Who Is Raymond Davis?

By General Mirza Aslam Beg, Former Chief of Army Staff, Pakistan

No doubt Raymond Davis is somebody very important because of all the people, the President of United States, himself intervened, demanding that the Pakistan government must release him immediately on the grounds that Davis enjoyed diplomatic immunity and the Pakistani courts of justice could not try him for the cold-blooded murder of two Pakistanis. Obama lied, knowing fully well that Davis was no diplomat and enjoyed no immunity. Now the US government is threatening Pakistan of dire consequences, if Davis was not released.

On the basis of evidence collected from Davis, very revealing information has been obtained about his contacts and his anti-Pakistan activities, as the Chief Coordinator, for other US sponsored agencies, working in Pakistan, such as:

• The Black Water, agency has been operating in Pakistan since 2004, under different names and since has remained engaged in all kinds of anti-state activities. This agency also worked in Iraq and its gruesome activities have been testified by many writers and human rights activists.

• The Special Investigation Centre (SIC) was established in 2005, with its controlling headquarters in Model Town, Lahore, which was blown-up some year and a half back. It’s really a Gestapo organization and employs over six hundred operatives, spread all over Pakistan and is tasked to carry out all the ‘dirty work,’ which Pakistani intelligence agencies would not be willing to take-on. It is this agency which kidnapped hundreds of Pakistanis and handed them over to the CIA, killed and tortured many and carried out number of ‘terror attacks’ to foment trouble and discredit the government by creating despondency amongst the people. The very painful aspect of this organization is that majority of the operatives are Pakistanis, engaged in such heinous acts. Raymond Davis exercised direct control over this agency, maintaining close contact with Blackwater and the agency working along the North Western borders, without a name but controlled by the CIA.

• The North West Border Agency was set-up in 2004, when the Americans complained to the government of Pakistan, about the cross-border involvement of Pakistanis and support to the Taliban movement inside Afghanistan. The government came under pressure and the CIA, along with the marines and FBI were allowed to set-up their vigilance net-work along the entire border from Balochistan to Khyber Pakhtun-khawah province. Thus, more than seven hundred personnel were deployed to monitor the Pak-Afghan border. It was during this period, that the ‘Indian Spy Network’ was established in Afghanistan, under the RAW, about which I had sent my report few years back to our national dailies, under the heading “Global Conspiracies Against Pakistan”. Thus CIA and RAW joined hands to infest our border with their agents, and destabilized the entire region and succeeded in turning the war on Pakistan. Thus the Pakistan Army, since 2005, is engaged in dealing with this threat, identified as Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariah (TNS) in Swat and Dir. It is in our common knowledge that prior to 2005, none of our tribals in the border region, fired even a single shot, in anger, in our direction. Thus the CIA and RAW have been able to create the serious insurgency problem for Pakistan.

• There are a number of NGOs working in Pakistan, who provide operational support to CIA. The FATA Development Agency (FDA) in particular, is very active in support of CIA and COTE operations by the coalition forces in Afghanistan.

The arrest of David has caused strains in our relations with the United States, who has been threatening Pakistan of dire consequences, if Davis was not released. Therefore President Zardari found it necessary to tell them, ‘not to cross the red-line’, in blaming Pakistan, because it were the courts of law of the country who would decide the matter and our intelligence agencies, particularly the ISI will probe into the matter of violation of trust for intelligence sharing, and engaging in activities considered detrimental to the security of Pakistan. In this connection some arrests have also been made and more are expected, including some important personalities of Pakistan, operating at the behest of Davis. Thus the working relationship between ISI and CIA also is not the same any more.

Who is Davis, whose arrest has caused strained relations between the two governments and the two secret agencies, working hand-in-glove for the last several decades? Davis’s true identity has been revealed by an American, named Robert Anderson, a CIA agent of the past. His story is very revealing. He says:

“I had Davis’s job in Laos, 30 years ago. As in Pakistan, in Laos our country conducted covert military operations against a sovereign people, using the CIA. Davis is in a bad situation now because most of the people of the world are now aware of the lies and not going to turn their head anymore. Davis is the American being held as a spy working under cover out of our embassy in Islamabad. You can understand why foreign countries no longer trust us and people are rising up across the Middle East against the ‘Great Satan’.”

“In the Vietnam War the country of Laos held a geo-strategic position, as Pakistan does to Afghanistan today. As in Pakistan, in Laos our country conducted covert military operations against a sovereign people, using the CIA. We were told if captured we were to ask for diplomatic immunity, if alive. We carried out military missions on a daily basis all across the countries of Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam. In Laos, the program, I was affected to carry-out a systematic assassination of people who were identified as not loyal to US goals. It was called the ‘Phoenix Programmes’ and eliminated an estimated 60,000 people across Indochina. We did an amazing amount of damage to the civilian infrastructure of the country and still lost the war.”

“But I see from the Davis fiasco in Pakistan that our government is still up to its old way of denying to the people of the world what everyone knows is true. When will this official hypocrisy end, when will our political class speak out about this and quit going along with the lies and tricks? How many more of our people and others will die in these foolish programmes? Davis is in a bad situation now because most of the people of the world, as we see across the Middle East are now aware of the lies and not going to turn their head any more. I say “most” everyone knows, because our own public, the ones supposed to be in control of the military and CIA has constantly lied. It is so sad to see President Obama repeating the big lie.” – Counterpunch.

How many Pakistanis have been assassinated, eliminated, kidnapped and dumped in the torture cells in USA, no one will ever know, unless, some years later, Davis’s sense of guilt compels him to speak-out the truth, as Anderson has done. Truth will prevail, but it is time now for USA to wind-up this dirty net-work in Pakistan, for the sake of better relations and mutual understanding between the two countries.

General Aslam Beg is one of the most authoritative analysts in Pakistan. He can be reached at [email protected]