PAKISTAN Special

BY: SHIREEN M MAZARI

While much is being made of Pakistan's nuclear assets, facts on the ground reveal the US to be the most dangerous nuclear state in the world with a track record of failed command structures and failed safety systems for its reactors. Without making any value judgements, I want to simply present the data available from public international sources regarding the nuclear track record of the US.

First, and most recent, was the horrifying revelation that a US B52 bomber flew across the US carrying six nuclear-armed cruise missiles which led to a "Bent Spear" alert -- a code for an incident involving live nuclear weapons. Each of these W80 nuclear warheads had the destructive power of 10 Hiroshima bombs. According to the published data, the nukes were "lost" for 36 hours after the plane took off on August 29, 2007, from a base in North Dakota. So while western, including the US, analysts raise the bogey of the possibility of "loose nukes" in Pakistan in an almost hysterical fashion, we already have the reality of loose nukes in the US.

What is even more disturbing about these loose US nukes is the lack of security that seems to surround US nuclear weapons. Apparently, according to reports, the US airmen had replaced official procedures for handling these missiles with an "informally devised plan of their own". Given the extremist and psychologically disturbed personnel within the US military -- remember Abu Ghraib -- and the tendency of the US to bring in the private sector into the management of security, the international community should have some contingency plan to prevent the loose nukes incident being repeated again in the US. The danger is even more acute because religious extremists in the form of born-again Christians actually hold office in that country.

Nor is the nuclear safety problem in the US only related to loose nukes though that is certainly at the top of the threat spectrum. The other serious issue relating to US nuclear safety is of missing fissile and other nuclear-related material -- especially since unlike in Pakistan, in the US the private sector is a major part of the nuclear industry. Even a cursory look at the disappearance of nuclear-related material from US facilities should be enough to show the threat of nuclear terrorism from the US.

For instance, between 1957 and 1965, 100 kilograms of uranium 235 disappeared from a nuclear recycling plant in Apollo, Pennsylvania. This was weapons grade material and enough to produce more than one bomb. The president of the firm was reported to have close ties with Israel, but the mystery of the disappearance of this fissile material was never solved. In fact, US officials showed little reaction to Euratom's report of the missing uranium on the grounds that the material would have to undergo complicated reprocessing to be turned into a weapon. According to a report in Time magazine (April 12, 1976), Israel had operationalized a reprocessing facility in 1969, and had used it to produce a limited number of nuclear weapons.

Nor was this a one-off incident. Again, in 1979, nine kilograms of weapons grade uranium was found missing from a nuclear fuel plant in Erwin, Tennessee. More recently, in July 2004, an inventory of US classified weapons data revealed that four hard disk drives were missing. While two of the drives were subsequently found to have been improperly moved to a different building, the two others' remained unaccounted for.

Then, in October 2006, the BBC reported that the FBI is investigating whether information from a US nuclear weapons laboratory was found in a police drugs search of a New Mexico trailer park. According to police officials, the material and classified information recovered during the search appeared to have come from the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Earlier, in August 2006, it had been revealed that the lab had released sensitive nuclear research data by email. Interestingly, in an ABC News report in October 2005, Christopher Steele, the senior safety officer of the US government's nuclear weapons laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, had stated that he could not vouch for the safety of this facility. According to Steele, the equivalent of 5,000 pounds of plutonium in barrels of radioactive waste was being stored outside the laboratory under a tent. Also, March to April 2005, in New Jersey, a package containing 3.3g of Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) was inadvertently disposed of.

Finally, the US has also led the field in nuclear proliferation -- and not simply in the form of US citizens but the state itself, and the beneficiary was primarily Israel. The father of the US atomic bomb was eventually stripped of his security clearance by the US Atomic Energy Commission once his views on the hydrogen bomb production became suspect and his loyalty was suspected because of his alleged links to communist parties and groups.

According to Sir Timothy Garden, a fellow at Indiana University, Israel signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with the US in 1954. Between 1955 and 1966, more than 50 Israeli nuclear specialists completed a probationary period in the largest US scientific institutions. Israel received 6-10 kilograms of uranium a year starting in 1955. The total grew to 40 kilograms by 1966. The US provided Israel with a small nuclear reactor in 1955, which became operational in 1960. In 1958, US spy planes photographed the Dimona complex, but the US Atomic Energy Commission's (AEC) inspections of the Dimona facilities in the late 60s were hampered because of non-cooperation on the part of the Israeli government. In addition to controlling the extent of the inspections as well as the timing, according to Rohan Pearce, Israel constructed false control panels and bricked up corridors to fool AEC teams. As Pearce puts it, "an October 1969 US government memo, reporting on discussions between State Department officials and a representative from the AEC, implied that the US government had no problem with Israel possessing the facilities for building nuclear weapons." The memo made it clear that the US was not prepared to support a real inspections effort.

Despite all these public facts, the US continued to aid and abet Israel's nuclear and military capability. In October 1998, Israel and the US reached an agreement that committed the US to enhancing Israel's "defensive and deterrent capabilities." An agreement reported by the BBC in February 2000 between the two related to cooperation in nuclear and other energy technologies and this agreement allowed Israeli scientists to once again gain access to US nuclear technology. So it is hardly surprising to find that by October 2003 Israeli and US officials admitted that they had collaborated to deploy US-supplied Harpoon cruise missiles armed with nuclear warheads in Israel's fleet of Dolphin-class submarines.

Nor is this all. The British and Americans, who have tried to make themselves out as champions against WMD and staked so much on this issue, are themselves in cahoots on WMD build-up and proliferation -- the latter from the US to Britain. And all this is under the legal cover of their 1958 Mutual Defence Agreement which the US Congress has renewed every ten years. The US supplies of WMD to Britain are crucial to Britain's support for US policy and WMD exports to the UK include Trident D5 missiles and nuclear weapons components and technology. For years, Britain has also exploded its nuclear weapons at the Nevada test site in the US.

In September 1994, Greenpeace had released a report documenting the US government's violations of domestic law and international treaty obligations by transferring "sensitive nuclear technology" to Japan. The report, entitled, "The Unlawful Plutonium Alliance", revealed that the US Department of Energy had negotiated an agreement in 1987 which allowed for the transfer of advanced plutonium separation or "reprocessing" technology to Japan.

In the face of this evidence, which is merely a tip of the iceberg, and by its own judgemental standards, the US is clearly the most dangerous nuclear state in the globe.

The writer is director general of the Institute of Strategic Studies, Islamabad.

BY: SHAMSHAD AHMAD

Whether or not Richard Armitage said it, we have already gone back to the 'stone age'. The US did not have to bomb us to make Tora Bora out of Pakistan. We have done it ourselves.

Like the ape-men of the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods of the 'stone age', we are also fighting among ourselves as enemies of each other, and our sole 'equipment' for solving our problems now is our 'instinct' devoid of any tolerance and rationality. Like the early primates, we are no longer living in an organised or civilised state, and have no taste for the 'rule of law' or good governance.

We have really gone back to the 'preliterate' culture. We are good only at the 'use of fire, rocks, batons, clubs, tear gas and all sorts of other weapons' in running our day-to-day affairs, and our talent for learning is limited only to trial-and-error 'monkeying' or fumbling with dangerous situations which in modern vocabulary would be called 'crises'.

A country without constitution or the rule of law and where there is no independent judiciary and no fundamental freedoms and rights is no better than the 'stone age' cultures, and has no place in the contemporary comity of civilised nations. Government and politics, as the world knows them, are alien to Pakistan. Our scene pathetically bears resemblance to Thomas Hobbes's concept of primitive anarchy marked by a 'war of one against all' and to Rousseau's idealisation of the 'noble savage'.

Perhaps, Hegel spoke for us when he said that man can never learn anything from history. We have never been prone to learning any lessons from history. For us, history is nothing more than a 'tableau of crimes, follies and misfortunes of our ancestors'. Woefully, our history as a nation is replete with a series of crises and tragedies which has left us politically and economically unstable, socially fragmented and physically disintegrated. And yet, we are bent upon living through our history without any remorse or respite.

With Quaid-e-Azam's early demise, Pakistan was orphaned in its very infancy and lost the promise of a healthy youth with acute systemic deficiencies and normative perversities restricting its orderly natural growth. After the Quaid, its political bankruptcy and moral aridity left it without any sense of direction. There was no one there who could stabilise its 'adolescence' and take it out of its 'identity' crisis, and like a neglected spoilt child, Pakistan became a nuisance for its neighbours as well as for itself.

It started cutting itself into pieces, losing within less than quarter of a century not only its own half but also its very rationale that had inspired its founding fathers to struggle for a separate homeland for the Muslims of the subcontinent. The real Pakistan disappeared with its tragic dismemberment, and whatever was left has been the pillage ground with 'spoils of power' for its military-controlled feudal custodians.

World's history is replete with tales of 'self-centred' rulers who forgot that power never endures and considered their reign as a mere extension of their egos and idiosyncrasies. The seventeenth century French monarch, Louis XIV, was one classic example of this mentality. His famous dictum: "L'etat, c'est moi" ("I am the state") was an expression of arrogance and an affront to democratic norms, including the principle of 'separation of powers' and independence of judiciary.

The finality of those words enunciated with a note of casual self-assurance did speak of the king's determination to have his way but also showed his contempt for the sovereign will of the people. It is the same contempt that is being shown today to the sovereign will of the people of Pakistan. We are now learning what a 'dual-office' ruler in Pakistan considers to be the limits of his power - nothing. He owns the country and runs it with the law of 'tooth and claw'.

For any state in the contemporary world, its constitution is its solemn and inviolable 'social contract' which guarantees fundamental freedoms and basic rights of its citizens, including their inalienable right to choose or change their government through freely cast ballot, and which establishes the power and duties of the government and provides the legal basis for its institutional structure.

But in Pakistan, gross abuse of power, frequent assaults on constitutional supremacy and independence of judiciary, protracted spells of military rule and poor and corrupt governance have not only cost us our entire independent statehood, but also left us without any 'social contract'. Ours is a dismal record of constitutional and political delinquency and unrelenting 'omissions and commissions' with total insensitivity to what the contemporary world thinks of us.

We don't care if the Commonwealth has again expelled us for violating its fundamental values. Like an 'enfant terrible' we feel proud in being censured in global forums. We don't care for any value system. We have no convictions. Even our sins lack conviction. We don't take any thing to heart. Look, how gracefully we digested the tragedy of 1971, the worst that could happen to any country or a nation. We did not make it an 'issue of our core' for we had other 'core issues'.

We are not afraid of repeating the same blunders, and are ready for more of similar tragedies and debacles. Unsure of our future, we are still struggling through an identity crisis and personality 'schizophrenia' tearing the nation apart with no common sense of purpose or unity. We take pride in topping the lists of world's most corrupt, most autocratic, most violent, most unsafe and most dangerous countries on earth. We are beholden to Machiavelli who believed in what men do, and not what they ought to do. We deviated from our ideals. Machiavelli's political philosophy based on his infamous 'doctrine of necessity' became an integral part of our body politic. In fact, we allowed this doctrine to circumscribe the supremacy of our constitution, the rule of law and independence of judiciary, and have again opted for pre-historic 'one-man rule'.

Pakistan has seen a constant struggle between power and polity since the very beginning of its independence. Might always and everywhere considered wrong has never been claimed so 'right' as in Pakistan. The tragedy of our nation is that democracy was never allowed to flourish in our country. We have lost half the country and also our 'raison d'etre'. We have been living with extra-constitutional measures and systemic aberrations with no parallel in political philosophy or contemporary history.

The closest we could trace something alike is perhaps the Cromwellian era of the seventeenth century known for its assorted political experiments. These included the establishment and dissolution of several parliaments, military rule, rule of the saints, establishment and collapse of the 'lord protectorate' and finally an unsuccessful attempt by Cromwell in the form of 'humble petition and advice' to legalise his power through parliamentary authority.

Cromwell was however conscientious enough to realise that the source of his authority was force, not law. And he died a frustrated man within seven months after he dissolved the last parliament in disgust, having utterly failed in securing any popular basis for his power.

In Pakistan, as in England of the Cromwellian era, fundamental values of freedom, democracy and human dignity have been breached with impunity. Constitutions have been violated in letter and spirit with 'custom-made' judiciary always available to sanctify military coups. Institutional paralysis has kept the whole nation disenfranchised. Our feudal power structure has been exploited by successive military regimes to unleash a culture of political opportunism, corruption and ineptitude.

Unfortunately, our recognition in the comity of nations today is only as a 'breeding ground' for religious extremism and militancy and as a country afflicted with a culture of violence and sectarianism. Every act of violence anywhere in the world is traced back to our country in one way or the other. The US, in particular, sees Pakistan as the 'ground zero' and a pivotal lynchpin in its fight against terrorism, and for all purposes, now brackets Pakistan with already 'stone-aged' Afghanistan.

We have brought the anti-Taliban war into Pakistan which puts our armed forces on the wrong side of the people. Ours is the only country in the world today with an ongoing military operation against its own people. Our sovereignty is being violated with impunity. Our freedom of action in our own interest is being questioned and undermined. We are accepting the responsibility for crimes we have not committed.

As if this was not enough, according to latest reports, plans modelled on the American strategy in Anbar Province of Iraq are afoot to pour more money and arms (and perhaps more American soldiers too) into our tribal areas, thus making Pakistan another Iraq. This is an alarming signal.

It is time we woke up to the ominous reality. Pakistan is being weakened methodically by keeping it engaged on multiple external as well as domestic fronts. We are being ingeniously torn apart brick by brick with the ultimate goal of taking out, in a worst case scenario, our nuclear capability.

Our foremost challenge in this situation is not what we are required to do for others' interests; it is what we can do to serve our own national interests and to safeguard our national assets, including our sovereign independence and national dignity. This we can do under a new genuinely elected civilian government rooted in the will of the people and based on constitutional supremacy, rule of law and independence of judiciary.

Mr. Shamshad Ahmed is a former Foreign Secretary of Pakistan