Tuesday, May 03, 2011

Raymond Davis Affair and the Plot against Osama Bin Laden

My student Fahim has been saying all along that there was something strange about the Raymond Davis affair. No one really believed that the reason he shot the two men following him in Lahore on January 27 was because they were trying to rob him, as he claimed. There were more reasons to ask questions once it became known that the two men were with the ISI, Pakistan's notorious intelligence service. Fahim repeatedly said that there had to be something more to the affair than the public was being told.

If so, we may never know. Whatever the reason, Davis made sure that both of the men were dead -- he shot them in the back as they were fleeing and then went back to put more bullets into one of them who seemed still to be alive.

But now we may have an additional piece of relevant information: for many months the Americans were planning an attack on a location they supposed was Osama Bin Laden's hiding place. The raid on the Bin Laden compound was planned with utmost secrecy. Now that it has been pulled off, with impressive speed and efficiency, we wonder: Could Davis have been protecting information critical to the plot against Osama? Was that why he took such pains to exterminate his ISI pursuers?

We of course will never know. This is pure speculation. Even so, it is hard to deny Fahim's point: Davis was up to something important; his behavior makes little sense unless something else was at stake.

One issue is evidently beyond speculation, as many have noted: Pakistan's military should be embarrassed: They were either incompetent or in cahoots with Bin Laden, one or the other. It's hard not to believe that they were aware of his presence in their midst -- how could they not have been protecting him?

But whatever one might speculate, Fahim seems to have it right: Davis was protecting the critical plot to attack Osama Bin Laden.

1 comment:

Sid Ravi said...

My name is Sid an I'm a friend of Fahim. He showed me this post and I concur. If one looks at the (released) timeline for the planning of the operation to kill Bin Laden, up until November, most of what the CIA knew was "maybe"s and "likely"s. In December-January, something changed and the released reports say there was confirmation that Bin Laden was actually in Abbotabad.

Obama had 8 meetings with the NSA regarding the specific Operation Geronimo to kill Bin Laden, according to the press. The first meeting was on March 14. Raymond Davis was released on the 16th but his release was probably secured earlier after the USA paid millions of dollars to the families of the men Davis killed.

Sounds very "conspiracy theory" but this is the CIA we're talking about.