Share this story!            

EDITORIAL: The ghost of proliferation — Libya and Iran...

The heat of the United States counter-proliferation policy has finally caught up with Libya’s strongman Colonel Moammar Gadhafi. On Friday, in separate statements, US president George Bush and British prime minister Tony Blair declared to the world that Mr Gadhafi had decided to relinquish his country’s WMD (weapons of mass destruction) capability and was willing to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors into the country to inspect its facilities. Mr Bush praised Mr Gadhafi and said that Libya had begun “the process of rejoining the community of nations”. Mr Blair too was full of praise, saying the decision will “make the region and the world more secure. It shows that problems of proliferation can, with good will, be tackled through discussion and engagement”. But we might add in parenthesis that a similar approach in relation to Iraq was dismissed by the Bush-Blair duo. As US Rep. Edward Markey (D-Massachusetts) said, “this [policy] is difficult to reconcile with the administration’s previous ridicule of IAEA inspectors in Iraq”.

In Tripoli, the mood was less effusive. The official Libyan statement merely said that the country reaffirmed its commitment to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as well as the Additional Protocol under which it was prepared and “ready to welcome any international inspection mission” to Libya. The statement also went on to vindicate Libya’s earlier decision to acquire WMD capability by pointing to the fact that it took the WMD route because its (Libya’s) “calls to make the Middle East and Africa zones exempt from all weapons of mass destruction went unheeded”.

This last bit is important. It is a grim reminder of two facts: One that Israel is a nuclear-weapons country and is embarked upon the process of constantly augmenting its capability; two, that the Middle East remains a dangerous place in the absence of a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The Israeli policy, after having taken care of Egypt and Jordan through peace treaties and by neutralising Syria through deterrence, has been to finish off the threat in its outer circle. The three countries in that circle included Iran, Iraq and Libya. Iraq has been occupied and de-fanged. It is no coincidence that the country most interested in getting the US to attack and neutralise Iraq was Israel; Iran has agreed, after some resistance, to intrusive IAEA inspections under the Additional Protocol and now Libya has thrown in the towel. (Reports indicate secret negotiations had been going on for nine months before the Friday announcement. There is reason to believe that the quid pro quo for Mr Gadhafi is that Libya will not be attacked and he himself would be spared the fate of Mr Saddam Hussein.) *

...and Pakistan

The United States should be quite happy with this outcome, as should Israel. But these developments are likely to have an impact far beyond the Middle-East. Indeed, Islamabad has already taken note and is hurrying to make amends for some past carelessness.

The first charge of proliferation was laid at Pakistan’s door with the alleged North Korean connection. Then the IAEA found the Pakistani spoor in Iran. There are reports that Iran has been singing to the IAEA and some western governments about companies and middlemen that have been traced back to some individuals in the Pakistani nuclear establishment. The recent detentions of some top Pakistani scientists — euphemistically referred to as “debriefings” — prove that all is not as it should have been. The fact that some scientists might have jumped their national brief for financial or ideological reasons has been admitted in a roundabout manner by highly placed officials.

At a minimum this brings credible pressure on Pakistan to not only hunt down such contacts but also to agree to very stringent export control measures that may or may not have been in place until now. The charge also creates space for international actors to pressure Pakistan on other counts, including sharpening the salience of Pakistan’s nuclear capability and its running conflict with India. The problem with this kind of behaviour — when the state fails to leash some of its own functionaries and they begin to assume that they are bigger than the state — is that it unfortunately gives rise to all sorts of conspiracy theories. For instance, General Pervez Musharraf’s recent overtures towards India are good policy steps intrinsically. But they might be unfairly perceived at home as gestures aimed at appeasing the international community on other issues.

But while General Musharraf may be able to ride out any domestic storm, his government needs to look into the issue of proliferation very, very carefully. Pakistan developed its own capability clandestinely but it had a strong argument working in its favour: it had refused to sign the NPT. To that extent, while Pakistan’s and India’s programmes broke the normative aspect of nonproliferation, the two countries did not break the legal side of it, being non-signatories to the treaty. Yet, it is one thing breaking the norm for one’s own security; quite another to seemingly go about helping others to develop the capability. The state’s inability to detect this kind of activity is inexcusable. There is need therefore for the Pakistan government to weed out all such elements who, arguably, have become national security hazards in more ways than one in the post 9/11 environment irrespective of the good that they may have individually and collectively done to the country in the pre-9/11 era. The state, it should be reiterated, has only permanent interests and not permanent friends. *

Home | Editorial

Share this story!