Will America respect Pakistan’s law?

We have begun the most political of tennis matches, the Desi Davis Cup for the prize of Raymond Davis’s freedom or conviction, the American accused of shooting two Pakistanis in Lahore. The court of choice will be clay, slippery for both Pakistan and America.

Some facts are clear. Raymond Davis shot and killed two people. A third was killed by a US consulate vehicle rushing to save him. What remains to be verified is the diplomatic status of the killer, the identity of the driver of the second vehicle and whether the two of the three people killed were actually attempting a robbery.

The Americans, predictably, are not eager for Raymond to be tried in Pakistan, or at all. They have claimed he is in the clear because of diplomatic immunity. That fact is suspect at this stage because of Davis’s background in private security, a recent newspaper expose of his non-diplomatic passport status and the US consulate’s-flip flopping on the nature of Raymond Davis’s work.

A firmer account of what actually happened will emerge in the coming weeks. If Davis’s version of events is true, that he acted in self-defence, it still leaves the question of who the driver of the second automobile was, and that incident of vehicular death leaves very little room for innocence. It was reckless driving caused by placing a value judgment on the life of an American over a Pakistani. Second, why did Davis have a gun and was it licenced? Even if he is cleared for acting in self-defence that still leaves open the issue of acting with excessive force and illegally bearing arms .

For some time now the Americans have been publicly flexing their verbal muscle at Pakistan. I am sure they never expected it, but they have been put to the litmus test here. The question really is: Will America respect Pakistan’s law?

In all likelihood it won’t. And that’s outrageous. It’s outrageous for one pertinent reason; even though all the facts aren’t yet in, based on the circumstantial evidence available so far, America’s case looks extremely weak. Right now they are resting their case on diplomatic immunity. That’s dubious at best, but what it does signal is that the Americans do not want the legal process to go through. From Pakistan’s perspective, quite rightly, it has to.

Even in the remote possibility that Raymond Davis’s diplomatic immunity is established, that’s not the final straw. For egregious excesses committed by their diplomats, countries do sometimes waive it. The US knows this all too well. For example Gueorgui Makharadze, a Georgian diplomat in the US, in 1997, was waived of his diplomatic immunity by his own country so he could stand trial in the US (later convicted) for killing a 16-year-old girl in an accident.

Second, by judicial equivalence had Davis done the same in a crime-hit ghetto in the US, he still would have faced jail time. But, by most accounts the PPP and the PML-N are facing immense pressure to let the man go. If WikiLeaks taught us anything, it’s that we have a good idea to what extent his case is being discussed right now and with what intensity.

This is partly why the prognosis is so poor. Because the case is Punjab-related, we can anticipate the PPP passing the buck to the PML-N, and vice versa citing the international nature of the crime. With the onus of responsibility divided, a clear stance will be hard to evolve. And this will benefit the Americans as it tries to isolate one or the other.

Letting Davis leave will mean many things: it plays into the hands of the right and supports the army narrative of politicians being weak on matters of sovereignty. But that shouldn’t matter, what should matter is that three people died and those who killed them must answer for it.

Who wins match point here need not be one country, or the other, but a just application of Pakistani law. If only it had a better winning streak.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 1^st,  2011.