A Whole Load
of Trash
By Dr Shireen M Mazari
It is becoming rather
sickening to find that anyone wanting to make a
quick buck or gain cheap publicity can do so simply
by creating "revelations" relating to
Muslim states like Iran and Pakistan. For us, the
nuclear program is the favorite whipping boy of
the Western media and analysts since the Western
world now clearly seems to be suffering from the
trauma of having to deal with Pakistan possessing
nuclear capability -- and that too a Muslim state
which appears to outsiders to be constantly going
through internal crises and which is still within
the fold of the developing rather than the developed
world.
It is interesting to note that whenever Pakistan
faces domestic upheavals, along comes another attack
on the nuclear front from some Western source or
the other. Honestly, there is a ridiculous absurdity
to these shenanigans from opportunistic Western
sources. The latest trash -- for that is what it
comes down to finally -- in this context has come
in the form of a book entitled "Deception:
Pakistan, the United States and the Secret Trade
in Nuclear Weapons: Pakistan's Nuclear Program"
which will come on the market next week.
Of course, if ever there was a deception in terms
of nuclear trading it was the US assistance to Israel
-- which still continues. The only nuclear trade
that has been more secret has been India's acquisitions
of, for example, krytrons, flash x-rays, maraging
steel and so on, especially in the early sixties
and seventies when India did not have the capability
to produce all the nuts and bolts for its 1974 nuclear
tests…
As for the authors of this latest piece of trashy
propaganda -- Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark
-- their previous foray into writing books had nothing
to do with nuclear or remotely related issues since
the two books to their credit are entitled, The
Amber Room: The Fate of the World's Greatest Lost
Treasures, and The Stone of Heaven: Unearthing the
Secret History of Imperial Green Jade. But that
hardly matters since they are inventing a story
that will be bought by so-called Western security
experts, a naive Western press and a Western audience
that laps up any attack on Pakistan's nuclear program
and on Dr A Q Khan -- who certainly traumatized
them by his audacious extrication of enrichment
knowledge from within their midst. The truth is
that the "facts" presented in the book,
as seen in the extractions published in the British
press, do not add up, the chronology's off track
and the dots do not connect.
Extracts from the book, published in Britain's Sunday
Times -- for whom the authors worked before they
joined The Guardian -- show the authors asserting
that Pakistan's nuclear program is a threat to the
security of the whole world because it can fall
into the hands of "Islamic terrorists at any
time." Such a tall claim, and with no hint
of proof or even a logical argument to back it up.
Just for the record, it would be more rational to
fear the US nuclear capability since presently nuclear
command authority in the US rests with President
Bush who in his second inaugural address declared
that he received his guidance from "beyond
the heavens." Was it this guidance that led
him to invade Iraq on false pretexts of WMD? What
if this source of guidance becomes his raison d'etre
for attacking other Muslim states? In contrast,
Pakistan's nuclear command, control and communications
are firmly in the hands of professionals.
There are also major contradictions including on
the one hand claiming that President Musharraf had
already been reducing Dr Khan's role in the nuclear
program and on the other declaring that it was all
done under pressure from Bush -- and then going
on to state that in fact the proliferation has still
not stopped. Yet no proof or even linkage has been
cited to support the last claim, except for a reference
to a 2006 report by German Intelligence Service
-- the BND -- that had declared that proliferation
had not stopped. Now one only has to recall the
BND being fooled by Iraq's so-called WMD in 2002-2003
to question the credibility of this "early
warning" assessment which sounds more like
a recycling of propaganda trash put out by the CIA
and Mossad to a gullible consumer of such manufactured
intelligence. Incidentally, of what crime is Dr
Khan guilty apart from perhaps alleged corruption
in terms of making personal financial gains? Anyhow,
with indemnity perhaps becoming a formal part of
our political landscape, will corruption be seen
as a crime now?
One of the biggest canards of our time is the claim
that Pakistan's arsenal is "unsecured"
and vulnerable to terrorists. They cite the views
expressed by 100 so-called US foreign policy experts
in a poll conducted by the Center for American Progress
and the Carnegie Endowment that Pakistan posed the
greatest nuclear threat to the world. Well, would
they have been honest enough to admit that their
own country posed the greatest nuclear and conventional
threat to the globe? But this tirade against Pakistan
is a desperate move by Americans to deflect attention
away from the US destruction of the non-proliferation
regime as a result of its nuclear deal with India.
This deal violates US obligations under the NPT
and NPT Agreements of 1995 and 2000. Attacking Pakistan
also deflects attention away from US failures in
Iraq and elsewhere, but especially in Afghanistan.
Even at the level of micro details of the now concluded
Libya-A Q Khan links, the authors are unclear or
wrong about the facts on the ground. For instance
it was Libya that revealed all on its nuclear ambitions
to the US in return for a political, economic and
strategic deal so there is little for the CIA to
claim as its success. But worse is the authors'
lack of basic nuclear knowledge. For instance, they
refer to the churning out of "cheap centrifuge
components" whereas in reality centrifuges
are high precision machines and cheap ones will
not work. Even India has not yet perfected uranium
enrichment and had to go the plutonium route for
its tests of 1974 and 1998, nor has Japan.
Perhaps the most ludicrous assertion by the authors
is their claim to finding a range of materials and
components still being procured by Pakistan that
"clearly exceed" what Pakistan needs for
its domestic nuclear program. Now that is presumptuous
of the authors to assume that they know what is
adequate for Pakistan. Trash at its peak! But then
here is a new growth industry in the West that hypes
the WMD threat, now diversified into an "Islamic
nuclear threat". The reality of Pakistan's
cooperation with the international community, including
assisting the IAEA on Iran and Libya, and Pakistan's
publicly revealed and clear cut command and control
mechanisms as well as its export control laws do
not sit well with this hype industry and propagandist
trash.
We are also to blame. We tolerate this abuse and
continue to give explanations in a defensive mode.
This must stop. Although presently we are totally
immersed in critical domestic issues, let us not
allow these to be used by external forces to undermine
our capabilities and national assets, including
nuclear assets. Perhaps if we looked inwards to
our own people rather than to external players to
decide our political fate, we would keep the latter's
access and influence limited and more circumspect.
(The writer is director general of the Institute
of Strategic Studies, Islamabad. Courtesy The News)
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