Pakistan tested five nuclear bombs in 1998 and rapidly developed an arsenal of 50 or more nuclear bombs that can be deployed on missiles or aircraft against targets in India.

Yet for all its nuclear success, Pakistan itself has morphed into a slowly disintegrating country that is seen as a desirable asset for radical Islamic groups, varying from Al Qaeda to the Taliban. They see the country's nuclear arms as the proverbial pot of gold that awaits them at the end of a political rainbow.

When Bhutto launched his bid to secure the nuclear option for Pakistan, his primary motive was to somehow match the growing military might of neighbouring India. Using money extracted from oil-rich Arab countries and Iran, the Pakistani leader funded an ambitious effort headed by metallurgist AQ Khan who masterminded the theft of uranium enrichment technology from secret laboratories in Holland.

Khan, who is still alive, was so successful that he managed to create a vast procurement network that used the international black market to secure whatever he needed to apply the stolen technology for Pakistan's needs.
Yet those 'needs' are now seemingly open ended. According to one report, Islamabad has accumulated far more than 50 nuclear warheads, more like 80 to 100. And recent Congressional testimony by Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirms experts' fear that the size of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is indeed increasing.

Although the dimensions of this expansion are yet to be spelt out, there is evidence that Islamabad has authorised the production of extra bomb grade uranium. To add to international concerns, Pakistan is also in the process of building a new series of reactors that will produce bomb grade plutonium for a new generation of weapons that are lighter and more efficient to use.
The reactors are coming up at Khushab, about 100 miles from Islamabad. One month before the September 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S., a senior Pakistani nuclear scientist travelled to Afghanistan where he met Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al Zawahiri.

Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, a former director of Khushab, made statements in support of the Taliban and publicly stated that Pakistan should help other Islamic nations acquire nuclear weapons. A colleague, Abdul Majid, also visited Afghanistan where he and Mahmood met Bin Laden and Zawahiri. Two other Pakistani scientists, also said to have suspicious links to Al Qaeda, were spirited away to work at the Pakistani embassy in Myanmar where they are beyond the reach of U.S. investigators.

Hence the discomfiture of experts like Bruce Riedel, the U.S. diplomat turned scholar, who was recently quoted as saying that Pakistan 'has more terrorists per square mile than any place else on earth, and it has a nuclear weapons programme that is growing faster than any place else on earth.'
Pakistan's traditional friends in the Pentagon and CIA, those with long memories who gratefully remember the assistance they received from Islamabad during the Cold War, insist there is nothing to worry about. They say Washington has a special plan drawn up by a special commando unit, the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) that can infiltrate Pakistan and secure its warheads in the event of an emergency.

JSOC currently has units operating along the Afghan-Pakistan border and U.S. intelligence sources have been quoted as saying about Pakistan's nuclear arms, 'We have plans to secure them ourselves if things get out of hand. That is a big secondary mission for JSOC in Afghanistan.'

Admiral Mullen recently commented, 'I remain comfortable that the nuclear weapons in Pakistan are secure, that the Pakistani leadership and in particular the military is very focused on this. We in the United States have invested fairly significantly over the last three years, to work with them, to improve their security. And we're satisfied, very satisfied with that progress.'
Yet what Mullen and others fail to take into account is the international dimension of Pakistan's nuclear development. Leave aside the help that Pakistan has received from China to test its weapons and produce fissionable material. Far more serious are the understandings reached between Islamabad and those allied who have received Pakistan's nuclear expertise. Before she died Benazir Bhutto disclosed how she traded uranium enrichment secrets for North Korea's missile technology.

Decades earlier Benazir's father and his military successor, General Zia, accepted millions of dollars from each of Iran, Libya and Saudi Arabia to help build the world's first Islamic bomb. Syria too was part of the international procurement network from which the Pakistanis benefited.

Pentagon experts may be confident they have secured nuclear weapons stores within Pakistan's borders. But can they be equally confident that they have the full measure of the nuclear quid pro quo that Pakistan leaked to its friends in exchange for cash and other forms of help in previous years?

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