Jihadis can grab Paki nuclear bombs

Exposed: At least three raids on N-arsenal sites despite elite guards

The world’s darkest fear – that jihadis will one day get to lay their hands on Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal – is not entirely unfounded. Loud claims by Pakistan’s dissolute ‘civilian Government’ and the Pakistani Army that the ‘Islamic Bomb’ is in safe custody need not be taken seriously. Nor should we be persuaded by the Obama Administration’s strenuous insistence that the nuclear weapons of America’s most-favoured terror-sponsoring country are in no imminent danger of becoming part of Jihad Inc’s armoury.
Prof Shaun Gregory, Director of the ‘Pakistan Security Research Unit’ at the University of Bradford in Britain, has made public the details of three attacks on Pakistan’s nuclear facilities, exposing just how vulnerable they are to being grabbed by jihadis.
“The risk of the transfer of nuclear weapons, weapons components or nuclear expertise to terrorists in Pakistan is genuine,” Prof Gregory says in an article, ‘The terrorist threat to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons’, published in the latest issue of CTC Sentinel, the monthly journal of the Combating Terrorism Centre at West Point, US.
Pakistan, says Prof Gregory, screens those selected to guard its nuclear facilities to ensure jihad sympathisers are kept out. Also, warhead cores and detonators are stored separately in underground sites. Citing Pakistani and French officials, Prof Gregory says 8,000 to 10,000 members of the Pakistani Army’s Strategic Plans Division and other intelligence agencies are deployed to protect that country’s weapons of mass destruction.
However, “despite these elaborate safeguards, empirical evidence points to a clear set of weaknesses and vulnerabilities in Pakistan’s nuclear safety and security arrangements,” Prof Gregory says in his article. As is known, most of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons infrastructure is located in the north and west, and in areas near Islamabad and Rawalpindi. “The concern, however, is that most of Pakistan's nuclear sites are close or even within areas dominated by Pakistani Taliban militants and Al Qaeda”, says Prof Gregory.
He has mentioned three attacks to bolster his point -- On a nuclear missile storage facility in November 2007; on a nuclear airbase in December 2007; and on nuclear weapons assembly site in August 2008. In the third attack, Pakistani Taliban suicide bombers blew up several entry points to the armaments complex.
A spokesman of the Pakistani Army, Major-General Athar Abbas, has predictably rubbished Prof Gregory’s claims as “factually incorrect” and part of “Western propaganda campaign to malign Pakistan and its nuclear facilities”. The bases at Wah, Sargodha and Kamra, where the jihadi attacks took place, were used to manufacture conventional weapons, ammunition and fighters jet, he said. “These are military facilities, not nuclear installations.”
Equally predictably, the Pentagon has pointed out that both US Defence Secretary and Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen are “comfortable with the security measures the Pakistani Government, the Pakistani military have in place to ensure that their nuclear arsenal is safeguarded”.
Curiously, a senior American intelligence official has confirmed to Fox News that Prof Gregory is not off the mark in his assessment. But he has also said that there is “no waning confidence regarding the safety of the Pakistani nuclear programme”.
Pakistan is believed to have stockpiled approximately 580-800 kg of highly enriched uranium, sufficient amounts to build 30 to 50 fission bombs. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists estimated in 2007 that the Pakistani arsenal comprised about 60 warheads.
[Read the full text of Prof Gregory's article here.]