Foreign propaganda and Pakistan's nuclear assets

Of late, a lot of reports are appearing in the western media claiming that Pakistan is about to be taken over by extremists i.e. Al Qaeda or the Taliban. The reports, one after the other, imply that once the extremists capture the country, they will have control over Pakistan's nuclear assets and may use them against nations like the United States and the United Kingdom. The other scenario that is being presented is that instability would grow in Pakistan, providing a chance to the extremists to move towards the storages where the nuclear weapons are stored. These terrorists or extremists, once getting the bombs or stocks of nuclear explosive material, would use them as they like, perhaps against the American and NATO forces fighting in Afghanistan. With regard to these reports, there are several significant points that should be taken note of.
First, the talk about the unwanted elements taking over Pakistan's fissile material and nuclear assets emerged soon after 9/11. Among the proponents of the theory was the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), whose president, David Albright, declared that "Fighting the war on terror starts with ensuring the stability of a nuclear-armed Pakistan, otherwise the terrorist threat will take on a new frightening dimension." The experts divided the security threat to Pakistan's nuclear weapons arsenal in five categories: outsider threat; insider threat; insider/outsider threat; leakage of sensitive information; and the loss of central control of storage facilities. They advocated that the Pakistani nuclear weapons should not be put at one place, they should be disassembled and the components scattered far away from the Afghan border where Al Qaeda was operating. Also, such procedures should be devised that no one man could have access to the sensitive material or the assembled devices. Also, strong physical security should be put in place around the storages and nuclear installations. While the media kept away from the topic, the US, nevertheless, covertly started providing technical aid to Pakistan to safeguard its nuclear facilities. Reports say the Americans provided nuclear detection units, helicopters and night-vision goggles to Pakistan besides other equipment so that the storages of nuclear warheads and laboratories remained safe. At the same time, they made sure that the equipment that they provided did not enhance Pakistan's nuclear capabilities, including better warhead designs. They also made sure that the systems and equipment they provided did not increase the chances of war with India. Such support to Pakistan was not the first case of its kind. Earlier, after the end of the Cold War, the US had provided similar help to Russia so that it could safeguard its weapons, its nuclear facilities and keep track of its scientists.
Second, it was Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan and his network that instead became the focus of American efforts and the media, which accused him of spreading the nuclear know-how and technology among countries like Iran, Libya and North Korea, considered pariah by the United States. The reports about Dr Qadeer Khan and his alleged network of international smugglers continued to appear regularly in the western newspapers and magazines while books were also written about it. The west focused on the claim that Pakistan had allowed the AQ Khan network to sell sensitive technology endangering the western countries. But then, the Libyans surrendered their nuclear equipment to the United States, the North Koreans bowed before the US demands and it was proven that Iranians were not in the race to build nuclear bombs. Even to the surprise of many, the US intelligence said so about Tehran's intentions. Most of such reports roughly appeared between 2002 and 2007.
Third, from the advent of the year 2007 what we see is that there has been a gradual shift in the western media from the above three countries and the AQ Khan network. Their focus as we see now is on the possibilities of the taking over of Pakistan's nuclear assets by the extremists and doomsday scenarios. One report after another is appearing in American newspapers and some British publications, claiming that extremists are about to capture the Pakistani nuclear weapons. The reports, which are also coming out in the electronic media, are trying to convince the world that the Pakistani military has no safe control over its nuclear assets.
Fourth, a significant development has been the involvement of US presidential hopefuls in the subject. While these people shoot their mouths on a host of issues that may have an impact on the US public or subjects that may earn them votes to land in the White House, their participation in the propaganda war against the Pakistani nuclear assets not only keeps the issue alive but it also gives impetus to it. Statements coming from Senator Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton and John McCain cannot simply be ignored by the US media.
Fifth, it is visible that to a great extent the western media, especially the Americans, continue to ignore the clarifications issued by the Pakistani government and the military top brass, including General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani and General Tariq Majeed, to the effect. In every interview, President Musharraf, besides the Foreign Office in its briefings, is found defending the country's stance on the control of nuclear weapons. The American media, however, is harping on the theme that sooner or later, the nuclear assets would fall into the wrong hands. They have little understanding or perhaps don't want to learn how Pakistan has mounted multi-layered security around the sensitive facilities and how a single agency with professional and dedicated team is running it.
What is clear, however, is the reports in the foreign media are getting a boost from the increasing number of suicide attacks in the country and the ongoing military operations in North and South Waziristan agencies and Swat. The three-day anarchy following the death of Benazir Bhutto and the government's inability to stop the criminal elements in their tracks has provided fodder to the elements that are out to portray the Pakistan nuclear programme and its control in the bleakest terms.
At the same time, suspicions are rising among the Pakistani public that the United States is working on an agenda to locate and disable Pakistani nuclear weapons or take them into its control. In fact, some quarters have started putting up extremely grave scenarios. These include the US taking the Pakistani nuclear weapons out of the country, intensive bombing of the nuclear sites that could release vast amounts of radioactivity that could kill thousands of people and so on and so forth. Such talk is awfully foolish. Needless to say, any unilateral action would never be acceptable to the Pakistan military or the ordinary people. It would be tantamount to making Pakistan another Iran with hundred times more serious repercussions for the United States.
It is time for the Pakistan government to realise that the longer it is perceived to be losing control over law and order and ignoring the rogue elements, whether terrorists or common criminals, the stronger the media campaign will become against the country's nuclear assets. Also, poor tackling of national crises like the unavailability of flour and liquefied petroleum gas, among others, in any way will not help the country's nuclear cause.

Pak nuclear weapons ‘vulnerable’: US official

WASHINGTON: Political turmoil in Pakistan has not seriously threatened the military’s control of its nuclear weapons “but vulnerabilities exist”, US intelligence said in a report on Tuesday.
“We judge the ongoing political uncertainty in Pakistan has not seriously threatened the military’s control of the nuclear arsenal, but vulnerabilities exist,” the US intelligence community said in its annual threat assessment.
Noting that the Pakistan Army was responsible for the country’s nuclear programs, the report said, “we judge that the Army’s management of nuclear policy issues – to include physical security – has not been degraded by Pakistan’s political crisis.”
US intelligence chief Mike McConnell told a Senate hearing that al-Qaeda, increasingly shut down in Iraq, is establishing cells in other countries as Osama bin Laden’s organisation uses a “safe haven” in Pakistan’s tribal region to train for attacks in Afghanistan, the Middle East, Africa and the United States.
“Al-Qaeda remains the pre-eminent threat against the United States,” McConnell said. He said that fewer than 100 al-Qaeda terrorists had moved from Iraq to establish cells in other countries as the US military clamped down on their activities, and “they may deploy resources to mount attacks outside the country”.
The al-Qaeda network in Iraq and in Pakistan and Afghanistan has suffered setbacks, but he said the group posed a persistent and growing danger. He said that al-Qaeda maintained a “safe haven” in Pakistan’s tribal areas, where it was able to stage attacks supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan.
The Pakistani tribal areas provide al-Qaeda “many of the advantages it once derived from its base across the border in Afghanistan, albeit on a smaller and less secure scale”, allowing militants to train for strikes in Pakistan, the Middle East, Africa and the United States, McConnell said.
Terrorists use the “sanctuary” of Pakistan’s border area to “maintain a cadre of skilled lieutenants capable of directing the organisation’s operations around the world”, McConnell told the Senate Intelligence Committee.
The next attack on the United States will most likely be launched by al-Qaeda operating in “under-governed regions” of Pakistan, Adm Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, planned to tell Congress on Wednesday.
“Continued congressional support for the legitimate government of Pakistan braces this bulwark in the long war against violent extremism,” Mullen states in remarks prepared for a separate budget hearing and obtained by The Associated Press.
Still, McConnell praised Pakistan’s cooperation in the fight against extremists, saying that hundreds of Pakistanis have died while fighting terrorists. He said Islamabad had done more to “neutralise” terrorists than any other partner of the United States.
Despite the Pakistani cooperation, Lt-Gen Michael Maples, director of the Defence Intelligence Agency, said the Pakistani military had been unable to disrupt or damage al-Qaeda terrorists operating in the tribal border region. And the US military is prohibited by Pakistan from pursuing Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters that cross the border to conduct attacks inside Afghanistan.
McConnell also told the Intelligence Committee that the Taliban, once thought to be routed from Afghanistan, had expanded its operations into previously peaceful areas of the west and around the capital of Kabul, despite the death or capture of three top commanders in the last year.
At the same hearing, CIA Director Michael Hayden publicly confirmed for the first time the names of three suspected al-Qaeda terrorists who were subjected to a particularly harsh interrogation technique known as waterboarding, and why.
“We used it against these three detainees because of the circumstances at the time,” Hayden said. “There was the belief that additional catastrophic attacks against the homeland were inevitable. And we had limited knowledge about al-Qaeda and its workings. Those two realities have changed.”
Hayden said that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the purported mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, and Abu Zubayda and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri were subject to the harsh interrogations in 2002 and 2003.
Waterboarding is an interrogation technique that critics call torture. Waterboarding induces a feeling of imminent drowning with the restrained subject’s mouth covered and water poured over his face.
“Waterboarding taken to its extreme, could be death, you could drown someone,” McConnell acknowledged. He said waterboarding remains a technique in the CIA’s arsenal, but it would require the consent of the president and legal approval of the attorney general.