"There is a significant danger that the black market will put Pakistani nukes ... in terrorist hands."Pakistan's nuclear program poses two serious threats to global security, argues Graham Allison in the following viewpoint. First, he asserts, terrorists could obtain Pakistan's nuclear weapons. In fact, Allison claims, intelligence reveals that officials of Pakistan's atomic-energy program have met with terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. Second, the tenuous leadership of the current Pakistani regime leaves open the possibility that Islamic factions in Pakistan will gain control of Pakistan's nuclear capabilities. Allison, director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, is author of Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe.As you read, consider the following questions:According to Allison, what was Pakistan's response to the story that the founder of its nuclear-weapons program has sold nuclear technology on the black market?What has Pakistan done to prevent India from destroying its nuclear arsenal, in the author's opinion?Who might be the unlikely savior of the nuclear dilemma in Pakistan, in the author's view?
Not since the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 have I been as frightened by a single news story as I was by the revelation [in 2003] that Abdul Qadeer Khan, the founder of Pakistan's nuclear-weapons program, had been selling nuclear technology and services on the black market. The story began to break ... after U.S. and British intelligence operatives intercepted a shipment of parts for centrifuges (which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear bombs as well as fuel) on its way from Dubai to Libya. The centrifuges turned out to have been designed by Khan, and before long investigators had uncovered what the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] has called a "Wal-Mart of private-sector proliferation"—a decades-old illicit market in nuclear materials, designs, technologies, and consulting services, all run out of Pakistan.
The Pakistani government's response to the scandal was not reassuring. Khan made a four-minute televised speech on February 4 [2004] asserting that "there was never any kind of authorization for these activities by the government." He took full responsibility for his actions and asked for a pardon, which was immediately granted by President Pervez Musharraf, who essentially buried the affair.... Pakistan's official position remains that no member of Musharraf's government had any concrete knowledge of the illicit transfer—an assertion that U.S. intelligence officials in Pakistan and elsewhere dismiss as absurd. Meanwhile, Pakistani investigators have reportedly questioned a grand total of eleven people from among the country's 6,000 nuclear scientists and 45,000 nuclear workers, and have refused to allow either the United States or the IAEA access to Khan for questioning.
Two Main Threats
Pakistan's nuclear complex poses two main threats. The first—highlighted by Khan's black-market network—is that nuclear weapons, know-how, or materials will find their way into the hands of terrorists. For instance, we have learned that in August of 2001, even as the final planning for [the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001,] was under way, [terrorist leader] Osama bin Laden received two former officials of Pakistan's atomic-energy program—Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood and Abdul Majid—at a secret compound near Kabul. Over the course of three days of intense conversation bin Laden and his second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, grilled Mahmood and Majid about how to make weapons of mass destruction. After Mahmood and Majid were arrested, on October 23, 2001, Mahmood told Pakistani interrogation teams, working in concert with the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency], that Osama bin Laden had expressed a keen interest in nuclear weapons and had sought the scientists' help in recruiting other Pakistani nuclear experts who could provide expertise in the mechanics of bomb-making. CIA Director George Tenet found the report of Mahmood and Majid's meeting with bin Laden so disturbing that he flew directly to Islamabad to confront President Musharraf.
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