US/1; ATTN: StandUpAmerica
Think Tank Identifies Growing Terrorist Threat to Pakistan's Nuke Arsenal
By: Anthony Kimery
06/30/2011 ( 8:37am)
A new Federation of American Scientists (FAS) report released Wednesday stated that “the greatest threat to Pakistan's nuclear infrastructure comes from jihadists both inside Pakistan and South and Central Asia.”
The report, Anatomizing Non-State Threats to Pakistan’s Nuclear Infrastructure, stated that “while there is appreciation of this danger, there are few substantive studies that identify and explore specific groups motivated and potentially capable of acquiring Pakistani nuclear weapons and/or fissile materials.”
FAS said its new “report fills that gap by exploring the Pakistani Neo-Taliban (PNT) and the groups that fill its ranks.”
Prepared by Charles Blair, director of the group’s Terrorism Analysis Project, and Hans Kristensen, director of its Nuclear Information Project, discusses why the Pakistani Neo-Taliban is the most worrisome terrorist group that’s capable of acquiring nuclear weapons. The report detailed new numbers for Pakistan's nuclear stockpile and developments in Pakistan’s production of fissile materials.
“The discovery and subsequent killing of [O]sama Bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, raises several troubling questions,” the new FAS report stated, adding that “with regard to the security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, commentators note the US’ airborne raid on Bin Laden’s compound - undetected by radars in Pakistan, the world’s fifth largest military power - lends credence to the belief that state actors might be capable of successfully seizing and exfiltrating Pakistan’s nuclear assets.”
“As serious a security breach as the raid may have been,” the report stated, “of far greater importance is what it reveals about Pakistan’s nuclear insecurities with regard to non-state actors. Indeed, while much attention has rightfully refocused on senior components of Pakistan’s military that aid and abet the Afghan Taliban, elements of Al Qaeda, and other jihadist groups that actively oppose the US, recent events are also a strong reminder that Pakistan is in the midst of a civil war against many of these same forces.”
“While it is likely that some senior Pakistani officials were aware of Bin Laden’s location in Abbottabad prior to the US assault,” the FAS report continued, “one should not entirely dismiss the recent comments of Prime Minister [Syed Yusuf Raza] Gilani, especially those in which he notes Pakistan’s own war against terrorism has cost it ‘some 30,000 men, women, and children and more than 5,000 armed forces personnel [and] billions of dollars lost as economic costs.’”
The FAS report stated “Pakistan may well be attempting to play all sides with its Janus-faced policies. Yet Pakistani leaders believe its policies - costly as they may be - are in harmony with their primary goals of blunting Indian influence in Central Asia and ensuring that the geopolitical endgame in Afghanistan conforms to their perceived interests.”
“Fully aware that the US will likely not remain in Afghanistan until it is favorably stabilized, and apprehensive that the power-vacuum left by a US withdrawal will invite meddling by Iran and India,” the report explained, “from late 2001 onward Pakistan’s military viewed the Taliban as a tool held in reserve, one that could blunt and counter Indian influence in Central Asia, generally, and offset mounting Indian influence in Kabul, specifically.”
“For example,” the report noted, “during the early post-9/11 era, Pakistan’s Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) not only passively allowed the Afghan Taliban and its jihadist allies to fortify their position in Pakistan’s Waziristan Agencies, but implemented specific plans ‘to create a broad Talibanized belt in its [Federally Administered Tribal Areas – FATA] that would keep the pressure on [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai to bend to Pakistani wishes, keep US forces under threat while maintaining their dependence on Pakistani goodwill, and create a buffer zone between Afghan and Pakistani Pashtuns.’ Ahmed Rashid has summarized the ISI’s perception of this post-2001 Pakistani strategy as one that would ensure ‘a Talibanized Pashtun population along the border [that] would pose a threat to Karzai and the Americans but no threat to Pakistan, which would be in control of them.’”
But, the report said, “Pakistan gravely miscalculated in this regard. For four primary reasons Pakistan’s Talibanized Pashtuns and their allies - collectively referred to in [the] report as the Pakistani Neo-Taliban (PNT) - challenge not only the US-led coalition in Afghanistan, but also pose a distinct threat to Pakistan’s nuclear infrastructure; indeed, in the words of Gen. David Petraeus, the PNT is now a ‘threat to the very existence of Pakistan … supplanting even India.’”
“Pakistan’s first miscalculation - shared by the US - was a failure to foresee the violent revolt in its tribal areas as a result of the Pakistani military’s unprecedented incursion into FATA,” the FAS report continued, pointing out that “this military campaign - halfheartedly advanced by Pakistani forces against Al Qaeda after the latter escaped from Tora Bora in December 2001- was irresolutely advanced only at the insistence of the US and the latter’s concomitant and intertwined promise of generous military aid packages. As armed engagements increased, local tribal leaders in FATA came to believe that Pakistan was allowing US forces to operate unfettered within Pakistan.
“Fearing subjugation by a US-Pakistani cabal, it was only a matter of time before FATA’s tribal chieftains organized their own militias and began to battle Pakistani forces - the civil war had begun.”
The report goes on to identify and discuss in-depth three other important factors that gave rise to the threat that jihadist Taliban forces pose to Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.
[Information contained in BKNT E-mail is considered Attorney-Client and Attorney Work Product privileged, copyrighted and confidential. Views that may be expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of any government, agency, or news organization.]
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