Author: Kaushik Kapisthalam
Publication: Asia Times
Date: June 4, 2004
URL: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/FF04Df05.html
Novelists Dominique Lapierre and
Larry Collins, authors of such bestsellers as City of Joy and Is Paris
burning?, have just written a new novel titled Is New York Burning? whose
plot involves al-Qaeda members, with help from a Pakistan army major, successfully
smuggling a Pakistani nuclear device into New York and then using it to
try to blackmail the United States into stopping support for Israel.
The Pakistani jihadi group that
plays a big part in the plot is called Lashkar-e-Tibi. Even fiction writers
have now started connecting the dots linking Pakistan's nuclear establishment,
its home-grown jihad groups and the possibility of an al-Qaeda nuclear
attack overseas. But US authorities seem curiously blase about this threat
and still appear to be content with the old shibboleths about the "inviolability"
of Pakistan's nuclear program.
The ones who met Osama bin Laden
In late 2001, US officials investigating
the activities of Osama bin Laden discovered that the al-Qaeda head had
contacted some Pakistani nuclear experts for assistance in making a small
nuclear device. US officials sought two veteran Pakistani nuclear scientists
in particular, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood and Abdul Majid, for interrogation.
The two admitted working in Afghanistan in recent years, but said they
had only been providing "charitable assistance" to Afghans.
Mahmood was no low-level scientist.
He was one of Pakistan's foremost experts in the secret effort to produce
plutonium for atomic weapons. In 1999 he publicly said that Pakistan should
help other Islamic nations build nuclear weapons. He also made some public
statements in support of the Taliban movement. After more interrogation,
both Mahmood and Majid admitted that they had met with bin Laden and his
deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri during their visits to Afghanistan and held long
"theoretical" discussions on nuclear weapons.
Then the trail went cold. After
months in Pakistani custody, both Mahmood and Majid were quietly released.
Fearing that Mahmood's charity organization, Ummah Tameer e-Nau, could
be a front for al- Qaeda, the US government placed the entity in its terrorist
list and designated Mahmood himself "a global terrorist". Pakistan's government
never put the two scientists on trial, and they are free men today.
The ones who got away
In December 2001, the New York
Times reported that while US authorities were investigating Mahmood and
Majid, they found some links between al-Qaeda and two other Pakistani nuclear
scientists, Suleiman Asad and Muhammed Ali Mukhtar. Both Asad and Mukhtar
had long experience at two of Pakistan's most secret nuclear-weapons-related
installations. However, before US investigators could reach them, Pakistan
sent the two scientists to Myanmar on an unspecified "research project".
The New York Times also quoted Pakistani
officials as saying that President General Pervez Musharraf personally
telephoned one of Myanmar's military rulers to ask him to provide temporary
asylum for the two nuclear specialists. In January 2002, the Wall Street
Journal reported that Asad and Mukhtar were possibly aiding Myanmar's efforts
to build a 10-megawatt nuclear "research reactor". Asad and Mukhtar are
still in Myanmar, well away from US reach.
The Lashkar-Nuke link
Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) is a terrorist
group based in Muridke, Pakistan. Although founded by the chief promoter
of the Afghan jihad and bin Laden mentor, Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, LeT claims
ousting India from Kashmir as its main goal. But experts say LeT shared
training camps with al-Qaeda and that many al-Qaeda-linked Afghan-Arabs
have been found fighting for LeT in Indian- administered Kashmir. The LeT
fought on the side of the Taliban in Afghanistan as well.
An Australian named David Hicks,
who was picked up by coalition forces in Afghanistan and who is now in
Guantanomo prison in Cuba, was trained by LeT. LeT has also provided training
for jihadis from Southeast Asia, Central Asia and Chechnya. In December
2001, the US banned LeT after it was implicated in a terrorist attack on
India's parliament. Pakistan subsequently banned LeT in January 2002, but
allowed it to operate under a new name - Jamaat-ud- Dawa. Prior to being
banned, LeT used to hold massive annual conclaves in Pakistan, preaching
jihad against India, Israel and the United States. Today, it is widely
believed that LeT is operating as a global al-Qaeda "franchisee", even
though it is still active in Indian Kashmir.
In a sensational claim, French journalist
and author Bernard Henri- Levy stated that Pakistan's disgraced "father"
of the nuclear bomb, Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, was in fact a member of LeT.
What is definite is that Khan did attend the last openly held LeT moot,
in April 2001, as an honored guest. Accompanying Khan on the dais was none
other than Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, the plutonium expert who met bin
Laden. According to the South Asia Analysis Group, bin Laden himself was
known to address LeT annual meets over the phone for many years, even when
he was hiding in Afghanistan and Sudan.
Despite being banned, the Pakistani
media have frequently reported that LeT has openly collected funds under
its new name. Pakistani authorities have allowed LeT's leader or "emir",
Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, to barnstorm Pakistan, calling for jihad against
the United States, in particular. In the recent past, Saeed has stated
in his public meetings and rallies that Pakistan's nuclear weapons should
be used to benefit all Islamic nations and that Pakistan must share its
nukes with such nations as Iran and Saudi Arabia. More alarming, in a 2002
statement Saeed released to the LeT website, he claimed that people loyal
to his organization "control two nuclear missiles". He is claimed to have
said that the two missiles with warheads would be used against "enemies
of Islam".
In 2002, top al-Qaeda leader Abu
Zubaida was arrested from a LeT safe house in Faisalabad, Pakistan. Pakistani
officials did not, however, arrest LeT leader Hameedullah Khan Niazi, who
had housed Zubaida. In late 2003, the brother of Indonesian terrorist Hambali
and many of his Indonesian and Malaysian associates were also arrested
from a LeT-owned seminary in Karachi.
In what is now known in the United
States as the "Virginia Jihad" conspiracy, nine terrorist suspects were
recently arrested from Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania. The men were
later convicted on terrorism-related charges. As per the indictment, all
were members of LeT and trained in LeT camps in Pakistan.
Last October, a French-born terrorist
named Willie Brigitte was arrested in connection with his actions in Australia.
Brigitte admitted to be a member of LeT. Australian police later arrested
a Pakistani architect - Faheem Lodhi, who was also a member of LeT, and
was supposedly Brigitte's co-conspirator in a plot to conduct a major terrorist
attack in Australia. Reports indicate that Lodhi's and Brigitte's target
was supposedly the electrical grid. Other targets considered included the
Lucas Heights nuclear research center outside Sydney and various military
facilities and natural-gas pipelines. It is also known that both Lodhi
and Brigitte received funds and took orders from a mid-to-high-level LeT
member in Pakistan named Sheikh Sajid. More alarming, Brigitte told interrogators
that he had personally seen a Chechen chemical- weapons expert named Abu
Salah experiment with chemical weapons in an LeT camp in Pakistan.
Why the Pakistan threat is real
Despite all the ominous-sounding
facts mentioned above, some readers might wonder whether the Pakistan nuclear-terrorism
threat is a credible one. Indeed, some analysts do feel that the idea of
Pakistan's nuclear warheads falling into the hands of terrorist groups
such as LeT is an exaggeration. After all, it is widely believed that Pakistan's
nuclear weapons are under the secure safekeeping of the nation's army,
the only institution in Pakistan that is supposedly free of al-Qaeda influence.
But is that really so?
Just recently, Musharraf revealed
that some "junior" Pakistani army and air force officers had colluded with
al-Qaeda terrorists in the two attempts on his life last December. The
Pakistani newspaper the Daily Times revealed that the "junior officers"
referred to by Musharraf may include an army captain, three majors, a lieutenant-
colonel and a colonel. This is extremely significant. While many retired
Pakistani generals and intelligence chiefs have openly associated with
groups such as al-Qaeda, their actions have been glossed over because they
weren't in active service. But when we know that serving Pakistani military
officers have been conducting joint operations with al-Qaeda, the possibility
of a Pakistani nuclear device falling into the hands of al-Qaeda appears
more credible.
Even if al-Qaeda never gets hold
of a Pakistani nuclear warhead, thanks to US technical safeguards, the
possibility of it building a Pakistani-designed radiation dispersal device
or a "dirty bomb" looks plausible. A recent analysis by US nuclear experts
David Albright and Holly Higgins found strong evidence that Pakistani nuclear
scientists Sultan Mahmood and Abdul Majid "provided significant assistance
to al-Qaeda's efforts to make radiation dispersal devices". Therein lies
the most overlooked Pakistani threat - the knowledge in the heads of nuclear
experts sympathetic to the jihad movement, and jihadi groups with weapons-of-mass-
destruction ambitions such as LeT operating secure facilities and training
camps in Pakistan with only the most minimal of restraints.
Assuming that the US might be secretly
monitoring Pakistani nuclear fuel and weapons sites, such actions would
not be enough to prevent, for instance, radioactive materials stolen from
the former Soviet Union by Chechen LeT members and delivered to Pakistan,
packaged into a dirty bomb designed by a Pakistani nuclear scientist (or
an improvised nuclear device based on a Pakistani warhead design) in an
LeT compound and delivered by a Pakistani- trained Western citizen taking
orders from a handler in Karachi or Lahore.
For those who are skeptical of such
a scenario it is worthwhile to recall that there have been reports of every
one of its individual elements over the past three years, including the
smuggling of radioactive and fissile material in to the region. This March,
Tajik authorities arrested a man with a small quantity of plutonium that
he allegedly planned to sell in Afghanistan or Pakistan. Indeed, Pakistan
remains the single most important country of focus in preventing an attack
using a dirty bomb or even an improvised nuclear device.
Even before September 11, 2001,
al-Qaeda had been interested in launching suicide attacks on nuclear reactors,
turning them in effect into huge dirty bombs. For instance, in a 2002 interview
with alJazeera reporter Yosri Fouda at a secret location in Karachi, September
11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his associate Ramzi bin al-Shibh
claimed that the September 11 attacks were originally going to target nuclear
reactors, but they "decided against it for fear it would go out of control".
Scientists and engineers from Pakistan's nuclear program could provide
essential advice that could make the difference between success and failure.
For instance, Sultan Mahmood, who played an important role in the construction
of Pakistan's Khushab nuclear reactor, could have given specific tips to
terrorists on how to breach nuclear reactors.
Unlearning the lessons of September
11
This summer is slated to be a period
of high tension for the West, the United States in particular, with multiple
threats of terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda and its affiliates, according
to US officials. As horrific as the September 11 attacks on the US were,
many terrorism experts have been warning that the next al-Qaeda attacks
could be much worse. Even as the US struggles to deal with the aftermath
of a war to remove Saddam Hussein from Iraq, where the threat from weapons
of mass destruction was highly ambiguous, it appears that US policymakers
are unresponsive to a more alarming threat from Pakistan.
Kaushik Kapisthalam is a freelance
journalist based in the United States.
