Washington continues to voice its worries about the security of Pakistan's nuclear assets. Vice President Joe Biden repeated, in more detail and with added emphasis, what Hillary Clinton said a few days back, on Thursday. As he put it, his greatest worry was not Afghanistan, not Iraq, nor the Iranian nuclear crisis, but Pakistan. He mentioned three factors that caused him anxiety.
Pakistan had deployable nuclear weapons, it had a 'significant minority' of a radicalised population, and it is not a completely functional democracy 'in the sense we think about it'. On February 7, Clinton had also expressed fears about the al Qaeda, or any of its several affiliates which she called a syndicate of terror, getting their hands on weapons of mass destruction. It annoys many Pakistanis when they are told their country alone is the possible source of leakage of nuclear materials or weapons.
Fighting against armed terrorist groups, possessing weapons of mass destruction, can justifiably be considered a nightmarish task, much more so than it was during the Cold War era, when there were only two blocs - Nato and the Warsaw Pact - led by the two major powers, with strong chains of command. There is still a considerable stockpile of unsecured WMDs in some states of the defunct Soviet Union.
There is also a thriving black market all over the world, where nuclear technology and components can be acquired. Again, there are unsecured nuclear materials located in hundreds of sites throughout the world. Many of the world's 130 highly enriched uranium-fuelled research facilities have less than ideal security. Some locations have no more security than a chain, link fence. What is more, numerous people have been apprehended, during the last few years, attempting to smuggle or steal nuclear materials or weapons at various places in the world, all of them outside Pakistan.
There is also inadequate security of highly enriched uranium and plutonium stockpiles; and radioactive materials used for research by medical and industrial concerns. Terrorist networks do not exist in Pakistan alone. Their existence has been reported in Europe, the Middle East, the Caucasus, Central Asia, South and South East Asia and the Americas. There are reports of their presence in Yemen now. Some of them are keen to acquire weapons of mass destruction to use against the US.
These organisations attract a number of engineers and technicians who could facilitate their home-grown nuclear weapons programmes. With considerable financial resources at their disposal, they can also recruit engineers and scientists from the thousands who have received education in related fields in Russia and the West.
Clandestine programmes of the sort would be assisted by the wealth of information, about nuclear matters, available on the Internet. And what about terrorists succeeding in getting nuclear materials from India? In June 2009, Indian nuclear scientist Lokanathan Mahalingam disappeared mysteriously from the Kaiga Atomic Power Station in Karnataka and his body was found five days later in a river. Was he kidnapped and killed after some terrorist group had acquired information to penetrate the Indian nuclear arsenal and use the material for a future attack on Washington or New Delhi?
Other incidents have also exposed India's low nuclear safety standards. For example, two junior Indian scientists were burnt to death last year at an Indian nuclear research facility located on the outskirts of Mumbai. American leaders sound partial therefore when they ignore all these possible sources of the leakage of nuclear technology and material and focus only on Pakistan.
This continues to happen despite repeated assurances by Pakistan's establishment that its command and control system is highly efficient and impenetrable. This encourages the formation of a perception that the US is not happy with Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.
The partiality also promotes the thinking that the increase in the US embassy staff, the presence of the Black Water now renamed Xe operatives in Pakistan, and the US military personnel coming as instructors, are all somehow or other related to a secret US plan to capture Pakistan's nuclear assets.
This is all the more so when senior US journalists also file reports about arrangements by Washington to take control of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, in case they are supposed to be in danger. It would be in the US' own interest if its leaders do not single out Pakistan. In case they are keen to convey whatever concerns they might have, it should be to the official quarters in Islamabad instead of going public on them.