From: Miroslav Antic <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: PAKISTAN: A NUCLEAR ROGUE STATE? by Srdja Trifkovic HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------- http://www.rockfordinstitute.org/News/Trifkovic/NewsST110801.htm PAKISTAN: A NUCLEAR ROGUE STATE? by Srdja Trifkovic Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld left Delhi Monday after a tour of four nations that included Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Pakistan, some of the key players in the ongoing campaign against Afghanistan. His last stop was India, where Rumsfeld arrived on Sunday from Islamabad. Before leaving Pakistan he declared that the United States was not concerned about the potential for misuse of Pakistan's nuclear weapons: "I do not personally believe that there is a risk with respect to the nuclear weapons of countries that have those weapons; I think those countries are careful and respectful of the dangers that they pose and manage their safe handling effectively." He did allude to concerns over nuclear security in the region. "With the increasing availability of very powerful weapons-in some cases weapons of mass destruction-the risk they'll fall into terrorist hands poses a threat that is unique in the history of mankind," Rumsfeld said. The reality is much more uncomfortable. While Mr. Rumsfeld's soothing words reflect political expediency rather than wishful thinking, the problem of Pakistan's capability and its potential misuse will not go away. The United States is unhappy with that capability and Washington has been trying to prevent its development for almost three decades. In 1972, following its third war with India, Pakistan secretly decided to start nuclear weapons program to match India's plans. Its program was ostensibly peaceful-that's how they all start-and Canada supplied a reactor for the Karachi Nuclear Power Plant, as well as heavy water and heavy-water production facility. But in 1974 Western suppliers embargoed nuclear exports to Pakistan, suspecting its true agenda, and in 1976 Canada stopped supplying nuclear fuel for Karachi. The following year the United States halted economic and military aid to Islamabad over what was by then known to be Pakistan's nuclear weapons program. In 1979 the U.S. imposed economic sanctions when Pakistan was caught importing equipment for its uranium enrichment plant at Kahuta. This was more than compensated by support from Arab states, particularly Libya-which provided funds and access to clandestinely obtained West European technologies and materiel-and Saudi Arabia, which gave Pakistan money and access to U.S.-made supercomputers. Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan the Reagan administration radically changed its policy, however. It lifted sanctions and provided generous military and financial aid because of Pakistan's help to Afghan rebels battling Moscow. By 1983 the CIA strongly suspected that China had supplied Pakistan with bomb design, but the White House looked the other way. On Capitol Hill this was deemed a matter of great concern and in 1985 Congress passed the Pressler amendment, requiring economic sanctions unless the White House certified that Pakistan was not embarked on nuclear weapons program. Islamabad was duly certified every year until 1990. That year, however, Pakistan made cores for several nuclear weapons, and the administration of Bush, Sr.-under Pressler amendment-imposed economic, military sanctions against Pakistan. The government in Islamabad nevertheless managed to complete a 40-megawatt heavy-water reactor that, once operational, provided the source of plutonium-bearing spent fuel that was not subjected to international inspections. The process reached its logical conclusion on May 28, 1998, when Pakistan detonated a string of nuclear devices and became the first Islamic country to join the nuclear club. The United States imposed sanctions, as it had on India, but there was no serious reaction from the other nuclear powers. When the jubilant masses poured to the streets of Pakistan to cheer the news, they shouted Allah Akbar! They carried models of the Hatf-Pakistan's nuclear missile-marked 'Islamic bomb.' In Friday prayers mullahs stressed that the tests are a "triumph for Islam." As Yossef Bodansky pointed out at the time, President Nawaz Sharif's explanations that these nuclear tests were Pakistan's reaction to the Indian threat were treated both inside Pakistan and throughout the Islamic world as mere window-dressing for external consumption. It is in this stark difference between action and the politicians' rhetoric that the quandary lied then, and still does today: The Pakistani propaganda machine spun the yarn of convoluted Israeli-Indian and now also American conspiracies against Pakistan and its "Islamic Bomb" . . . This is not because Islamabad still fears the Israeli-Indian attack, if it ever really did, but because of Islamabad's requisite to integrate the dramatic development of Pakistan becoming a declared nuclear power into the volatile polity of the Hub of Islam . . . Islamabad is already capitalizing on its unique notoriety to build support as the sole Muslim nuclear power. Bodansky's conclusion-Islamabad's statements that its nuclear assets are not a component of an Islamic 'cause' should not be trusted-still stands today, more starkly than three years ago. That is why Washington is casting a wary eye toward its key presumed ally in the Subcontinent. The question is what will happen if some of Pakistan's assets-two-dozen warheads, not counting fissure material-fall into the wrong hands. The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh reported (October 29) that elite U.S. and Israeli units were being trained to "take out Pakistan's nuclear weapons to make sure that the warheads do not fall into the hands of renegades" if Pervez Musharraf is toppled by Islamist opponents. Even if the regime in Islamabad survives the mounting protests against its ostensible support for Washington's "war against terrorism," Pakistan's nuclear material may be stolen by military or intelligence officers or by renegade scientists sympathetic to the Taliban or Osama bin Laden, and used for crude terror devices. According to Hersh, One U.S. intelligence officer expressed particular alarm late last week over the questioning in Pakistan of two retired Pakistani nuclear scientists, who were reported by authorities to have connections to the Taliban. Both men, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood and Chaudry Abdul Majid, had spent their careers at the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, working on weapons-related projects. The intelligence officer, who is a specialist in nuclear proliferation in South Asia, depicted this latest revelation as 'the tip of a very serious iceberg,' and told me that it shows that pro-Taliban feelings extend beyond the Pakistani Army into the country's supposedly highly disciplined nuclear-weapons laboratories. Pakistan's nuclear researchers are known for their nationalism and their fierce patriotism. If two of the most senior scientists are found to have been involved in unsanctioned dealings with the Taliban, it would suggest that the lure of fundamentalism has, in some cases, overcome state loyalty. 'They're retired, but they have friends on the inside,' the intelligence officer said. Hersh's assessment was echoed by a former senior U.S. official who was quoted in the International Herald Tribune last week as saying that the issue of Pakistan's nuclear security at potentially vulnerable sites is "perhaps our most urgent threat reduction priority in South Asia." The report raised doubts about the safety of Pakistan's nuclear program centered on the A.Q. Khan Research Laboratory in Kahuta: "My sense," says George Perkovich, author of India's Nuclear Bomb, "is that the problem of an insider or insiders making off with fissile material is probably greater than somebody making off with an actual weapon." Designing a simple, gun-type device using highly-enriched uranium is not difficult, once the enriched uranium is at hand. With relatively little effort, a small amount (as little as three kilograms) of highly enriched uranium could be turned into a weapon of nearly half the power of the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima at the end of World War II. If detonated in a major metropolitan area, even such a crude weapon-of the sort that could be transported in a van-could kill hundreds of thousands of people and render hundreds of square miles uninhabitable for years. Because such tragedy may happen it is necessary to contemplate the timely means of its prevention; and this has to include a cool assessment of the role of Pakistan. At the time of the Partition in1947 it came into being as an avowedly Muslim state - and it cannot evolve into anything else without undermining the rationale for its existence. The Taleban came out of Pakistani madarasas and took power in Afghanistan with the help of Pakistani officers. By 1971 it became obvious that religion was not a sufficient basis for the creation of a nation, when East Pakistan broke away to become Bangladesh. The other element of national cohesion - hatred of India - also showed its limitations in the two wars with India, both of which Pakistan lost. Always on the verge of bankruptcy, Pakistan has been for most of its 54 years of existence under military dictatorships. None of its leaders has ever left power voluntarily. Some were executed on trumped-up charges (Bhutto), others assassinated (Bhutto's executioner General Zia ul-Haq). The government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was overthrown on October 12 1999 by General Pervez Musharraf-who is still in power today. That was the first military coup in a major country since the end of the cold war and the first in a country with nuclear weapons. Under Musharraf, according to Le Monde Diplomatique, Pakistan remains one of the main international platforms for Muslim fundamentalism. At the domestic level it is a powder-keg. It is riven by religious divisions which set Sunnis against Shia (20% of the population); by ethnic conflict between Pashtuns, Baluchis, Sindhis and Punjabis; and by social inequality (40% of its population live below the poverty level and up to 20 million of its children exist in conditions of slavery). It is also one of the most corrupt countries in the world-a country where, according to the United Nations, the criminal economy is larger in real terms than the legal economy. For all his supposed "liberal" inclinations General Musharraf has said many times that 'jihad in Kashmir and terrorism must be differentiated." As Pakistani journalist Najum Mushtaq pointed out a month ago, the mere spectacle of the WTC towers crumbling is being flaunted as the destruction of the myth of U.S. power: The heavily indoctrinated, religious-minded public sees it as a miracle of faith (forget the official statements in the media and the views of the westernized intelligentsia on the BBC) . . . The Pakistan government, indeed its society and the military, are at an ideological crossroads. Nationalism here in Pakistan is equated with religion. In official as well as public parlance, ideology of Pakistan and Islamic ideology are interchangeable phrases. And those who enjoy "property rights" over Islam here--the sectarian clergy and militants--interpret the religion in anti-West, anti-U.S., anti-India terms. Theirs is an anti-culture which, incidentally, coincides with the mindset of Pakistani soldiers. It may be necessary and prudent for the United States to humor those soldiers, led by General Musharraf, lest someone much worse takes their place. It would be an act of folly, however, to pretend that they are-or can ever be-our reliable and trusted allies. Copyright 2001, www.ChroniclesMagazine.org 928 N. Main St., Rockford, IL 61103 _________________________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. Box 66 00841 Helsinki Phone +358-40-7177941 Fax +358-9-7591081 http://www.kominf.pp.fi General class struggle news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe mails to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Geopolitical news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________
