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The (shallow) atlantic!
ou know certain impressions of your country have hit rock-bottom when the elected head of state’s assurances on a matter are brushed away. The head of the US Homeland Security delegation that met with the president recently, Congressman Michael McCaul, said doubted, publicly, whether President Zardari can live up to his promises to “eradicate” the Haqqanis. “The real question,” said the American lawmaker, “is how much the president controls the military.” The Republican is a US politician and is not in government. He can say out loud what everyone in the Obama administration ostensibly also believes. The foreign office is going to issue statements. Schoolboy’s copy: the president is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces and all that. And in practical terms, through his position as leader of the ruling party, he can direct the prime minister, who is the chief executive authority in the country. But there is no use for the indignant amongst us, especially those in uniform, to huff and puff a little too much. The military has given the world much evidence to assume this scheme of things. This is, of course, not to talk about the years where the military has been overtly in power. Under discussion are the years of supposed civilian rule when, at least on certain important issues, all but the pathologically pedantic knew where the buck stopped. Have things changed all too much? The west knows how to measure the difference between what the elected government makes a policy to do and what actually plays out in the great outdoors. It is not aloof. Yes, it is the lot of the diplomatic corps to tilt at those windmills. But the rest of the world, and us, know better.
the promise of SCo too big to be ignored
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hanghai Cooperation Organisation holds an interest for Pakistan for a number of reasons. So does Pakistan for the SCO. All countries bordering Afghanistan which include Pakistan and five out of six SCO members are concerned about the post-2014 scenario in that country. While the departure of the US and Nato troops is a source of satisfaction to the SCO states, they fear the further spread of the activities of Al-Qaeda and Taliban in the wake of the allied troops withdrawal. Pakistan being in the forefront of the fight against terrorism is seen as a potentially important ally. Pakistan which has been under pressure from the US is looking for new and strong allies to provide it political and economic space to manoeuvre. With Russia showing willingness for the first time to support Pakistan’s membership of the SCO, a major hurdle has been removed. It might however take time to formally join the club. It would be difficult for Russia and China to grant membership to Pakistan while ignoring India which is still weighing options of going all the hog with the US and Nato or join the SCO. There are also fears of the new entrants bringing in their regional rivalries. Gilani’s ambitious five point development programme presented before the meeting stresses SCO sponsored intra-regional and interregional cooperation in trade and building infrastructure and power links. It would go a long way in overcoming Pakistan’s energy crisis if headway is made in the development of power links with Central Asia. A beginning was made during the Putin-Gilani talks when the former announced $ 500 million for the Central Asia, South Asia Electricity Trade and Transmission Project (CASA 1000). He also expressed the desire to materialise Turkmenistan- AfghanistanPakistan-India gas pipeline project (TAPI). Improving relations with India will not only help Pakistan but also turn out to be instrumental in bringing New Delhi to the fold of SCO along with Pakistan. The SCO which stresses an unremitting fight against terrorism also supports peaceful relations between India and Pakistan. Moves towards opening of trade routes and an energy corridor connecting Central Asia with South Asia would bring prosperity to the entire region.
Dedicated to the legacy of the late Hameed Nizami
Arif Nizami Editor
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Friday, 11 November, 2011
In all such articles, everyone plays to type
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By Ejaz Haider
n all the silly controversy over The Atlantic-National Journal article, one underlying United States unease has gone unnoticed, a deeply satisfying fact for me as a student of strategy: the US, despite all the scenario-building over several years and consistent attempts through technical and other means to pick up intelligence on Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal – directly and through allied efforts – remains clueless about critical aspects of Pakistan’s programme. The Strategic Plans Division, an otherwise open organisation that serves as the Secretariat of the National Command Authority, deserves credit for this. The second aspect deals with our reaction. The Foreign Office spokesperson should have responded to the question about it with a one-line, does-not-merit-comment response. The next step which Pakistan took, getting the State Department to debunk it, was a much smarter move. Now to the article. First, concerned officials at the Inter-Services Public Relations, the Strategic Plans Division and the InterServices Intelligence deny anyone authorised to speak with the media on this subject ever met with or spoke to these reporters. “No request was ever filed, no one ever spoke to them, no one had heard their names before the publishing of this article,” I was told. Second, going by what they have written, both reporters are singularly ignorant of the technicalities of the subject they undertook. The first problem relates to conflating the concepts of safety and security. Are the nuclear weapons safe is a different question from are they secure. In theory, a safe nuclear weapon may not be secure or a secure one may not be safe. In practice, an arsenal requires the weapons to be both safe and secure. In very broad terms, eschewing complex details and procedures – some of which may be known while others kept secret – safety deals with the safe working mechanism of various parts of a nuclear weapon and its storage (incidents/accidents etc) and their authorised use only. Security relates to the physical security, transportation and storage of a site, its weapons and their components. The secrecy of many of these procedures is in line with the IAEA security protocol. All such write-ups about Pakistani loose nukes get this wrong. So, is there no threat to the Pakistani arsenal? Of course there is; in fact, there are multiple
threats. Is the Pakistani arsenal absolutely safe and secure? It is safe, as safe as technologies and procedures can make something safe. But nothing can be absolutely secure. As someone said about foolproof measures, for every proof there is always a fool. The reporters of this article would do well to study nuclear-related incidents and accidents in the US and perhaps also cast a glance at Charles Perrow’s remarkable ‘normal accidents’ theory. It is one of the many dilemmas of possessing nuclear weapons: how to safekeep and secure the arsenal that is supposed to secure a state and give it a strategic advantage. Nuclear arsenals are kept safe and secure in all nuclear-weapon states precisely to avoid incidents, accidents, unauthorised use, theft etc. Procedures are checked, monitored and improved where improvement is required. A case in point is the 2007 incident at the Minot AFB in the US where six cruise missiles armed with nuclear warheads were loaded on a B52H bomber and were without required security for 36 hours. The incident, after the cover-up, resulted in two high-level separate inquiries which also brought into light many other lapses. Based on the findings, many procedures were revisited and improved. Many heads also rolled. Ditto for security and safety of reactors, weapons labs, and other nuclearrelated material, including best practices for accounting of radioactive materials which have multiple civilian uses apart from safe and secure storage and use of reactor- and weapons-grade uranium and plutonium. This also includes export of such materials. Again, in 2006, a US cargo to Taiwan mistakenly contained four electrical fuses for the Minuteman ICBM nose cone. So, yes, nothing is foolproof. The safety and security of Pakistani arsenal and other measures for accounting of stocks etc take into account the threat spectrum which has some features common to all NWSs and has some that are peculiar to Pakistan. This means that the threats identified in the article are factored into the security and safety regimes. Similarly, the article’s assertion that Pakistan is using civilian vehicles to move weapons, both ‘de-mated’ and ‘mated’, on ‘dangerous and congested roads’ is not only fantastic, the reporters again reveal their lack of knowledge of the concept of ‘security’. Low profile security does not mean less security or, worse, lack of security. It simply means securing something or someone in a way that does not attract attention. This is like people often saying “Oh, these intel guys; they can’t even hide themselves while tailing me”. Right! Except that one can see them because they want to be seen! Overt surveillance for most subjects is a more cost-effective way than covert surveillance. Expectedly, the writers do not define the term ‘mated’ weapons. Are they
referring to the transportation of a full weapon as opposed to its dissembled components? Mating normally refers to a weapon ‘mated’ to its delivery vehicle. It is highly unlikely that Pakistan is transporting 30-meter-long nucleartipped missiles in civilian vehicles! But why should facts stand in the way of magical realism? How many contradictions can one highlight? Here’s one. On the one hand the reporters quote very senior officials as stating that the US doesn’t know much about the Pakistani programme and on the other unnamed US intelligence sources confirm to the reporters how exactly Pakistan is moving its arsenal on ‘dangerous and congested’ roads. Then, while the US is terribly concerned about possible loose nukes and is constantly scheming to secure them, it does nothing when it sees Pakistan moving its arsenal around so dangerously. The US also doesn’t know the exact location of Pakistan’s silos and storage facilities but buses attacked outside Sargodha and Kamra AFBs are supposed to be near-misses to grab Pakistani nukes because those are possible storage sites. One, even the US intelligence at the highest level has only guesstimates and conjectures; two, attacking buses on thoroughfares is no way of trying to grab a nuke, thank you. And since it is a known fact that Pakistan operates multiple decoy sites, how do the reporters know which is which? Of course, here we are not even getting into the technical details of how difficult it is to steal (grabbing makes much less sense because even if a group managed to do that, it would be impossible for them to extricate with the weapon) a weapon, how difficult it is, even if one could be stolen, to transport it, how difficult to trigger it, how difficult to (theoretically) dissemble and reassemble it with different nuclear codes if original PAL (permissive action links) codes are unknown etcetera. This is a whole different debate and the reporters would do well to read the findings of a 2004 paper commissioned by the WMD Commission. There are multiple steps to keep weapons safe and secure and most of the scenarios experts keep conjuring up are built into these regimes. As David Sanger of The New York Times said in his article published on January 11, 2009 – I responded to that in a Daily Times article on Jan 13 – “every few months someone in Washington...runs a simulation of how the United States should respond if a terrorist group infiltrates the Pakistani nuclear programme or manages to take over one or two of its weapons”. The problem is, as he wrote, “In these exercise, everyone plays to type”. So there, then, we have yet another article. The problem is, this one is much inferior even as playing-to-type articles go. The writer is Contributing Editor, The Friday Times.
Regional Press
A relationship rethink? Daily Pakhtun Post
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akistan is passing through one of the most delicate times in its history and it is a testing time for the leadership and the public. If there is a little swerve taken by the country in the wrong direction, the result could be catastrophic, resulting in losses not only to the country but to the region at large. Pakistan has bore the brunt of American pressure and the war on terror simultaneously for the last 10-years. On one side, America considers Pakistan an ally and friend to fight with it in the war on terror but on the other hand, blames it for losses in the same. Now Pakistan has learnt the hard way that its relationship with the US is transactional and the US is not interesting in befriending it in the true sense of the word. Thus, it was surprising when Foreign Minister of Pakistan, Hina Rabbani Khar, said that the visit of American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would lead to betterment in relation and would render positive results.
It reveals that the incumbent rulers of Pakistan are still running with the hope that America might exhibit a more positive attitude towards it and would extend its support in matters both financial and military. But all this might prove to be fool’s hope. It is because that the American secretary of state’s visit that more pressure is now being exerted on Pakistan. The US is now cultivating stronger ties with India to send a signal to Pakistan. They are above all seeking furtherance of atomic cooperation with India. Likewise, Russia is also deeply engaged with India. The question that now arises is whether the recent visit of Hillary Clinton will deliver something substantial to propel relations of both the countries in a more positive direction and would be helpful in removing the current deadlock-of-sorts. It seems to be not holding any water at all: Pakistan needs to rethink its relationship with America. – Translated from the original Pashto by Abdur Rauf Khattak