Keeping the bomb

Pakistan on Sunday rejected all allegations raised by a US magazine in its cover story regarding the safety of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. In a statement, Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs spoke of "campaigns... orchestrated by quarters that are inimical to Pakistan."

In its December 2011 issue, The Atlantic claims that the article was the "product of dozens of interviews over the course of six months" in a joint project with National Journal. The main thrust of authors Jeffrey Goldberg and Marc Armbinder is that ever since the May 2 US raid on a house in Abbottabad which led to the death of Osama bin Laden, the Pakistani authorities are increasingly paranoid that the US might use similar tactics to "de-nuclearize" the country in the event of a take-over by jihadists. Or even, as the authors put it, attempt "to seize their country's nuclear weapons preemptively" – a step, which, according to the authors, many Pakistanis see as likely.

The article gives a full and detailed account of the "tormented relationship" between the United States and its South Asian ally since the days of the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan. But the account enters a territory which is as sensitive as it is unchartered with the focus on the storage and transport of nuclear materials within Pakistan.

'Keep us guessing'

Pakistan's Strategic Plans Division (SPD) ensures the safety of the country's nuclear weapons by moving them – always in the "de-mated" state, as it claims - among 15 or more facilities. Maintenance, too, necessitates the occasional removal from one site to another. But a third reason could be that Pakistan is moving the nuclear weapons from facility to facility "to keep American and Indian agencies guessing about their locations."

The article claims that nuclear weapons components are "sometimes moved over roads," and not in armored, well-defended convoys but in "civilian-style vehicles... in the regular flow of traffic." In other words: "nuclear bombs capable of destroying entire cities are transported in delivery vans on congested and dangerous roads," and that "in a country that is home to the harshest variants of Muslim fundamentalism." But the authors' real accusation is that "the Pakistani government is willing to make its nuclear weapons more vulnerable to theft by jihadists simply to hide them from the United States, the country that funds much of its military budget."

'Baseless and motivated'

Goldberg and Armbinder entitled their article "The Ally from Hell" and ended the teaser with the rhetorical question: "With a friend like this, who needs enemies?" Islamabad promptly reacted by calling their story "pure fiction, baseless and motivated." While there is no reason to doubt that the US must and will "maintain its association with a nuclear Pakistan over the long term," as the authors gathered from American strategists, equally valid grounds exist for the "paranoia (that) has spread through the Pakistani security elite" regarding a preemptive US strike on "Pakistani strategic assets." The article details contingency plans involving hundreds of US commandos to disable or seize those strategic assets in SEAL-type raids in the event of a collapse of the state or a jihadist coup.

It will still remain a "low-probability but high risk" global-crisis scenario on par with a possible US invasion of Iran or a possible conflict with China, for which preparations are nevertheless being made by US military planners, according to the authors of "The Ally from Hell."

Author: Arun Chowdhury (Reuters, AFP)
Editor: Grahame Lucas