Pakistan-US bilateral relations, which touched an unexpected height during the regime of then Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf – who had quite admittedly sold his country’s vital interests to the States for a handful of dollars – has experienced a severe jolt with the case of Raymond Davis taking a critical turn when Pakistan’s Federal Law Minister Babar Awan called on the US authorities to exchange Davis currently facing trial for a double murder in Lahore for a Pakistani citizen, Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, who has been serving prison terms in the US.
“We will demand the release of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui if America demands the release of Raymond Davis,” said Federal Law Minister Babar Awan at a press conference in Gujranwala on February 13. Thirty-eight-year-old Aafia Siddiqui, a highly-educated Pakistani neurologist, is serving 86 years in prison on concocted charges of shooting at two US soldiers in dubious circumstances while in custody in Afghanistan. Though Davis is an ordinary American citizen, the US government, most brazenly, insists that Davis enjoys diplomatic immunity and should be released, and has threatened Pakistan that it will break the diplomatic and other ties if Davis is not to be released. Davis is accused of murdering two Pakistani citizens in a busy locality of Lahore in broad daylight with scores of persons witnessing it. Though Awan’s bold, undaunted statement shows a different position from that adopted by the Zardari government, which says the courts will decide Davis’ fate, it voices the just and popular demand of the Pakistani people to get Dr. Siddiqui released and extradited to her country.
The relations between the two strategic partners in their so-called fight against terror have come to so sorry a pass that the United States has postponed the long-awaited high-level trilateral meeting between Afghanistan, Pakistan and the States without hinting at any fresh date for the meeting. Pakistani President Zardari also recently cancelled a visit to the US due mainly to the developments in the Davis case. Yet another development is that Shah Mahmud Durrani was not inducted in the federal Cabinet as foreign minister because he reportedly gave an undertaking to the US administration for Davis’ early extradition.
That the Davis case has brought the case of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui once again to the fore is a matter of satisfaction for human and civil rights activists like British journalist Yvonne Ridley, who had been championing the cause of Dr. Siddiqui’s release. The Pakistani people as well as the rights activists are likely to continue their pressure on the government to get Dr. Siddiqui released in the prevailing situation.