First published in The Islamabad Dateline on 24.02.2010
Raymond Davis has been on the front-page of newspapers for quite sometime now. He will remain to be, till the parties involved extract their ulterior motives out of the issue and us, the ignorant sheep will dance to the tune of the shepherd, as planned.
The British newspaper that broke the news of Raymond being a CIA spy quotes: The New York Times, Washington Post, Associated Press and other media outlets reported for the first time that Davis is a CIA employee. They said they had been aware of his status but kept it under wraps at the request of US officials
The American media outlets, who cry about “freedom of press” every now and then, only gathered the audacity to report the same after London-based newspaper had broken the story.
American media’s mum-ness and Pakistani media’s hue and cry over Raymond Davis’s CIA links puts a big question mark on freedom of press, both here and in the US.
Youth all over Pakistan are disgruntled and angry over Raymond Davis. Protests are being planned out throughout the country, and if set free, the government will find it hard to control the street agitation. But some important points to be considered before coming out on streets:
Do we seriously think the mighty Intelligensia of Pakistan was un-aware of Raymond Davis and others working within our borders? I mean, a British newspaper is more ‘intelligent’ than the agencies that need to be checking exactly the likes of Raymond? Are we sharing Intelligence and receiving billions of dollars for signed contracts and only way to make those who become a nuisance, flee is by creating public backlash by orchestrating such drama, on the street? Do we think that our boys are not monitoring diplomats, and that too of Raymond’s history and profile?
More puzzling is the Raymond’s link with banned terrorist outfits and his potential link to drone strikes. America is striking Taliban with drone attacks, but their top spy in the country has links with Taliban and has been visiting them quiet often? The riddle is yet to be fully solved, one wonders if it ever will be solved as American media still had the guts to acknowledge it with-held information, our media still cries of being “free”.
We are living in troubling times of wars between intelligence agencies and our collective energies need to be directed at finding common grounds in rallying for democracy, in trying to infest democratic norms in our society, in working for freedom of judiciary and media, in rallying against extremism and in finding peace within, before aspiring to have peace outside.
Let us not be carried away by “spy-games” as not everybody loves Raymond, in that world.
Syed Ali Abbas Zaidi is an aeronautical engineer by force, an activist by mind, a wanderer by soul & a lover by heart.
Geo News released today: Davis row creates rift between ISI, CIA
Is this the first time we have a CIA agent operating and carrying out his agenda on this Earth?
I have been hearing of CIA doing this and doing that ever since I learned to recite ABC.
Millions of agents have come to this land and accomplished their mission and gone under cover. Even those who get killed get a ‘nameless place’ in their Memorial Wall of Fallen CIA Agents in the CIA headquarters in Langley Virgina(http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122258124)
No one gets to know who they were, even their families.
The situation with Raymond Davis is that for some stupidity of his, he got caught and couldn’t escape–hence all this exposure of a CIA operative in Pakistan. And hence all this screaming from every nook and corner of Pakistan.
What will happen to his fate, I know not.
But whatever happens to him–extradited or punished or whatever, will not make any difference in the long run.
Many more will come and go this way without being caught exactly the way they come and go elsewhere in the world.
After this incident one firmly comes to believe that Ignorance is ‘really’ a bliss.
Only we had remained ignorant of this nth CIA operative on our land, we would have been so much at peace and worry about other issues.
Lastly, what do we do of those CIA agents who are hired locally and live amongst us ?