As fighting intensifies in the Swat Valley and other tribal regions in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province, the worsening security situation in the Af–Pak region coupled with the seeming failure of the writ of the civilian government in Pakistan has raised deep concerns regarding the safety of Islamabad’s nuclear arsenal.
This overriding concern was evident when US President Barack Obama sought assurances from Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari, in May 2009, that Islamabad’s nuclear arsenal was safe and that the Pakistan Army intends to trounce the radical Taliban upsurge.
Even though the Obama administration has stated that Pakistans nuclear weapons are secure, at least for the moment, paramount unease revolves around the possibility that non-state actors would not let go even a remote opportunity to seize a nuclear weapon.
Even though the Obama administration has stated that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are secure, at least for the moment, paramount unease revolves around the possibility that non-state actors would not let go even a remote opportunity to seize a nuclear weapon.
Although Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, United States Armed Forces, is comfortable about the security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, he expressed doubts regarding its “continuing safety.” The apprehension seems palpable given the present fluidity of the politico–military situation in Pakistan. In the event of President Zardari’s government crumbling, the Pakistan Army’s failure to root-out militants and terrorists, a situation could well arise wherein extremist infiltration within the military and intelligence services could compromise the safety of Islamabad’s nuclear weapons – a potential catastrophe for the entire region, especially India.
Beijing as Islamabad’s Nuclear Benefactor
All along, as the world debates and ponders over the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, China’s silence on the issue remains conspicuously evident. Following its comprehensive military defeat at India’s hands in 1971, Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had said that the ‘Pakistanis would eat grass if need be but would spare no effort to produce an Islamic (nuclear) bomb.’ It has been well known that Pakistan acquired this capability with munificent assistance from the Chinese, who found in Pakistan a strategic ally willing to countervail India — a common adversary to both. It was noted with consternation that the international community led by the US pointedly ignored China’s role in nuclear and missile proliferation to Pakistan throughout the 1980s and the 1990s.
Nuclear proliferation analyst, Gary Milhollin, has very succinctly summed up by stating, “If you subtract Chinese help, there wouldnt be a Pakistani programme.”
China’s trade of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and their means of delivery within Asia generated significant debate during the Cold War years and thereafter. Although China pledged publicly in 1984 that it would not contribute to the spread of nuclear weapons and agreed to IAEA safeguards on its nuclear exports, there was evidence that China continued providing weapons-related aid to Pakistan and exported unsafeguarded nuclear material to other nations as late as 1987. By that year, Washington gained more intelligence on the China–Pakistan relationship and wanted to confront Pakistan and, thus, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory was asked to mock-up a small model of the weapon based on the Chinese design, using the intelligence picked up from procurement patterns.
It is only too well known that China provided crucial direct assistance to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme since the 1980s. It was widely believed that China provided Pakistan with the design for a nuclear weapon in the 1980s, and probably enough highly enriched uranium (HEU) for one to two bombs, according to US intelligence agencies which reported way back in 1983. According to a study conducted by the Monterey Institute of International Studies, China reportedly transferred the nuclear weapon design of a 25-kiloton nuclear bomb – possibly a Chic-4 design – to Pakistan in 1983. Besides, Pakistani nuclear scientists claimed to have been permitted by the Chinese to test a nuclear device in the Lop Nor test range in China in 1983.
According to Leonard Spector, Beijing also assisted Islamabad in the construction of an unsafeguarded plutonium production reactor at Khushab, and construction of a safeguarded nuclear-power plant at Chasma to supplying it with an advanced-computer control system. In 1986, China sold Pakistan tritium – an element used in the trigger of hydrogen bombs as well as to boost the yield of fission weapons. Beijing also supplied heavy water (D2O) to the safeguarded Kanupp reactor (originally supplied by Canada) at a rate to make up heavy-water losses of 2 to 4 percent a year.
Although the Kanupp reactor had large reported losses of heavy water in its early years of operation, the facility was upgraded later to bring the reactor into conformity with industry standards, and reduce the heavy water loss rate to about one percent annually. Thus, China was believed to have supplied Pakistan with up to nearly four metric tonnes more heavy water per year that it needed for its safeguarded power reactor, leaving open the possibility of diversion of surplus heavy water to Khushab, which needed only five tonnes of heavy water to start up and fifteen tonnes to operate at full power.
Beijing is carefully choosing not to comment on the issue of its “hand in glove” ally Pakistans nuclear weapon arsenal safety. This is primarily aimed at deflecting attention away from the “proliferating role” it has played towards Islamabad.
The situation with regard to the Kanupp and Khushab reactors continued to remain of particular proliferation significance. A shortage of heavy water was apparently the principal obstacle in the start-up of the nearly completed, unsafeguarded Khushab reactor.
In 1985, the US Congress passed the Pressler Amendment, which required that the Administration certify at the start of each fiscal year that Pakistan did not possess a nuclear device. The US Administration continued to certify to the Congress that Pakistan did not have a nuclear weapon through the late 1980s, despite the evidence to the contrary — thus making it amply clear that the Americans were fixed to fit the policy that Pakistan was simply too important an ally to loose. The Administration got around this by saying Pakistan had not stockpiled or put together every single element for a bomb, but the justifications bordered on the absurd. “In my view, it was irrefutable evidence,” stated Richard J Kerr, who was then Deputy Director of Intelligence at the CIA. “The argument always came down to a political judgment and that judgment was made on the basis of not whether or not there was a weapon but whether that was a convenient time to declare that they had a weapon.”
Furthermore, a 1986 National Intelligence Estimate concluded that Kahuta had enriched sufficient weapons-grade uranium and had all the parts for a device. It arrived at the conclusion that Pakistan could have a bomb within two weeks of making a decision and was only “two screwdriver turns” from assembling a weapon. Consequently, the result of Chinese help and US promiscuity led to Pakistan acquiring nuclear weapons covertly in 1987. Nuclear proliferation analyst, Gary Milhollin, has very succinctly summed up by stating, “If you subtract Chinese help, there wouldn’t be a Pakistani programme.”
In what seemingly was an effort to curb proliferation activities in this part of the world, September 1995 witnessed the US Senate passing the Brown Amendment through a one-time waiver of the Pressler Amendment. But this was not as smooth a move as was expected to be since the Brown Amendment’s primary aim of enhancing the US non-proliferation goals soon stood a litmus test.
It was merely days after President Clinton signed the Brown Amendment that in February 1996, The Washington Times reported a CIA finding that China had sold 5,000 ring magnets to Pakistan for its main plant to enrich uranium in high-speed gas centrifuges. According to the Nucleonics News, these ring magnets could enable Pakistan double its capacity to enrich uranium for weapon purposes. Obviously, both Pakistan and China denied the sale had occurred. Senator Larry Pressler was enraged when he came to know about this deal and remarked, “I am very disturbed that this illegal sale of nuclear technology was taking place at the same time that the government of Pakistan and the Clinton Administration actively were lobbying Congress to pass the Brown Amendment.”
Thus, it has become a perceptibly frustrating fact that in characteristic style of advocating one principle and pursuing something diametrically opposite, Beijing has established by its actions time and again that it has been at the core of the WMD proliferation web that has been woven within Asia — Pakistan, Iran and North Korea being the prime receivers of the said technologies. Inspite of this reality, in an article published in the China Daily, October 16, 2002, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister, Wang Guangya stressed upon China’s ‘non-proliferation policy and practice’ and stated: “China has consistently stood for the complete prohibition and thorough destruction of all kinds of WMD and firmly against the proliferation of WMD and their delivery systems. For this, China has over the years been an active participant in international non-proliferation efforts. At the same time, we have steadfastly pursued a policy of not advocating, encouraging or assisting any other country in developing weapons of mass destruction and made our contribution with concrete deeds to the international non-proliferation process.”
China’s Assisstance in the Realm of Missile Technology Transfer
In the realm of missile technology transfer, China’s missile sales have been a continuing source of discord as concerns doubled when the Sino–Pak nuclear cooperation during the 1980s further spilled over to cooperation in the field of ballistic missile development in the early 1990s. It was revealed that China had supplied M-11 missiles to Pakistan – the result of a suspected 1987 deal, but these were left in their crates at an air force base west of Lahore to try and avoid sanctions as international pressure grew vis-à-vis Chinese WMD proliferation activities.
In fact, the US objected to Chinese sale of M-11 technology to Pakistan in 1991 and, for the first time, on May 27, 1991, President George HW Bush declared sanctions against China for transferring to Pakistan technology related to the M-11 short-range ballistic missiles in accordance with the newly passed Missile Technology Control Act.
On the one hand China transferred M-9 and M-11 nuclear capable ballistic missiles to Pakistan in fully assembled mode as well as their related technologies, and on the other, was fully aware when North Korea transferred its Nodong and Taepo Dong ballistic missiles to Pakistan.
Soon after the US sanctions, Beijing agreed to observe the MTCR guidelines, although in December 1992, reports surfaced yet again that China had transferred 34 complete M-11 missiles to Pakistan and also allegedly built a turnkey missile plant for Pakistan at Tarwanah, a suburb of Rawalpindi, in violation of its 1991 pledge. Consequently, in May 1993, the Clinton Administration re-imposed MTCR-related sanctions against China.
The challenge for the existing geo-strategic equations in South Asia came in the form that on the one hand China transferred M-9 and M-11 nuclear capable ballistic missiles to Pakistan in fully assembled mode as well as their related technologies, and on the other, was fully aware when North Korea transferred its Nodong and Taepo Dong ballistic missiles to Pakistan. North Korea was known to be willing to sell pretty much anything for hard cash, of which it was desperately short. This was also the time when Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto declared that the deal with the North Koreans was for cash and said: “When I went to North Korea, AQ Khan told me we could get their (missile) technology (so) that we can compare (it) to our own. So I took (it) up with Kim Il Sung…December ’93 I talked to him, he agreed…and it was in cash, they needed money and so it was done for cash, with no exchange of nuclear technology. Exchanging nuclear technology for missiles was never even discussed during my visit.”
As a result of the deal, Islamabad got the Nodong missile and rechristened it ‘Ghauri’.
The Peoples Republic of China has strategic, energy and economic interests in Pakistan with both sharing a free trade agreement including $6 billion in bilateral trade”¦
However, in spite of assurances to the US during China’s President, Jiang Zemin’s 1997 visit, Chinese proliferation of missile components and technology to Pakistan continued. Additionally, in February 2000, the CIA reported to the US Congress that despite its promise to stop ballistic missile and nuclear assistance to Pakistan in May 1996, China continued such assistance during the first half of 1999.
The People’s Republic of China has strategic, energy and economic interests in Pakistan with both sharing a free trade agreement including $6 billion in bilateral trade in 2008. Beijing and Islamabad consider each other critical to energy security. The Gwadar port – 400 kms from the Straits of Hormuz – along with a network of rail and roads through Pakistan assures the convenient transport of Middle Eastern oil and gas to China through Xinjiang province.
Thus it becomes amply clear that the continued proliferation of WMDs and advanced weapons technologies coupled with the constant fear of a possibility that they might fall in the wrong hands and further destabilise vulnerable regions in South Asia is extremely worrisome. Beijing is carefully choosing not to comment on the issue of its “hand in glove” ally Pakistan’s nuclear weapon arsenal safety.
This is primarily aimed at deflecting attention away from the “proliferating role” it has played towards Islamabad laying its hands on such weapons and their means of delivery in the first place. This is not a very encouraging situation as China aims to put forth a strong case at being a regional stakeholder and play a greater role in stabilising the region – as securing security and maintaining stability assumes vital centrality in this turbulent part of the world.
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