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BOOK REVIEW: Insecure with nuclear weapons —by Khaled Ahmed

Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons;
By Bhumitra Chakma;
Routledge 2009;
Pp187;
Price £75;
Available at bookstores in Pakistan

Benazir Bhutto as prime minister objected to sales to Iran but the army overruled her and the supplies continued. Islamabad had a troika system in which the executive authority of the prime minister was greatly diluted if not usurped

Author Chakma has written easily the most up to date and informative book on the subject laconically expressed in its title. Pakistan is a product of the Second Nuclear Age. The first Nuclear Age had two active players — the US and the USSR — with Britain, France and China playing marginal roles. It was Cold War with known bounds of fear growing out of nuclear weapons. The awesome grandeur of the nuclear weapons of the two superpowers was followed, after the collapse of the USSR, by the less certain second nuclear age, spurred by proliferation and the emergence of greatly destabilising nuclear states of the lesser order.

Nuclear deterrence is also not what it used to be, that is, the US deterring another superpower. Today it is challenged to deal with asymmetric nuclear threats which could come from a terrorist organisation. Medium and small sized states acquiring weapons through proliferation seek to deter in a variety of patterns: to stave off conventional invasion, to shake off coercion and blackmail, etc. North Korea’s weapons deter coercive action in the region by the US; Iran wants to avoid ‘regime change’ compulsions; and Pakistan wants to deter perceived military aggression from India. On the other hand, India wishes to ensure security for its posture of a global power.

The new nuclear states face dangerous constraints — dangerous because they compel unorthodox behaviour — like scarce resources, lack of technology and domestic scientific expertise and, last but not least, an undertow of suicidal nationalism. Once the weapons are acquired, the problem of establishing a command and control is compounded once again because of lack of technology and funds. India and Pakistan are faced with severe constraints in establishing their command and control systems, thus introducing the world to a new series of dangers, including accidental launch and repossession by terrorists.

Pakistan’s nuclear acquisitions in the 1980s — thanks to the shadow of the superpowers’ confrontation in Afghanistan under which it was proliferating — made Pakistan more challenging to India on Kashmir in the 1990s. Present was a recessed deterrence which allowed jihad but there were moments of panic in the 1990s when the two tested each other’s invisible red lines. Then both put their bombs on the table and India tried its hand even at a nuclear doctrine; Pakistan was India-specific, too intellectually restricted to announce a doctrine, but faced with problems of ‘minimum deterrence’ across a very severe ‘flying time’ constraint, and India’s ‘strategic depth’.

A significant observation has been made by the author about Pakistan’s ‘first-use’ option: “Even if Pakistan undertakes a first nuclear strike against India, its strategic gains from doing so would be doubtful for the simple reason that after the Pakistani first strike, India still retains sufficient nuclear capacity to undertake a retaliatory strike that may lead to the collapse of the Pakistani state. Moreover, even if New Delhi decides not to retaliate, Pakistan’s gains will still be questionable. If Islamabad strikes first, New Delhi will certainly receive overwhelming international support, including support from the UN Security Council. The ‘political and economic cost’ [according to expert Cirincione] will simply be unbearable for Pakistan. Islamabad indeed confronts formidable dilemmas and challenges in its attempts to construct a viable first-use and war-fighting posture.” (p.55)

Some of the North Korean syndrome got rubbed off on Pakistan. There were probably 60 to 70 nuclear bombs but no money to run the country’s economy. The temptation to make money out of proliferation was great and was succumbed to. In 2008, the people in nuclearised Pakistan were desperately looking for bread while flour leaked to the neighbouring states through the holes in its borders burned by a cross-border jihad under its nuclear umbrella. Dr AQ Khan, who ran the Kahuta Laboratory, sat at the centre of a network of technology acquisition that stretched from North Korea to Germany, the US and Holland.

The Khan Network achieved a new level of illegal nuclear trade that challenged the non-proliferation regimes as never before. From the 1980s onwards, Dr Khan built centrifuges with imported parts, soon turning it into an import-export business covering Malaysia, Singapore, Turkey, South Africa, Switzerland, Dubai, and North Korea. Libya passed to him 450 tons of yellowcake it obtained from Niger; in return Islamabad trained 18 Libyan scientists in 1973-1980. General Zia forced a cut-off in 1977, but Libya was able to revive its programme in 1995 through Dr Khan. In 1997, Dr Khan and his financier BSA Tahir met the Libyans in Istanbul.

That was the year when Dr Khan sent Libya 20 complete centrifuges and material for 200 more. In 2000, Khan supplied two P-2 maraging steel centrifuges for testing. Libya ordered 10,000 P-2 machines from Dr Khan who made the delivery in December 2000. In 2003, Libya decided to abandon the project and come clean (p.110). BSA Tahir confessed to Malaysian authorities that Dr Khan supplied 1.87 tons of uranium hexafluoride to Libya in 2001. Dr Khan also supplied to Libya the complete nuclear component designs and instruction about how to build a nuclear bomb. The complete nuclear bomb would have resembled a Chinese nuclear bomb dating from the late 1960s. Since the last supply made was in 2002, the Libyan decision to come clean must have been sudden.

In February 2003, Iran told IAEA that it had been building two enrichment facilities at Natanz. In June 2003, Iran tested its first centrifuge, and in August 2003 began the test operation of the ten-machine cascade with UF6. In 2006, President Ahmadinejad announced Iran had enriched uranium. In 2007, he said Iran had 3,000 centrifuges enriching uranium and could graduate to the weapons level enrichment in a year. The book says without AQ Khan Iran could not have come to the threshold of nuclear power. Iran was the first country to receive centrifuges from Mr Khan. According to IAEA, he made the sale to Iran of all the required elements in 1987 in Dubai. (p.111)

The one-page initial document of enrichment instructions by Dr Khan was shown by the Iranians to the IAEA. Iran contracted for 50,000 centrifuges from Khan for a price that ran into ‘hundreds of millions of dollars’, which included training of Iranian scientists in Pakistan in 1988. Iranians complained about glitches in the P-1 centrifuges supplied earlier, but Khan developed P-2 centrifuges and supplied Iran with them to replace the earlier batch in 1993 and got paid $3 million for them. He also helped Iran with names of other suppliers that would sell to Iran. A Khan network scientist is quoted as saying, ‘We confided in them [Iranians] about the items needed to construct a nuclear bomb, as well as the makes of equipment, the names of companies, the countries from which they could be procured. The Khan network’s assistance enabled Tehran to contact suppliers in Europe, Russia, and Asia in order to acquire the nuclear technology and equipment’. (p.113)

Iran had asked Pakistan for ‘nuclear assistance’ in 1986 but General Zia gave strict orders to not to give Iran anything substantial while himself signing an agreement with President Khamenei on peaceful nuclear cooperation. But Dr Khan got into the act through the chinks in the agreement which provided for training Iranian nuclear scientists in Pakistan at the Khan Research Laboratories (KRL). After Zia’s death, army chief Aslam Beg (1988-1991) was in favour of giving Iran what Zia did not, and Dr Khan was most willing to oblige. Beg then threatened the Americans (Ambassador Oakley included) that he would transfer nuclear technology to Iran if America stopped sale of weapons to Pakistan. Beg was aware of what Dr Khan was up to.

Benazir Bhutto as prime minister objected to sales to Iran but the army overruled her and the supplies continued. Islamabad had a troika system in which the executive authority of the prime minister was greatly diluted if not usurped. Dr Khan may have got the go-aheads but there was no systems impediment to his making money for himself too. His people — two are named, Sultan Bashiruddin Mehmood and Chaudhry Abdul Majeed — also discussed all kinds of weapons of mass destruction with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. (p.125)

Given the above information, it is no surprise that Dr Khan is being kept under wraps by a rather chastened Pakistan. *

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