By Dr. Rajkumar Singh (Professor and Head Department of Political Science Bhupendra Narayan Mandal University)
Although the issue of nuclear proliferation remained an alert regionally and globally, the nuclear test by North Korea in October 2006, put renewed focus on the dangers of nuclear proliferation.
Following the test New Delhi swiftly condemned the test and indirectly highlighted Islamabad’s contribution to Pyongyang’s nuclear test. On the other hand, Islamabad refuted any suggestion that the activities of the A.Q. Khan network had contributed to the said test and stated that North Korea’s nuclear program is based on plutonium while Pakistan relies on uranium. In this manner, for the time being, both India and Pakistan tried to ensure that proliferation in South Asia was not equated with proliferation in North-east Asia.
To a certain extent, the Bush administration obliged the subcontinental nuclear powers, as senior officials dismissed any parallels between North Korea’s path to nuclear weapons to those of India and Pakistan. In the context while Pakistan denied any links to the test, it did not help Islamabad’s case when Japanese sources stated that days before Pyongyang’s test, several Pakistani nuclear technicians arrived in North Korea through China. This augmented the suspicions that Pakistani agencies may have had some role in the test, perhaps through data sharing before or after explosion.
Man, behind the mission
The A.Q. Khan’s network which provided nuclear assistance to North Korea and Iran has represented the most serious proliferation problem in recent years. Since Khan’s public confession in February 2004, the Musharraf regime has consistently asserted that this network was the work of a rogue scientist and that the Pakistani government and its military leaders were not involved in these activities. Analysts and officials in Pakistan as well as in the United States have expressed skepticism over Khan’s confession and the implicit professed innocence of the Pakistani political and military establishment.
A highly publicised report released in April 2007 by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, also stated that individuals and entities involved in the network could still be dormant and can conceivably be reactivated in the future. Moreover, A.Q. Khan claimed in a signed statement that successive army chiefs in the 1990s, General Mirza Aslam Beg and Jehangir Karamat, had authorised the sales of nuclear technology.
While this could be taken as Khan’s attempts to remove the burden of guilt, it is true that the military was closely associated with the nuclear and missile programs. In fact, in 1990, General Beg warned US government officials that Pakistan would be forced to provide nuclear technology to Tehran if Washington did not offer support to Pakistan.
Other circumstantial evidence, such as visits by the Pakistani military leadership to North Korea throughout the nineties, suggests that there was a barter deal between Pyongyang and Islamabad. Additionally, in August 2005, General Musharraf conceded that Khan had transferred centrifuge machines to North Korea through which uranium hexafluoride can be enriched for eventual processing into civilian reactors fuel or for military purposes. Shipping out such large centrifuge machines without the military’s knowledge would have been impossible.
For a country to acquire a nuclear delivery system, the decision-making process incorporates several factors, as well as the opinions of numerous government agencies to ensure compatibility among the various systems.
Implications of proliferation
The issue of the Pakistani military-scientific establishment’s involvement or endorsement in the Khan’s network activities is crucial due to its implications for contemporary proliferation routes and processes. If these elements within and outside Pakistan and their methods and routes remain undiscovered, it has two broad consequences for proliferation in South Asia.
First, it allows Islamabad to potentially procure missile and nuclear technology in the future, in an attempt to catch-up with India. In this regard, a Pakistani national, Mohammed Aslam, working at the Tabani Corporatio n’s Mo scow office, was named by the Russian government in 2006 as having attempted to acquire dual-use technology and other materials for Pakistan’s nuclear and missile development programs. Given Islamabad’s need to construct a secure deterrent against India, especially long-range missiles that can reach southern and eastern India, it is possible that the said case is an instance of continuing efforts to exploit non-state networks to procure prohibited equipment. As one analyst noted aptly ‘due to Pakistan’s apparent inability to acquire nuclear weapons components legally, it is encouraged to look towards illegal sources.
Second, the continued existence of the kind of middlemen that the network generated increases the possibility of nuclear technology leakage out of Pakistan in the event of a coup or widespread instability from radical groups. According to some experts, the Iranian government has made use of these networks for its nuclear and missile programs. The previously mentioned IISS report also states: Tehran controls a clandestine nuclear materials network comparable to the one seen by Khan and in the past has procured technology from some of the same suppliers used by Khan. And the elements of the network are still active.
Other links of the programme
The nuclear proliferation by Pakistan directly or indirectly did not stop here and there are links between the Middle East and South Asia. Even today Islamabad has nuclear connection to the Middle East through possible collaboration with Saudi Arabia. In past Saudi Arabia remained a significant factor in the development of Pakistan’s nuclear power. News reports as well as US government officials’ analyses have claimed that Riyadh provided considerable financing for Pakistan’s nuclear and missile programme in previous decades.
As reported apart from developing nuclear power for itself, it is working as a pool for other countries of the region. This is in line with the announcement in November 2006 by six Arab States–Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates that they would develop civilian nuclear programs.
In addition, German news reports stated in early 2006 that Pakistani Scientists assisted Saudi efforts to develop a nuclear program me and that this was done under the guide of pilgrimages to Saudi Arabia between 2003 and 2005. Several high-ranking Saudi royals as well as government officials are among the few non-Pakistanis who have toured Islamabad’s nuclear facilities. These include defence minister Prince Sultan who visited the Kahuta uranium enrichment facility in 1999 and a son of the current Saudi ruler, King Abdullah, who attended the test of the nuclear-capable 950-mile range Ghauri missile in 1999.
A 2003 news report quoted an anonymous Pakistan official, who claimed that Riyadh and Islamabad had concluded a secret agreement under which Pakistan would receive subsidised oil in exchange for transferring nuclear technology. Even if there is no immediate possibility of such a transfer, Saudi Arabia could pursue this with Pakistan in the future to hedge against nuclear developments in the Middle East. In case of Saudi Arabia, it fulfils Pakistan’s strategic purpose. Saudi Arabia could provide a base for stationing Pakistani nuclear devices that would be safe from the reach of Indian missiles and give Islamabad a semblance of second-strike capability.
Author: Dr. Rajkumar Singh, Professor and Head, University Department of Political Science, B.N.Mandal University, Madhepura, Madhepura-852113, Bihar, India.
(The views expressed in this article belong only to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of World Geostrategic Insights).