Pakistan’s Nuclear Scandal

The New York Times of February 7, 2004, argued that while Iraq, which had not sold any weapon of mass destruction has been subjected to military conquest, Pakistan, the biggest violator, has been congratulated. Punishing or pardoning Dr. A.Q. Khan is not as important as ending the sales and the production of fissile material in Pakistan.

The Washington Post published two consecutive editorials. In the first, carried on February 5, the very day that Musharraf addressed the nation and the media on the issue, the paper called him an unreliable General and contended that Pakistan’s military leadership had threatened the US and global security more than either al-Qaeda or Saddam Hussein. To remain a friend of the US and continue receiving billions in aid, Pakistan should allow the US or the UN access to its nuclear facilities for monitoring its compliance with non-proliferation.

The very following day, another editorial scathingly critical of the Administration giving Pakistan a pass, the Post repeated its demand that Pakistan should allow outside monitoring of its nuclear facilities.

Such comments become all the more significant as to the likely long term objectives of the US when considered against the clear statement of Richard Boucher, spokesman of the State Department: “Steps taken by the Pakistan Government do, indeed, demonstrate that President Musharraf and the Government of Pakistan take seriously their commitment, their assurances regarding proliferation.”

Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage, has said that the Government of Pakistan is not involved in nuclear proliferation. “I think”, he said, “there is a growing realization that President Musharraf is the right man at the right time in the leadership of Pakistan.”

The Bush administration needs Musharraf at this point of time in their war on terror and their efforts to have an abiding arrangement for peace on the subcontinent. The administration is hopeful of catching, of course with the help of Musharraf, Osama and Mulla Umar ahead of the elections this year, thus adding another feather to its cap and enhancing the prospects of re-election.

The disclosures of the clandestine deals of Pakistan’s Oppenheimer and his Kahuta cohorts couldn’t have come at a more inappropriate time.

While Musharraf is taking damage control measures and is making desperate efforts for bottling up the jinni, the Bush administration is avoiding any punitive action at this stage as that might turn out to be counter-productive in the immediate time frame.

From Pakistan’s point of view too, the disclosures have come at a time when the country was trying to project an image of stability and an environment conducive to foreign investment. The benefit to the nation of the strike of the religious parties is open to question. No wonder, it did not turn out to be a much popular strike. The image of A. Q. Khan as a national hero who has fallen on his own sword, was not free of the tarnish of the vast properties in Pakistan and the fabulous Hendrina Khan Hotel in the African city of Timbuktu that could have hardly been built by him on his meager salary. The hotel was named after his Dutch wife.

A rational for the financial aberration could perhaps be found in the fact that Mr. Khan was from the very beginning in the thick of the clandestine nuclear supermarket. It is a large network of underworld that operates from several industrially advanced countries. The IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) has documented them during its inspections of Iran and Libya.

The foreign media has singled out Pakistan owing to the prevalent practice of profiling since the tragedy of 9/11. Neither the IAEA nor the US has ever challenged Israel or India for the illicit transactions during the long drawn process of acquiring nuclear weapons. As a matter of fact, no nuclear power can claim that it has developed its nuclear capability without the open or secret assistance of outside sources.

It is a well-documented fact that the US and the Soviet Union received their nuclear know-how from German scientists and engineers. The Manhattan project was conceived by Albert Einstein and carried out by several German scientists such as Robert Oppenheimer, Neil Bohr and Richard Feyman

The US helped Britain, France and Israel. China benefited from its affinity to the Soviet Union. Israel has the reputation of even stealing technology and hardware from the US and France. India secured its technology from the US, Soviet Union, Israel and France. North Korea’s plutonium-based program was helped by China and Russia.

About the revelations connected to A.Q.Khan, the IAEA chief, Mohammad ElBaradei has called them only “the tip of the iceberg” of illegal trafficking .

He had warned last January a World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland of “a very sophisticated and complex underground network of black market operators… not that much different from organized crime cartels.” A question that arises is that if he knew the existence of such an underworld market, what action did he take, being the watch-dog of the UN, to have it eliminated.

Although President Musharraf has refused to disclose details of the investigations and their findings, the issue is unlikely to die down as perhaps wished for by him. As the world media builds up the pressure, and as the need of the US for reliance on Musharraf in its war on terror wanes, authorities in Pakistan may have to supply the IAEA with an account of its investigations to convince the world community that no civil or military sector of the country was involved in the Khan affair.

Pakistani nuclear experts, according to the BBC, have said that in exchange for not embarrassing Mr. Musharraf, the US is now likely to insist that Pakistan allow some degree of international safeguards on its nuclear program.

The fall-out of Pakistan’s proliferation is likely to continue with the arrest of those middlemen in Europe, Africa and Dubai who have been named by Dr. Khan.

Pakistan’s nuclear program emanates from the action-reaction cycle of Indo-Pakistan relations. Now that both countries are moving towards a rapprochement, would it not be in the fitness of things to arrive at some workable agreement on this issue too. Both parties will have to show leadership rather than rhetoric for domestic consumption.

The Soviet Union had to withdraw from Afghanistan despite possessing enough nuclear weapons to destroy the entire world. Similar was the fate of the US in Vietnam.

Unless there is a madman who has his finger on the nuclear button, the possibility of the use of such weapons is extremely remote.