Safety Measures of Pakistan Nuclear Weapons

Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons News:

With the assault on the office of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in Peshawar on 13 November 2009, which left at least 20 people dead, including 10 ISI officials, the Taliban-Al Qaeda nexus has once again demonstrated that it is capable of hitting the supposedly well-guarded targets representing the power and authority of the state. A few weeks earlier, they were able to deceive the guards at the entry of the citadel of the Pakistan army, the General Headquarters, in Rawalpindi. On that occasion, more than 40 people were taken hostage, of whom 37 were rescued due to a daring operation by the commandos of the elite Special Services Group.

The Head Office of the Federal Investigation Agency in Lahore was bombed in October this year. A similar attack took place in 2008. Since 2007, attacks have been launched on military, air force and naval personnel and officials. On the other hand, the media also reported that some terrorists had tried to enter the restricted area where the nuclear facilities are located, but they were stopped at the outer security ring.

Report on Safety and Security of Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons

In his detailed report published in the New Yorker dated 16 November 2009 (though it was already made public a week earlier), Seymour Hersh claims that the United States was doing all it could to ensure that Pakistan’s nuclear warheads were safe and secure. He referred to United States President Barack Obama’s response to a question by a journalist about the safety of those weapons. President Obama reportedly said that the United States wanted to “make sure that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is secure – primarily, initially, because the Pakistan army, I think, recognises the hazards of those weapons falling into the wrong hands.”
Some of Hersh’s assertions put the Pakistanis in an awkward and deeply embarrassing position. For example, a spokesman for Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Hersh that Admiral Mullen was deeply involved in day-to-day Pakistani developments and “is almost an action officer for all things Pakistan”. However, Admiral Mullen denied that he and General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff, or their staffs, had reached an understanding about the availability of American forces in case of a mutiny or a terrorist threat to a nuclear facility. “To my knowledge, we have no military units, special forces or otherwise, involved in such an assignment”, Admiral Mullen is reported to have said through his spokesman. The report informs that, for the last three years, the United States and Pakistan have been working very closely on the nuclear weapons issue.

In light of conflicting reports, one wonders who should be believed – the American journalist Hersh, who has suggested that the United States is seeking a greater role in the protection of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons from terrorists or the angry refutation by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, General Tariq Majid, who dismissed Hersh’s report as sensational and mischievous. He reportedly said that, “We have operationalised a very effective nuclear security regime, which incorporates very stringent custodial and access controls. As overall custodian of the development of [the] strategic programme, I reiterate in very unambiguous terms that there is absolutely no question of sharing or allowing any foreign individual, entity or a state, any access to sensitive information about our nuclear assets” (The News, 10 November 2009).

Possible Scenarios

Hersh considered a number of scenarios that could plunge regional and world peace into jeopardy. The most serious was the possibility of a mutiny within the military stationed at the Pakistan nuclear weapon sites. It was based on the assumption that support for radical Islam and sympathy for the Taliban-Al Qaeda ideology could exist even among soldiers and officers stationed in places where the weapons are kept. When Hersh probed that possibility with military officers who he claimed to have spoken to, they rejected such a turn of events. They told him that the personnel working in such places were thoroughly scrutinised and those whose ideological orientation or mindset was suspect were screened out.

Moreover, Hersh was told that the nuclear devices are kept in deep tunnels that can never be detected by spy satellites. Even more importantly, the procedure adopted to make the nuclear weapons operational is exceedingly complex. The different elements and parts of a nuclear bomb are kept apart from one another. In order to use these devices, they needed to be assembled in one place. The procedure has been streamlined and, in case of a war or some threat to national security, a select group of military personnel could quickly make them operational.

The United States and Pakistan’s Sovereignty

It may be recalled that a controversy raged in Pakistan recently over the Kerry-Lugar Bill, which was attacked by right-wing media and politicians as an invasion of Pakistani sovereignty. Hersh’s report suggests that the Americans are determined to take control of Pakistan’s nuclear assets. In one sense, it gives credence to the conspiracy theory that the Americans are out to nullify Pakistani sovereignty and security – the nuclear weapons epitomising sovereignty and security!

It is, therefore, not surprising that it was not only a top Pakistani military officer who refuted the claim that the terrorists could get hold of Pakistani nuclear weapons; Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari, the Federal Minister of Information, Qamar Zaman Kaira, and the Pakistan Foreign Office also issued similar statements. Their standpoint was supported by statements issued by the United States Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, and the United States’ Ambassador to Pakistan, Anne Patterson.

Will this latest controversy subside now that the power holders on both sides are singing the same refrain or will it only adversely affect the United States-Pakistan alliance against terrorism? That remains to be seen.

However, this is not the most interesting aspect of the recent controversy.

The most crucial problem policymakers have to face in the current situation is that the Taliban-Al Qaeda network will not hesitate to try anything to stop the offensive launched against them by the Pakistan military and to force the American and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation forces to pack up and leave Afghanistan. There are good reasons to believe that General Majid is speaking with sincerity that only those which the military has already included in the core group, who, in case of an emergency, will make those weapons operational, can access them unless that core group itself is eliminated. Arguing thus, he assured that it was not possible to reach the nuclear warheads and use them because all precautions have been taken to prevent that from happening.

Rational men in command positions in the Pakistani military who are in charge of the nuclear assets know that if they use such weapons, there would inevitably be a similar retaliation. The destruction and suffering that will follow in such a situation will defy imagination; hence the assumption is that while nuclear weapons are not usable, they guarantee peace. However, from the die-hard Islamist point of view, such reasoning may not carry much persuasive power.

Moreover, no watertight, foolproof guarantee can be provided by any nation or military that some mad men in their midst would never be able to get hold of such weapons and use them. Such a danger is present in all circumstances and, therefore, the Pakistani explanation is convincing on its own merits.

There is, however, no reason to believe that the Americans would not be interested in getting as accurate as possible knowledge about those weapons because, in case the unimaginable happens and hardcore Islamists do manage to get hold of them, regional and world peace would be gravely threatened. Some time ago, Rowan Scarborough, a journalist with Fox News, reported that three attempts have already been made by terrorists to get to Pakistan’s nuclear assets. Under the circumstances, the United States has a detailed plan to rapidly deploy the Joint Special Operations Command, a super-secret commando unit headquartered at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in Pakistan to take control of Pakistani nuclear weapons in case Pakistan was destabilised and extremists come to power. Some rumours suggest that an elite commando force is already stationed in Afghanistan for such an undertaking.

Decline of Pakistan

It is truly very sad that Pakistan should end up in such a sordid and profoundly dangerous situation. In the mid-1960s, Pakistan was being celebrated as the paragon of economic development that many nations, including South Korea, Singapore and Malaysia keenly studied, but after the 1965 war with India, Pakistan could not return fully to the path of peaceful development and change.

The military defeat at the hands of India in 1971 in the former East Pakistan, which broke away to become Bangladesh, played a most vitiating role in accentuating a belief in the need for an Islamist orientation of the armed forces. Such a mindset reached consummation during the Afghan jihad of the 1980s. It set in motion a process that inevitably took it down the path of violent politics, which undermined the social peace within Pakistan and created dangerous situations of a military confrontation with India.

Until the beginning of the 1980s, Pakistan’s standard of living was higher than not only India but China as well. Now, China is way ahead and, since 2006, India has also surpassed Pakistan. Poverty, illiteracy and despondency mark the lives of the majority of an otherwise very hardworking and warm-hearted Pakistani nation.

Black water operations in Pakistan

Secret war of Black water in Pakistan:

At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, “snatch and grabs” of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan, an investigation by The Nation has found. The Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help direct a secret US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes, according to a well-placed source within the US military intelligence apparatus….
According to the source, Blackwater has effectively marketed itself as a company whose operatives have “conducted lethal direct action missions and now, for a price, you can have your own planning cell. JSOC just ate that up,” he said, adding, “They have a sizable force in Pakistan–not for any nefarious purpose if you really want to look at it that way–but to support a legitimate contract that’s classified for JSOC.” Blackwater’s Pakistan JSOC contracts are secret and are therefore shielded from public oversight, he said. The source is not sure when the arrangement with JSOC began, but he says that a spin-off of Blackwater SELECT “was issued a no-bid contract for support to shooters for a JSOC Task Force and they kept extending it.” Some of the Blackwater personnel, he said, work undercover as aid workers. “Nobody even gives them a second thought.”…
In addition to planning drone strikes and operations against suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban forces in Pakistan for both JSOC and the CIA, the Blackwater team in Karachi also helps plan missions for JSOC inside Uzbekistan against the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, according to the military intelligence source. Blackwater does not actually carry out the operations, he said, which are executed on the ground by JSOC forces. “That piqued my curiosity and really worries me because I don’t know if you noticed but I was never told we are at war with Uzbekistan,” he said. “So, did I miss something, did Rumsfeld come back into power?”…

The former Blackwater executive, when asked for confirmation that Blackwater forces were not actively killing people in Pakistan, said, “that’s not entirely accurate.” While he concurred with the military intelligence source’s description of the JSOC and CIA programs, he pointed to another role Blackwater is allegedly playing in Pakistan, not for the US government but for Islamabad. According to the executive, Blackwater works on a subcontract for Kestral Logistics, a powerful Pakistani firm, which specializes in military logistical support, private security and intelligence consulting. It is staffed with former high-ranking Pakistani army and government officials. While Kestral’s main offices are in Pakistan, it also has branches in several other countries.

Counterterrorism operations have been dubbed by human rights groups and military officials as “death from above”, as strikes have killed 49 civilians for every terrorist leader assassinated. It’s uncontroversial such civilian casualties are counter-intuitive to “winning the hearts of minds of the population”, as Gen McChrystal reported to the president was crucial to avoid “mission failure”.

Mr. Scahill, adding that the Obama Administration “has now surpassed the number of Bush-era strikes in Pakistan and has faced fierce criticism from Pakistan and some US lawmakers over civilian deaths” and cites the June drone attack of a funeral where as many as 60 were killed, continues:

The military intelligence source also confirmed that Blackwater continues to work for the CIA on its drone bombing program in Pakistan, as previously reported in the New York Times, but added that Blackwater is working on JSOC’s drone bombings as well. “It’s Blackwater running the program for both CIA and JSOC,” said the source. When civilians are killed, “people go, ‘Oh, it’s the CIA doing crazy shit again unchecked.’ Well, at least 50 percent of the time, that’s JSOC [hitting] somebody they’ve identified through HUMINT [human intelligence] or they’ve culled the intelligence themselves or it’s been shared with them and they take that person out and that’s how it works.”

The military intelligence source says that the CIA operations are subject to Congressional oversight, unlike the parallel JSOC bombings. “Targeted killings are not the most popular thing in town right now and the CIA knows that,” he says. “Contractors and especially JSOC personnel working under a classified mandate are not [overseen by Congress], so they just don’t care. If there’s one person they’re going after and there’s thirty-four people in the building, thirty-five people are going to die. That’s the mentality.” He added, “They’re not accountable to anybody and they know that. It’s an open secret, but what are you going to do, shut down JSOC?”

In addition to working on covert action planning and drone strikes, Blackwater SELECT also provides private guards to perform the sensitive task of security for secret US drone bases, JSOC camps and Defense Intelligence Agency camps inside Pakistan, according to the military intelligence source….The military intelligence source said that when Rumsfeld was defense secretary, JSOC was deployed to commit some of the “darkest acts” in part to keep them concealed from Congress. “Everything can be justified as a military operation versus a clandestine intelligence performed by the CIA, which has to be informed to Congress,” said the source. “They were aware of that and they knew that, and they would exploit it at every turn and they took full advantage of it. They knew they could act extra-legally and nothing would happen because A, it was sanctioned by DoD at the highest levels, and B, who was going to stop them? They were preparing the battlefield, which was on all of the PowerPoints: ‘Preparing the Battlefield.’”…

The use of private companies like Blackwater for sensitive operations such as drone strikes or other covert work undoubtedly comes with the benefit of plausible deniability that places an additional barrier in an already deeply flawed system of accountability. When things go wrong, it’s the contractors’ fault, not the government’s. But the widespread use of contractors also raises serious legal questions, particularly when they are a part of lethal, covert actions. “We are using contractors for things that in the past might have been considered to be a violation of the Geneva Convention,” said Lt. Col. Addicott, who now runs the Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary’s University School of Law in San Antonio, Texas. “In my opinion, we have pressed the envelope to the breaking limit, and it’s almost a fiction that these guys are not in offensive military operations.” Addicott added, “If we were subjected to the International Criminal Court, some of these guys could easily be picked up, charged with war crimes and put on trial. That’s one of the reasons we’re not members of the International Criminal Court.”

We all Pakistanis knows about the fact that this force is on us but what we are doing watch this:

Thrilling Moment for Pak

Facts about Indian Nuclear Attack

Reliable sources stated that Pakistani authorities have decided to move her forces from Western to Eastern border. The move of forces would start soon.The decision has been taken after receiving the threat from Indian Army Chief General Deepak Kapoor to strike Pakistan on November 22, 2009. Indian Chief warned that a limited war under a nuclear overhang is still very much a reality at least in the Indian sub-continent. On November 23, 2009 Pakistan Foreign Office Spokes man Abdul Basit asked the world community to take notice of remarks passed by the Indian Army Chief. He also said that India has set the stage and trying to impose a limited war on Pakistan. There are reports that Indian intelligence agencies have made a plan to hit some Indian nuke installation, alleging and then striking Pakistan. It is also added here that India has started purchasing lethal weapons. According to the careful survey a poor Asian country (India) has spent trillions on purchasing of Naval, Air force and nuke equipments.

Thus, Indian preparation simply dictates that she is preparing for nuke war. The Kashmir conflicts, water issue, borer dispute between China and India, American presence in Afghanistan, Maoist movements, Indian state terrorism, cold war between India and regional countries would be contributing factors towards Next third world war.

Indian Chief’s statement by design came a day earlier to Manmohan Singh visit to USA. The purpose of threatening Pakistan could also be justifying future Indian attack on Pakistan. Therefore, Islamabad concern is serious in nature since any Indian misadventure will put the regional peace into stake and would lead both the country towards nuclear conflict. Islamabad probably conveyed her ally (USA) regarding danger of limited war against Pakistan; she has to cease her efforts on western border for repulsing Indian aggression on eastern border. In fact, Indian government and her army chief made a deliberate try to sabotage global war against terror. In this connection Pakistan Army Spokesman Major General Athar Abbas time and again said that India is involved in militancy against Pakistan and her consulates located in Afghanistan are being used as launching pad.

It is worth mentioning here that Pakistan has deployed more than 100,000 troops on the border with Afghanistan and is fighting a bloody war against terrorism. Her security forces are busy in elimination of foreign sponsored militancy. Thousand of soldiers have scarified their lives not only for the motherland but to bring safety to the world in general. Pakistan is a key ally in the war on terror and the threat of withdrawal would alarm the USA as it could seriously hamper NATO troops fighting in Afghanistan. Pakistan is a nuclear power too and is able to handle any type of Indian belligerence.

In this context, earlier Pakistan Army Chief of Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani has categorically expressed at number of occasions that Indian attack would be responded in full strength while using all types of resources. On November 25, 2009 General Kayani stated that the nation would emerge as victorious in the on-going war against extremism. While addressing a ceremony at Police Lines he paid rich tributes to the Frontier police for their valuable sacrifices in the war against terrorism. At this occasion General Kayani revealed that Pakistan was founded in the name of Islam by our forefathers and each one of us should work for strengthening the country and should made commitment towards achieving the goal of turning the country into a true Islamic state. He also announced Rs.20 million for the Frontier Police Shuhada Fund.

In response to Indian Army Chief’ statement he also put across the message that the protection and solidarity of the country are our main objectives as our coming generation owes this debt to us and resolved that any threat to the sovereignty and integrity of the country would not be tolerated. The General made it clear that Pak Army has the capability and the capacity to fight the war against terrorists and adversary too. He praised the sacrifices rendered by the security forces and high morale of the troops. Lt General Masood Aslam, Commander 11 Corps, IGFC Major General Tariq and IGP NWFP Malik Neveed Khan were also present at this historic moment.

Pakistan Army Chief visits of western border reflect his commitment to root out the foreign sponsored militancy from the area. This rooting out is directly helping global war on terror, whereas on the other hand his counter part (Indian Chief) keep on yelling and dreaming of striking Pakistan. He probably has forgotten that Pakistan is a responsible nuke power and capable to defend and strike. In 2001 and 2008 at the occasions of attacks on parliament and Mumbai, both the nations close to a nuke war, this was averted by interference from the world community India and USA. At that time too security officials have also told NATO and USA that they will not leave a single troop on the western border incase of Indian threat.

Pakistan is facing a serious economic crisis and terrorist attacks present most serious threat to the country’s internal security. The political and military leadership knows that it is not an ideal situation for them to go for war, but they would not be having any choice to defend the country if threatened by India. Moreover they would be justified in moving her forces from her western to Eastern front. USA, if serious in elimination of global militancy then she has to ask India to resolve regional issues with the neighbouring countries instead of trying to hijack the war against terror. American think tanks should also review the remarks of Indian Army Chief Gen Deepak Kapoor in the light of India’s offensive nuclear doctrine. The doctrine of a fake nuke power (Indian) reflect the hazardous and aggressiveness of nuclear theory and prediction of third World War.

In the wage of above debate, the world community and USA should ask India to stop fanning terrorism. USA should review the nuke deal with a fake nuclear power prior of signing NPT and CTBT. Foreign Office Spokesman Abdul Basit also quite right in saying that India’s dangerous and offensive nuclear doctrine is serious hazard to global peace. It is true that also that India has long been working on the so-called ‘Cold Start’ strategy and preparing for a limited war. Thus, Pakistan has to pay more attention on her Eastern front under the prevailing adverse security environment and Indian General Kapoor’s threat to her.