Citizen diplomat Mansoor Ijaz is right to be deeply worried about the extent of Pakistan's efforts to proliferate nuclear weapons technology to the Islamic world.
Unfortunately, the plethora of revelations about Pakistan's activities is only the tip of the iceberg of a decade-long clandestine effort by unregulated elements within the country's nuclear, intelligence and military establishments to sell the "Islamic bomb" to other Muslim nations. At the heart of the effort was a dangerously motivated clique of former Pakistani intelligence chiefs, corrupt politicians, and Islamized Pakistani scientists, including Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, who believed it was their moral duty to offer weapons of mass destruction to embattled Muslim states in the global Ummah (community of Islamic nations).Their activities, in various stages of planning and implementation since the late 1980s, reached a zenith in the months leading up to the September 11 attacks. Key military and intelligence officials in Islamabad, later fired or laterally moved to less sensitive posts by Musharraf at Washington's urging, had come to the conclusion that the West, led by the United States, was hell-bent on the economic destruction of Pakistan for its robust nuclear weapons program, lack of democracy, military support for militants in Kashmir, and supply lines to the extremist Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
These ambitious Islamists (wrongly) perceived that spreading Pakistan's nuclear wealth throughout the Ummah would secure both its economic future and place in history as the hub of the Muslim world's intellectual and scientific power. Their vision had multiple dimensions, including the sharing of knowledge, materials, and technologies to build ultra-sophisticated research facilities in other countries, and that is precisely what they repeatedly and aggressively did for over 15 years.
The evidence is now compelling that they succeeded in Iran and North Korea, and were far enough along in Libya to show their fingerprints. But where else was Pakistan's nuclear brain trust plying its trade and for what purpose?
Proliferation is certainly the medium- and long-term risk. However, given the recent assassination attempts against Pakistan's president, which seemed to be powered by insider information, hijacking of Pakistan's own nuclear arsenal may be the more immediate threat. Do the U.S. and/or India have a plan for securing the bombs rapidly if Islamic radicals seize control of the Pakistan government? We'll only know if Musharraf's time runs out.
Posted by Alan at January 13, 2004 12:06 PM