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Nuclear Tales from Pakistan
Proliferation unbound: Nuclear Tales from Pakistan is an insightful story of Pakistan's Nuclear program and beyond. Was it just Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, Kahota Research Laboratory or early 90's era that led to this dodgy business of Nuclear trading or it was even massive.
Author: Gaurav Kampani
Gaurav Kampani is a Senior Research Associate, Proliferation Research and Assessment Program (PRAP) at Moneterey Institute of International Studies.
Musharraf's Narrative
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has deployed four arguments to explain why Khan and his associates were able to proliferate nuclear technologies and secrets for nearly two decades without the knowledge of successive Pakistani governments.
First, he has argued that during the covert phase of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, which lasted from 1975-1998, A.Q. Khan and KRL had to rely on shell companies, clandestine procurement techniques, smuggling networks, and middlemen for the purchase of equipment and technologies that were on the export control lists of advanced industrial countries. Thus the same networks that supplied the Pakistani nuclear weapons effort were redirected to meet the demand for similar technologies in the international market. Once Khan and his associates developed a successful model of clandestine trade in forbidden technologies outside formal governmental control, they were able to offer their services for financial rewards to other bidders in the international system.[32]
During a press briefing earlier in February, Musharraf explained that since Pakistan's nuclear weapons program was covert until 1998, civilian governments were out of the nuclear decision-making loop. But more astonishingly, he sought to peddle the line that even former army chiefs, who were supposed to exercise oversight authority over KRL, never knew of the intimate happenings within the entity. Musharraf's proffered explanation for successive army chiefs' ignorance: the KRL's near total organizational autonomy. According to Musharraf, such autonomy was an essential precondition for the lab to achieve its mandated objectives However, the army never imagined that Khan would abuse the trust and confidence reposed in him by the state. Furthermore, Khan gradually capitalized on his successes and the state's mythologizing of his contributions to elevate himself to the status of a national hero. Hence, the organizational demands for success during the development phase of the nuclear weapons program, as well as Khan's nearly unassailable position within domestic Pakistani politics, made it difficult for successive army chiefs to confront him for his transgressions.[33]
Third, Musharraf maintains that the United States did not share intelligence on Khan's proliferation network with the Pakistani government until very recently.[34] In the absence of such damning evidence, it was difficult for the Pakistani government to proceed against Khan and his associates.[35] And finally, Musharraf insists that the bulk of the proliferation from Pakistan occurred in the form of intellectual property transfers; the implication of his suggestion being that it is easier for governments to safeguard industrial hardware and nuclear material than the transmission of software.[36]
The Counter Narrative
Musharraf's defense provides some useful information on the historical evolution of Pakistan's nuclear command authority, the relationship between the military and the nuclear entities and scientists, and damning disclosures about Khan's personal corruption, but it does not offer credible explanations as to how or why successive Pakistani governments remained ignorant of Khan's activities for such a long period of time; or why they should not be held to account. On balance, the historical evidence points in the direction of a more complex and murkier reality that casts aspersions on Musharraf's motivations.
Admittedly, it is easier for governments to safeguard industrial hardware and equipment in comparison to software which resides in the neural networks of human beings, floppy disks, CDs, and computers. Humans can carry software on their person, unbeknownst to oversight authorities; and transmit it either verbally or electronically. However, evidence has surfaced that Khan and his associates proliferated both hardware and software. Pakistan's Attorney General Makhdoom Ali Khan recently told the Rawalpindi bench of the Lahore High Court that the scientists transferred "secret codes, nuclear materials, substances, machinery, equipment components, information, documents, sketches, plans, models, articles and notes entrusted them [scientists] in their official capacity."[37] Given the logistics of moving machinery and materials, it is extraordinarily difficult to believe that the Pakistani military and its intelligence agencies had no inkling of the nuclear trade.
Musharraf has offered a novel explanation as to why the army did not know of the intimate happenings at KRL. According to him, the military commanders tasked with KRL's security detail were under the lab's autonomous control; the military officers were answerable to Khan and not the army high command.[38] However, most independent observers who are familiar with the Pakistani Army's professional ethics, training procedures, and command protocols are skeptical that this would indeed be the case.[39] Others more familiar with KRL's security detail are equally dismissive of Musharraf's explanations.[40]
Pakistani government sources have also suggested that KRL's security detail was designed to prevent penetration and sabotage of the nuclear weapons program from the outside. But it was not particularly well-designed to prevent the egress of men, material, and equipment in the reverse direction.[41] The obvious flaw of designing a one-dimensional security model apart, the nature of nuclear cooperation with Iran and North Korea suggests that sensitive nuclear facilities in Pakistan were penetrated from the outside; and the osmosis of technical exchange between the scientists and entities was facilitated by formal nuclear cooperation agreements between the Pakistani and Iranian and later North Korean governments.[42]
Iranian nuclear scientists reportedly traveled to the port city of Karachi in Pakistan for technical briefings during the early 1990s.[43] The ease with which foreign scientists and technicians gained access to Pakistani scientists and sensitive facilities stands in sharp contrast to the difficulty former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto encountered while trying to gain similar access. For example, the army denied Bhutto security clearances to visit KRL during her first tenure as prime minister (1988-1990).[44] General (retd.) Mirza Aslam Beg allegedly withheld details about the nuclear weapons program from the prime minister on the rationale that "briefings at Kahuta were on a need-to-know basis."[45] In another episode, the French ambassador to Pakistan was physically manhandled by Pakistani security forces when he made the mistake of venturing close to KRL.[46] Thus, some of the anecdotal evidence from the early 1990s undercuts the army's recent assertions about lapses in KRL's security network.
Two former cabinet ministers in the first Nawaz Sharif government (1990-1993), Senator Ishaq Dar and Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan have stated for the record that in 1991 former Chief of Army Staff General (retd.) Mirza Aslam Beg lobbied Sharif for the transfer of nuclear technology to a "friendly state," for the sum of $12 billion. The proposed figure was apparently supposed to underwrite Pakistan's defense budget for the decade.[47] According to Dar, a representative of that "friendly state" accompanied Beg when he made the offer. However, Sharif, rejected Beg's proposal.
Similarly, Nisar Ali Khan maintains that in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, Beg proposed that Pakistan should sell its nuclear technology to Iran as part of a grand alliance. The general's reasoning: that after the United States succeeded in defeating Iraq, it might be the turn of Iran and Pakistan next. Sharif, according to Nisar, rejected Beg's proposal. But this does not rule out the possibility that Khan and Beg might have acted independently of the prime minister, who never had control over the nuclear weapons program in any case.[48]
Musharraf's protestation to the contrary, Pakistani governments have had some knowledge about Khan's activities and about equipment and technology transfers from KRL to Iran and North Korea. There is evidence to suggest that every army chief from the late 1980s has known of Tehran's interest in acquiring enrichment technologies from Pakistan for a weapons program. Apparently, Pakistani investigators have also found evidence that Khan informed Beg of equipment transfers to Iran. However, Beg claims that he received assurances from Khan that the equipment being sold to the Iranians was outmoded and disused and would not enable them to enrich uranium in the short term.[49]
Washington has also raised proliferation concerns with Islamabad repeatedly since the early 1990s. Former US Ambassador to Pakistan Robert B. Oakley (1988-1991) recalls Beg telling him in 1991 that he had reached an understanding with the head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards to help Tehran with its nuclear program in return for an oil facility and conventional weapons. An alarmed Oakley broached the subject with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.[50] Subsequently, according to Oakley, Sharif and Pakistani President Ghulam Ishaq Khan informed the Iranian government that Pakistan would not carry such an agreement through.[51]
In the mid-1990s, when UNSCOM inspectors in Iraq uncovered documentary proof that Khan had approached Saddam Hussein's regime with offers of assistance in the area of centrifuge-based uranium enrichment, the Pakistani government declared that it had conducted an internal investigation and found the allegations to be fraudulent.[52]
Similarly, Washington began querying Islamabad about possible nuclear transfers to North Korea as early as 1998.[53] Musharraf also recently confirmed that the ISI raided an aircraft bound for North Korea in 2000 after it was tipped off that KRL was transferring sensitive equipment to Pyongyang; but that raid drew a blank.[54] More recently, US State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher took issue with Musharraf's charge that Washington did not provide the Pakistani government with timely intelligence against Khan; Boucher insisted that the United States had "discussed nonproliferation issues with Pakistan repeatedly, over a long period of time, and it's been an issue of concern to us and President Musharraf...so it's not a single moment of information."[55]
Besides the intelligence inputs that Islamabad received from Washington, whistle blowers within the Pakistani nuclear establishment began warning the Pakistani military and its intelligence agencies about Khan's corruption as early as the late 1980s.[56] Musharraf recently admitted that he suspected Khan of clandestine proliferation activities as early as 1998; and that it was a critical factor behind his removal from KRL in March 2001.[57] Yet, despite Khan's removal, US intelligence tracked strategic trade between Pakistan and North Korea until fall 2002. More alarmingly, Khan and his network coordinated nuclear trade with Libya until October 2003; and Khan, despite being moved out of KRL, was able to transfer a nuclear weapons design to Libya in late 2001 or early 2002.[58]
But oddly enough, despite mounting evidence that Khan might have profited illegally by selling the Pakistani state's most sensitive secrets, the Pakistani military did not consider it fit to investigate him or his top associates until October 2003. Despite repeated foreign government entreaties, published documentary evidence, foreign intelligence leaks, and news reports alleging nuclear proliferation to Iran and North Korea over a period of 14 years, the proverbial Pakistani military watchdog did not bark. Furthermore, even after the Pakistani government launched an internal probe after receiving incriminating intelligence from the United States and the IAEA in fall 2003, Pakistani investigators visited Iran, Libya, Dubai, and Malaysia, but excluded North Korea from their itinerary.[59]
The Pakistani military's lack of institutional curiosity in investigating the internal affairs of its nuclear scientists and labs, physical transfers of machinery, nuclear materials, and components from Pakistan over land routes and on board chartered and air force transports, travel of Pakistani scientists to Iran, and training/briefing sessions for Iranian and North Korean scientists in Pakistan, suggests that the Musharraf regime is being frugal with the truth. In fact, Musharraf alluded to the latter reality in an address to Pakistani journalists when he said that even if for the sake of argument it were accepted that the Pakistani military and governments were involved in nuclear proliferation, the Pakistani press should avoid debating the issue out of deference to the country's national interests.[60]
Washington's Muted Response
Washington's public reaction to what is perhaps the greatest proliferation scandal in history has been relatively muted. Although US officials have privately expressed disbelief that such massive diversions from KRL could have occurred for nearly two decades without the knowledge and consent of the Pakistani military, the Bush administration has publicly accepted Musharraf's fiction that Khan's was a rogue operation; and that the Pakistani military and other state functionaries were probably unaware of some of Khan's operations. Senior administration officials have also publicly lauded President Musharraf for investigating Khan and his associates and strengthening internal controls over KRL.[61]
However, Washington has privately warned Musharraf that Pakistan risks jeopardizing the $3 billion proposed economic aid package and its relations with the United States. During a visit to Islamabad in October 2003, US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage personally presented evidence against Khan to Musharraf and threatened that Pakistan could be reported to the United Nations Security Council and suffer sanctions if it failed to put an end to Khan's nuclear entrepreneurship permanently.[62] The implicit bargain between Washington and Islamabad: the United States will avoid publicly hectoring and embarrassing Musharraf in return for a Pakistani undertaking to tear up Khan's clandestine nuclear trading network from its "roots"; intelligence inputs that would help US intelligence agencies fill critical gaps in their knowledge about the scale, depth, and modus operandi of the clandestine global trade in nuclear technologies; and details on North Korea[63] and possibly Iran's uranium enrichment programs.
Washington's public nonchalance has also been determined by the necessity of avoiding actions that might rebound on Musharraf domestically. The Bush administration regards Musharraf and the Pakistani Army as critical allies in the global war on terror against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Since the launch of the Afghan war in fall 2001, Pakistan has rendered critical intelligence, logistical, and military support for US military operations. Pakistan's cooperation has also been critical in apprehending al-Qaeda operatives taking shelter in Pakistan and along the Pakistan-Afghan border. Because Osama Bin Laden and his key lieutenants remain at large, and because the United States needs Pakistan's political support to pacify the resurgent Taliban threat in Afghanistan, the Bush administration has resorted to quiet diplomacy to force changes in Islamabad's proliferation policies.[64]
In this regard, re-imposition of US economic sanctions would only compound the problem. On the one hand, because the drivers that led to Pakistani proliferation in the past would remain in place, economic privation would only create further incentives for the Pakistani military to feed its corporate appetite through weapons of mass destruction-related technology sales abroad. On the other hand, the consequences of military action against Pakistan would be infinitely worse. If the United States ever made the mistake of degrading or destroying the Pakistani military's coercive capacity, Pakistan might become a failed state, and the problem of securing its nuclear facilities, fissile materials, scientific personnel, and actual weapons and delivery systems would become a security nightmare.
Because it is likely that some of past clandestine nuclear trade had the
tacit if not formal support of the Pakistani military, the United States is
also perhaps trying to avoid actions that would place Musharraf, who is also
the head of the army, in an institutional quandary.
Perhaps the quiet calculation in Washington is that a policy of selective
intelligence leaks, private and multilateral diplomacy, and a combination of
carrots and sticks would constitute more robust means to persuade Islamabad to
mend its ways. More enticing is the possibility, howsoever remote, of
recruiting the Pakistani military's intelligence agencies and nuclear labs to
help roll up the global black market in nuclear technologies they helped create
in the first place.[65]
Finally, the US reticence in publicly rebuking Islamabad for its proliferation transgressions is an acknowledgement of the sensitive regard with which nuclear issues are treated in domestic Pakistani politics. Nuclear weapons are closely tied to the Pakistani nation's sense of self-worth and national identity. Pakistanis count their nuclear capability as one of the few areas of national achievement. Nuclear scientists are treated as cult figures; and until recently, the Pakistani state lionized Khan as a national hero.[66] Khan and the nuclear establishment also enjoy the support of the Islamist parties in Pakistan. Hence, Washington has been keen to avoid giving the impression that it is intruding into the holy sanctum of Pakistan's nuclear politics; or doing anything that would compromise Pakistan's nuclear weapons program. But, behind the façade of public calm, US policy makers have launched a quiet program of cooperation to help Pakistan institute more reliable personnel reliability protocols, and enhance the safety and security of its nuclear warheads, fissile materials, and sensitive nuclear facilities.[67]
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