Nuclear Blackmarket
The Bomb is a Burden
Praful Bidwai
The Daily Star, 10 February 2004
The "Father of the Pakistani Bomb", Abdul Qadeer Khan, has confessed to his culpability in clandestine nuclear transfers to North Korea, Iran and Libya. This follows a deal with President Pervez Musharraf, under which Dr Khan would get clemency, but remain under surveillance for life.
Clearly, the government did not want to put Dr Khan on trial. It feared embarrassing disclosures about the army's involvement in selling the country's nuclear secrets. Dr Khan threatened to name names. Mutual blackmailing produced a "compromise".
The information that's been revealed is stunning. Khan Research Laboratories scientists ran a global network peddling mass-destruction technology. This was the world's most complex, elaborate and purposive effort ever at beating non-proliferation controls.
The network's ramifications cut across continents: a Malaysia-based factory making centrifuge components, run by a Sri Lankan, middlemen from Germany and Holland, and hardware shipments routed through Dubai.
Lubricating this network was monumental corruption. Dr Khan bought numerous properties at home and abroad, including a "fabulous" hotel in Timbuktu in Mali.
Given the evidence, clemency doesn't make sense. The government may now put some KRL personnel on trial, depending upon how confident it feels about handling the fallout. It is under pressure from the United States, whose policy-makers have been shaken.
Ever since last year's leaks suggesting Pakistan had swapped uranium centrifuges for ballistic missiles from N. Korea, the US has bought Gen Musharaf's line that the illicit commerce was the work of "individual scientists" driven by "greed"; it ended three years ago. But the secret transfers couldn't have suddenly stopped when Gen Musharraf took power.
Washington is playing this line because it needs Gen Musharraf in its war against Al-Qaeda.
However, no transfers of uranium centrifuges could have occurred from Pakistan's Kahuta enrichment plant without the consent of the army-controlled security apparatus. Pakistani physicist-nuclear expert Pervez Hoodbhoy says: "Since its inception, Pakistan's nuclear programme has been squarely under army supervision [and] multi-tiered security ..."
No civilian leader has been allowed to enter the Kahuta enrichment plant, barring Ghulam Ishaq Khan, a former president trusted by the army. Some years ago, the French ambassador was manhandled when he as much as approached Kahuta.
Pakistan has consciously traded in nuclear components. Ever since it decided to counter India's nuclear status after the 1974 Pokharan-I explosion, it made up for its technological backwardness by buying/stealing nuclear designs. In the late 1970s, Dr Khan managed to steal designs for high-speed uranium centrifuges from Holland. The metallurgist had huge government resources and total freedom from public scrutiny.
By the late 1980s, Kahuta produced highly enriched uranium. As Pakistan's nuclear capability grew, so did its blackmarket involvement - and Dr Khan's wealth!
Of the three countries involved, N. Korea's deals were the most important. By the 1980s, Pakistan had a nuclear capability, but no missiles. It bought these from N. Korea, a willing seller.
Pakistan's nuclear-trade network is only "the tip" of a global iceberg, says International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei: "International export controls have completely failed ...
A nuclear blackmarket has emerged, driven by fantastic cleverness. Designs are drawn in one country, centrifuges are produced in another, they are then shipped via a third country ..."
The danger of nuclear proliferation isn't confined to the global blackmarket. Huge quantities of weapons-grade fissile material routinely pass through "legitimate" civilian facilities the world over. Plutonium - only 5 kilos is enough to make a Nagasaki-type Bomb - is annually traded in tens of tonnes.
There are large quantities of "material-unaccounted-for" in global reprocessing facilities. One leaked IAEA report notes MUF enough for 20 bombs in one year!
IAEA inspections cannot plug all these leaks. And yet they are the physical controls available on global movements of nuclear materials. The proliferation danger will remain so long as nuclear weapons and power programmes exist. It can't be eliminated - short of global nuclear disarmament and shift to non-hazardous power technologies.
It would be foolhardy for Indians to take a smug, "we-told-you-so" view of Pakistan's nuclear transfers. Having a proliferator on its borders doesn't help India. Nor does it extinguish its responsibility for having teased, taunted and coaxed Pakistan into crossing the nuclear threshold.
Pakistan's nuclear programme has been reactive to India's. The world hyphenates India and Pakistan on nuclear weapons. They were named in a Security Council resolution, condemning their tests. If this is invoked against Pakistan, it can also be used against India.
It won't do to claim a lily-white status for India while painting Pakistan in dark colours. India too has bought, borrowed and dubiously procured nuclear materials from diverse sources: UK, US, USSR/Russia, Norway, France, China and Canada. Without their help in design, construction and material transfer, India couldn't have built its nuclear programme.
The plutonium used in India's 1974 test came from CIRUS, a reactor built with Canadian and US help. India reneged on its promise to use CIRUS solely for "peaceful" purposes. So it hypocritically called the 1974 test a "peaceful nuclear explosion". This too was a form of cheating.
There is admittedly a difference between Indian and Pakistani cheating. India is technologically more advanced, and KRL personnel were criminals. But that must be seen in the context of a crude 60-year-old mass-destruction technology, not something sophisticated, or of universal value.
The rational Indian response to the new developments would be to tighten controls on our nuclear facilities and exports to reduce the nuclear danger in the region and world.
India's true interest lies in global nuclear disarmament. Immediately, it lies in tight controls. US experts like Michael Krepon recently told a Senate committee that material to make "dirty bombs" could be procured from poorly guarded labs in India and Pakistan; both countries are "very vulnerable".
The Bomb's makers have brought disgrace to Pakistan. The Bomb is a liability for India and Pakistan. The sooner they get rid of it, the better.
Copyright 2004 The Daily Star
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