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CNS Research StoryProliferation Unbound: Nuclear Tales from Pakistan
By Gaurav Kampani February 23, 2004
The Iranian and Libyan revelations have exposed a vast black market in clandestine nuclear trade comprising of middle men and shell companies; clandestine procurement techniques; false end-user certifications; transfer of blueprints from one country, manufacture in another, transshipment to a third, before delivery to its final destination. But even more remarkably, the investigations of Iranian and Libyan centrifuge-based uranium enrichment efforts have exposed the central role of the former head of Pakistan's Khan Research Laboratories (KRL), Dr. A.Q. Khan, in the clandestine trade. Detailed information has surfaced about transfers of technical drawings, design specifications, components, complete assemblies of Pakistan's P-1 and P-2 centrifuge models, including the blueprint of an actual nuclear warhead from KRL. But the transfer of hardware apart, there is equally damning evidence that Khan and his top associates imparted sensitive knowledge and know how in secret technical briefings for Iranian, North Korean, and Libyan scientists in Pakistan and other locations abroad. Three decades ago, Khan, with the support of Pakistan's government, set out to create a new model of proliferation. He used centrifuge design blueprints and supplier lists of companies that he had pilfered from URENCO's facility in the Netherlands to launch Pakistan's nuclear weapons program. In the process, he perfected a clandestine model of trade in forbidden technologies outside formal government controls. By the end of the 1980s, after KRL acquired the wherewithal to produce highly-enriched uranium for a nuclear weapons program, it reversed course and began vending its services to other clients in the international system. KRL and Khan's first client was Iran (or possibly China even earlier); but the list gradually expanded to include North Korea and Libya. Starting in the late 1980s, Khan and some of his top associates began offering a one-stop shop for countries that wished to acquire nuclear technologies for a weapons program. Khan's key innovation was to integrate what was earlier a disaggregated market place for such technologies, design, engineering, and consultancy services; and in the process offer clients the option of telescoping the time required to develop a nuclear weapons capability. As independent evidence of diversions from KRL has come to light, the Pakistani government has swiftly sought to distance itself from Khan and his activities. President Pervez Musharraf's regime has publicly denied that it or past Pakistani state authorities ever authorized transfers or sales of sensitive nuclear weapons-related technologies to Iran, Libya, or North Korea. Islamabad attributes Khan's clandestine nuclear trade to personal financial corruption, abuse of authority, and megalomania. Alarmed that Khan's past indiscretions might directly implicate the Pakistani military and state authorities, the Musharraf regime also launched an internal probe to apparently get a clearer picture of the activities of its top nuclear lab and senior scientists. In fall 2003, Pakistani investigators traveled to Iran, Dubai, Vienna, and Libya to investigate US and IAEA complaints against Khan. They discovered that the complaints were borne out by evidence; and more alarmingly, that Khan had apparently made unauthorized deals unbeknownst to Islamabad and reaped huge personal financial rewards in the process. Since October-November 2003, Khan and his close associates' movements have been restricted. While Khan himself has been under placed under informal house arrest, his aides are undergoing what Pakistani government spokesmen politely describe as "debriefing sessions." In late January 2004, the government ultimately stripped Khan of his cabinet rank and fired him from his position as senior advisor to the chief executive. As part of a deal, Khan made a public apology on television before the Pakistani nation. In that apology, he admitted to personal failings, accepted responsibility for all past proliferation activities, and absolved past and present Pakistani state authorities of any complicity in his acts. In return, the Jamali cabinet granted Khan a conditional pardon. However, Khan's senior aides remain in custody and the government has not made up its mind on whether to press formal charges against them for violating the state's national secrets or to pardon them. Most proliferation specialists and
independent observers of Pakistani politics have watched the surreal saga of
what is perhaps the greatest proliferation scandal in history with disbelief.
This research report provides an overview of the evidence that has surfaced in the last three months to paint a clearer picture of what we now know of Khan and KRL's contributions to Iran, North Korea, and Libya's clandestine centrifuge-based uranium enrichment programs. It reviews the internal debate and finger pointing in Pakistan, and analyzes the narrative presented by President Musharraf's regime in its defense. The report also outlines some of the reasons for the Bush administration's muted response and concludes by offering a net assessment of the strategic implications of the new disclosures. What Do We Now Know? Although Pakistan has admitted that its nuclear scientists and entities engaged in clandestine nuclear transfers to Iran, North Korea, and Libya during the period 1989-2003, the full extent and nature of those transfers are still unclear. Iran has still not made a full disclosure about its two-decades-old centrifuge enrichment program. Scientists and engineers at the US Department of Energy are still in the process of analyzing documents and equipment turned over by Libya. And North Korea maintains that it never admitted to pursuing a clandestine centrifuge-based uranium enrichment program in October 2002. But despite existing gaps, there is evidence that nuclear transfers to Iran from Pakistan occurred during 1989-1995.[1] According to Pakistani government sources, North Korea obtained similar assistance between the years 1997-2001.[2] However, US intelligence agencies believe that strategic trade between Pyongyang and Islamabad continued as late as August 2002.[3] Khan also began cooperating with Libya in 1997and such cooperation continued until fall 2003.[4] All three countries - Iran, North
Korea, and Libya - obtained blueprints, technical design data,
specifications, components, machinery, enrichment equipment, models, and notes
related to KRL's first generation P-1 and the next generation P-2
centrifuges.
Similarly, Khan and his associates supplied Pyongyang with centrifuge and enrichment machines, and depleted uranium hexaflouride gas (UF6).[7] Orders for the North Korean contract were placed in 1997 and deliveries continued until 1999. KRL also rendered further technical assistance to Pyongyang during 1999-2001.[8] Some of the shipments to North Korea were flown directly from Pakistan using chartered and Pakistan Air Force transports.[9] In 1997 Khan supplied Libya with 20 assembled P-1 centrifuges; with components for an additional 200 more for a pilot facility. The Libyans also obtained 1.87-tons of UF6 in 2001; the consignment was directly airlifted from Pakistan on board a Pakistani airline. IAEA sources believe that amount is consistent with the requirements for a pilot enrichment facility. In September 2000, Libya placed an order for 10,000 centrifuges of the more advanced P-2 model. Component parts for the centrifuges began arriving in Libya by December 2002.[10] However, a subsequent consignment of parts was intercepted by US intelligence agencies in October 2003, after which Libya decided to make a full disclosure and terminate its nuclear weapons program. But more alarmingly, in either late 2001 or early 2002, Khan also transferred the blueprint of an actual fission weapon to Libya as an added bonus.[11] The supply package to all the three countries did not just include hardware and design information. Khan and his associates also provided their clients integrated shopping solutions in a fragmented market. They shared sensitive information on supplier networks, manufacturers, clandestine procurement and smuggling techniques, and arranged for the manufacture, transport, and delivery of equipment and materials through a clutch of companies and middlemen based in South-East Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe.[12] Pakistani scientists and technicians held multiple briefing sessions for their Iranian counterparts in Karachi, and locations in Malaysia and Iran.[13] Briefings for Libyan scientists were held in Casablanca and Istanbul.[14] Khan also visited North Korea nearly a dozen times, and it is likely that technical briefing sessions for North Korean scientists were arranged during those visits. But there are also reports that North Korean scientists were allowed to train at KRL itself.[15] In addition, Pakistani engineers and scientists were also on hand for providing consulting advice and trouble-shooting services through intermediaries. US intelligence analysts believe that the nuclear weapon blueprint that Khan and his network sold Libya is most likely a design that China tested in the late 1960s; and later shared with Pakistan. Apparently the design documents transferred from Pakistan contain information in both Chinese and English, establishing their Chinese lineage; they also provide conclusive evidence of past Chinese assistance to Pakistan's nuclear weapons program.[16] The blueprint provides the design parameters and engineering specifications on how to build an implosion weapon weighing over 1,000 pounds that could be delivered using aircraft or a large ballistic missile.[17] Analysts believe that the design is not currently in use in Pakistan, which has graduated to building more advanced nuclear weapons.[18] However, the transfer of an actual weapon design to Tripoli has left open the question whether Tehran and Pyongyang obtained a similar copy; whether the design is still in circulation; or who else might have obtained it. In the mid-1990s, Khan also set up a clandestine meeting with a top Syrian official in Beirut to offer help with setting up a centrifuge enrichment facility for an HEU-based nuclear weapons program.[19] In mid-1990, he also made a similar offer through a Gulf-based intermediary to Saddam Hussein's regime. However, the Iraqi government ignored the offer in the erroneous belief that it was likely a sting operation or a scam.[20] There is also fragmentary and indirect evidence to suggest that Khan may have offered his nuclear services to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.[21] But little is publicly know about the outcome of those overtures. The Internal Blame Game The Pakistani government claims that the nuclear trade with Iran, North Korea, and Libya was unauthorized; that KRL proliferated centrifuge technologies, equipment, and related intellectual property clandestinely and illegally, unbeknownst to military oversight authorities formally in charge of the nuclear weapons program. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has publicly accused A.Q. Khan and his top aides of corruption and attributed their actions to financial gains.[22] In an attempt to distance Pakistani state authorities from the scandal's fallout, Musharraf has also suggested that the scientists were rogue operators, who abused the trust and autonomy granted by state authorities to pursue their personal agendas.[23] In calculated leaks to the press, senior Pakistani government officials have painted Khan as a megalomaniac; a publicity hound who created a larger-than-life image of himself. They have narrated tales of KRL's corrupt culture; of Khan's parceling of procurement contracts at exorbitant prices to family members and associates; bribes for procurement orders from vendors; Khan's palatial houses and real estate investments in Pakistan and abroad; his lavish lifestyle; and unaccounted for millions in secret bank accounts.[24] Pakistani government sources from the president on down have also made it plain that Khan's corruption and profiteering from proliferation activities were critical factors behind his removal from KRL in March 2001.[25] However, Khan has disputed Musharraf's allegations in private debriefings with Pakistani government investigators. Apparently Khan has made the case that he was pressured to sell nuclear technologies to Iran by two individuals close to former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. The first, Dr. Niazi, was a friend, while the latter, General Imtiaz Ali, served as military advisor to Bhutto.[26] Both individuals are now deceased. Khan has further alleged that aid for Iran's uranium enrichment program was also approved by then Chief of Army Staff, General (retd.) Mirza Aslam Beg (1988-1991). Similarly, Khan claims the nuclear-for-missile deal with the Kim Jong Il regime was backed by two former army chiefs, Generals (retd.) Abdul Waheed Kakar (1993-1996) and Jehangir Karamat (1996-1998). The latter, according to Khan, made a secret trip to North Korea in December 1997 and presided over efforts to obtain Nodong ballistic missiles from that country. Khan's friends have also privately suggested that General Pervez Musharraf, who succeeded Karamat and took over responsibility for the Ghauri missile program in 1998, had to have known about the transfers to North Korea.[27] In interviews with Pakistani government investigators, Khan apparently insisted that no investigation would be complete until all the actors - Khan, former army chiefs, and other senior military and government officials - were questioned together. Equally significant, Khan is believed to have challenged his interlocutors' reticence to probe the nature of the technology and equipment transfers to North Korea as against the blanket charge of proliferation; the import of his suggestion being that either the equipment and material transferred to North Korea would not enable it to enrich uranium to weapons-grade in the short-term, or alternatively, that the logistics of the equipment and technology transfers would directly implicate the military and state authorities. [28] There are also rumors that Khan has smuggled out evidence with his daughter Dina, who is a British citizen, which would directly implicate senior Pakistani officials in an unfolding scandal.[29] Fearing that any further washing of Pakistan's dirty nuclear laundry in public could cause irretrievable harm to the Pakistani military and state authorities, Musharraf has sought to cap the controversy by pardoning Khan for his past transgressions. In the bargain, Khan has accepted personal responsibility for all acts of proliferation and absolved the Pakistani state and the military from blame. However, in his contrite public confession on television, Khan declared that he acted in "good faith but on errors of judgment," obliquely hinting at the likely involvement of the Pakistani military and other state authorities in his activities.[30] Despite the Pakistani government's attempts to absolve itself from the charges of proliferation, most independent analysts of Pakistani politics remain unconvinced that A.Q. Khan and his associates could have engaged in nuclear transfers over nearly two decades without sanction or tacit acknowledgement from sections or individuals within the Pakistani government. The Pakistani military's tight control over the nuclear weapons program, multiple layers of security surrounding it, the exports of machinery and hardware from Pakistan, as well as rumors, leaks, and past warnings about Pakistan's nuclear cooperation with Iran and North Korea by Western intelligence agencies, have led analysts to believe that the current effort to pin the blame on a small number of senior officials from KRL is a cynical ploy to prevent the Pakistani military and state from being implicated in the unfolding scandal.[31] Musharraf's Narrative Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has deployed four arguments to explain why Khan and his associates were able to proliferate nuclear technologies and secrets for nearly two decades without the knowledge of successive Pakistani governments. First, he has argued that during the covert phase of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, which lasted from 1975-1998, A.Q. Khan and KRL had to rely on shell companies, clandestine procurement techniques, smuggling networks, and middlemen for the purchase of equipment and technologies that were on the export control lists of advanced industrial countries. Thus the same networks that supplied the Pakistani nuclear weapons effort were redirected to meet the demand for similar technologies in the international market. Once Khan and his associates developed a successful model of clandestine trade in forbidden technologies outside formal governmental control, they were able to offer their services for financial rewards to other bidders in the international system.[32] During a press briefing earlier in February, Musharraf explained that since Pakistan's nuclear weapons program was covert until 1998, civilian governments were out of the nuclear decision-making loop. But more astonishingly, he sought to peddle the line that even former army chiefs, who were supposed to exercise oversight authority over KRL, never knew of the intimate happenings within the entity. Musharraf's proffered explanation for successive army chiefs' ignorance: the KRL's near total organizational autonomy. According to Musharraf, such autonomy was an essential precondition for the lab to achieve its mandated objectives However, the army never imagined that Khan would abuse the trust and confidence reposed in him by the state. Furthermore, Khan gradually capitalized on his successes and the state's mythologizing of his contributions to elevate himself to the status of a national hero. Hence, the organizational demands for success during the development phase of the nuclear weapons program, as well as Khan's nearly unassailable position within domestic Pakistani politics, made it difficult for successive army chiefs to confront him for his transgressions.[33] Third, Musharraf maintains that the United States did not share intelligence on Khan's proliferation network with the Pakistani government until very recently.[34] In the absence of such damning evidence, it was difficult for the Pakistani government to proceed against Khan and his associates.[35] And finally, Musharraf insists that the bulk of the proliferation from Pakistan occurred in the form of intellectual property transfers; the implication of his suggestion being that it is easier for governments to safeguard industrial hardware and nuclear material than the transmission of software.[36] The Counter Narrative Musharraf's defense provides some useful information on the historical evolution of Pakistan's nuclear command authority, the relationship between the military and the nuclear entities and scientists, and damning disclosures about Khan's personal corruption, but it does not offer credible explanations as to how or why successive Pakistani governments remained ignorant of Khan's activities for such a long period of time; or why they should not be held to account. On balance, the historical evidence points in the direction of a more complex and murkier reality that casts aspersions on Musharraf's motivations. Admittedly, it is easier for governments to safeguard industrial hardware and equipment in comparison to software which resides in the neural networks of human beings, floppy disks, CDs, and computers. Humans can carry software on their person, unbeknownst to oversight authorities; and transmit it either verbally or electronically. However, evidence has surfaced that Khan and his associates proliferated both hardware and software. Pakistan's Attorney General Makhdoom Ali Khan recently told the Rawalpindi bench of the Lahore High Court that the scientists transferred "secret codes, nuclear materials, substances, machinery, equipment components, information, documents, sketches, plans, models, articles and notes entrusted them [scientists] in their official capacity."[37] Given the logistics of moving machinery and materials, it is extraordinarily difficult to believe that the Pakistani military and its intelligence agencies had no inkling of the nuclear trade. Musharraf has offered a novel explanation as to why the army did not know of the intimate happenings at KRL. According to him, the military commanders tasked with KRL's security detail were under the lab's autonomous control; the military officers were answerable to Khan and not the army high command.[38] However, most independent observers who are familiar with the Pakistani Army's professional ethics, training procedures, and command protocols are skeptical that this would indeed be the case.[39] Others more familiar with KRL's security detail are equally dismissive of Musharraf's explanations.[40] Pakistani government sources have also suggested that KRL's security detail was designed to prevent penetration and sabotage of the nuclear weapons program from the outside. But it was not particularly well-designed to prevent the egress of men, material, and equipment in the reverse direction.[41] The obvious flaw of designing a one-dimensional security model apart, the nature of nuclear cooperation with Iran and North Korea suggests that sensitive nuclear facilities in Pakistan were penetrated from the outside; and the osmosis of technical exchange between the scientists and entities was facilitated by formal nuclear cooperation agreements between the Pakistani and Iranian and later North Korean governments.[42] Iranian nuclear scientists reportedly traveled to the port city of Karachi in Pakistan for technical briefings during the early 1990s.[43] The ease with which foreign scientists and technicians gained access to Pakistani scientists and sensitive facilities stands in sharp contrast to the difficulty former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto encountered while trying to gain similar access. For example, the army denied Bhutto security clearances to visit KRL during her first tenure as prime minister (1988-1990).[44] General (retd.) Mirza Aslam Beg allegedly withheld details about the nuclear weapons program from the prime minister on the rationale that "briefings at Kahuta were on a need-to-know basis."[45] In another episode in 1979, the French ambassador to Pakistan was physically manhandled by Pakistani security forces when he made the mistake of venturing close to KRL.[46] Thus, some of the anecdotal evidence from the late 1970s and early 1990s undercuts the army's recent assertions about lapses in KRL's security network. Two former cabinet ministers in the first Nawaz Sharif government (1990-1993), Senator Ishaq Dar and Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan have stated for the record that in 1991 former Chief of Army Staff General (retd.) Mirza Aslam Beg lobbied Sharif for the transfer of nuclear technology to a "friendly state," for the sum of $12 billion. The proposed figure was apparently supposed to underwrite Pakistan's defense budget for the decade.[47] According to Dar, a representative of that "friendly state" accompanied Beg when he made the offer. However, Sharif, rejected Beg's proposal. Similarly, Nisar Ali Khan maintains that in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, Beg proposed that Pakistan should sell its nuclear technology to Iran as part of a grand alliance. The general's reasoning: that after the United States succeeded in defeating Iraq, it might be the turn of Iran and Pakistan next. Sharif, according to Nisar, rejected Beg's proposal. But this does not rule out the possibility that Khan and Beg might have acted independently of the prime minister, who never had control over the nuclear weapons program in any case.[48] Musharraf's protestation to the contrary, Pakistani governments have had some knowledge about Khan's activities and about equipment and technology transfers from KRL to Iran and North Korea. There is evidence to suggest that every army chief from the late 1980s has known of Tehran's interest in acquiring enrichment technologies from Pakistan for a weapons program. Apparently, Pakistani investigators have also found evidence that Khan informed Beg of equipment transfers to Iran. However, Beg claims that he received assurances from Khan that the equipment being sold to the Iranians was outmoded and disused and would not enable them to enrich uranium in the short term.[49] Washington has also raised proliferation concerns with Islamabad repeatedly since the early 1990s. Former US Ambassador to Pakistan Robert B. Oakley (1988-1991) recalls Beg telling him in 1991 that he had reached an understanding with the head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards to help Tehran with its nuclear program in return for an oil facility and conventional weapons. An alarmed Oakley broached the subject with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.[50] Subsequently, according to Oakley, Sharif and Pakistani President Ghulam Ishaq Khan informed the Iranian government that Pakistan would not carry such an agreement through.[51] In the mid-1990s, when UNSCOM inspectors in Iraq uncovered documentary proof that Khan had approached Saddam Hussein's regime with offers of assistance in the area of centrifuge-based uranium enrichment, the Pakistani government declared that it had conducted an internal investigation and found the allegations to be fraudulent.[52] Similarly, Washington began querying Islamabad about possible nuclear transfers to North Korea as early as 1998.[53] Musharraf also recently confirmed that the ISI raided an aircraft bound for North Korea in 2000 after it was tipped off that KRL was transferring sensitive equipment to Pyongyang; but that raid drew a blank.[54] More recently, US State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher took issue with Musharraf's charge that Washington did not provide the Pakistani government with timely intelligence against Khan; Boucher insisted that the United States had "discussed nonproliferation issues with Pakistan repeatedly, over a long period of time, and it's been an issue of concern to us and President Musharraf...so it's not a single moment of information."[55] Besides the intelligence inputs that Islamabad received from Washington, whistle blowers within the Pakistani nuclear establishment began warning the Pakistani military and its intelligence agencies about Khan's corruption as early as the late 1980s.[56] Musharraf recently admitted that he suspected Khan of clandestine proliferation activities as early as 1998; and that it was a critical factor behind his removal from KRL in March 2001.[57] Yet, despite Khan's removal, US intelligence tracked strategic trade between Pakistan and North Korea until fall 2002. More alarmingly, Khan and his network coordinated nuclear trade with Libya until October 2003; and Khan, despite being moved out of KRL, was able to transfer a nuclear weapons design to Libya in late 2001 or early 2002.[58] But oddly enough, despite mounting evidence that Khan might have profited illegally by selling the Pakistani state's most sensitive secrets, the Pakistani military did not consider it fit to investigate him or his top associates until October 2003. Despite repeated foreign government entreaties, published documentary evidence, foreign intelligence leaks, and news reports alleging nuclear proliferation to Iran and North Korea over a period of 14 years, the proverbial Pakistani military watchdog did not bark. Furthermore, even after the Pakistani government launched an internal probe after receiving incriminating intelligence from the United States and the IAEA in fall 2003, Pakistani investigators visited Iran, Libya, Dubai, and Malaysia, but excluded North Korea from their itinerary.[59] The Pakistani military's lack of institutional curiosity in investigating the internal affairs of its nuclear scientists and labs, physical transfers of machinery, nuclear materials, and components from Pakistan over land routes and on board chartered and air force transports, travel of Pakistani scientists to Iran, and training/briefing sessions for Iranian and North Korean scientists in Pakistan, suggests that the Musharraf regime is being frugal with the truth. In fact, Musharraf alluded to the latter reality in an address to Pakistani journalists when he said that even if for the sake of argument it were accepted that the Pakistani military and governments were involved in nuclear proliferation, the Pakistani press should avoid debating the issue out of deference to the country's national interests.[60] Washington's Muted Response Washington's public reaction to what is perhaps the greatest proliferation scandal in history has been relatively muted. Although US officials have privately expressed disbelief that such massive diversions from KRL could have occurred for nearly two decades without the knowledge and consent of the Pakistani military, the Bush administration has publicly accepted Musharraf's fiction that Khan's was a rogue operation; and that the Pakistani military and other state functionaries were probably unaware of some of Khan's operations. Senior administration officials have also publicly lauded President Musharraf for investigating Khan and his associates and strengthening internal controls over KRL.[61] However, Washington has privately warned Musharraf that Pakistan risks jeopardizing the $3 billion proposed economic aid package and its relations with the United States. During a visit to Islamabad in October 2003, US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage personally presented evidence against Khan to Musharraf and threatened that Pakistan could be reported to the United Nations Security Council and suffer sanctions if it failed to put an end to Khan's nuclear entrepreneurship permanently.[62] The implicit bargain between Washington and Islamabad: the United States will avoid publicly hectoring and embarrassing Musharraf in return for a Pakistani undertaking to tear up Khan's clandestine nuclear trading network from its "roots"; intelligence inputs that would help US intelligence agencies fill critical gaps in their knowledge about the scale, depth, and modus operandi of the clandestine global trade in nuclear technologies; and details on North Korea[63] and possibly Iran's uranium enrichment programs. Washington's public nonchalance has also been determined by the necessity of avoiding actions that might rebound on Musharraf domestically. The Bush administration regards Musharraf and the Pakistani Army as critical allies in the global war on terror against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Since the launch of the Afghan war in fall 2001, Pakistan has rendered critical intelligence, logistical, and military support for US military operations. Pakistan's cooperation has also been critical in apprehending al-Qaeda operatives taking shelter in Pakistan and along the Pakistan-Afghan border. Because Osama Bin Laden and his key lieutenants remain at large, and because the United States needs Pakistan's political support to pacify the resurgent Taliban threat in Afghanistan, the Bush administration has resorted to quiet diplomacy to force changes in Islamabad's proliferation policies.[64] In this regard, re-imposition of US economic sanctions would only compound the problem. On the one hand, because the drivers that led to Pakistani proliferation in the past would remain in place, economic privation would only create further incentives for the Pakistani military to feed its corporate appetite through weapons of mass destruction-related technology sales abroad. On the other hand, the consequences of military action against Pakistan would be infinitely worse. If the United States ever made the mistake of degrading or destroying the Pakistani military's coercive capacity, Pakistan might become a failed state, and the problem of securing its nuclear facilities, fissile materials, scientific personnel, and actual weapons and delivery systems would become a security nightmare. Because it is likely that some
of past clandestine nuclear trade had the tacit if not formal support of the
Pakistani military, the United States is also perhaps trying to avoid actions
that would place Musharraf, who is also the head of the army, in an
institutional quandary.
Finally, the US reticence in publicly rebuking Islamabad for its proliferation transgressions is an acknowledgement of the sensitive regard with which nuclear issues are treated in domestic Pakistani politics. Nuclear weapons are closely tied to the Pakistani nation's sense of self-worth and national identity. Pakistanis count their nuclear capability as one of the few areas of national achievement. Nuclear scientists are treated as cult figures; and until recently, the Pakistani state lionized Khan as a national hero.[66] Khan and the nuclear establishment also enjoy the support of the Islamist parties in Pakistan. Hence, Washington has been keen to avoid giving the impression that it is intruding into the holy sanctum of Pakistan's nuclear politics; or doing anything that would compromise Pakistan's nuclear weapons program. But, behind the façade of public calm, US policy makers have launched a quiet program of cooperation to help Pakistan institute more reliable personnel reliability protocols, and enhance the safety and security of its nuclear warheads, fissile materials, and sensitive nuclear facilities.[67] Preliminary Conclusions Without a doubt, the new revelations show that Pakistan remains the most problematic nuclear state in the international system and perhaps the state of greatest proliferation concern. KRL's diversion of centrifuge blueprints, designs, models, complete assemblies, components, enriched uranium, and the actual design of a warhead itself without a nary afterthought of the likely political consequences of such actions, is unparalleled in the history of nuclear proliferation. In the mid-1970s and 1980s, Pakistan's nuclear weapons program presented a new model of proliferation. In the past, state-to-state cooperation had been the main conduit for the passage of nuclear weapons-related technologies. However, Pakistani entrepreneurs such as A.Q. Khan demonstrated how loose export control regulations, dual-use technologies, market ethics, and a fragmented manufacturing base spread across different countries could be exploited by a determined proliferator to build an integrated fissile material production complex. The Pakistanis perfected a system of clandestine trade through middlemen and shell companies; through clandestine procurement techniques, false end-user certificates, and diversion of industrial goods and technologies placed on the export control lists of advanced industrial nations using circuitous routes. But that effort took about a decade to accomplish.[68] In comparison, new proliferators such as North Korea and Libya have been able to reduce substantially the lead time for setting up similar facilities. Libya, for example, was able to set up a pilot uranium enrichment plant within five years; and could have conceivably extracted enough enriched uranium for a single nuclear weapon on a crash basis.[69] The critical difference between the Pakistani and North Korean and Libyan cases is that the latter tapped into the services of nuclear entrepreneurs such as Khan who provided a one-stop shop for uranium enrichment programs: integrated shopping solutions for complete centrifuge assemblies; component parts and manufacturing services; enriched uranium; engineering consultancies and trouble shooting services; and finally the blueprint of an actual fission weapon itself. Thus the same fragmented network that fed the Pakistani nuclear weapons effort morphed into what IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei described as an underground international Wal Mart for nuclear weapons technologies. Any analysis of the proliferators' motivations will have to wait until we have a more definitive idea of whether Khan's activities were entirely a rogue operation or conducted at the behest of the Pakistani military. Revelations of Khan's disproportionate wealth and the modus operandi of his associates clearly suggest that money was a primary motivation. But Khan has also justified his actions as means to help other "Muslim" nations and divert Western attention and pressure from the Pakistani nuclear weapons program.[70] However his sales to secular regimes in North Korea and Libya, and offers to other secular regimes in Syria and Iraq suggest that although ideology and antipathy to the West might have played some role, it was in part a cover to mask his greed and megalomania. Although the Pakistani government has distanced itself from Khan's activities, it is difficult to believe that a diversion of such massive scale and scope over a period of nearly two decades could have occurred without the knowledge of oversight authorities within the Pakistani government. Evidently, Khan made nuclear transfers to Iran under the rubric of a secret peaceful nuclear cooperation agreement that the two countries signed in the mid-1980s. The historical record shows that former Pakistani president, the late General Zia-ul-Haq, was aware of Iran's interest in purchasing Pakistani enrichment technology that would enable it to enrich uranium to weapons grade. The historical record is equally clear that General (retd.) Beg, who immediately succeeded Zia, toyed with the idea of nuclear technology sales to finance Pakistan's defense budget. Khan also informed Beg of the equipment sales to Iran. However, Beg insists that Khan had assured him that the equipment being sold was outmoded, old, and disused, and would not enable Tehran to enrich uranium in the near term. Similarly, the Musharraf regime has never admitted to Nodong imports from North Korea or explained how it cobbled together the resources to pay for them. But there is also the possibility that the Pakistani military approved transfers of a limited scope and nature to Iran and North Korea; but that Khan and his associates abused the authority granted them to make unauthorized sales of goods and services and reap huge personal financial rewards in the process. However, the Musharraf regime's attempt to absolve the Pakistani state of all blame in the current controversy by suggesting that Pakistani scientists acted out of pecuniary and career goals borders on the preposterous. If the above argument were accepted in principal, no future government in Islamabad could be held accountable for transfers or theft of fissile material, warheads, or other weapons-related technologies and know how from Pakistan. By Musharraf's logic, Khan and his associates could have also diverted weapons-grade uranium or an actual nuclear weapon itself to foreign clients and the Pakistani military would claim innocence. Even if the nuclear entities and scientists were acting independently, the Pakistani state is ultimately responsible for the guardianship of all nuclear assets, technologies, and personnel on its territory. Although Islamabad's proliferation record raises serious concerns, the current Pakistani government's assertion that its scientists and entities might have acted at cross purposes and in a manner unbeknownst to state authorities, is infinitely worse. For the record would then suggest that not only did civilian governments in Islamabad lack effective control over the nuclear weapons program during its developmental phase, but that the military too, which analysts believe effectively monitors the nuclear weapons effort, exercised only perfunctory control. The implications of such abdication of internal sovereignty by the state are staggering. It suggests that behind the façade of centralized control, Pakistan's strategic military-industrial complex is dangerously fragmented, compartmentalized, and autonomous; that government agencies lack effective oversight; and individuals act as authorities unto themselves. In light of their alleged past behavior, the possibility that such individuals might share secrets concerning the dark nuclear arts with other countries and terror groups for ideological and financial motivations is not as remote as it had once seemed. Iran's and Libya's revelations about their Pakistani connection are also likely to have a sobering effect on other proliferators in the international system. Proliferator states, rogue entities, scientists, engineers, manufacturers and suppliers can no longer feel assured that their identities will be protected by client states. Tripoli and Tehran's acts have also undermined the Pakistani Islamists' ahistoric notions of an imagined pan-Islamic community of Muslim nations. During a press conference, Musharraf raged that Pakistan had been outed by its Muslim brothers with whom it had shared its most sensitive defense technologies; and such treachery is the reason why Pakistanis should abandon chimeras of an "Islamic bomb."[71] Equally significant, the disclosure that Khan and his associates sold the blueprint of a nuclear weapon design, which the Chinese had shared with Pakistan, to Libya and possibly Iran and North Korea, is likely to embarrass China. It confirms what was known for a long time; that China helped Pakistan with the design for nuclear weapons. But despite the obvious strain on Sino-Pakistani relations, it remains unclear whether the new disclosures will lead Beijing to reappraise its decision to continue help for Pakistan's solid-fuel ballistic missile and possibly nuclear programs. Finally, although Pakistan can be expected to provide some intelligence inputs to help root out the clandestine international network in nuclear trade, the extent of its cooperation is likely to be limited. For Islamabad's own nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs have profited from such trade; and remain dependent on it. Recently, a South African businessman was discovered trying to illegally export "triggered spark gaps" that can be used in nuclear weapons to Pakistan through false end-user certification.[72] This episode is a small indicator of just how far Pakistan is from achieving self-sufficiency. Worse, most of the
drivers that led Pakistani entities such as KRL to proliferate nuclear
technologies in the past remain. Khan's greed was only one variable in the
proliferation equation. Other drivers such as the Pakistani military's
corporate appetite for a nuclear deterrent and maintaining proportional parity
with their larger and more powerful neighbor India, are constants in the
Pakistani political spectrum. Domestically as well, Pakistan's
institutions remain relatively undeveloped. Individuals dominate institutional
processes; there is little respect for the rule of law or constitution; and
critical sectors such as the nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs
remain beyond the pale of civilian oversight. It was this combination of factors
- the military's corporate desperation for nuclear and missile
deliverables, undeveloped institutions, personalization of power, fragmented and
compartmentalized authority structures, and the absence of civilian oversight
- that provided opportunities for Khan and his associates to peddle their
dangerous wares in the international market. Although the Pakistani Army appears
to be making efforts to tighten its grip on the nuclear and missile
military-industrial complex, the larger structural problems in the Pakistani
polity remain. And it is this combination of factors that might pave the way for
a similar recurrence in the future. It is also why Pakistan will require careful
monitoring and reform and remain one of the most significant foreign policy
challenges for the United States in the near and medium term.
Gaurav Kampani
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