Davis, a contract security officer for the CIA, has been in Pakistani custody
since a Jan. 27 incident in which he shot two men who reportedly pointed a
pistol at him in an apparent robbery attempt.
Pakistani officials have corroborated Davis' version of events and,
according to their preliminary report, Davis appears to have acted in
self-defense. From a tactical perspective, the incident appears to have been (in
tactical security parlance) a "good shoot," but the matter has been taken out
of the tactical realm and has become mired in transnational politics and
Pakistani public sentiment. Whether the shooting was justified or not, Davis
has now become a pawn in a larger game being played out between the United
States and Pakistan.
When one considers the way similar periods of tension between the
Pakistanis and Americans have unfolded in the past, it is not unreasonable to
conclude that as this current period plays out, it could have larger
consequences for Davis and for American diplomatic facilities and commercial
interests in Pakistan. Unless the Pakistani government is willing and able to
defuse the situation, the case could indeed provoke violent protests against the
United States, and U.S. citizens and businesses in Pakistan should be
prepared for this backlash.
Details of the Case
One of the reasons that the Pakistanis have been able to retain Davis in
custody is that while he may have been traveling on a "black" diplomatic
U.S. passport, not everyone who holds a diplomatic passport is afforded full
diplomatic immunity. The only people afforded full diplomatic immunity are
those who are on a list of diplomats officially accredited as diplomatic
agents by the receiving country. The rest of the foreign employees at an
embassy or a consulate in the receiving country who are not on the diplomatic
list and who are not accredited as diplomatic agents under the Vienna
Convention are only protected by functional immunity. This means they are only
protected from prosecution related to their official duties.
As a contract employee assigned to the U.S. Consulate in Lahore, Davis was
likely not on the diplomatic list and probably did not enjoy full
diplomatic immunity. He was probably considered a member of the administrative or
technical staff. Protecting himself during a robbery attempt would not be
considered part of his official function in the country, and therefore his
actions that day would not be covered under functional immunity. So
determining exactly what level of immunity Davis was provided will be critical in
this case, and the information provided by the Pakistani Foreign Ministry
will have a big impact on the Pakistani judge hearing the arguments.
In all likelihood, Davis was briefed regarding his legal status by his
company and by the CIA prior to being assigned to post. He also would have
been told that, while he had limited immunity, the U.S. government would do
its best to take care of him if some incident occurred. However, it would
have been made clear to him that in working as a protective contractor he was
running a risk and that if there was an incident on or off duty, he could
wind up in trouble. All security contractors working overseas know this and
accept the risk as part of the job.
At the time of the shooting, of course, Davis would not have had time to
leisurely ponder this potential legal quagmire. He saw a threat and reacted
to it. Undoubtedly, the U.S. government will do all it can to help Davis
out — especially since the case appears to be a good-shoot scenario and not
a case of negligence or bad judgment. Indeed, on Feb. 15, U.S. Sen. John
Kerry flew to Islamabad in a bid to seek Davis' release. However, in spite of
American efforts and international convention, Davis' case is complicated
greatly by the fact that he was working in Pakistan and by the _current
state of U.S.-Pakistani relations_
(http://www.stratfor.com/geopolitical_diary/20110215-difficult-crisis-us-pakistani-relations) .
Tensions
Over the past few years, relations between the United States and Pakistan
have been very strained. This tension has been evidenced not only by
public opinion but also by concrete examples. For example, in mid-December, the
_CIA station chief in Islamabad_
(http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20101220-pakistani-response-us-annual-review) was forced to leave the country after
his name was disclosed in a class-action lawsuit brought by relatives of
civilians killed by unmanned aerial vehicle strikes in the Pakistani tribal
badlands.
It was no coincidence that the Pakistani lawsuit against the CIA station
chief occurred shortly after the head of Pakistan's Inter-Services
Intelligence directorate, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, was accused in a civil
lawsuit of being involved in the 2008 attacks in Mumbai. The suit was brought in
U.S. District Court in Brooklyn by family members of the American rabbi
killed alongside his wife in Mumbai by Pakistan-based Islamist militants.
Like Iraq, Pakistan is a country that has seen considerable controversy
over American security contractors over the past several years. The
government of Pakistan has gone after security contractor companies like DynCorp and
its Pakistani affiliate InterRisk and Xe (formerly known as Blackwater),
which has become the Pakistani version of the bogeyman. In addition to the
clandestine security and intelligence work the company was conducting in
Pakistan, in 2009 the _Taliban even began to blame Xe _
(http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20091204_pakistan_mosque_attacks_and_insurgent_rift) for
suicide bombing attacks that killed civilians. The end result is that American
security contractors have become extremely unpopular in Pakistan. They are
viewed not only as an affront to Pakistani sovereignty but also as
trigger-happy killers. And this is the environment in which the Davis shooting
occurred. Even though some Pakistani civilians apparently came forward and
reported that they had been robbed at gunpoint by the men Davis shot, other
Pakistani groups like the _Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD)_
(http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20090605_pakistan_challenge_militants_release) — the successor to the
Lashkar-e-Taiba, which was presumably banned by the Pakistani government —
have demanded that Davis be hanged. The Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI), an Islamist
political party, has also demanded that Davis be hanged and has called for
large protests if he is released without a court order. As noted above, TTP
spokesman Azam Tarik made a statement demanding that the Pakistani
government either hang Davis or hand him over to them. Interest in this issue is
not just confined to Islamist groups. There are some right-wing conservative
nationalists and even some secular liberals who are asking: "If the United
States can give _CIA shooter Mir Amal Kansi_
(http://www.stratfor.com/attack_new_york_lone_wolf_threat) the death penalty, why can't Pakistan do the
same thing to Davis?"
The result is that the Davis case has aroused much controversy and passion
in Pakistan. This not only complicates the position of the Pakistani
government but also raises the distinct possibility that there will be civil
unrest if Davis is released.
Civil Unrest in Pakistan
Like many parts of the developing world, civil unrest in Pakistan can
quickly turn to extreme violence. One example that must certainly be on the
minds of the security personnel at the U.S. Embassy and the U.S. consulates
in Pakistan is the November 1979 incident in which an enraged mob seized and
destroyed the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad. While there were only two
Americans killed in that incident — a Marine security guard shot as he stood on
the roof of the embassy and an Army warrant officer who died when an
apartment building on the embassy compound was torched — the fire that the mob set
inside the building very nearly killed all the employees who had sought
shelter in the embassy's inner safe-haven area. Two local Pakistani staff
members were also killed in the fire.
The 1979 attack was said to have been sparked by reports that the U.S.
government was behind an assault on the Grand Mosque in Mecca by Saudi
militants the day before. In reality, the mob that stormed and torched the U.S.
Embassy was at least tolerated, if not orchestrated, by the Pakistani
government, which was angry that the United States cut off financial aid to the
country in April 1979. Not only did the Pakistani government facilitate the
busing of large numbers of protesters to the U.S. Embassy, its security
forces also stood aside and refused to protect the embassy from the onslaught
of the angry mob. The embassy assault was Pakistan's not-so-subtle way of
sending a message to the U.S. government.
But U.S. diplomatic facilities have not been the only targets of civil
unrest in Pakistan. Following the assassination of former Pakistani Prime
Minister Benazir Bhutto, _angry mobs_
(http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/pakistan_western_businesses_and_violence_following_bhuttos_death) attacked not only
security forces but also foreign businesses, banks, shops and gasoline
stations in the cities of Karachi, Rawalpindi, Islamabad and Quetta and
throughout the province of Sindh, Bhutto's home province.
Similarly, in February 2006 during the unrest generated by the Mohammed
cartoon fiasco,_mobs in Islamabad, Peshawar, Karachi and Lahore_
(http://www.stratfor.com/when_mobs_attack_multinationals_abroad_best_advice_run)
attacked a wide range of Western business targets. The worst of this violence
occurred in Lahore, where a rampaging mob burned down four buildings housing
the four-star Ambassador Hotel, two banks, a KFC restaurant franchise and
the regional office of Telenor, a Norwegian cell phone company. The
protesters also damaged about 200 cars and several storefronts and threw stones
through the windows of a McDonald's restaurant, a Pizza Hut and a Holiday Inn.
Lahore, incidentally, is where the Davis shooting occurred.
Forecast
Based on this history, the current tension between the United States and
Pakistan, public sentiment in Pakistan regarding U.S. security contractors
and the possibility of groups like JuD and JeI attempting to take advantage
of the situation, there is a very real possibility that Davis' release
could spark mob violence in Pakistan (and specifically Lahore). Even if the
Pakistani government does try to defuse the situation, there are other
parties who will attempt to stir up violence.
Due to the widespread discontent over the issue of U.S. security
contractors in Pakistan, if protests do follow the release of Davis, they can be
expected to be similar to the protests that followed the Mohammed cartoon
case, i.e., they will cut across ethnic and sectarian lines and present a
widespread threat.
Physical security measures such as concrete barriers, standoff distances
and security cameras can add to a facility's defenses against a terrorist
attack, but they really do not pose much of an obstacle to an angry mob
intent on overrunning a property — especially if local and indigenous security
forces are unwilling or unable to intervene in a timely fashion and the mob
has the time and latitude to assault the facility for a prolonged period.
The protesters can scale barriers and their overwhelming numbers can render
most security measures useless. Barriers such as hard-line doors can
provide some delay, but they can be breached by assailants who possess tools and
time.
Additionally, if protesters are able to set fire to the building, as
happened at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad in 1979, a safe-haven can become a
death trap, especially if the mob can take control of the secondary escape
hatch as it did in that incident, trapping the Americans inside the
safe-haven.
Commercial facilities are, by their very nature, far more accessible — and
far more vulnerable — to mob violence than diplomatic facilities. A
commercial facility can present a_tempting soft target_
(http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20090901_security_militant_threat_hotels) to those who wish to
attack a symbol of America without tackling a hard target like a _U.S.
diplomatic facility_
(http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20090318_counterterrorism_funding_old_fears_and_cyclical_lulls) , which is designed and built to comply
with stringent security standards. If a mob storms a hotel, the local staff
will be unable to protect the guests, and conceivably could leave the
guests to fend for themselves in the confusion and chaos of a riot. Even worse,
they could even facilitate attacks against Americans by pointing them out
or providing their room numbers.
Any person identified as an American by such an angry mob could quickly
find himself or herself in dire danger. While Americans working for the U.S.
government can expect to have some security assistance in getting back to
the embassy or to another secure location, non-officials may be left to
fend for themselves, especially if they are not registered with the embassy.
Non-officials are also not required to abide by the same security rules as
officials. While many non-officials consider the U.S. State Department's
security rules to be onerous at times, during troubled periods these
conservative security rules often serve to keep diplomats out of harm's way.
Once a mob attacks, there often is little that can be done — especially if
the host government either cannot or will not take action to protect the
facility being attacked. At that point, the focus should be on preventing
injuries and saving lives — without regard to the physical property. In most
cases, when a mob attacks a multinational corporation, it is attacking a
symbolic target. KFC restaurants, for example, have been frequent targets of
attacks in Pakistan because of the company's association with the United
States. In many cases, multinational franchises such as KFC and even some
hotels are owned by locals and not Americans, but that does not matter to the
mobs, which see nothing but a U.S. symbol.
When an issue such as the Mohammed cartoons, the Bhutto assassination or
the release of Raymond Davis spirals into violent protests, the only real
precaution that many companies can take is to escape the area and avoid loss
of life. The best defense is to use good intelligence in order to learn
about the protests in advance, to track them when they occur and then to
evacuate personnel before they can be affected by the violence.
U.S. diplomatic facilities and business interests in Pakistan are almost
certainly reviewing their contingency plans right now and planning for the
worst-case scenario. During such times, vigilance and preparation are
vital, as is a constant flow of updated intelligence pertaining to potential
demonstrations. Such intelligence can provide time for an evacuation or allow
other proactive security measures to be taken. With the current tension
between Pakistan and the United States, there might not be much help coming
when the next wave of unrest erupts, so keeping ahead of potential protests
is critically important.
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