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Pakistan in peril: Political and economic turmoil fuel worries over nuclear safety

March 22, 2023 13:56:03 IST
Pakistan nuclear warheads may fall into wrong hands. Reuters
Sometimes a denial can be more convincing than an assent. Thats what happened when the Finance Minister of Pakistan Ishaq Dar and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif asserted that there would be no compromise on the countrys nuclear and missile programe and that they are jealously guarded by the State. This at a time when both are among those with whom the public has the least confidence. While Dar seems to have no control over the precipitous slide into economic chaos, Sharif seems to have been swept aside by the Imran Khan political tornado. When these officials assert one thing, the public is likely to believe the opposite.
Those nuclear headshakes
True, Finance Minister Dar was responding to questions raised by Senator Raza Rabbani on whether the unusually delayed loan from the International Monetary Fund had anything to do with the pressure on the countrys nuclear programme or its strategic relationship with China or because an imperialist power wanted its presence in the region. To which the finance minister replied in a statement typical of a man from the Punjabi heartland, that Pakistan had not lost its nuclear prowess, and that no one had the right to decide what range of missiles it needed to have and how many warheads it could field. The prime minister followed it up with a tweet and a statement that stringent, foolproof and multi-layered security safeguards, duly testified by the International Atomic Energy Agency, are in place.. That statement was called out immediately. The IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) has no role at all in the oversight of Pakistans nuclear armoury. Its statutory mandate is to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health and prosperity throughout the world. A Prime Minister should be better briefed.
The IMF takes a break
It is true however that the IMF has taken an inordinate amount of time to provide its much-awaited tranche, even as the country has just enough foreign exchange reserves for months of imports. True also that (unattributed) reports suggest that the fund managers are waiting for Saudi Arabia, Qatar and UAE to fulfil prior commitments before the fund review to bail out Pakistan for providing financial assistance including additional deposits and investments to the tune of about $6 billion. Its all very questionable. No wonder then that social media is rife with speculation about whether the country is being forced, step by step to relinquish its nuclear weapons, an expensive toy for a country that is shaky at the best of times, and downright dangerous at the worst, which is now. What Pakistan actually spends on its nuclear armoury is unknown, given that the defence budget itself is incredibly opaque, covering just a few lines. Indias budget figures run into several pages. The 2022-23 allocation of Rs 1,523 billion for defence, came to 17.5 per cent of the total current expenditure and is 11.16 per cent higher than last year. That the IMF would want this cutdown was inevitable.
Fears of Pakistani nuclear safety from day one
Much of the sensible world, has long been alarmed at Pakistans ability to retain control over its nuclear weapons or its materials. In the 1980s, the spectre of a nuclear scientist selling sensitive nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya and another suspected fourth customer long believed to be the Saudis shocked the non-proliferation community, and led to a focus on Pakistans underground networks. After 9/11, that fear was turned into an asset, with the Obama Administration providing generous aid to Pakistan for nuclear safety and screening programmes for nuclear personnel, against a supposed threat from Al Qaeda, and fears that it could infiltrate the Pakistani nuclear establishment. That was also tied to Pakistans cooperation on Taliban sanctuaries, which of course, never fructified.
In
revealed
the intense concern among the US intelligence community about terrorist attacks on Pakistans nuclear weapons programs and worry about poor information on nuclear weapons storage and safeguards; there were also apprehensions that individual Pakistani nuclear weapons handlers could go rogue. All this was pushed by an academic industry that made its money predicting just such threats, even as Islamabad raked in dollars. Even during the Trump Presidency, Senator Lindsey Graham was able to convince President Trump to meet Prime Minister Imran Khan, just after meeting the Pakistan Ambassador, with his
tweet
noting, We all must remember Pakistan is a nuclear-armed nation, and there is a Pakistan version of the Taliban who wishes topple the Pakistani government and military. There isnt. That was a Pakistani army line. It was not any Taliban which was the threat. As attacks against General Musharraf indicated, the threat was from serving army personnel radicalised by the Jihadi Tablighi Ijtima. While an attempted attempt to hijack a Pakistani ship PNS Zulfikar, was by radicalised navy personnel. The threat has always been from within.
The real threat
It is President Biden who has dealt with Pakistan and Afghanistan for years who actually got it right when he remarked that Pakistan was one of the most dangerous countries in the world as it had nuclear weapons without cohesion. Someone briefed that president well. Political parties on a collision course, violence on the streets, terror attacks almost every other day, and an army divided and shamed by Imran Khan is not the best climate for any kind of stability. Consider the nuclear command and control system. The country has always had a diffused authority to put it mildly between the President, the Prime Minister and the Army, and these together with the scientific heads formed a loose nuclear authority.
In reality, all nuclear decisions were made by the Strategic Plans Division (SPD) at the Joint Service Headquarters. It was General Musharraf who streamlined the system to create the National Command Authority (NCA) in February 2000, with SPD as the secretariat of the NCA, and Strategic Force Commands (SFCs). That was nice for him because he was the head of the army and president. The Prime Minister was the Vice Chairman, and Foreign, Defense, Finance, and Interior ministers were made part of the NCA, as well as four military commanders (Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee (CJCSC), the Army Chief, the Naval and Air Force chiefs and DG SPD (three-star Army General) were ex-officio members of the NCA. In 2010, President Zardari handed over NCA command to a (puppet) prime minister. When Nawaz Sharif came in as prime minister, he tried to get matters more under his control, but there is nothing to indicate that he succeeded. Imran Khan seems to have attended no meeting of the NCA at all.
Now look at the current NCA. To think that the prime minister has control is laughable. He doesnt even have the support of his own coaliti

Wednesday, March 22, 2023 at 8:26 am

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