This essay tracks the relationship between the legal and the lethal in the Central Intelligence Agency’s operations in Pakistan as part of the U.S.-led war on terror. I juxtapose an account of an automobile accident in Lahore on 26 January 2011 involving the Blackwater employee, Raymond Davis, with a drone strike in the North Waziristan Agency in Pakistan’s (former) Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), the day after Davis was released by a court in Pakistan. I examine these “sovereign accidents” as articulations of the legal, political and democratic, and as sites upon which to (re)build understandings of sovereignty and its flourishes. Contrary to the popular tendency to see FATA as a marginal border region, that quintessential space of exception, I examine the FATA as jurisdiction. I thread together political discourse and practice in the U.S. and Pakistan, and by examining media coverage and litigation around the accidents, I show how a question of freedom of information in one setting is a question of life itself in another setting. At stake is the meaning and valence of law, the political, and the promise of postcolonial sovereignty.

中文翻译：

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帝国的意外：巴基斯坦“反恐战争”中的法律、谎言和主权

作为美国领导的反恐战争的一部分，本文追踪了中央情报局在巴基斯坦的行动中合法与致命之间的关系。我将 2011 年 1 月 26 日在拉合尔发生的一起车祸，涉及 Blackwater 雇员雷蒙德·戴维斯（Raymond Davis）与无人机在巴基斯坦（前）联邦直辖部落地区 (FATA) 的北瓦济里斯坦机构发生的一起，在戴维斯获释第二天由巴基斯坦法院审理。我将这些“主权事故”视为法律、政治和民主的表达，以及作为（重新）建立对主权及其繁荣的理解的场所。与将 FATA 视为边缘边界地区这一典型的例外空间的流行趋势相反，我将 FATA 视为管辖权。我将美国和巴基斯坦的政治话语和实践联系在一起，通过研究围绕事故的媒体报道和诉讼，我展示了在一种情况下的信息自由问题如何在另一种情况下是生活本身的问题。危在旦夕的是法律的意义和价值、政治以及后殖民主权的承诺。