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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.
Preliminary Conclusions
Without a doubt, the new revelations show that Pakistan remains the most problematic nuclear state in the international system and perhaps the state of greatest proliferation concern. KRL's diversion of centrifuge blueprints, designs, models, complete assemblies, components, enriched uranium, and the actual design of a warhead itself without a nary afterthought of the likely political consequences of such actions, is unparalleled in the history of nuclear proliferation.
In the mid-1970s and 1980s, Pakistan's nuclear weapons program presented a new model of proliferation. In the past, state-to-state cooperation had been the main conduit for the passage of nuclear weapons-related technologies. However, Pakistani entrepreneurs such as A.Q. Khan demonstrated how loose export control regulations, dual-use technologies, market ethics, and a fragmented manufacturing base spread across different countries could be exploited by a determined proliferator to build an integrated fissile material production complex. The Pakistanis perfected a system of clandestine trade through middlemen and shell companies; through clandestine procurement techniques, false end-user certificates, and diversion of industrial goods and technologies placed on the export control lists of advanced industrial nations using circuitous routes. But that effort took about a decade to accomplish.[68]
In comparison, new proliferators such as North Korea and Libya have been able to reduce substantially the lead time for setting up similar facilities. Libya, for example, was able to set up a pilot uranium enrichment plant within five years; and could have conceivably extracted enough enriched uranium for a single nuclear weapon on a crash basis.[69] The critical difference between the Pakistani and North Korean and Libyan cases is that the latter tapped into the services of nuclear entrepreneurs such as Khan who provided a one-stop shop for uranium enrichment programs: integrated shopping solutions for complete centrifuge assemblies; component parts and manufacturing services; enriched uranium; engineering consultancies and trouble shooting services; and finally the blueprint of an actual fission weapon itself. Thus the same fragmented network that fed the Pakistani nuclear weapons effort morphed into what IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei described as an underground international Wal Mart for nuclear weapons technologies.
Any analysis of the proliferators' motivations will have to wait until we have a more definitive idea of whether Khan's activities were entirely a rogue operation or conducted at the behest of the Pakistani military. Revelations of Khan's disproportionate wealth and the modus operandi of his associates clearly suggest that money was a primary motivation. But Khan has also justified his actions as means to help other "Muslim" nations and divert Western attention and pressure from the Pakistani nuclear weapons program.[70] However his sales to secular regimes in North Korea and Libya, and offers to other secular regimes in Syria and Iraq suggest that although ideology and antipathy to the West might have played some role, it was in part a cover to mask his greed and megalomania.
Although the Pakistani government has distanced itself from Khan's activities, it is difficult to believe that a diversion of such massive scale and scope over a period of nearly two decades could have occurred without the knowledge of oversight authorities within the Pakistani government. Evidently, Khan made nuclear transfers to Iran under the rubric of a secret peaceful nuclear cooperation agreement that the two countries signed in the mid-1980s. The historical record shows that former Pakistani president, the late General Zia-ul-Haq, was aware of Iran's interest in purchasing Pakistani enrichment technology that would enable it to enrich uranium to weapons grade. The historical record is equally clear that General (retd.) Beg, who immediately succeeded Zia, toyed with the idea of nuclear technology sales to finance Pakistan's defense budget. Khan also informed Beg of the equipment sales to Iran. However, Beg insists that Khan had assured him that the equipment being sold was outmoded, old, and disused, and would not enable Tehran to enrich uranium in the near term. Similarly, the Musharraf regime has never admitted to Nodong imports from North Korea or explained how it cobbled together the resources to pay for them.
But there is also the possibility that the Pakistani military approved transfers of a limited scope and nature to Iran and North Korea; but that Khan and his associates abused the authority granted them to make unauthorized sales of goods and services and reap huge personal financial rewards in the process. However, the Musharraf regime's attempt to absolve the Pakistani state of all blame in the current controversy by suggesting that Pakistani scientists acted out of pecuniary and career goals borders on the preposterous. If the above argument were accepted in principal, no future government in Islamabad could be held accountable for transfers or theft of fissile material, warheads, or other weapons-related technologies and know how from Pakistan. By Musharraf's logic, Khan and his associates could have also diverted weapons-grade uranium or an actual nuclear weapon itself to foreign clients and the Pakistani military would claim innocence. Even if the nuclear entities and scientists were acting independently, the Pakistani state is ultimately responsible for the guardianship of all nuclear assets, technologies, and personnel on its territory.
Although Islamabad's proliferation record raises serious concerns, the current Pakistani government's assertion that its scientists and entities might have acted at cross purposes and in a manner unbeknownst to state authorities, is infinitely worse. For the record would then suggest that not only did civilian governments in Islamabad lack effective control over the nuclear weapons program during its developmental phase, but that the military too, which analysts believe effectively monitors the nuclear weapons effort, exercised only perfunctory control. The implications of such abdication of internal sovereignty by the state are staggering. It suggests that behind the façade of centralized control, Pakistan's strategic military-industrial complex is dangerously fragmented, compartmentalized, and autonomous; that government agencies lack effective oversight; and individuals act as authorities unto themselves. In light of their alleged past behavior, the possibility that such individuals might share secrets concerning the dark nuclear arts with other countries and terror groups for ideological and financial motivations is not as remote as it had once seemed.
Iran's and Libya's revelations about their Pakistani connection are also likely to have a sobering effect on other proliferators in the international system. Proliferator states, rogue entities, scientists, engineers, manufacturers and suppliers can no longer feel assured that their identities will be protected by client states. Tripoli and Tehran's acts have also undermined the Pakistani Islamists' ahistoric notions of an imagined pan-Islamic community of Muslim nations. During a press conference, Musharraf raged that Pakistan had been outed by its Muslim brothers with whom it had shared its most sensitive defense technologies; and such treachery is the reason why Pakistanis should abandon chimeras of an "Islamic bomb."[71]
Equally significant, the disclosure that Khan and his associates sold the blueprint of a nuclear weapon design, which the Chinese had shared with Pakistan, to Libya and possibly Iran and North Korea, is likely to embarrass China. It confirms what was known for a long time; that China helped Pakistan with the design for nuclear weapons. But despite the obvious strain on Sino-Pakistani relations, it remains unclear whether the new disclosures will lead Beijing to reappraise its decision to continue help for Pakistan's solid-fuel ballistic missile and possibly nuclear programs.
Finally, although Pakistan can be expected to provide some intelligence inputs to help root out the clandestine international network in nuclear trade, the extent of its cooperation is likely to be limited. For Islamabad's own nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs have profited from such trade; and remain dependent on it. Recently, a South African businessman was discovered trying to illegally export "triggered spark gaps" that can be used in nuclear weapons to Pakistan through false end-user certification.[72] This episode is a small indicator of just how far Pakistan is from achieving self-sufficiency.
Worse, most of the drivers that led Pakistani entities such as KRL to proliferate nuclear technologies in the past remain. Khan's greed was only one variable in the proliferation equation. Other drivers such as the Pakistani military's corporate appetite for a nuclear deterrent and maintaining proportional parity with their larger and more powerful neighbor India, are constants in the Pakistani political spectrum. Domestically as well, Pakistan's institutions remain relatively undeveloped. Individuals dominate institutional processes; there is little respect for the rule of law or constitution; and critical sectors such as the nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs remain beyond the pale of civilian oversight. It was this combination of factors - the military's corporate desperation for nuclear and missile deliverables, undeveloped institutions, personalization of power, fragmented and compartmentalized authority structures, and the absence of civilian oversight - that provided opportunities for Khan and his associates to peddle their dangerous wares in the international market. Although the Pakistani Army appears to be making efforts to tighten its grip on the nuclear and missile military-industrial complex, the larger structural problems in the Pakistani polity remain. And it is this combination of factors that might pave the way for a similar recurrence in the future. It is also why Pakistan will require careful monitoring and reform and remain one of the most significant foreign policy challenges for the United States in the near and medium term.
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