US outpolls India as main threat to Pakistan. Pakistan leads World in nuclear weapon production. US to give$7.5 billion in aid.

U.S. Accuses Pakistan of Altering Missiles


By ERIC SCHMITT and DAVID E. SANGER
Published: August 29, 2009
New York Times

WASHINGTON — The United States has accused Pakistan of illegally modifying American-made missiles to expand its capability to strike land targets, a potential threat to India, according to senior administration and Congressional officials.

The charge, which set off a new outbreak of tensions between the United States and Pakistan, was made in an unpublicized diplomatic protest in late June to Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani and other top Pakistani officials.

The accusation comes at a particularly delicate time, when the administration is asking Congress to approve $7.5 billion in aid to Pakistan over the next five years, and when Washington is pressing a reluctant Pakistani military to focus its attentions on fighting the Taliban, rather than expanding its nuclear and conventional forces aimed at India.

While American officials say that the weapon in the latest dispute is a conventional one — based on the Harpoon antiship missiles that were sold to Pakistan by the Reagan administration as a defensive weapon in the cold war — the subtext of the argument is growing concern about the speed with which Pakistan is developing new generations of both conventional and nuclear weapons.

“There’s a concerted effort to get these guys to slow down,” one senior administration official said. “Their energies are misdirected.”

At issue is the detection by American intelligence agencies of a suspicious missile test on April 23 — a test never announced by the Pakistanis — that appeared to give the country a new offensive weapon.

American military and intelligence officials say they suspect that Pakistan has modified the Harpoon antiship missiles that the United States sold the country in the 1980s, a move that would be a violation of the Arms Control Export Act. Pakistan has denied the charge, saying it developed the missile itself. The United States has also accused Pakistan of modifying American-made P-3C aircraft for land-attack missions, another violation of United States law that the Obama administration has protested.

Whatever their origin, the missiles would be a significant new entry into Pakistan’s arsenal against India. They would enable Pakistan’s small navy to strike targets on land, complementing the sizable land-based missile arsenal that Pakistan has developed. That, in turn, would be likely to spur another round of an arms race with India that the United States has been trying, unsuccessfully, to halt. “The focus of our concern is that this is a potential unauthorized modification of a maritime antiship defensive capability to an offensive land-attack missile,” said another senior administration official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity because the matter involves classified information.

“The potential for proliferation and end-use violations are things we watch very closely,” the official added. “When we have concerns, we act aggressively.”

A senior Pakistani official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity because the interchanges with Washington have been both delicate and highly classified, said the American accusation was “incorrect.” The official said that the missile tested was developed by Pakistan, just as it had modified North Korean designs to build a range of land-based missiles that could strike India. He said that Pakistan had taken the unusual step of agreeing to allow American officials to inspect the country’s Harpoon inventory to prove that it had not violated the law, a step that administration officials praised.

Some experts are also skeptical of the American claims. Robert Hewson, editor of Jane’s Air-Launched Weapons, a yearbook and Web-based data service, said the Harpoon missile did not have the necessary range for a land-attack missile, which would lend credibility to Pakistani claims that they are developing their own new missile. Moreover, he said, Pakistan already has more modern land-attack missiles that it developed itself or acquired from China.

“They’re beyond the need to reverse-engineer old U.S. kit,” Mr. Hewson said in a telephone interview. “They’re more sophisticated than that.” Mr. Hewson said the ship-to-shore missile that Pakistan was testing was part of a concerted effort to develop an array of conventional missiles that could be fired from the air, land or sea to address India’s much more formidable conventional missile arsenal.

The dispute highlights the level of mistrust that remains between the United States and a Pakistani military that American officials like to portray as an increasingly reliable partner in the effort to root out the forces of the Taliban and Al Qaeda on Pakistani territory. A central element of the American effort has been to get the military refocused on the internal threat facing the country, rather than on threat the country believes it still faces from India.

Pakistani officials have insisted that they are making that shift. But the evidence continues to point to heavy investments in both nuclear and conventional weapons that experts say have no utility in the battle against insurgents.

Over the years, the United States has provided a total of 165 Harpoon missiles to Pakistan, including 37 of the older-model weapons that were delivered from 1985 to 1988, said Charles Taylor, a spokesman for the Defense Security Cooperation Agency.

The country’s nuclear arsenal is expanding faster than any other nation’s. In May, Pakistan conducted a test firing of its Babur medium-range cruise missile, a weapon that military experts say could potentially be tipped with a nuclear warhead. The test was conducted on May 6, during a visit to Washington by President Asif Ali Zardari, but was not made public by Pakistani officials until three days after the meetings had ended to avoid upsetting the talks. While it may be technically possible to arm the Harpoons with small nuclear weapons, outside experts say it would probably not be necessary.

Before Congress departed for its summer recess, administration officials briefed crucial legislators on the protest to Pakistan. The dispute has the potential to delay or possibly even derail the legislation to provide Pakistan with $7.5 billion in civilian aid over five years; lawmakers are scheduled to vote on the aid package when they return from their recess next month.

The legislation is sponsored by Senators John Kerry of Massachusetts and Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, the top Democrat and Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, as well as Representative Howard L. Berman, a California Democrat who leads the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Congressional aides are now reconciling House and Senate versions of the legislation.

Frederick Jones, a spokesman for Mr. Kerry, declined to comment on the details of the dispute citing its classified nature but suggested that the pending multifaceted aid bill would clear Congress “in a few weeks” and would help cooperation between the two countries.

“There have been irritants in the U.S.-Pakistan relationship in the past and there will be in the future,” Mr. Jones said in a statement, noting that the pending legislation would provide President Obama “with new tools to address troubling behavior.”

Pakistan Slips from Bad to Very Bad

Liberals never fail to underestimate evil. Pakistan has capitulated to radical Islam. It will be no different in Pakistan than it was in Iran. Jimmy Carter discouraged the Iranians from a military coup as a means to fight the mullahs. It was a critical error in judgment and a belief that one could negotiate with the irrational. You cannot.

I fear that this will ensure that the Islamists will end up with a one hundred nuclear weapon arsenal. Bad to bad and on our way to far worse.

______________

Pakistan imposes Islamic law in Taliban stronghold
Government brings in sharia courts in Malakand in attempt to placate extremists

Saeed Shah in Islamabad
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 15 February 2009 18.39 GMT

Pakistan is to impose Islamic law in a vast region of the north-west called Malakand in an attempt to placate extremists, even as President Asif Zardari warns that they are "trying to take over the state".

Pakistani Taliban militants who are in control of the Swat valley in the region announced a ceasefire tonight, reacting to the government's agreement to bring in sharia courts.

Malakand is part of North West Frontier province, a regular part of Pakistan, not the wild tribal area, which runs along the Afghan border.

Critics warned that the new sharia regulations represented a capitulation to the extremists' demands, and that it would be difficult to stop hardliners elsewhere in the country from demanding that their areas also come under Islamic law.

"This is definitely a surrender," said Khadim Hussain of the Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy, a thinktank in Islamabad. "If you keep treating a community as something different from the rest of the country, it will isolate them."

Javed Iqbal, a retired judge, speaking on Pakistani television, said: "It means that there is not one law in the country. It will disintegrate this way. If you concede to this, you will go on conceding."

The deal, set to be announced tomorrow, follows talks between the government and a local Islamic leader, Sufi Muhammad, who once led hundreds of men to fight alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan against the US-led coalition. He was freed by the Pakistani authorities after the restoration of democracy last year, in a move heavily criticised by Washington.

In an interview broadcast todayby the US television channel CBS, Zardari admitted that the future of Pakistan was in grave danger from the Taliban, who are present in "huge parts" of the country. Islamabad is under severe pressure from the US, Britain and other western allies to rein in the extremists, who fight both in Pakistan and Afghanistan and play host to al-Qaida.

Zardari said: "We are aware of the fact [the Taliban are] trying to take over the state of Pakistan. We're fighting for the survival of Pakistan. "

Zardari's wife, the former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, was killed by Islamic extremists in 2007. "I lost my wife, my children's mother," the president said. "It's important to stop them and make sure that it doesn't happen again and they don't take over our way of life."

Hajji Adeel, a senior member of the Awami National party which runs the government of North West Frontier province that undertook the negotiations with Muhammad, said the main aim of the new law was to speed up the justice system. Under the new regulations, criminal cases would be disposed of within four months and civil cases in six months, he said.

The creaky colonial-era legal system in Pakistan means that cases drag on for years, sometimes decades, a major source of anger for ordinary people. "If six months ago, this [sharia] had started working in Swat, the intensity of the terror there would have been much less," said Adeel.

The ANP a proudly secular party, has come under sustained attack from the Taliban, and last week one of its members in the provincial parliament was killed by a roadside bomb.

The new law is a relatively mild form of sharia, with the aim of undermining support for the extremists and their populist demand for speedy Islamic justice. Religious experts, known as a qazi, will sit in the court, alongside a regular judge, to ensure that the rulings are in compliance with Islam.

However, many believe that the Taliban will not ultimately accept this form of Islamic law. Muhammad is not part of the Taliban and it is unclear how far his influence goes.

The Swat Taliban's ceasefire, described as a "goodwill gesture", will only last for 10 days, while it decides what to do. Muhammad has undertaken to tour the area to convince the militants to put down their arms. In Swat, the Taliban have for months been enforcing their brutal version of Islamic justice, which includes public floggings and summary executions. The Taliban are also entrenched across the tribal area.

Snatching Pakistan's Nuclear Arsenal

This is so audacious it would seem to be best left for Hollywood. It is inconceivable that there would be enough Pakistani military cooperation to make such a snatch and grab successful.

If we could not get bin Laden at Tora Bora, what chance do we have to capture 50-100 nuclear weapons, many disbursed on mobile missile launchers? We tried freeing US military captives in Viet Nam and US Embassy hostages in Iran, both failures.

There is no likelihood that there would be anything close to 100% cooperation. 70% would leave 15-30 nuclear weapons in hostile hands. Simple nationalism would deny cooperation with invading US forces, and a hot entry would worsen the welcome. Fantasy and wishful thinking are fine but Murphy rules.



Bush handed blueprint to seize Pakistan's nuclear arsenal

· Architect of Iraq surge draws up takeover options
· US fears army's Islamists might grab weapons

Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark
Saturday December 1, 2007
The Guardian

The man who devised the Bush administration's Iraq troop surge has urged the US to consider sending elite troops to Pakistan to seize its nuclear weapons if the country descends into chaos.

In a series of scenarios drawn up for Pakistan, Frederick Kagan, a former West Point military historian, has called for the White House to consider various options for an unstable Pakistan.

These include: sending elite British or US troops to secure nuclear weapons capable of being transported out of the country and take them to a secret storage depot in New Mexico or a "remote redoubt" inside Pakistan; sending US troops to Pakistan's north-western border to fight the Taliban and al-Qaida; and a US military occupation of the capital Islamabad, and the provinces of Punjab, Sindh and Baluchistan if asked for assistance by a fractured Pakistan military, so that the US could shore up President Pervez Musharraf and General Ashfaq Kayani, who became army chief this week.

"These are scenarios and solutions. They are designed to test our preparedness. The United States simply could not stand by as a nuclear-armed Pakistan descended into the abyss," Kagan, who is with the American Enterprise Institute, a thinktank with strong ideological ties to the Bush administration, told the Guardian. "We need to think now about our options in Pakistan,"

Kagan argued that the rise of Sunni extremism in Pakistan, coupled with the proliferation of al-Qaida bases in the north-west, posed a real possibility of terrorists staging a coup that would give them access to a nuclear device. He also noted how sections of Pakistan's military and intelligence establishment continued to be linked to Islamists and warned that the army, demoralised by having to fight in Waziristan and parts of North-West Frontier Province, might retreat from the borders, leaving a vacuum that would be filled by radicals. Worse, the military might split, with a radical faction trying to take over Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.

Kagan accepted that the Pakistani military was not in the grip of Islamists. "Pakistan's officer corps and ruling elites remain largely moderate. But then again, Americans felt similarly about the shah's regime and look what happened in 1979," he said, referring to Iran.

The scenarios received a public airing two weeks ago in an article for the New York Times by Kagan and Michael O'Hanlon, an analyst at the Brookings Institution, who has ties to the Democrats.

They have been criticised in the US as well as Pakistan, with Kagan accused of drawing up plans for another US occupation of a Muslim country.

But the scenarios are regarded with some seriousness because of Kagan's influence over thinking in the Bush administration as the architect of the Iraq troop surge, which is conceded to have brought some improvements in security.

A former senior state department official who works as a contractor with the government and is familiar with current planning on Pakistan told the Guardian: "Governments are supposed to think the unthinkable. But these ideas, coming as they do from a man of significant influence in Washington's militarist camp, seem prescriptive and have got tongues wagging - even in a town like Washington, built on hyperbole."

Kagan said he was not calling for an occupation of Pakistan.

"I have been arguing the opposite. We cannot invade, only work with the consent of elements of the Pakistan military," he said.

"But we do have to calculate how to quantify and then respond to a crisis that is potentially as much a threat as Soviet tanks once were. Pakistan may be the next big test."

The political and security crises there have led the Bush administration to conclude that Pakistan has become a more dangerous place than it was before Musharraf took over in the coup of October 1999.

One Pentagon official said last week that the defence department had indeed been war-gaming some of Kagan's scenarios.

A report by Kagan and O'Hanlon in April highlighted their argument.

"The only serious response to this international environment is to develop armed forces capable of protecting America's vital interests throughout this dangerous time," it said.

But in Pakistan, aides to Musharraf yesterday dismissed Kagan's study as "hyperbole".

NY Times Discloses Classified US Program to Secure Pakistani Nuclear Weapons

The NY Times has decided that it will depart from reporting on foreign policy to changing it and according to the Times, it has the blessing of the Bush Administation in doing so. It justifies the release and approval by the Bush Administraion in this language:

...The New York Times has known details of the secret program for more than three years, based on interviews with a range of American officials and nuclear experts, some of whom were concerned that Pakistan’s arsenal remained vulnerable. The newspaper agreed to delay publication of the article after considering a request from the Bush administration, which argued that premature disclosure could hurt the effort to secure the weapons.

Since then, some elements of the program have been discussed in the Pakistani news media and in a presentation late last year by the leader of Pakistan’s nuclear safety effort, Lt. Gen. Khalid Kidwai, who acknowledged receiving “international” help as he sought to assure Washington that all of the holes in Pakistan’s nuclear security infrastructure had been sealed.

The Times told the administration last week that it was reopening its examination of the program in light of those disclosures and the current instability in Pakistan. Early this week, the White House withdrew its request that publication be withheld, though it was unwilling to discuss details of the program.

In recent days, American officials have expressed confidence that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is well secured. “I don’t see any indication right now that security of those weapons is in jeopardy, but clearly we are very watchful, as we should be,” Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Pentagon news conference on Thursday..."

November 18, 2007 NY Times
U.S. Secretly Aids Pakistan in Guarding Nuclear Arms

By DAVID E. SANGER and WILLIAM J. BROAD
WASHINGTON, Nov. 17 — Over the past six years, the Bush administration has spent almost $100 million on a highly classified program to help Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s president, secure his country’s nuclear weapons, according to current and former senior administration officials.

But with the future of that country’s leadership in doubt, debate is intensifying about whether Washington has done enough to help protect the warheads and laboratories, and whether Pakistan’s reluctance to reveal critical details about its arsenal has undercut the effectiveness of the continuing security effort.

The aid, buried in secret portions of the federal budget, paid for the training of Pakistani personnel in the United States and the construction of a nuclear security training center in Pakistan, a facility that American officials say is nowhere near completion, even though it was supposed to be in operation this year.

A raft of equipment — from helicopters to night-vision goggles to nuclear detection equipment — was given to Pakistan to help secure its nuclear material, its warheads, and the laboratories that were the site of the worst known case of nuclear proliferation in the atomic age.

While American officials say that they believe the arsenal is safe at the moment, and that they take at face value Pakistani assurances that security is vastly improved, in many cases the Pakistani government has been reluctant to show American officials how or where the gear is actually used.

That is because the Pakistanis do not want to reveal the locations of their weapons or the amount or type of new bomb-grade fuel the country is now producing.

The American program was created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when the Bush administration debated whether to share with Pakistan one of the crown jewels of American nuclear protection technology, known as “permissive action links,” or PALS, a system used to keep a weapon from detonating without proper codes and authorizations.

In the end, despite past federal aid to France and Russia on delicate points of nuclear security, the administration decided that it could not share the system with the Pakistanis because of legal restrictions.

In addition, the Pakistanis were suspicious that any American-made technology in their warheads could include a secret “kill switch,” enabling the Americans to turn off their weapons.

While many nuclear experts in the federal government favored offering the PALS system because they considered Pakistan’s arsenal among the world’s most vulnerable to terrorist groups, some administration officials feared that sharing the technology would teach Pakistan too much about American weaponry. The same concern kept the Clinton administration from sharing the technology with China in the early 1990s.

The New York Times has known details of the secret program for more than three years, based on interviews with a range of American officials and nuclear experts, some of whom were concerned that Pakistan’s arsenal remained vulnerable. The newspaper agreed to delay publication of the article after considering a request from the Bush administration, which argued that premature disclosure could hurt the effort to secure the weapons.

Since then, some elements of the program have been discussed in the Pakistani news media and in a presentation late last year by the leader of Pakistan’s nuclear safety effort, Lt. Gen. Khalid Kidwai, who acknowledged receiving “international” help as he sought to assure Washington that all of the holes in Pakistan’s nuclear security infrastructure had been sealed.

The Times told the administration last week that it was reopening its examination of the program in light of those disclosures and the current instability in Pakistan. Early this week, the White House withdrew its request that publication be withheld, though it was unwilling to discuss details of the program.

In recent days, American officials have expressed confidence that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is well secured. “I don’t see any indication right now that security of those weapons is in jeopardy, but clearly we are very watchful, as we should be,” Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Pentagon news conference on Thursday.

Admiral Mullen’s carefully chosen words, a senior administration official said, were based on two separate intelligence assessments issued this month that had been summarized in briefings to Mr. Bush. Both concluded that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal was safe under current conditions, and one also looked at laboratories and came to the same conclusion.

Still, the Pakistani government’s reluctance to provide access has limited efforts to assess the situation. In particular, some American experts say they have less ability to look into the nuclear laboratories where highly enriched uranium is produced — including the laboratory named for Abdul Qadeer Khan, the man who sold Pakistan’s nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya.

The secret program was designed by the Energy Department and the State Department, and it drew heavily from the effort over the past decade to secure nuclear weapons, stockpiles and materials in Russia and other former Soviet states. Much of the money for Pakistan was spent on physical security, like fencing and surveillance systems, and equipment for tracking nuclear material if it left secure areas.

But while Pakistan is formally considered a “major non-NATO ally,” the program has been hindered by a deep suspicion among Pakistan’s military that the secret goal of the United States was to gather intelligence about how to locate and, if necessary, disable Pakistan’s arsenal, which is the pride of the country.

“Everything has taken far longer than it should,” a former official involved in the program said in a recent interview, “and you are never sure what you really accomplished.”

So far, the amount the United States has spent on the classified nuclear security program, less than $100 million, amounts to slightly less than one percent of the roughly $10 billion in known American aid to Pakistan since the Sept. 11 attacks. Most of that money has gone for assistance in counterterrorism activities against the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

The debate over sharing nuclear security technology began just before then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was sent to Islamabad after the Sept. 11 attacks, as the United States was preparing to invade Afghanistan.

“There were a lot of people who feared that once we headed into Afghanistan, the Taliban would be looking for these weapons,” said a senior official who was involved. But a legal analysis found that aiding Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program — even if it was just with protective gear — would violate both international and American law.

General Musharraf, in his memoir, “In the Line of Fire,” published last year, did not discuss any equipment, training or technology offered then, but wrote: “We were put under immense pressure by the United States regarding our nuclear and missile arsenal. The Americans’ concerns were based on two grounds. First, at this time they were not very sure of my job security, and they dreaded the possibility that an extremist successor government might get its hands on our strategic nuclear arsenal. Second, they doubted our ability to safeguard our assets.”

General Musharraf was more specific in an interview two years ago for a Times documentary, “Nuclear Jihad: Can Terrorists Get the Bomb?” Asked about the equipment and training provided by Washington, he said, “Frankly, I really don’t know the details.” But he added: “This is an extremely sensitive matter in Pakistan. We don’t allow any foreign intrusion in our facilities. But, at the same time, we guarantee that the custodial arrangements that we brought about and implemented are already the best in the world.”

Now that concern about General Musharraf’s ability to remain in power has been rekindled, so has the debate inside and outside the Bush administration about how much the program accomplished, and what it left unaccomplished. A second phase of the program, which would provide more equipment, helicopters and safety devices, is already being discussed in the administration, but its dimensions have not been determined.

Harold M. Agnew, a former director of the Los Alamos weapons laboratory, which designed most of the United States’ nuclear arms, argued that recent federal reluctance to share warhead security technology was making the world more dangerous.

“Lawyers say it’s classified,” Dr. Agnew said in an interview. “That’s nonsense. We should share this technology. Anybody who joins the club should be helped to get this.”

“Whether it’s India or Pakistan or China or Iran,” he added, “the most important thing is that you want to make sure there is no unauthorized use. You want to make sure that the guys who have their hands on the weapons can’t use them without proper authorization.”

In the past, officials say, the United States has shared ideas — but not technologies — about how to make the safeguards that lie at the heart of American weapons security. The system hinges on what is essentially a switch in the firing circuit that requires the would-be user to enter a numeric code that starts a timer for the weapon’s arming and detonation.

Most switches disable themselves if the sequence of numbers entered turns out to be incorrect in a fixed number of tries, much like a bank ATM does. In some cases, the disabled link sets off a small explosion in the warhead to render it useless. Delicate design details involve how to bury the link deep inside a weapon to keep terrorists or enemies from disabling the safeguard.

The most famous case of nuclear idea sharing involves France. Starting in the early 1970s, the United States government began a series of highly secretive discussions with French scientists to help them improve the country’s warheads.

A potential impediment to such sharing was the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which bars cooperation between nations on weapons technology.

To get around such legal prohibitions, Washington came up with a system of “negative guidance,” sometimes called “20 questions,” as detailed in a 1989 article in Foreign Policy. The system let United States scientists listen to French descriptions of warhead approaches and give guidance about whether the French were on the right track.

Nuclear experts say sharing also took place after the cold war when the United States worried about the security of Russian nuclear arms and facilities. In that case, both countries declassified warhead information to expedite the transfer of safety and security information, according to federal nuclear scientists.

But in the case of China, which has possessed nuclear weapons since the 1960s and is a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the Clinton administration decided that sharing PALS would be too risky. Experts inside the administration feared the technology would improve the Chinese warheads, and could give the Chinese insights into how American systems worked.

Officials said Washington debated sharing security techniques with Pakistan on at least two occasions — right after it detonated its first nuclear arms in 1998, and after the terrorist attack on the United States in 2001.

The debates pitted atomic scientists who favored technical sharing against federal officials at such places as the State Department who ruled that the transfers were illegal under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and under United States law.

In the 1998 case, the Clinton administration still hoped it could roll back Pakistan’s nuclear program, forcing it to give up the weapons it had developed. That hope, never seen as very realistic, has been entirely given up by the Bush administration.

The nuclear proliferation conducted by Mr. Khan, the Pakistani metallurgist who built a huge network to spread Pakistani technology, convinced the Pakistanis that they needed better protections.

“Among the places in the world that we have to make sure we have done the maximum we can do, Pakistan is at the top of the list,” said John E. McLaughlin, who served as deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency at the time, and played a crucial role in the intelligence collection that led to Mr. Khan’s downfall.

“I am confident of two things,” he added. “That the Pakistanis are very serious about securing this material, but also that someone in Pakistan is very intent on getting their hands on it.”

The Real Islamic Nuclear Threat

“Securing the Bomb 2007”, a report by Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government on behalf of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a non-proliferation advocacy group, concluded that Pakistan posed a serious challenge to efforts to prevent terrorist groups from obtaining nuclear weapons.

It said Pakistan’s relatively small nuclear stockpile faced “huge threats” from al-Qaeda and other jihadi terrorist groups, as well as from insiders with a demonstrated willingness to sell sensitive nuclear technology throughout the world and proven sympathy for extreme jihadi causes.

Officials fail to ease nuclear threat fears
By Jo Johnson and Farhan Bokhari Financial Times
Published: November 8 2007 18:20 | Last updated: November 9 2007 02:24

Pakistani intelligence officials on Thursday dismissed suggestions that the country’s nuclear arsenal could be at risk of falling into terrorist hands in the volatile political climate created by General Pervez Musharraf’s imposition of a state of emergency and brushed aside concerns expressed by a senior US general and Nicolas Sarkozy, French president .

“Pakistan has come a long way since the A.Q. Khan episode,” one senior Pakistani official told the Financial Times, referring to the illicit trade in nuclear secrets conducted by Pakistan’s top nuclear scientist that was exposed in 2004. “The problem is that the west doesn’t believe us. No matter how much we clarify, they will still suspect our intentions.”

Hasan Askari Rizvi, a defence analyst and former visiting professor of Pakistan studies at Columbia University, said mounting instability was bound to trigger fresh international concerns for the security of the country’s nuclear assets: “If we head towards growing confrontation on the streets, there is bound to be growing global pressure on Pakistan on the nuclear front.”

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Lieutenant General Carter Ham, director of operations for the US joint chiefs of staff, said the Pentagon was watching developments in Pakistan closely. “Any time there is a nation that has nuclear weapons that has experienced a situation such as Pakistan is at present, that is a primary concern,” he said.

Adding his voice to calls for swift elections, Mr Sarkozy, on a visit to the US, said: “This is a country of 150m people, which happens to have nuclear weapons. This is very important for us that one day we shouldn’t wake up with a government, an administration in Pakistan which is in the hands of the extremists.”

The US has stepped up its nuclear security co-operation with Pakistan in the wake of Mr Khan’s activities, famously described as a “nuclear Wal-Mart” by Mohamed ElBaradei, the International Atomic Energy Agency chief. Islamabad, however, has made it clear that it will not allow US visits to its sensitive nuclear sites and the effectiveness of US monitoring is unknown.

In his recently published memoir George Tenet, former Central Intelligence Agency chief, recalled a conversation with Gen Musharraf in which the president assured him that Pakistani nuclear experts had dismissed the possibility that “men hiding in caves” could build a nuclear bomb. “Mr. President, your experts are wrong,” Mr Tenet said he replied.

“Securing the Bomb 2007”, a report by Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government on behalf of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a non-proliferation advocacy group, concluded that Pakistan posed a serious challenge to efforts to prevent terrorist groups from obtaining nuclear weapons.

It said Pakistan’s relatively small nuclear stockpile faced “huge threats” from al-Qaeda and other jihadi terrorist groups, as well as from insiders with a demonstrated willingness to sell sensitive nuclear technology throughout the world and proven sympathy for extreme jihadi causes.

“If al-Qaeda terrorists can twice come close to assassinating President Musharraf with help from Pakistani military officers, who can rule out the possibility that other military officers guarding nuclear weapons might be convinced to help al-Qaeda?” the report, written by Matthew Bunn, said.

Recent US intelligence assessments, including the National Intelligence Estimate, suggest that al-Qaeda’s central command has been reconstituting its ability to direct complex operations from the border areas of Pakistan. The Pakistani government has rejected suggestions that al-Qaeda has found a haven in the tribal areas.

Islamabad claims that Mr Khan’s export of sensitive nuclear technology to third countries, believed to include Iran, were unauthorised, suggesting that his activities over two decades represented a massive security failure. Pakistani officials say they have since taken wide-ranging – but unspecified – measures to ensure that rogue proliferation cannot happen again.

A non-signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, Pakistan may have up to 100 nuclear weapons in a number of locations, analysts say. Facilities are heavily guarded, though probably not equipped with state-of-the-art protection and material control and accounting technologies, according to Securing the Bomb 2007.

Our Nuclear Friends in Pakistan Hate our Guts

"In the one Muslim nation that already has nuclear weapons, people who are intent on using them against us, such as al Qaeda and bin Laden, enjoy more popular support than the people we are trusting such as President Musharraf to safeguard those nuclear weapons."

Bin Laden outpolls Musharraf in Pakistan


AAMIR QURESHI/AFP

Sameer Lalwani argues in a new Web exclusive for FP that the best hope for U.S. counterterrorism efforts in Pakistan, surprisingly, is to engage and reinforce Gen. Pervez Musharraf's military regime. It's no secret that Musharraf has seen better days, but a recent poll (pdf) by the anti-terrorism organization Terror Free Tomorrow shows just how dismal a state he is in. The general's approval ratings (at 38 percent) failed to surpass public approval for Osama bin Laden, who was seen favorably by 46 percent of respondents. And Musharraf's civilian political rivals, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, were welcomed much more warmly by Pakistanis (they received respective ratings of 63 and 57 percent).

But these numbers actually help Lalwani's argument in a way. He writes in his piece:

A deeply unpopular United States and the prevailing ethnic fissures also render it politically untenable for a civilian government to do Washington’s bidding. Neither Bhutto nor Sharif will crack down on the tribal regions, whatever promises they are privately making these days.

So, with this much public distrust of the United States (only 4 percent said the United States has had any positive motivation in conducting the war on terror, and 66 percent believed the United States is acting against Islam), it would be difficult to expect a civilian government to be as cooperative in fighting al Qaeda within the country's borders.

Oh, and there is one more thing to worry about: The nukes. Ken Ballen of Terror Free Tomorrow told CNN:

In the one Muslim nation that already has nuclear weapons, people who are intent on using them against us, such as al Qaeda and bin Laden, enjoy more popular support than the people we are trusting such as President Musharraf to safeguard those nuclear weapons.

Worried about Iran? What if Musharraf falls?

We are worried , with good reason, about the witches brew being cooked up by the mullahs in Iran. The worry is about an Islamist government with the ability to launch a nuclear weapon. What is our plan if Pakistan falls under the control of any of the violent crazies rife in Pakistan? It is not an unlikely event.

Strike Brings Karachi Screeching to Halt
By Zarar Khan
The Associated Press

KARACHI, Pakistan -- A general strike paralyzed Karachi and closed businesses in other major Pakistani cities Monday as discontent grew over President Pervez Musharraf's ouster of the chief justice and a weekend of violence that left 41 people dead.

Shops were shut and traffic was thin on the roads in the southern port city, where security forces have authority to shoot rioters on sight, after the worst political violence in Pakistan in years broke out over the weekend.

Security forces Saturday took no action as rival groups demonstrating over an abortive visit to Karachi by suspended Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry fought fierce clashes that also wounded more than 150 and caused widespread damage to property. Opposition parties blamed the government for the violence and called a nationwide protest strike Monday.

"There is a complete strike in Karachi," said Azhar Faruqi, the city police chief.

He reported that law and order was improving -- after the unrest took an ominous ethnic turn Sunday with clashes between Urdu-speaking Mohajirs linked to a pro-government party and Pashtuns, whose rivalry has caused bloodshed here in the past.

Officials said the strike was being observed in towns and cities across southern Sindh province, of which Karachi is the capital. It was also observed, in varying degrees, in Islamabad and the capitals of Pakistan's other three provinces, Lahore, Peshawar and Quetta.

Many citizens appeared to support the strike call; others observed it out of fear of recrimination or unrest during pro-Chaudhry street demonstrations.

In Lahore, about 8,000 people, including lawyers, opposition party and human rights activists, chanted "Go Musharraf Go!" and "Death to Altaf Hussain." Hussain is leader of the pro-government Mutahida Qaumi Movement party blamed for much of the Karachi violence.

They burned two effigies of Musharraf and hundreds of protesters pushed through a police barricade.

The weekend's bloodshed marked a serious escalation in a crisis that began March 9 when Musharraf suspended Chaudhry, and has hardened opposition to plans for the general, a key U.S. ally, to extend his nearly eight-year rule, seeking another term this fall.

"Ego, money, nationalism and a sense of Islamic fraternity" motivated Khan and his supporters to sell nuclear technology to other Muslim countries"

There simply is no other issue more important to the US and the West than nuclear proliferation into the Islamic world at a state or under-state level. None.

Analysis: Pakistan's nuke network may resume
By Claude Salhani
UPI International Editor

WASHINGTON -- The black-market nuclear network established by the father of Pakistan's nuclear program, A.Q. Khan, broken up in 2004, may be dormant but could resume operations in the future, according to a just-released report by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.

The IISS study found no evidence to indicate that Pakistan sanctioned or encouraged the sales of nuclear technology and equipment to Iran, Libya and North Korea as a means to fund its own nuclear program.

The report by Mark Fitzpatrick, a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for non-proliferation, found that Khan ran a black-market operation beyond the reach of the Pakistani government. However, the truth behind Khan's activities is unlikely to ever be fully revealed.

"Pakistan would never allow any foreign intelligence organization to question Dr. Khan," said Fitzpatrick.

He added that the CIA had some knowledge of Khan's proliferation activities while they were in progress, yet did not pay enough attention to them. "There's no doubt that the CIA knew about some of Khan's activities at various stages of his proliferation," Fitzpatrick told a group of journalists in Washington. "There's also no doubt that the CIA didn't give enough attention to this area of private sector proliferation in looking at Iran's nuclear development program over the years."

The CIA, much like other Western intelligence services, was more focused on state-to-state activities rather than on individuals, like A.Q. Khan's network, said Fitzpatrick.

Fitzpatrick, the lead author of a dossier revealing the activities of the A.Q. Khan network, stated that Khan's sales to Libya, for example, "were almost exclusively private business transactions, beyond state control."

The centrifuges that Khan's black-market operation sold to Libya were produced in Malaysia, Turkey, Europe and South Africa and shipped via Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, according to the report.

But given the control Pakistan maintains over its nuclear technology it is hard to imagine that Khan did not enjoy the protection, if not the outright support of Pakistan's intelligence services -- the ISI -- who were known to be supportive of the Taliban in Afghanistan and other radical Islamist organizations, such as Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida
However, Fitzpatrick's report identified some "gray areas." It remains questionable whether prior to Sept. 11, 2001, Pakistan's government did not have knowledge of Khan's illicit activities or to what degree certain groups within the Pakistani government did not facilitate Khan's nuclear proliferation activities. Soon after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, Washington communicated to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf -- in no uncertain terms -- to stop Pakistan's support of Islamist groups.

In an interview with Pakistan's Dawn newspaper, Fitzpatrick said that former Pakistani army chief Gen. Aslam Beg "encouraged" the Khan network's sales to other countries.

"Ego, money, nationalism and a sense of Islamic fraternity" motivated Khan and his supporters to sell nuclear technology to other Muslim countries, he said. "Different motivations in different cases."

Fitzpatrick said in his report that he did not think Pakistan sold its nuclear technology in order to raise money for its nuclear program.

Additionally, Fitzpatrick also found no link between Khan's network of nuclear proliferators and the terrorist group responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon just outside Washington.

Although Khan was removed from Pakistan's nuclear program in January 2004 and placed under house arrest by President Musharraf, he remains a very popular and revered figure in Pakistan. However, despite an official pardon from Musharraf, Khan remains under house arrest.

Following Khan's arrest, Washington declared that the network had been shut down. But according to Fitzpatrick's report published by the IISS, it is believed that some of Khan's associates have escaped law-enforcement attention and "may resume their black-market business."

According to Fitzpatrick, Khan established a procurement network to keep Pakistan's nuclear program operational. Fitzpatrick said the Khan network was made up of about 50 members that included operators from Dubai, Turkey, Malaysia, Switzerland and Germany, as well as from Pakistan.

Given the strong demand for nuclear technology by governments as well as from terrorist groups, the possibility of Khan reactivating his black-market network remains a distinct possibility.

Nuclear armed Pakistan exposed to Islamic terror

Pakistan is the big enchilada. The warm-up events in Iraq have trained the cadres ready to go for the big one, a nuclear armed Islamic state.
Pakistani official wounded, 12 killed in attack
Suicide bombing in northwest comes after interior minister’s public speech

BREAKING NEWS

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - A suicide attacker detonated a bomb as Pakistan’s interior minister finished speaking at a meeting in the country’s northwest on Saturday, killing at least 12 people and wounding the official.

Security guards blocked the attacker as he tried to approach Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao at the public meeting in Charsadda, an intelligence official said. The attacker detonated the bomb moments later.

Mohammed Khan, a police official, said the minister suffered minor injuries and was in stable condition. He was being shifted to a hospital in the nearby city of Peshawar.