner, the prospect surely unnerves Washington. The postponement of the trilateral meeting in Washington shows up the uncertainties.
Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.
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