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How safe are Pakistan's nuclear weapons?

Dr Bhashyam Kasturi considers the global implications of Pakistan's nuclear proliferation, and its build-up of WMDs.

By Dr Bhashyam Kasturi

DETAINED FOR QUESTIONING: Sultan Mahmood and Chaudhry Majeed were former PAEC employees

The former head of the CIA, George Tenet, recalls in his memoirs a meeting with President Pervez Musharraf, then President of Pakistan, in late 2001, after the 9/11 attacks. Tenet writes: 'After a few pleasantries… I launched into a description of the campfire meeting between Osama bin Laden, al-Zawahiri and the UTN [Ummah Tameer-e-Nau] leaders. “Mr. President,” I said, “you cannot imagine the outrage there would be in my country if it were learned that Pakistan is coddling scientists who are helping bin Laden acquire a nuclear weapon. Should such a device ever be used, the full fury of the American people would be focused on whoever helped al-Qaeda in its cause.”'

In response, Musharraf tried to assure Tenet that it was well beyond the reach of bin Laden and his men hiding in caves to obtain a nuclear bomb. At the end of the conversation, Musharraf promised to clamp down on the Ummah Tameer-e-Nau (UTN) and its leaders and undertake a 'thorough inventory of its nuclear material'. The reference above is to an August 2001 campfire meeting between bin Laden and his successor, Ayman al Zawahiri, and two Pakistani nuclear scientists, part of an Islamic charity called UTN.

The two al-Qaeda leaders wanted to know if they could make a nuclear weapon or acquire one, though it was not the first time that they had shown such an interest.

As a result of Tenet's dash to Islamabad, Pakistani authorities on October 23 2001 'detained for questioning' two Pakistani nuclear scientists, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood and Chaudhry Abdul Majeed. Both were former employees of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC), and in June 2000 had established the UTN — a reconstruction of the Muslim Ummah — whose stated mission was to conduct relief work and investment in Afghanistan.

Mahmood, according to many of his former colleagues, was considered to be 'something of a madman' and was often publicly supportive of the Taliban, calling it a model for Pakistan. In 1987 he published a book called Doomsday and Life After Death, whose basic message was that the world would end one day soon in the fire of a nuclear holocaust, which would usher in judgement day and thus fulfil the prophecies of the Quran. Even after September 11, 2001, Mahmood remained supportive of the Taliban. In October he proposed a three-month ceasefire to resolve the situation in Afghanistan.

Mahmood had resigned from the PAEC in 1999 in protest at the government's willingness to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. He had previously served as Director for Nuclear Power and was the chief designer and director of Pakistan's Khushab Reactor. Writing for Yespakistan, a Pakistani website, on the theme 'Who are the Taliban?', Mahmood stated: 'The Taliban are not people in power but upholders of a movement — the movement of the renaissance of Islam in the world. Simple proof of this is that all anti-Islamic forces are united in opposition to them. In the holy Quran, Allah has told us: “All kufr (disbelief) will unite against the haq, the truth of Islam”. Today the world is witness to this truth.'

Chaudhry Abdul Majeed, the other scientist who was detained along with Mahmood, had worked at the Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology (PINSTECH). An expert in plutonium technology, Majeed is known for his contribution to plutonium nuclear fuel cycle technology. His knowledge on nuclear matters appears to have been more specialized than that of Mahmood, and his skills include expertise in plutonium separation — a vital step in producing weapons grade plutonium for a nuclear weapon.

All seven members of UTN's board of directors were detained on October 23, 2001. Mirza Yusef Baig, an industrialist with extensive ties to the Taliban and several contracts to build schools, hospitals, government buildings and a flour mill in Afghanistan, was one such person. Other members detained were Brigadier Mohammad Ali and Commodore Arshad Ali Chaudhry, a retired air force commander and vice president of UTN; Humayun Niaz, a former naval officer and businessman with ties to Nawaz Shariff and the finance director of UTN; Brigadier Mohammad Hanif, a career army engineer; and Sheikh Mohammed Tufail, the owner of one of Pakistan's leading engineering companies.

During interrogations by Pakistan intelligence officials, Mahmood and Majeed admitted that they'd had long discussions with al-Qaeda officials in August 2001 about nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Pakistan believed that the scientists used UTN partially as a cover to conduct secret talks with bin Laden. In late January 2002, they were released from detention on the grounds that a trial would cause embarrassment for the government. Islamabad took the stand that Mahmood and Majeed were not weapons experts and therefore by themselves could not have provided al-Qaeda with the ability to build a nuclear weapon. Mahmood, who failed several polygraph tests, said he explained to bin Laden the difficulty of setting up a uranium-enrichment plant, whereupon bin Laden asked, 'What if you already have the enriched uranium?' When senior US officials came to know of this statement, they became convinced that the US needed to do what it could to help Pakistan keep its nuclear assets from falling into terrorist hands.

First revelations about UTN
After the fall of the Taliban on November 13, 2001, UTN offices were searched by coalition forces and subsequently the media. These revealed records that the charity had indeed helped in the reconstruction of Afghanistan. But they also revealed that the UTN was studying Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). The first revelations about the UTN's WMD activities followed visits to its headquarters and subsidiary offices in Kabul. Members of the media appear to have been among the first to visit the UTN's headquarters in Kabul, which also served as Mahmood's residence while he was in Kabul.

The information provided by the White House at the time of the arrest of the two Pakistani nuclear scientists made the following assertions:

 The nuclear scientists had close ties to bin Laden and the Taliban;

 During repeated visits to Afghanistan, UTN directors and members met with bin Laden, al-Qaeda leaders, and Mullah Omar and discussed the development of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons;

 The UTN has been linked to the WAFA Humanitarian Organization and Al Rashid Trust, two other NGOs with ties to al-Qaeda that have been designated as supporters of terrorism under Executive Order 13224;

 During 2001, Mahmood met with Mullah Omar and bin Laden. During a follow-up meeting, in which bin Laden's associate indicated he had nuclear material and wanted to know how to use it to make a weapon, Mahmood provided information about the infrastructure needed for a nuclear weapon programme and the effects of nuclear weapons; and

 After the fall of the Taliban regime, searches of UTN locations in Kabul yielded documents setting out a plan to kidnap a US attaché and outlining basic nuclear physics related to nuclear weapons.

According to the head of Libyan intelligence Musa Kousa, the UTN also approached Libya to offer help in 'building a nuclear bomb'. Mahmood made clear in public speeches his view that Pakistan's nuclear capability was the property of the global Muslim community.

The person who helped to reveal to the world the link between the UTN and al-Qaeda was a senior CNN producer, Ingrid Arnesen. When she visited residences and offices used by the UTN and al-Qaeda houses in Afghanistan, she found among other things documents linking the UTN to Jaish-e-Muhammad (JEM), the Army of the Prophet Mohammad, a Pakistani militant group that was outlawed by the US in the spring of 2002 and is active in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir.

That the UTN was involved in the reconstruction of Afghanistan became apparent from the documents recovered from the office of the Barakat Islami Investment General Trading and Contracting Co. Ltd (BTC), located just off the lobby of Kabul's Intercontinental Hotel. Among the documents were several drafts of a memorandum of understanding between the UTN and Barakat, establishing a close working relationship to promote the relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction of Afghanistan.

Further revelations were made when the CNN crew visited the posh area of Kabul, Wazir Akbar Khan. One of the 'residents' was a member of al-Qaeda known as Abu Khabbab al-Masri, an Egyptian expert in WMD and conventional explosives. The United States had identified al-Masri as a key figure in al-Qaeda's nuclear weapons effort. Also at al-Masri's house was found a document entitled 'Superbomb' and a number of documents on making conventional explosives from easy-to-obtain ingredients. The 25-page 'Superbomb' document, handwritten in Arabic, was an elementary primer on nuclear weapons. The text exhibits an understanding of basic nuclear physics and chemistry but lacks familiarity with nuclear weapons' design and manufacture, describing the complicated process of laser enrichment as a 'simple' method to pursue, and presents several properties of plutonium and uranium but does not discuss the production of weapons components out of these materials.

Osama bin Laden's efforts to acquire WMD through Pakistan are outlined in 2009, a US Congressional Research Service Report entitled 'Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons: Proliferation and Security Issues'. The report quotes the former CIA Director, George Tenet, as saying that the US had 'received fragmentary information from an intelligence service' in 1998 that Osama bin Laden had 'sent emissaries to establish contact' with the network. A Q Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear programme, was also a businessmen who created a centralized 'one-stop shop' for anything on nuclear weapons, whose network offered technical advice, parts and customer support to anyone interested, prompting Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to call it the 'Wal-Mart of private-sector proliferation'. The Khan Research Laboratories, a government-supported nuclear facility just outside Islamabad, reportedly offered 24-hour technical assistance to customers and even had colour brochures printed up — advertising centrifuges and other components for sale — to give to prospective clients at arms fairs.

Given the history of nuclear proliferation by Pakistan under the leadership of A Q Khan and supported by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) over the years, it would not be surprising if it were found that even the UTN was officially backed by the government of Pakistan or elements within it. George Tenet therefore concludes that 'it appeared that the UTN's contacts with the Taliban and al-Qaeda may have been supported, if not facilitated, by elements within the Pakistani military and intelligence establishment'. This raises the spectre of al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups operating from the AfPak complex attempting to acquire WMD, including chemical and biological weapons.

Who controls Pakistan's nuclear weapons?

According to Shaun Gregory, Director of the Pakistan Security Research Centre, at the University of Bradford in the UK, Pakistan's decision-making process on nuclear weapons is almost exclusively the domain of the military, despite the creation of a National Command Authority. Therefore, when in August 2011, Musharraf — who is again running for the presidency of Pakistan — referred to 'these…assets [nuclear weapons] which are the pride of Pakistan, assets which are dispersed and very secure in very secure places, guarded by a corps of 18,000 soldiers', he was only reiterating the official position that Pakistan's nuclear weapons were safe and secure.

However, contrary to the safe hands theory being dished out by the Pakistani establishment, the journal of the Combating Terrorism Centre at West Point in July 2009 reported that 'home-grown terrorists' had tried to enter Pakistani nuclear facilities three times between 2007 and 2008, when Pakistan was wracked by rioting and a series of destructive suicide bombings. Shaun Gregory writes: 'These have included an attack on the nuclear missile storage facility at Sargodha on November 1, 2007, an attack on Pakistan's nuclear air base at Kamra by a suicide bomber on December 10, 2007, and, perhaps most significantly, the August 20 2008 attack when Pakistani Taliban suicide bombers blew up several entry points to one of the armament complexes at the Wah cantonment, considered one of Pakistan's main nuclear weapons assembly sites.' And finally came the attack on PNS Mehran on May 22 2011 by Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan fighters. Therefore, the intentions of the terrorists are very clear. They will try their best to get hold of some kind of WMD with which to wreak destruction on the United States. That remains a clear and present danger to the US.

In addition, the following points need to be remembered. One has the benefit of Shaun Gregory's perceptive study to turn to in this regard. He points to the geographic location of the Pakistani nuclear sites as being mainly on the western front, making them vulnerable to penetration by militant elements. Equally important to keep in mind are the jihadi elements within the Pakistan Army and intelligence establishment. Lest we forget, Hamid Gul, a former DG of the ISI, was member of the UTN! Gregory rightly asserts that 'today a significant proportion of Pakistan's military are members of the main Islamist political party Jamaat-I-Islami, and many in the ranks are linked through ties of family and biradari to extremist groups'. So, the penetration of the military and in turn the nuclear facilities is not as impossible task as is being made out. True, the terrorists may find it difficult to actually steal a nuclear weapon, but that attempts have been made both covertly and overtly, and will continue to be made, presents a challenge to the security forces around the world.

The US has long planned to take out Pakistani nuclear weapons if there is a jihadi threat or they believe that they threaten American interests. Plans have been made to use Special Forces for this task. A US NBC report claims that the US President would authorize the taking out of Pakistan's 100-odd nuclear weapons in the following scenarios: 'Pakistan plunging into internal chaos, terrorists mounting a serious attack against a nuclear facility, hostilities breaking out with India or Islamic extremists taking charge of the government or the Pakistan army.'

Cited above are four attempts made on military installations, with nuclear weapons carriers or possibly components that would go into the assembly of a nuclear weapon. The American view is best summarized by Jeffery T Richelson, an intelligence historian who writes: 'The focus on Pakistan is the result of its being both the least stable of the nine nuclear weapons states and the one where there has been significant support for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, not only among the general population but also within the military and intelligence forces.'

The United States, which is well aware of the history of Pakistan's nuclear proliferation, has been worried and should remain alert to the Pakistan-al-Qaeda link as far as WMD are concerned. At one point in time, they closed their eyes to the proliferation by A Q Khan, but once they found that Pakistan's nuclear scientists were supping with al-Qaeda, their perception of the threat changed. In that sense, 9/11 changed the American world view. Even though the Khan network has been disrupted, it is always possible that it survives in one form or another and the second rung of leadership after bin Laden is seeking to acquire chemical or biological WMD.

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