Pakistan Nuclear Security Questioned
Lack of Knowledge About Arsenal May Limit U.S. Options
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 11, 2007; A01

When the United States learned in 2001 that Pakistani scientists had shared nuclear secrets with members of al-Qaeda, an alarmed Bush administration responded with tens of millions of dollars worth of equipment such as intrusion detectors and ID systems to safeguard Pakistan's nuclear weapons.

But Pakistan remained suspicious of U.S. aims and declined to give U.S. experts direct access to the half-dozen or so bunkers where the components of its arsenal of about 50 nuclear weapons are stored. For the officials in Washington now monitoring Pakistan's deepening political crisis, the experience offered both reassurance and grounds for concern.

Protection for Pakistan's nuclear weapons is considered equal to that of most Western nuclear powers. But U.S. officials worry that their limited knowledge about the locations and conditions in which the weapons are stored gives them few good options for a direct intervention to prevent the weapons from falling into unauthorized hands.

"We can't say with absolute certainty that we know where they all are," said a former U.S. official who closely tracked the security upgrades. If an attempt were made by the United States to seize the weapons to prevent their loss, "it could be very messy," the official said.

Of the world's nine declared and undeclared nuclear arsenals, none provokes as much worry in Washington as Pakistan's, numerous U.S. officials said. The government in Islamabad is arguably the least stable. Some Pakistani territory is partly controlled by insurgents bent on committing hostile acts of terrorism in the West. And officials close to the seat of power -- such as nuclear engineer A.Q. Khan and his past collaborators in the Pakistani military -- have a worrisome track record of transferring sensitive nuclear designs or technology to others.

That record, and the counterterror prism of U.S. policymaking since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, have led the Bush administration to worry less that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal might be used in a horrific war with India than that it could become a security threat to the U.S. homeland in the event of any theft or diversion to terrorist groups.

Because the risks are so grave, U.S. intelligence officials have long had contingency plans for intervening to obstruct such a theft in Pakistan, two knowledgeable officials confirmed. The officials would not discuss details of the plans, which are classified, but several former officials said the plans envision efforts to remove a nuclear weapon at imminent risk of falling into terrorists' hands.

The plans imagine, in the best case, that Pakistani military officials will help the Americans eliminate that threat. But in other scenarios there may be no such help, said Matt Bunn, a nuclear weapons expert and former White House science official in the Clinton administration. "We're a long way from any scenario of that kind. But the current turmoil highlights the need for doing whatever we can right now to improve cooperation and think hard about what might happen down the road."

Former and current administration officials say they believe that Pakistan's stockpile is safe. But they worry that its security could be weakened if the current turmoil persists or worsens. They are particularly concerned by early signs of fragmented loyalties among Pakistan's military and intelligence leaders, who share responsibility for protecting the arsenal.

"The military will be stretched thin if the level of protest rises," said John E. McLaughlin, the No. 2 official at the CIA from 2000 to 2004. "If the situation becomes more volatile, the conventional wisdom [about nuclear security] could come into question." He noted that Pakistan's army has become increasingly diverse, reflecting the country's ethnic and religious differences, "and that is different from the way it was years ago."

Former and current intelligence officials said the focus of U.S. concerns is the stability of Pakistan's army, which was already showing strain from Western pressures to upgrade its counterinsurgency work when President Pervez Musharraf declared a state of emergency last week, unleashing riots and a police crackdown on political opposition groups. The officials said the military might not remain a loyal, cohesive force if violence becomes sustained or widespread.

Anytime a nation with nuclear weapons experiences "a situation such as Pakistan is at present, that is a primary concern," said Lt. Gen. Carter Ham, director of operations for the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, during a Pentagon news conference last week. "We'll watch that quite closely, and I think that's probably all I can say about that at this point."

Concerns about possible thefts if the government's authority erodes or disintegrates extend to nuclear components, design plans and special materials such as enriched uranium. Twice in the past six years, Pakistan has acknowledged that its nuclear scientists passed sensitive nuclear information or equipment to outsiders -- including, in one case, members of al-Qaeda.

Two retired Pakistani nuclear scientists traveled to Afghanistan in August 2001 at the request of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. He pressed the scientists for details on how to make nuclear weapons, and the scientists replied with advice and crude diagrams, according to U.S. officials at the time.

Officials at the Pakistani Embassy declined to comment for this story.

Pakistan, which tested its first warhead in 1998, began developing nuclear weapons in the 1970s with help from Khan, the Pakistani engineer who years later became the leader of an international nuclear smuggling ring. Khan covertly acquired sensitive nuclear information and equipment from several European countries, helped build the stockpile and later profited personally by providing materials to Libya, North Korea and Iran.

Pakistan has repeatedly asserted that its government and army were unaware of Khan's proliferation activities until 2003. However, numerous published accounts have described extensive logistical support that military officials provided to Khan, including the use of military aircraft.

In the weeks after the 2001 terrorist attacks, the Bush administration dispatched Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage and other senior officials to Islamabad to raise the issue of safeguarding the country's nuclear arsenal. Musharraf agreed to policy changes and security upgrades, starting with the dismissal of some Pakistani intelligence officials suspected of ties to the Taliban, bin Laden's ally.

Musharraf also agreed to move some nuclear weapons to more secure locations and accepted a U.S. offer to help design a system of controls, barriers, locks and sensors to guard against theft.

Unlike U.S. nuclear arms, which are protected by integrated electronic packages known as "permissive action links," or PALs, that require a special access code, Pakistan chose to rely on physical separation of bomb components, such as isolating the fissile "core" or trigger from the weapon and storing it elsewhere. All the components are stored at military bases.

That means would-be thieves would have to "knock over two buildings to get a complete bomb," said Bunn, now a researcher at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. "Theft would be more difficult to pull off, though presumably in a crisis that might change."

Instead of allowing U.S. officials access to its weapons facilities, the Musharraf government insisted that Pakistani technicians travel to the United States for training on how to use the new systems, said Mark Fitzpatrick, a weapons expert who recently completed a study of the Pakistani program for the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Washington is confident that Pakistan's nuclear safeguards are designed to be robust enough to withstand a "fair amount of political commotion," said John Brennan, a retired CIA official and former director of the National Counterterrorism Center. The problem, he said, is that no one can reliably predict what will happen if the country slides toward civil war or anarchy.

"There are some scenarios in which the country slides into a situation of anarchy in which some of the more radical elements may be ascendant," said Brennan, now president of Analysis Corp., a private consulting firm based in Fairfax. "If there is a collapse in the command-and-control structure -- or if the armed forces fragment -- that's a nightmare scenario. If there are different power centers within the army, they will each see the strategic arsenal as a real prize."

Other nuclear "prizes" could leak more easily if the military holds together and the bombs remain in their bunkers, according to David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector and president of the nonprofit Institute for Science and International Security. He said individuals working inside nuclear facilities could make a quick fortune by selling bomb components or "fissile" material -- the plutonium or enriched uranium needed for building bombs.

"If stability doesn't return, you do have to worry about the thinking of the people with access to these things," said Albright, whose Washington-based institute tracks global nuclear stockpiles. "As loyalties break down, they may look for an opportunity to make a quick buck. You may not be able to get the whole weapon, but maybe you can get the core."

Bhutto Tries to Unite Opposition With Visit to Fired Judge
By Pamela Constable and Griff Witte
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, November 11, 2007; A20

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 10 -- Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, emerging from a day of house arrest, attempted Saturday to unite two key strands of the country's fragmented opposition by visiting Pakistan's deposed chief justice in his barricaded home in the capital. She was blocked by police, but her effort seemed aimed at winning over lawyers at the forefront of protests against President Pervez Musharraf.

Bhutto's move came as Pakistani authorities ordered three newspaper correspondents to leave the country within 72 hours, citing an editorial in the Friday edition of Britain's Daily Telegraph that compared Musharraf to a former Central American dictator. Officials said the paper had used "foul and abusive language" against Pakistan and its leadership.

The order was part of a crackdown on the media in Pakistan that has kept private television news stations off the air for a week. The government, which imposed emergency rule Nov. 3, has since arrested thousands of opposition activists, and riot police wielding clubs and firing tear gas have enforced a ban on public protests.

Bhutto, who spent Friday confined to her home by riot troops and barricades while her supporters were blocked from reaching a planned protest site, came out charging Saturday. She made one appearance at a rally by journalists protesting the media crackdown, met with foreign diplomats and then drove with supporters to visit the deposed chief justice, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry. When police blocked their path, she delivered a high-decibel speech on the spot, calling for democracy and judicial freedom.

Most significantly, Bhutto offered the strongest signals yet that she intends to join the nation's lawyers in fighting Musharraf's firing of Chaudhry and other judges who had opposed the emergency. Musharraf's crackdown on the independent judiciary has aroused strong public condemnation, drawn scathing commentary from political observers and galvanized an unprecedented protest movement by thousands of lawyers across the country.

By making a high-profile attempt to visit Chaudhry, Bhutto appeared to be acknowledging the importance of his role as the most prominent victim of emergency rule and as a powerful symbol for unifying opposition to Musharraf. Despite being under house arrest for a week, Chaudhry has managed to speak to public gatherings via cellphone. With the government now threatening to banish him to his native Baluchistan province, the deposed justice has refused to go quietly.

"I fear my connection with the outside world will be lost after some time," he said in a telephone interview with the News International, a Pakistani newspaper. "I just want to convey this message that this is the final chance to save our independence. . . . If the civil society loses its war now, it would take another 60 years to reach this point."

Bhutto, riding in a white SUV and surrounded by cheering supporters, attempted to reach the hilltop mansion where Chaudhry has been held since emergency rule began. Police barricaded her path about 200 yards from the house, and Bhutto swung out of the vehicle with a megaphone in hand.

"He is the real chief justice," she declared.

Bhutto has been treated skeptically by many leaders of the lawyers' movement, who believe she is still negotiating a power-sharing deal with Musharraf. She has not backed their call for him to resign from the presidency. The lawyers have preached a hard line against Musharraf all year, but their numbers nationwide are relatively small.

Bhutto, by contrast, commands an army of millions of followers through her position as head of the Pakistan People's Party, and she can bring supporters into the streets more effectively than any opposition politician in the country.

On Friday, she planned to lead a rally in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, but police confined her to her house in Islamabad and a massive security presence prevented crowds from massing.

Bhutto intends to try again Tuesday, with plans to lead a procession from the eastern city of Lahore to Islamabad, the capital, a journey of about 250 miles. The government has said the protest ban will be enforced once again.

Sen. Latif Khosa, a lawyer and member of Bhutto's party who represents Lahore, said the lawyers would be out in force to support her. "Benazir has come as the savior of our nation," he said. "People from all segments of society will come out to support . . . the restoration of the judiciary and the end of martial law."

The move against the three correspondents for the Telegraph was the government's first action against the international media since the imposition of emergency rule. One provision of the emergency order prohibits any insulting or critical media coverage of Musharraf, although Pakistani newspapers remain full of scathing commentary against him.

The Telegraph editorial referred to Musharraf with a vulgar phrase once used by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in legendary comments about Anastasio Somoza Garc¿a, a dictator and U.S. ally who ruled Nicaragua from 1936 to 1956. The editorial also said Musharraf had demonstrated a "combination of incompetence and brutality" and called him "a spent force."

Pakistani diplomats in London filed a formal letter of complaint with the Telegraph, which published the letter Saturday. Pakistani authorities also demanded a printed apology in return for a reconsideration of their decision to expel the three correspondents, Isambard Wilkinson, Colin Freeman and Damien McElroy.

Tariq Azim Khan, the deputy information minister, said the editorial had violated "cultural sensitivities."

Bush, Rice Defend Musharraf as an Ally
Desire for Pakistani Elections Made Clear
By Michael Abramowitz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 11, 2007; A13

CRAWFORD, Tex., Nov. 10 -- President Bush and his senior advisers offered Saturday perhaps their most extensive defense of Gen. Pervez Musharraf as an ally in the battle against Islamic extremists a week after the Pakistani president declared emergency rule and began a crackdown on human rights activists, lawyers and journalists.

Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made clear their continuing desire for Musharraf to hold elections and to resign from the Pakistani army, with Rice bluntly calling his assumption of emergency powers a "bad decision." But they mixed criticism with sympathy for what they termed Musharraf's past efforts to cultivate democracy and to help the United States go after al-Qaeda leaders in the border regions between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"President Musharraf, right after the attacks on September the 11th, made a decision, and the decision was to stand with the United States against the extremists inside Pakistan," Bush told reporters here after meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. "In other words, he was given an option: Are you with us, or are you not with us? And he made a clear decision to be with us, and he's acted on that advice."

Bush noted that several senior al-Qaeda leaders "have been brought to justice" and that "that would not have happened without President Musharraf honoring his word."

Bush spent last night and this morning at his ranch here in intensive consultations with Merkel on a variety of issues, especially his continuing drive to intensify the diplomatic and financial pressure on Iran over its nuclear activities. U.S. officials have considered Germany something of a weak link in this effort, but Merkel made clear that she is open to a new round of international sanctions and to possibly further reducing Germany's extensive commercial ties with Iran.

Bush was forceful in repeating several times his desire to solve the problem diplomatically, a nod to Merkel's evident distaste for any talk of military action.

"I'm deeply convinced that the diplomatic possibilities have not yet been exhausted," Merkel said through a translator.

The comments on Pakistan Saturday from Bush, Rice and national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley underscored that the administration does not appear willing to risk a break with Musharraf over his actions thus far, as troubling as they may be. Musharraf said this week that he plans to go ahead with parliamentary elections in February and indicated that he would step down from the army before being sworn in again as president, assuming the Pakistani Supreme Court certifies his election. Yet, he has also dismissed many of the country's judges, curbed the news media, rounded up opposition figures and generally sought to smash elements of Pakistan's civil society.

Briefing reporters after Saturday's meeting, Hadley seized on Musharraf's comments on elections and his plans to give up his uniform as an indication that the Pakistani president has followed through on U.S. pleas that he disclose his intentions about putting Pakistan on a path to full democracy. "President Musharraf has been responsive to calls from his own people for clarity on these subjects," Hadley said.

Rice, meanwhile, in an interview with the Dallas Morning News editorial board released yesterday, described Musharraf as "someone with whom you can talk and reason. He is someone who has tried to fight terrorism and has tried to unravel some of the extremist elements." She said the United States must "remain engaged" with Pakistan or risk the possibility of greater extremism, like what happened in the 1990s.

"It is interesting to me and important that, after several days, they did finally come out and unequivocally promise to have the elections -- and not a year from now, a few months from now. That's an important thing," Rice added.

Bush's meeting with Merkel at his Crawford ranch, a visit reserved for his closest international counterparts, was a sign of how much U.S.-German relations have improved since Bush feuded with Merkel's predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder, over the Iraq war. The two leaders went out of their way to mute potential differences over Afghanistan and global warming. Merkel is battling German public opinion that opposes the presence of more than 3,000 German troops in Afghanistan, and she would like to see much more aggressive efforts to curb carbon dioxide emissions than those favored by Bush.

"I assured Angela that I care deeply about the issue," Bush said, referring to climate change. "The United States is willing to be an active participant and try to come up with solutions that bring comfort to people around the world; that it is possible to have the technologies necessary to deal with this issue without ruining our economies."

But Iran may be the biggest source of potential contention between the two countries, given Germany's extensive commercial interests in that country, as well as Merkel's concern that a timetable of steadily tougher sanctions could become a pathway to war. "From Merkel's standpoint, the less that is done is better," said Simon Serfaty, an authority on Europe at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Under pressure from the United States, Germany has been reducing trade with Iran over the past 20 months after that reached a high-water mark of 4.4 million euros in exports in 2005. Some of the reduction is coming as the government scales back export guarantees and exerts informal pressure on German companies to reduce investments in Iran out of concern that the situation there may be unstable.

Merkel said Germany "needs to look somewhat closer at the existing business ties with Iran," noting that she plans to talk with German companies again "on further possible reductions of those commercial ties."


Commentary
Those Nuclear Flashpoints Are Made in Pakistan
By Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins
Sunday, November 11, 2007; B01
The Washington Post

George W. Bush is hardly the first U.S. president to forgive sins against democracy by a Pakistani leader. Like his predecessors from Jimmy Carter onward, Bush has tolerated bad behavior in hopes that Pakistan might do Washington's bidding on some urgent U.S. priority -- in this case, a crackdown on al-Qaeda. But the scariest legacy of Bush's failed bargain with Gen. Pervez Musharraf isn't the rise of another U.S.-backed dictatorship in a strategic Muslim nation, or even the establishment of a new al-Qaeda haven along Pakistan's lawless border. It's the leniency we've shown toward the most dangerous nuclear-trafficking operation in history -- an operation masterminded by one man, Abdul Qadeer Khan.

For nearly four years, under the banner of the "war on terror," Bush has refused to demand access to Khan, the ultranationalist Pakistani scientist who created a vast network that has spread nuclear know-how to North Korea, Iran and Libya. Indeed, Bush has never seriously squeezed Musharraf over Khan, who remains a national hero for bringing Pakistan the Promethean fire it can use to compete with its nuclear-armed nemesis, India. Khan has remained under house arrest in Islamabad since 2004, outside the reach of the CIA and investigators from the International Atomic Energy Agency, who are desperate to unlock the secrets he carries. Bush should be equally adamant about getting to the bottom of Khan's activities.

Bush's sluggishness over Pakistan-based proliferation, even as he has funneled about $10 billion in military and financial aid to Musharraf since Sept. 11, 2001, is even harder to explain when one considers the damage Khan has done to the world's fragile nuclear stability. Khan used stolen technology and black-market sales to help Pakistan obtain its nuclear arsenal, setting the stage for a possible atomic showdown with India. He played a pivotal role in helping Iran start what we increasingly fear is a clandestine nuclear-arms program, allowing Tehran to make significant progress in the shadows before its efforts were uncovered in 2002. He gave key uranium-enrichment technology to North Korea. And if all this weren't enough, he was busily outfitting Libya with a full bomb-making factory when his network was finally shut down in late 2003. Khan has been held incommunicado ever since, leaving the world with new nuclear flashpoints -- and some burning, unanswered questions about his black-market spree.

The most urgent line of inquiry -- particularly given Bush's bellicose statements about the threat posed by Iran's nuclear ambitions -- centers on what exactly Khan provided to the Iranians over 15 years of doing business with them. He could help answer the questions on which war may depend: Is Iran trying to get the bomb? If so, how close is Tehran to obtaining it? Or are the mullahs simply pursuing a civilian nuclear capacity? We do know that Khan sold Iran advanced equipment to manufacture and operate the centrifuges that can enrich uranium, either to generate electricity or to provide the fuel for a weapon. But Khan's nuclear bazaar trafficked in other goodies as well -- including the blueprints for a Chinese-made nuclear warhead, which were found in Libya after Moammar Gaddafi abandoned his atomic aspirations in December 2003 and fingered Khan as his chief supplier.

Despite all these compelling reasons for interrogating Khan, the Bush administration has treated Musharraf with kid gloves, insisting that the general is simply too critical to the fight against Islamic extremism to jeopardize his tenuous hold on power by forcing him to hand over such a national icon. (The same type of flawed rationale is now being rolled out to defend U.S. timorousness in the face of Musharraf's repugnant crackdown on his political foes, the judiciary, the media and human rights groups.) The nastiest legacy of Musharraf's reign will almost certainly not be his turn toward tyranny. It will be his reluctance to get tough on Khan in the past and to question him now -- a reluctance echoed by U.S. reticence about demanding that Pakistan's leaders control its rogue nuclear network. The dangers those failures created will threaten the world long after Musharraf and Bush are gone.

In fact, Khan could have been stopped before he got started. In the mid-1970s, he was working as a mid-level scientist at a research laboratory in Amsterdam, preparing to steal top-secret Dutch plans for building centrifuges and busily compiling a list of potential suppliers for Pakistan's nascent atomic-weapons program -- the seeds of the procurement network that led Pakistan to the bomb. In the fall of 1975, the Dutch secret service discovered what Khan was up to and grew eager to arrest him on espionage charges. But more pragmatic officials from the Dutch economics ministry urged them to hold off, worried about the embarrassment of exposing a spy in the heart of their nuclear establishment.

The CIA turned out to be a tiebreaker. Ruud Lubbers, the Dutch economics minister at the time and later prime minister, told us that the security service had asked the CIA to support its pleas to bust Khan. But the Americans surprised their Dutch colleagues, asking that the scientist be allowed to continue working so that they could monitor his budding procurement operation. Instead of being thrown in jail, Khan was transferred to a less sensitive job. That demotion tipped him off that time was running out, so he bolted for home, taking with him the nuclear secrets that would help make Pakistan a nuclear power. It was a "monumental error," said Robert Einhorn, a senior State Department official who worked on arms control under Bush and President Bill Clinton.

Four years later, Washington got a second chance to stop Khan. By 1979, U.S. intelligence agencies had a clear picture of Pakistan's pursuit of nuclear arms and Khan's crucial role as the chief of its uranium-enrichment efforts. In April, Carter slapped economic sanctions on Pakistan -- a shrewd move that turned out to be woefully short-lived.

On Christmas Eve 1979, Soviet troops landed at Kabul International Airport, and by Christmas morning, Red Army soldiers were rolling across pontoon bridges in northern Afghanistan and fanning out across the country. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter's national security adviser, saw an opportunity to confront the Soviets by funneling money and arms to the nascent Afghan resistance movement, dominated by the zealous Muslim fighters who would one day become the Taliban and al-Qaeda. But Brzezinski's plan required using Pakistan as a conduit for aid to the anti-Soviet jihad, which meant abandoning the sanctions on Islamabad. "This will require a review of our policy toward Pakistan, more guarantees to it, more arms aid, and, alas, a decision that our security policy toward Pakistan cannot be dictated by our nonproliferation policy," Brzezinski wrote Carter in a memo dated Dec. 26, 1979.

Carter reluctantly agreed. But by revoking the sanctions, he granted Pakistan -- and Khan -- carte blanche on the nuclear front. Washington sacrificed the goal of stopping Pakistan's nuclear-arms effort, and the moral authority that the United States had used to advocate the cause of nuclear nonproliferation was severely damaged.

The blame did not end with Carter. During a campaign stop in Florida in January 1980, Ronald Reagan was asked about Pakistan's atomic ambitions. "I just don't think it's any of our business," he replied.

In office, Reagan and his aides made an art of ignoring Pakistan's march toward the bomb, including intelligence in 1987 that warned that Khan had transferred nuclear equipment to Iran. That transaction started Tehran's clandestine atomic program and marked Khan's transformation from a buyer of nuclear technology to a seller of it. Once again, an opportunity to stop him -- and to derail Iran's fledgling efforts -- was missed.

Bush brags that he helped shut down Khan's network. In fact, much of the damage had already been done. And even Bush's supposed great nonproliferation victory -- persuading Libya to abandon its secret nuclear program -- was too little, too late.

Between 1997 and 2003, we found, Libya paid Khan and his associates nearly $100 million for bomb-making technology and expertise. Among Libya's purchases were detailed plans, which arrived in Tripoli in 2000 or early 2001, for a Chinese warhead. International experts who have seen those designs strongly suspect that the Libyans copied them before turning the plans over to the Americans, along with their nuclear hardware.

In fact, the Americans could have acted against Khan before Libya ever got the nuclear designs. A CIA case officer nicknamed "Mad Dog" had recruited a Swiss technician at the center of Khan's ring who was providing regular reports on what was going to Libya. We don't know whether the mole was aware of the warhead plans, but we do know that he provided the CIA with a list of equipment so frighteningly thorough that British intelligence, after learning how much material Gaddafi was receiving, was clamoring for action against Libya well before the Americans agreed to move.

The mole also revealed another bombshell. In previously secret briefings with senior IAEA officials in Vienna, he disclosed that he had made electronic copies of the warhead plans in the fall of 2003, acting on orders from Khan, according to diplomats with direct knowledge of the briefings. The mole said that he sent the copies to Khan and one of his associates. But the plans have never surfaced.

Other items from Khan's deadly inventory are missing, too, including a shipment of centrifuge components and precision tools that disappeared in mid-2003. International inspectors worry that the material wound up in the hands of a previously unknown Khan customer -- perhaps Saudi Arabia or Syria, both countries where Khan had tried to peddle his wares before he was arrested. Another possible destination: Iran, where some U.S. and Israeli intelligence officials suspect that the military is operating a second, parallel enrichment program buried deep within the mountains that cover much of the country. But solving such dangerous riddles is apparently not as attractive as propping up a dubious ally in the fight against Islamic extremism.

In the Carter and Reagan years, the justification for going soft on Pakistan's nuclear adventures was always the hope of defeating the Soviets in Afghanistan. Under George H.W. Bush and Clinton, the CIA argued convincingly that it needed more information before striking at Khan. When it comes to Pakistan, there's always something -- some perfectly sensible, hard-headed reason for putting the dangers of nuclear proliferation on the back burner. And Washington's priorities may well stay that way until the very moment when the unthinkable occurs.

frantzfiles@hotmail.com collinsfiles@gmail.com

Douglas Frantz, a senior writer at Cond¿ Nast Portfolio, and Catherine Collins, a D.C.-based writer, are co-authors of the forthcoming "The Nuclear Jihadist: The True Story of the Man Who Sold the World's Most Dangerous Secrets . . . and How We Could Have Stopped Him."


Musharraf Goes Splat
By Jim Hoagland
Sunday, November 11, 2007; B07
Washington Post

Pakistan is an unusual country -- a nation capable of looking into the abyss, pausing briefly to consider its options and then jumping headfirst into darkness. The willingness to go splat has been the backbone of Pakistan's national survival strategy for its 60-year history.

Whether rattling nuclear rockets at a much more powerful India or allowing terrorist networks to use Pakistani territory to mount plots against Afghan, American and British targets, the country's leaders have raised political blackmail to a national and international art form. Oppose or ignore us at our -- and your -- peril is the unofficial national motto of Islamabad.

An emotionally taut President Pervez Musharraf has dragged his country and its foreign patrons to the brink again by declaring emergency rule and intensifying a triangular power struggle with the nation's secular political parties and with the religious extremists who expect to rise from the ashes created by their Western-oriented rivals.

Musharraf retains the backing of the Pakistani army -- the only cohesive and enduring political movement in the country's history -- but that can change in the blink of an eye. Musharraf knows better than anyone that there is always another political general in the wings.

The Bush administration has been slow and unsteady in coming to terms with the rough-and-tumble nature of Pakistani statecraft and politics. Only late this summer did U.S. and British officials conclude that Musharraf had lost his once-deft political touch in engaging the country's courts, lawyers and students in angry but erratic and inconclusive confrontations.

Washington and London then engineered a desperate effort to save Musharraf from himself by persuading the Pakistani president to let former prime minister Benazir Bhutto return last month from exile. The idea was that the two would share power: She would serve as Musharraf's political eyes and ears, and he would prepare the way for her to run the country eventually.

That ploy has blown up in the face of those who designed it. On Nov. 3, Musharraf abruptly staged what amounts to his second coup d'etat by declaring emergency rule. Since then, he and the coldly calculating Bhutto have alternately clashed and made overtures to each other on the scheduling of elections in 2008 and over Musharraf's ban on public protests. In Pakistan, brinks come in his and her varieties.

This struggle is now more about local power dynamics than about restoring democracy, which never sank deep roots in Pakistan. The country's founder, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, set the pattern by dismissing its first legislature and ruling by decree. His successors have consistently plunged ahead in the same come-what-may spirit when faced with opposition or crisis.

A retired Pakistani diplomat recently underlined to me the sad results of that approach by noting: "We have had only one election in our history that was considered fair and free. And that was in 1970."

The political divisions and conflicts provoked by that bitterly fought election triggered a genocidal campaign by the Pakistani army against the country's eastern wing, which broke away to become Bangladesh. Infuriated and humiliated by India's open intervention on the side of the rebels in the east, Yahya Khan, then military ruler, launched a doomed strike along India's western frontier. New Delhi chose to treat it as a pinprick rather than stage the devastating retaliation it could have mounted.

Covering that war introduced me to Pakistan and to the political fatalism that makes it such a difficult ally and dangerous enemy. An Islamic state carved out of the imperial British version of India, Pakistan -- like other religious states -- tends to see its national destiny as a matter of divine will rather than personal responsibility.

Successive leaders, military and civilian, have encouraged or tolerated the world's most damaging spread of nuclear technology and international terrorism from Pakistani territory. They have encouraged or tolerated massive corruption at home, some of it funded by foreign aid from the United States and other countries frightened of the consequences of not providing it. They have also preferred to see Afghanistan engulfed in suicide bombings rather than become a stable neighbor.

Musharraf actually did a fair job of controlling and limiting some of these self-destructive practices early in his reign, especially with regard to India. He in fact negotiated a secret draft agreement on Kashmir that is now unlikely ever to see the light of day.

The Bush administration, when it had the opportunity, failed to push him hard enough to curb corruption and to train and use his army in counterinsurgency campaigns along the Pakistani-Afghan border. In extremis, Musharraf, too, threatens to go splat, and Washington is reduced to waiting to see what will happen.



The General Must Go
Pervez Musharraf has become an obstacle to U.S. interests in Pakistan -- and to Pakistan's interests as well.
Washington Post
Sunday, November 11, 2007; B06
Editorial

UNDER PRESSURE from President Bush, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf announced Thursday that he would hold elections for Parliament by Feb. 15. His government has said it will end a state of emergency within a month. But the general's security forces continue to detain thousands of activists from the country's secular political parties, judiciary and human rights groups, while violently breaking up protests and keeping independent television stations off the air. Despite his promises to Washington and back-channel negotiations with opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, Mr. Musharraf has not altered the course he embarked on last weekend when he suspended the constitution. He still intends to dictate his own continuance in power and to curtail the influence of the country's moderate political elite -- the judges, journalists, human rights activists and secular politicians who ought to be his army's allies in a war against Islamic extremists.

Mr. Bush has hesitated to withdraw U.S. support for Mr. Musharraf; his administration is understandably concerned about the destabilization of a nuclear-armed Muslim country. The Pentagon places a high priority on helping the Pakistani army combat a growing insurgency by the Taliban, al-Qaeda and their allies. Yet Mr. Musharraf's insistence on fighting rather than working with the country's civilian political center dooms the battle against extremism. After his first coup, in 1999, the general also promised elections: The result was a blatantly rigged ballot that excluded Ms. Bhutto and other centrist leaders and boosted militant Islamic parties. It is likely that the election he now promises would be similarly manipulated. Though his government pledges to lift emergency rule, it clearly does not intend to restore the rule of law, which would mean reinstating the Supreme Court judges whom Mr. Musharraf has illegally placed under arrest.

The only way to preserve U.S. interests and the cause of moderation in Pakistan is to eliminate the obstacle of Mr. Musharraf's desperate and destructive hold on power. Mr. Bush must now insist on the second demand he made in Thursday's phone call, which is that Mr. Musharraf retire from the army. His likely successor, Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani, is a pro-Western moderate who supports the U.S.-sponsored counterinsurgency program. The next army leader, rather than Mr. Musharraf, should be encouraged by the United States to lead negotiations with the Pakistani moderate opposition -- and not just Ms. Bhutto. U.S. military aid should be linked to a restoration of the constitution and reinstatement of the judges who have been removed from their posts. If a restored Supreme Court rules that Mr. Musharraf was legally elected president last month, he could retain that position; otherwise he should be obliged to retire to private life. Genuinely free parliamentary elections are essential, with the participation of all of Pakistan's established leaders and parties.

Pakistan's crisis unquestionably poses serious risks to U.S. national security. But the Bush administration's practice of clinging to Mr. Musharraf is increasing rather than lessening the danger. Pakistan can defeat Muslim extremism only through the empowerment of its moderate secular civil society with the full support of the army and the United States. Mr. Musharraf's actions in the past week have destroyed any chance that he could play a leading role in that process.