Posted on 10/20/2001 9:47:28 PM PDT by duck soup
US taking long-term aim at Pak nukes, ISI
CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
WASHINGTON: Beyond the immediate objective of decimating Osama Bin Laden and his al-Qaida and toppling the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, the US has some long-term collateral targets in the region: Pakistan's nukes and spooks.
While the bombing campaign against the Taliban is making headlines, the Bush administration is quietly moving behind the scenes to try and ensure it has some kind of handle on Pakistan's nuclear assets. Informed sources say Pakistan has rejected Washington's offer --made over the last month -- of enhancing the safety and security measures of its nuclear force, believing it will constitute an intrusive inspection of its weapons program.
In turn, Islamabad has assured the US that it has effectively put its command and control system in place. But the assertion is being taken with a fistful of salt
Proliferation experts within and outside the administration are increasingly invoking the nightmare scenario of the nuclear weapons falling into the hands of a fundamentalist jehadi regime that could overthrow the Musharraf rule.
The fears have been aggravated by the unending street protests now roiling Pakistan and polls showing that contrary to Musharraf's claim that 80 per cent of the people back him, 80 per cent actually oppose his support to the US.
"The US campaign against terrorism in neighboring Afghanistan is likely to add considerable strain on Pakistan's chain of command... Internal stresses within Pakistan could have dire consequences for the entire region," says Stimson Center's Michael Krepon, a South Asia expert who is advocating supply of US nuclear safety instruments to both Pakistan and India.
US officials are, however, less concerned about India's nuclear program, rooted as it is in institutional strength and a no-first-use policy. Although it is politic in the administration to talk about nuclear tensions in the region involving both India and Pakistan, the real worry now is the latter -- and the consequences of the bomb falling into the hands of extremists. It is a thought that was on the edge of US consciousness for a long time but has now moved sharply to the forefront. Disclosures and comments by bin Laden and his cohorts that they were aiming to get their hands on the nukes have given the administration the willies.
Some experts are now pushing for a back-up plan that includes deployment of US forces to remove Pakistan's nuclear weapons should a jehadi regime take over.
Unless Pakistan agrees to accept international help to secure its nuclear program "the US should begin to work immediately on contingency plans (that) include the ability to rapidly deploy forces to Pakistan to find and regain control of any lost nuclear materials and, only as a last option in a crisis, remove them from Pakistan to a secure location," says John Wolfsthal, a non-proliferation expert with the Carnegie Endowment.
While Pakistan's nuclear assets constitute one set of worries, the US is also concerned about the ISI, Pakistan's premier spook agency which is coming under increasing scrutiny and muted criticism within the administration. Although the CIA has had strong institutional ties with the ISI in the past, the Pakistani outfit has been doing its own thing over the past few years, especially in Afghanistan.
Over the past few weeks, there is a growing realisation in the intelligence community here that the ISI's links and loyalty to the Taliban, which it created and nurtured, is far stronger than support to the US war effort. According to one account, the intelligence supplied by the ISI to US forces has amounted to zilch so far. Having directed the removal of the pro-Taliban ISI chief Mahmoud Ahmed, the US is now set to oversee a purge in the ISI ranks of senior and mid-level operatives who it identifies as having sympathies with the fundamentalists.
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