Of late, reports about the safety of Pakistan's nuclear assets have started appearing in the Western media with disturbing regularity. Not a week passes without some media outlet in the United States or Britain publishing a report, generally attributed to some think-tank or undisclosed 'inside' source, claiming that these assets can fall into the hands of religious extremists.
These extremists are variously described as Islamist radicals or plain terrorists. Often, these reports describe in considerable detail what the US government would do, or can do, to preempt the take-over of Pakistani nukes by the terrorists. Although Pakistan's nuclear programme has been the bull's-eye ever since the publication of 'The Islamic Bomb' in seventies, it is quite intriguing that it has come under sharper focus of the Western media in the last couple of months.
One may not like to say it with any amount of assertiveness, but there seems to be two, albeit completely unconnected, developments that come to mind as the plausible factors leading to this media campaign. First, the ongoing US-India nuclear cooperation talks that are likely to mature into a firm agreement very soon, have yet to be clothed with international legal sanctity. As India is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) it is not entitled to cooperation in nuclear technology development by a signatory of the NPT, which the United States is.
By raising 'alarm' about the safety of Pakistan's nuclear programme India can be given the fig leaf of legitimacy. The second factor possibly may well be that a well-lobbied organised effort is afoot to link the safety of Pakistan's nuclear assets with the victory of the so-called liberal democratic forces in Pakistan in the forthcoming elections over their opponents who are perceived in the West as harbingers of primitivism and confrontation.
Without contesting the lobbyists' right to sell their products one would, however, wonder at the propensity of lapping it up log, stock and barrel. One would also question the wisdom of various official quarters in being readily available for clarifications and rebuttals. In psychological warfare, which surely surrounds Pakistan's nuclear programme, fighting is not about the authenticity of assertion but the public opinion space denied to the opponent.
Yes, there has been cooperation between Islamabad and Washington on how to make Pakistan's nuclear assets more secure and safe. It is also true that over some years Pakistan received technical help in the form of personnel training and some equipment, worth about 100 million dollars, to quote Pakistan Foreign Office, "to learn from the best practices of other countries with regard to nuclear safety and export controls".
Mind you, these very experts in the think-tanks concede without hesitation that despite the ongoing cooperation the United States has not been able to share with Pakistan the so-called Permissive Action Links (PALs), devices that prevent unauthorised detonations. As for the safety of Pakistan's strategic assets these are "as safe as of any other nuclear-weapon state", says the FO spokesman, adding that "such reports appear off and on and regardless of their motives".
Pakistan is not the only country to receive the US assistance in this area: Under the Nunn-Lugar Program Russia receives US assistance worth one billion dollars every year to increase the safety of its some 6000 operational warheads. To keep the anti-Pakistan propaganda boiling a year-old report has been retrieved from the dustbin of a think-tank, which war-gamed various options before the US government to secure Pakistan's nuclear assets from falling into wrong hands.
The report talks of sending the American troops into Pakistan as well as isolating its nuclear bunkers by "saturating the surrounding areas with tens of thousands of high-powered mines dropped from the air and packed with antitank and anti-personnel munitions". This indeed is a scanty scenario, may be scripted for another "Black Hawk Down", but a reality-check by recalling the US attack to rescue embassy staff in Tehran or its recent involvements in Iraq and Afghanistan would help. Pakistan is not neighbouring Nicaragua that troops can be sent in to take out its strategic assets.
Its nuclear programme is a national programme, run by thousands of dedicated workers who owe their first and last allegiance to Pakistan. It is not child's play, in that its nukes would be stolen - and, therefore, must be destroyed before that happens - by terrorists or the like. Anyone losing sleep on this account alone, does not need to do that because the Pakistani nukes are absolutely safe and secure.