Washington waiting
for Iraq War and Exploring Musharraf’s Alternatives
By
Shaheen Sehbai
WASHINGTON:
Clear signs are emerging in Washington that a major policy change
is in the offing as the Defense Establishment, Pentagon, CIA and
the non-proliferation activists are getting sick and tired of
General Musharraf’s U-Turns, specially his hollow denials
of not transferring nuclear technology to North Korea and secretly
supporting and propping up anti-US religious extremists in Pakistan.
“There
is a pattern of misleading statements, assurances and claims and
then string of evidence that whatever Musharraf has been saying
publicly, he has been doing just the opposite privately,”
an analyst in touch with the thinking of the US establishment
told me last week.
The
policy shift is already apparent in many ways. The hawkish media
has started its salvos against Musharraf and his policies. Former
CIA Director James Woolsey and informed analyst Mansoor Ijaz started
off the tirade in Los Angeles Times with a joint piece.
Before that the New York Times came out with the Pakistan-North
Korea axis story.
But
last week the most damning evidence of the Defense Establishment’s
changing mood came in famous journalist Seymour Hersh’s
story in The New Yorker Magazine, quoting a secret CIA
report. Hersh and the report did not speak in vague tones. They
categorically said Pakistan had provided nuclear technology to
Pyongyang and Pakistan will pay a price for this, the question
was how soon. View the New Yorker
Report
Pakistani
media would not have covered the Hersh story but what it said
cannot be ignored by any one having Pakistan’s interest
at heart. The following quotes would make this point very obvious:
“Last
June, four months before the current crisis over North Korea became
public, the Central Intelligence Agency delivered a comprehensive
analysis of North Korea's nuclear ambitions to President Bush
and his top advisers. The document, known as a National Intelligence
Estimate, was classified as Top Secret S.C.I. (for "sensitive
compartmented information"), and its distribution within
the government was tightly restricted. The C.I.A. report made
the case that North Korea had been violating international law—and
agreements with South Korea and the United States—by secretly
obtaining the means to produce weapons-grade uranium.
“The
document's most politically sensitive information, however, was
about Pakistan. Since 1997, the C.I.A. said, Pakistan had been
sharing sophisticated technology, warhead-design information,
and weapons-testing data with the Pyongyang regime. Pakistan,
one of the Bush Administration's important allies in the war against
terrorism, was helping North Korea build the bomb.”
“Within
three years, however, North Korea had begun using a second method
to acquire fissile material. This time, instead of using spent
fuel, scientists were trying to produce weapons-grade uranium
from natural uranium—with Pakistani technology. One American
intelligence official, referring to the C.I.A. report, told me,
"It points a clear finger at the Pakistanis. The technical
stuff is crystal clear—not hedged and not ambivalent."
Referring to North Korea's plutonium project in the early nineteen-nineties,
he said, "Before, they were sneaking." Now "it's
off the wall. We know they can do a lot more and a lot more quickly."
“According
to the report, Pakistan sent prototypes of high-speed centrifuge
machines to North Korea. And sometime in 2001 North Korean scientists
began to enrich uranium in significant quantities. Pakistan also
provided data on how to build and test a uranium-triggered nuclear
weapon, the C.I.A. report said.”
“It
had taken Pakistan a decade of experimentation, and a substantial
financial investment, before it was able to produce reliable centrifuges;
with Pakistan's help, the North Koreans had "chopped many
years off" the development process, the intelligence official
noted. It is not known how many centrifuges are now being operated
in North Korea or where the facilities are. (They are assumed
to be in underground caves.) The Pakistani centrifuges, the official
said, are slim cylinders, roughly six feet in height, that could
be shipped "by the hundreds" in cargo planes. But, he
added, "all Pakistan would have to do is give the North Koreans
the blueprints. They are very sophisticated in their engineering."
And with a few thousand centrifuges, he said, "North Korea
could have enough fissile material to manufacture two or three
warheads a year, with something left over to sell."
“A
former senior Pakistani official told me that his government's
contacts with North Korea increased dramatically in 1997; the
Pakistani economy had foundered, and there was "no more money"
to pay for North Korean missile support, so the Pakistani government
began paying for missiles by providing "some of the know-how
and the specifics." Pakistan helped North Korea conduct a
series of "cold tests," simulated nuclear explosions,
using natural uranium, which are necessary to determine whether
a nuclear device will detonate properly. Pakistan also gave the
North Korean intelligence service advice on "how to fly under
the radar," as the former official put it—that is,
how to hide nuclear research from American satellites and U.S.
and South Korean intelligence agents.
“In
the past decade, American intelligence tracked at least thirteen
visits to North Korea made by A. Q. Khan, who was then the director
of a Pakistani weapons-research laboratory, and who is known as
the father of the Pakistani nuclear bomb. This October, after
news of the uranium program came out, the Times ran a story suggesting
that Pakistan was a possible supplier of centrifuges to North
Korea. General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's leader, attacked the
account as "absolutely baseless," and added, "There
is no such thing as collaboration with North Korea in the nuclear
area." The White House appeared to take the Musharraf statement
at face value. In November, Secretary of State Colin Powell told
reporters he had been assured by Musharraf that Pakistan was not
currently engaging in any nuclear transactions with North Korea.
"I have made clear to him that any . . . contact between
Pakistan and North Korea we believe would be improper, inappropriate,
and would have consequences," Powell said. "President
Musharraf understands the seriousness of the issue."
“An
American intelligence official I spoke with called Pakistan's
behavior the "worst nightmare" of the international
arms-control community: a Third World country becoming an instrument
of proliferation. "The West's primary control of nuclear
proliferation was based on technology denial and diplomacy,"
the official said. "Our fear was, first, that a Third World
country would develop nuclear weapons indigenously; and, second,
that it would then provide the technology to other countries.
This is profound. It changes the world." Pakistan's nuclear
program flourished in the nineteen-eighties, at a time when its
military and intelligence forces were working closely with the
United States to repel the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The
official said, "The transfer of enrichment technology by
Pakistan is a direct outgrowth of the failure of the United States
to deal with the Pakistani program when we could have done so.
We've lost control."
“Pakistan
helped North Korea conduct a series of "cold tests,"
simulated nuclear explosions, using natural uranium, which are
necessary to determine whether a nuclear device will detonate
properly. Pakistan also gave the North Korean intelligence service
advice on "how to fly under the radar," as the former
official put it—that is, how to hide nuclear research from
American satellites and U.S. and South Korean intelligence agents.”
That
was the gist of the Hersh story. But read this with the changing
public tone of the statements of US Ambassadors in South Asia,
Robert Blackwill in New Delhi and Nancy Powell in Islamabad.
Blackwill
has been making anti-Pakistan statements for a while but Nancy
has just joined him and her very first reference to Pakistan being
used as a platform for terrorism triggered a shock wave, with
every political party and the government up in protest. They should
have expected it anyway.
I
can report on good authority that the media focus on Pakistan
is likely to increase manifold in the coming days and as soon
as the Bush Administration is through with a war against Iraq,
or a decision not to do so, Pakistan will be the next item on
the agenda.
What
Pakistan should expect then is immediate imposition of sanctions
as Washington did in 1990 when the Afghan war was over. That would
mean so many things for so many people.
Firstly
Pakistan is actively pursuing acquisition pf US Boeing aircraft
and will have to pay a hefty down payment to the Boeing company.
This down payment may already have been paid. If sanctions are
imposed, as they will be because it is becoming clear that US
administration will determine that Pakistan exported nuclear technology
to North Korea, the Boeing deal will be the first to be hit.
Expect
an F-16 type scenario then. Pakistan having made the down payment
of millions, US administration imposes sanctions, no planes will
be delivered and the money will be stuck.
What
can Pakistan do in such a scenario. The best thing would be for
the Army and the Generals in Islamabad to restore the credibility
of their word. Musharraf has lost that credibility and no one
no longer trusts him in Washington, whatever the present tone
and tenor of supporting statements from the State Department or
the White House.
A
change of leadership, or handing over of real political power
to the elected political government will restore some credibility
as the Prime Minister can then sit down with the Americans and
lay down the road map of the relations, based on realities on
the ground, the Mulla upsurge, the rogue factor inside the army
and rehabilitation of the real liberal and moderate political
forces like Benazir Bhutto’s PPP and Nawaz Sharif’s
PML.
The
present lopsided political system which is geared to suit the
dictator, no matter how serious a damage it may be doing to the
country, has to go.
Once
the genuine political leadership is restored, US should be told
what are the limits of Pakistan’s cooperation, how far it
can go, where it will stop and this will all be real and not just
empty promises.
The
fact is that the moderate political leadership is not anti-US,
with Benazir and Nawaz Sharif still saying they are friends of
US. Only they can contain the rising rightist wave, as Musharraf
has not only failed to stem this wave but has actually helped
it secretly.
Washington
knows this secret deal. Evidence has already surfaced how Musharraf
helped the MMA to contest the October elections by withdrawing
hundreds of cases against the MMA leaders and by pushing the moderate
forces out of the electoral contest by hook or crook. He has to
pay the price for his misdeeds, and soon.
