Pakistan's nuclear weapons could fall into pro-Taliban hands. It would be suicidal to dismiss this possibility or ignore U.S. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld's hint that America could use tactical nuclear weapons in Afghanistan.
A GRIM truth stares us all in the face: Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is neither safe nor secure amidst the unrest, turmoil and insecurity which now convulse that country. There is a finite, definite, chance that these weapons of mass destruction could fall into the hands of extremists within Pakistan's politicised army, or even pro-Taliban terrorists, who will have no hesitation in using them, or threatening the world with them. The chance may be relatively small - just as many had thought, before September 11, that the probability of a large-scale terrorist attack upon America's heartland was also small. But it is real.
No less real is the threat obliquely held out by U.S. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, who has again (October 29) refused to "rule out" the possibility that America could use tactical nuclear weapons against the reinforced caves in which Osama bin Laden is suspected to be hiding. This shocking statement is tantamount to a threat to unleash terror.
The logic of a nuclear attack, if not a Nuclear Armageddon, is built into the military confrontation now under way in India's immediate neighbourhood. It would be suicidal for us to dismiss or minimise its potential, or complacently wait and watch - till an even graver crisis is upon us. More than a billion people could end up paying for the colossal blunder which India and Pakistan made by crossing the nuclear threshold in May 1998.
After investigative journalist Seymour Hersh's stunning disclosure in The New Yorker (website, October 29), it would be criminal not to take note of changed U.S. perceptions of, and preparations under way to "neutralise", Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. Hersh's "Annals of National Security" report is a credible, cogent, convincing account of the high vulnerability of Pakistan's stockpile of nuclear weapons, and of how officials in the U.S. security establishment see the issue.
Hersh says that the Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. military have set up a special deep-penetration unit to seize, take out or de-fang Pakistan's nuclear weapons in case of an exigency. The commando group is training with an Israeli outfit, code-named Unit 262, which is known for covert operations including theft and assassination. The U.S. unit is said to specialise in locating and disarming nuclear weapons.
Hersh is not the only person to speak of U.S. concerns about Islamabad's arsenal. He is joined by Bruce G. Blair - president of the Centre for Defence Information, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) campaigning for nuclear restraint and disarmament, and long-time fellow of the Brookings Institution - in a New York Times op-ed article (October 22). Blair wrote a remarkable and thoughtful study, The Logic of Accidental Nuclear War (Brookings, 1995), in which he analyses the systemic vulnerability of U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals; in particular their command and control apparatuses. He cogently argues that even with the most sophisticated of technologies, the accidental use of nuclear weapons is no aberration, but a possibility that is intrinsic to the way nuclear armaments are managed in the real world.
Blair argues that in Pakistan, "insiders (in government) might collude to steal bombs and add them to the arsenal of Osama bin Laden or some other extremist... Besides urging Pakistan to strengthen security where its weapons are stored and/or to disable its nuclear devices, the United States should be offering to help out by providing security equipment and guards." He then says: "American surveillance and intelligence efforts should be aimed at independently keeping track of the Pakistani arsenal. To guard against the worst possibility - Pakistani weapons in the hands of our enemies - America should have plans ready to provide security without Pakistan's permission, if emergency circumstances dictate, and even to take Pakistan's weapons out of the country if the need arises."
Therefore, says Blair, "special operation forces... should be kept on high alert for quick, covert incursions to disable or even relocate the weapons to prevent their capture by unauthorised people. Nuclear emergency search teams, which are trained in bomb detection and dismantling, should be ready to accompany such military operations. The teams... know the basic design of Pakistani weapons from defectors' reports and could devise disabling procedures on the spot." These recommendations seem to be under implementation.
Joseph R. Biden, chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, too has confirmed that President George Bush is consulting senior leaders on plans to neutralise Pakistan's nuclear capability in case the Musharraf regime collapses. He told a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York that "those discussions are under way with the Democratic and Republican members of Congress..." U.S. and British intelligence officials have also been venting similar fears. In a CBS interview, Secretary of State Colin Powell referred to such concerns. He said: "We are very sensitive to that, and I know President Musharraf is very sensitive" (to the possibility of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal falling into the wrong hands).
These fears have recently peaked with the reported detention of two former senior scientists of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC), Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood and Chaudhry Abdul Majeed. The two are said to be experts on plutonium technology. Mahmood is known for his contribution in setting up Pakistan's first unsafeguarded plutonium reactor in Khushab. Majeed is among the few Pakistani scientists trained at a plutonium facility in Belgium in the 1960s. Mahmood is believed to be a stronger Taliban sympathiser. In late 1998, he resigned as project director, PAEC, when, like New Delhi, Islamabad announced that it would consider signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The two set up an NGO, which is believed to have links with the Taliban.
Since then, matters have become even murkier with reports, strongly denied by the Pakistan government, that it has handed over Mahmood, Majeed and yet another scientist Mirza Yousaf, to U.S. intelligence agencies for questioning. We still do not know the whole truth, and may never know it. But such reports appear plausible. Even if exaggerated, they would certainly form the basis for a strong intervention by the U.S. More important, these reports are certain to invite the charge from pro-Taliban/Al Qaeda extremists that Musharraf could strike an unacceptable deal with America; that he is not averse to giving up sovereign control over Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. That charge could itself trigger great hostility and impel Musharraf's adversaries to intensify their efforts to "defend" Islamabad's nuclear weapons.
REPORTS apart, it stands to reason that nuclear security in Pakistan could rapidly degrade under conditions of extreme political instability, a social implosion, or growing rifts within the armed forces over the extent to which Islamabad should militarily cooperate with Washington. Despite appearances, Pakistan's Army is hardly a united, homogenous entity. It is ethnically unbalanced, with 90 per cent of its officers coming from Punjab, and over 20 per cent of its ranks made up of Pashtuns. The process of Islamicisation launched by Zia-ul-Haq in the 1980s has eroded the Army's Sandhurst-dominated "Western" culture. Some of those who received Islamic instructions have now reached senior positions such as Brigadier or Major-General.
Thus, conditions under which deeper rifts, even an army mutiny, could occur are no longer a remote possibility. They are already in the process of materialising. The sudden reshuffle at the top, the unending anti-war protests by religious extremists, and their six-day takeover of a whole district of the Northwest Frontier Province, including parts of the Karakoram highway and an airfield, all reinforce this surmise.
An even stronger reason for worry arises from considerations of Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme, and the general lack of safety in that society and its armed forces. Pakistan's nuclear programme has been conducted under extreme secrecy and stealth, without adequate testing of safety devices to prevent accidents or unauthorised/unintended use of nuclear weapons or components. Both Pakistan and India have repeatedly made claims to nuclear prowess out of hubris. For instance, the claimed yields of their 1998 explosions were greatly exaggerated.
It is generally believed that Pakistan's command-and-control infrastructure is primitive and lacks good safety locks. In fact, there may be some conceptual confusion about the system too. Last year, Musharraf described the system as consisting of "a geographic separation between the warhead and the missile... In order to arm the missile, the warhead would have to be moved by truck over a certain distance. I don't see any chance of this restraint being broken." He would not say how far apart the warhead and missile were, or who controlled the system. But that is not what is usually meant by a command-and-control system, which involves minute-to-minute control over weapons which are ready to go at short notice.
Both Pakistan and India have a poor culture of safety and high rates of mishaps in their armed forces establishments (This is more fully documented in my book, co-authored with Achin Vanaik, South Asia on a Short Fuse: Nuclear Politics and the Future of Global Disarmament, Oxford University Press, New Delhi 2000, pages 76-82 and 190-194). Their nuclear programmes have an embarrassingly bad safety record.
Equally worrisome is the history of misperception of each other's nuclear capabilities. For long years, right until May 1998, many top Indian nuclear scientists refused to believe that Pakistan had the bomb or the capability. There is not much clarity about each other's nuclear doctrines either. For instance, India parades no-first-use as nuclear restraint. But Pakistan sees that as a confident, even boastful, assertion of a second-strike capability - the only knee-jerk response to which can be a first strike by Islamabad!
This is a dangerous mix of misperceptions and poor capabilities. But Defence Minister George Fernandes has issued a certificate of competence and "credit" to Pakistan's defence establishment. On October 30, he claimed that Pakistan's nuclear assets are in safe hands. He said: "I would like to give them credit. Those concerned with Pakistan's nuclear programme are responsible people." He was certain that Pakistan will not allow anybody to tamper with their nuclear devices. "They will not allow it to happen... They know how to keep the assets safely." Contradictorily, he also said Pakistan itself is insecure. The current "disturbances" in Pakistan, he said, "may strike at the very foundations of its nationhood... this should be cause for worry... also for India. Any break-up of Pakistan will jeopardise the stability of the subcontinent, with consequences which defy the imagination." And he warned Islamabad: "If you sup with the terrorist, you won't live to have your breakfast."
Fernandes' breathtakingly irresponsible comment was meant to stall any questions about the safety of India's own nuclear arsenal (which too has a high potential for mishaps and accidental or unauthorised use), and to dismiss genuine concerns about the unique nuclear danger in the subcontinent. It is of a piece with the smugness with which Indian policy-makers viewed Pakistan's nuclear preparations in the 1990s and the focussed intensity with which some of them chided, goaded and cajoled Islamabad to test in May 1998. It is was if the Chagai blasts would lessen the moral impact of Pokhran-II!
Many of our trumped-up security "experts" repeatedly told us that it was in India's own interest that Pakistan has nuclear weapons - that can kill millions of Indians at one go. Nuclear arms would induce "sobriety" and "maturity" and make South Asia more stable and safe! This dangerous prophecy was based on reckless self-serving speculation. The nuclear danger has since steadily grown and become horrifically serious. The sordid South Asian sideshow to the Afghan war bears witness to this. These experts - in reality, servitors of nuclear weapons - stand discredited and disgraced.
The nuclear threat that confronts us must not be underestimated. It calls for three policy responses. First, India must not offer "conventional" provocation to Pakistan through hostile rhetoric, threats to exercise "ruthlessness" in dealing with militants, and other actions or statements. There is a high potential for a conventional skirmish to escalate to the nuclear level. Second, Vajpayee must accept Musharraf's offer to meet in New York and resume the interrupted Agra process to improve mutual relations all round. This means eschewing the unseemly competition to become America's "most allied ally"!
And third, India and Pakistan must hold talks on nuclear-restraint measures that were left unaddressed at Agra. These measures must not rationalise and normalise their arsenals, but serve as steps towards their defusing and eventual dismantlement. This means that the two give up their ill-advised search for technology - like safety locks and "permissive action links". They must commit themselves to reversing their May 1998 actions, and thus create conditions that will promote global nuclear disarmament - not as a distant goal, but as an urgent practical necessity.
COMMents
COMMents
SHARE