Pakistan's nuclear mess

This writer noted some months ago that Israel and its American supporters have been pressing the Bush administration to make dismantling Pakistan's nuclear forces a top priority. If that is not immediately possible, pro-Israel neo-conservatives in the Bush administration are agitating for a high degree of US control over Pakistan's nuclear weapons and nuclear industries.

Dr Khan's bizarre admission on national TV that he headed a massive, international smuggling operation supplying Iran, North Korea and Libya with assorted nuclear technology was not just an unprecedented political and public relations disaster for Pakistan. It also handed Washington a club with which to beat Pakistan over the nuclear issue.

It's hard to believe Pakistan's claims that it was all the fault of the miscreant Dr Khan. His TV confession next to a stern-looking President Musharraf looked more like a naughty school boy being reprimanded by the school director.

The prevailing view abroad is that the military and ISI could not have been unaware of Dr. Khan's activities and, indeed, may have been collaborators. Suspicions are even being voiced about how much President Musharraf knew in recent years, though he is being largely shielded by his continuing usefulness to the US strategic policy in South Asia.

The view among Pakistan-watchers is that Dr Khan has been made the fall guy for a much larger and more sinister conspiracy that may yet explode into view and consume the current regime in Islamabad.

What can a long-time observer and friend of Pakistan say about this ghastly mess? First, one can only hope that the diversion of nuclear technology to other nations was motivated by some sort of Islamic zeal to help defend small, vulnerable countries threatened by the United States. This argument certainly applies to Iran, which has as much right to nuclear weapons for self-defence as, say, France or India.

But selling even proto-type nuclear plans to Libya's erratic, mercurial leader, Col. Muammar Qadhafi, was unwise and dangerous in the extreme, no matter how much Libya was threatened from without.

Libya has admitted blowing up a French airliner and was almost certainly responsible for the downing of an American Pan Am transport. No Pakistani had any business supplying nuclear technology to a regime that would commit such crimes.

Selling or bartering nuclear technology to North Korea, a nightmarish, Stalinist dictatorship that has repeatedly threatened nuclear and chemical attack on North Korea and US Pacific bases, cannot under any circumstances be excused.

North Korea may have provided Pakistan with missile technology to counter India's extensive and very threatening missile programmes, but covert dealings with the Pyongyang regime – if true – badly besmirch Pakistan's name and leave it open to charges of reckless irresponsibility.

Pakistan's credibility in the West, and particularly Washington, is around zero. In fact, after Dr. Khan's bombshell revelations, it is highly likely Pakistan would have been hit with an oil embargo and crushing financial sanctions – or even declared a pariah state – were not General Musharraf so valuable to Washington's campaign against Islamic resistance forces.

India, which has long tried to brand Pakistan a 'terrorist state,' is crowing with delight. No one in the West cares a whit that important parts of Delhi's nuclear arms development was based on US technology stolen by Israel and then sold to India.

The US will now sharply intensify pressure on Islamabad to accept some form of 'joint control' over its nuclear arsenal. The first steps have already been accomplished by pressuring Pakistan to accept United States nuclear command and control technology and security codes.

Washington will now use the Khan scandal to demand integration of the CIA and US military personnel in Pakistan's nuclear forces structure. The next step: joint guarding of weapons and reactors and, finally, their total control by US forces.