Worst Spy of the Year?

We can now belittle terrorist groups every claim of righteous holy war.

Here’s a solution: Toss Raymond Davis in the same prison cell as Mumtaz Qadri. Let them fight it out with their bare hands. Last man standing gets to walk out. If Davis wins, he is free but has to stay in Pakistan, which means all the niswar he can chew but only if he can make it to the nearest pan shop without being attacked. If Qadri wins he, too, gets freedom, but he then has to go on a date with every single person who sent him a Valentine card and that date has to end with the both of them on a heart-shaped bed festooned with pillows and petals.

To get extra mileage out of this, we can broadcast the fight as filmed by the security cameras in the cell and sell advertising spots during the fight to earn money that can go towards weaning Pakistan off American aid. Ali Zafar can sing a few dozen overwrought anthems to commemorate the event, one for each brand that manages to buy virtual real estate in the half-hour-long ad breaks during the pay-per-view event. The worst-case scenario is that the fight proves boring as Davis, weak from his hunger strike, flails feebly, while Qadri spends most of the time trying to climb out from under the paper hearts and cuddly extremist teddy bears that crowd his cell. Either way, we get some great television.

The alternative is to let things continue as is: Raymond Davis gathering first-hand intelligence on what the inside of a Lahore jail cell looks like; our government completely disintegrating as each and every member of the PPP comes out with a unique viewpoint on his visa status, declaring him to be everything from a diplomat to an exchange-programme medical student, before being fired for ‘not speaking for the party’ and attempting an Over-Acting101 monologue on TV; the US continuing to act like he is the most important diplomatic resource since John Adams, while doing everything short of sending a Black Ops team to extract him that will try to drive over every pedestrian it sees on the way to and from the prison and then calling us ‘anti-American’.

In all the din, however, we are missing one very crucial point. Investigations have revealed that Davis was personally in contact with at least two members of al Qaeda, members of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan. That last group is the same organisation that recently released a video, showing a Hakeemullah Mehsud who was either not killed (as previously thought) in a drone attack or has somehow returned from the dead like a terrorist zombie, murdering a former ISI official in cold blood, after declaring death on “all those collaborating with the Americans”. Either Raymond Davis, along with being a marksman and winner of the ‘Worst Spy of the Year — 2011’ award, is a master of disguise, or these groups are knowingly in contact with American intelligence officials. Regardless, this is a propaganda coup against the terrorist organisations that is being tragically squandered. We can now belittle their every claim of righteous holy war against the Great Satan by pointing to actual evidence of collusion. Every time they try to justify an atrocity in the name of their twisted interpretation of Islam, be it blowing up a girls’ school or murdering someone who believes differently from them, we just need to counter with ‘did the CIA order you to do that too?’ or ‘how many dollars did you get paid that time?’ Mockery can be a powerful weapon. The farce always outlives the fact.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 24^th, 2011.