In what could amount to extraordinarily serious and dangerously destabilizing global event, the government of India announced today that Pakistani extremists may already be in  control of nuclear weapons sites in Pakistan.  This is particularly concerning given that Pakistan already has the world’s worst record for proliferation of nuclear technologies to date.  (In 2004 the founder of Pakistan’s nuclear program,  A.Q. Kahn confessed to being involved with a clandestine international network which was engaged in proliferation of nuclear technologies to Iran, North Korea and Libya — and is believed to have supplied Iran and North Korea with gas centrifuges and uranium hexaflouride.)

The Times of India reports:

India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has told President Obama that nuclear sites in Pakistan’s restive frontier province are “already partly” in the hands of Islamic extremists, an Israeli journal has said, amid considerable anxiety among US pundits here over Washington’s confidence in the security of the troubled nation’s nuclear arsenal.

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There was no official word from either Washington or New Delhi about the exchanges, with India in the throes of an election and US winding down for the weekend. But US experts have been greatly perturbed in recent days about what they say is Washington’s misplaced confidence in, and lackadaisical approach towards, Pakistan’s nuclear assets. The disquiet comes amid reports that Pakistan is ramping up its nuclear arsenal even as the rest of the world is scaling it down.

“It is quite disturbing that the administration is allowing Pakistan to quantitatively and qualitatively step up production of fissile material without as much as a public reproach,” Robert Windrem, a visiting scholar with the Center for Law and Security in New York University and an expert on South Asia nuclear issues told ToI in an interview on Thursday. “Iraq and Iran did not get a similar concessions… and Pakistan has a much worse record of proliferation and security breaches than any other country in the world.”

Windrem, a former producer with NBC whose book “Critical Mass” was among the first to red flag Islamabad’s proliferation record going back to the 1980s, referred to recent reports and satellite images showing Pakistan building two large new plutonium production reactors in Khushab, which experts say could lead to improvements in the quantity and quality of the country’s nuclear arsenal. The reactors had nothing to do with power-production’ they are weapons-specific, and are being built with resources who diversion is enabled by the billions of dollars the US is giving to Pakistan as aid, he said.

Windrem also pointed out that Khushab’s former director, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood met with Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and offered a nuclear weapons tutorial around an Afghanistan campfire, as attested by the former CIA Director George Tenet in his memoir “At the Center of the Storm.” Yet successive US administrations had adopted an attitude of benign neglect towards Pakistan’s nuclear program and its expansion at a time the country was in growing ferment and under siege within from Islamic extremists.

US officials, going up to the President himself, have repeatedly said in public that they have confidence the Pakistani nuclear arsenal will not fall into the hands of Islamic extremists, and they have Islamabad’s assurances to this effect. But scholars like Windrem fear Pakistan’s nuclear program may already be infected with the virus of radicalism from within, as demonstrated by the Sultan Bashiruddin incident.

This comes on the heels of last Wednesday’s announcement by Pakistani president Zardari’s announcement that Pakistan’s nuclear facilities are secure:

As the AP reported last Wednesday:

Pakistan’s president is rejecting concerns that his country’s nuclear arsenal was in jeopardy.

The concerns are prompted by a surge in Taliban activity, and growing instability.

In London today, Asif Ali Zardari said Pakistan’s secret nuclear sites are secure. But he wouldn’t specify what safeguards are in place.

He says “anyone who is responsible in any government” will say that they are not concerned about the situation in Pakistan.

With due respect, Mr. Zardari — it would be the height of irresponsibility to not be overtly concerned at this juncture.  By many accounts, the government of Pakistan is currently perched at the tipping point, and by some estimates could fall to opposition within a matter of days.  .

President Obama has downplayed the situation, calling the threat of proliferation “overblown”.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports:

The Pakistani government and President Barack Obama say concern over the security of the nuclear weapons is overblown, and the country’s still-powerful army gives top priority to guarding them.

“I’m confident that we can make sure that (they are) secure,” Obama told reporters last week, adding the army “recognizes the hazards of those weapons falling into the wrong hands.”

But we must address the semantics of “proliferation”.  At this time, the potential of an outright theft of an intact nuclear weapon is likely to be an extremely low-level threat (although India’s announcement today certainly raises the threat level), and actually launching a missile would be impossible without acquiring centralized control.  Furthermore, it is believed that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is stored in an incomplete, disassembled state for security reasons, with warheads and missiles stored separately (although one must assume, within some geographic proximity).

Complicating the matter of monitoring the situation, is that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is stored on Soviet-style mobile launchers and rail-freight lines — making sattelite tracking of Pakistan’s weapons difficult for foreign intelligence agencies.

But “proliferation” of dangerous radioactive materials is indeed a real threat at this time .

Reuters reports:

Two scenarios are particularly worrying, analysts say.

If the Taliban encroached close to an area where warheads are stored, the military may feel it needs to try to move them — and the convoy could be vulnerable to capture.

“The Pakistani military say their procedures for moving nuclear weapons are very well thought out, but that is always a weak point, moving your nuclear assets,” Kuusisto said.

The second, and likelier, scenario would be that despite the vetting procedures in place, Taliban or al Qaeda sympathisers managed to get employed in a nuclear facility and were able to steal enriched uranium or other radioactive material.

Vetting of personnel can never be foolproof.

“What chills me is that the military says personnel assigned to sensitive nuclear facilities are all vetted by the Pakistan intelligence service,” said Steve Vickers, president and chief executive of FTI-International Risk and a former head of criminal intelligence for the Hong Kong police.

Now, in light of the government of India’s statement that “nuclear sites” may already be compromised, we must ask specifically which scenario they are describing?  Neither one of course, bodes well for global stability or for keeping the lid on the nuclear genie.

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