By Shuja Nawaz
Few issues grab more attention on the global stage today
than the safety of Pakistan's
nuclear arsenal. The assumption in the West has always been that Pakistan cannot
adequately safeguard these weapons and that radical Islamists will grab them,
putting Western interests at risk in the region. While the fears may be real,
the stories that emerge are often not so real.
The latest version of the old "telephone game" seems to be
the piece that Shaun Gregory wrote for the CTC Sentinel
at West Point and that Peter
Bergen blogged about recently. Bergen's post
pointing out Gregory's claims on the AfPak Channel unleashed a virulent
series of comments in the blogosphere and a slew of follow-on press reports.
The gist of the message was that three attacks had been launched on Pakistan's
nuclear facilities. Gregory wrote that "a series of attacks on [Pakistan's]
nuclear facilities has ... occurred."
The unstated assumption was that these
attacks were coordinated and aimed to
capture nuclear weapons or materials. Gregory is a scholar who is not wont
to make claims without clear and verifiable evidence. Only he can clarify what
his intent was. Bergen's
position of authority in the world of journalism gave the story a fresh life.
Unfortunately, the message published on the AfPak Channel was
picked up worldwide with the speed of a brush fire and its assumptions are not supported by the facts about these three
attacks. None of them was aimed at getting into or seeking control of
nuclear assets.
Bear in mind the following:
The
facility at Wah is a massive ordnance complex that is known to manufacture
conventional weapons. It may or may not have nuclear weapons facilities inside
its enormous perimeter. Gregory does not offer any evidence on its nuclear
activity. The attack of August 21, 2008, on one gate and another explosion in a
bazaar near another gate of the Wah facility was acknowledged to the BBC by Pakistani
Taliban spokesman Maulvi Umar as retaliation for the deaths of "innocent women
and children" in the tribal territory of Bajaur. No mention of
any intent to penetrate or capture nukes.
The
attack of November
1, 2007, on the Pakistan Air Force bus carrying trainees near Sargodha in Central Punjab
also was not an attack on a nuclear
facility or storage site. It was a lone suicide bomber on a motorcycle who
crashed into the bus carrying the airmen. Security experts saw
this as retaliation for the air force attacks the previous months in the
Mir Ali area of North Waziristan.
Again,
one may assume that the Sargodha
air base might be used for loading or launching airborne nuclear weapons. But
there was no indication that this was an attack aimed at the Pakistani nuclear facilities or capabilities. Sargodha lies on the road
often used by Sunni Punjabi militant groups traveling to the Afghan border
region where they support the Pakistani Taliban, and sometimes al Qaeda, as
franchisees. This may well have been their bloody handiwork against a target of
opportunity. But there's no evidence of any attack on nuclear facilities here
either.
The third attack on
Kamra in December 2007 again does not provide any evidence of a plan to
penetrate the aeronautical complex where military and civilian aircraft and
spare parts are manufactured. The target was a bus carrying more than 30
children of Air Force personnel on their way to a school inside the complex. At
least five of them were injured. Kamra produces, among other things, parts for
the Boeing 777. There is no evidence offered by Gregory of any nuclear work
being conducted at Kamra.
The blogosphere has now picked up this story
and no doubt it will become part of the hyperbolic record on Pakistan's nuclear safeguards.
Unless it is retracted or clarified by the source: Shaun Gregory.
There is no perfect security for any nuclear system. Even
the United States
cannot account for all its nuclear assets or materials nor stop someone from flying
a nuclear armed bomber
across the country. But Pakistan
appears to be very serious about securing its nuclear assets. Its nuclear
safeguards are "robust"
according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies of London.
Indeed, Gregory too uses the same word to describe Pakistan's nuclear safeguards.
This latest story on Pakistan may be gripping but when
not supported by facts; it creates more noise than substance.
Shuja Nawaz is the director of the South Asia Center of the Atlantic
Council of the United States in Washington, D.C. He is the author of Crossed Swords: Pakistan, its Army, and the Wars Within (Oxford 2008) and FATA: A Most Dangerous Place (CSIS 2009).
AFP/Getty Images
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