Pakistanis are being constantly told that the Raymond Davis episode and the Osama bin Laden event soured relations between the US and Pakistan and that these are the issues that have brought the bilateral relationship to a new low. They are not being told what it was about these events that made them so significant. Could it be that a CIA operative under the cover of being a diplomat was where he should not have been and that he killed two Pakistanis in broad daylight and then a US Consulate vehicle sent to retrieve him crushed another Pakistani dead? How do you get over something like that? The raid into Pakistan that led to the killing of OBL and was carried out without taking Pakistan into confidence left its Army and Intelligence to face the humiliation of being publicly accused of complicity or incompetence or both. This was indeed a watershed event and has had led to consequences that such events inevitably lead to. Perhaps it is relevant to consider that these events were the result of a perception on the US side that Pakistan was not cooperating as an ally should and a perception on the Pakistani side that the US had gained covert access into Pakistan through devious means and their intentions were not clear. If so, then several months later not much has been done to clear the air — in fact it is more fogged up than before. There is a crying need for clarity over divergences and perceptions.
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