Pakistan's Nuclear WalMart in its Infancy

Tomgram: Collins and Frantz on Pakistan's Nuclear Wal-Mart in Its Infancy

By Tom Engelhardt

Created Nov 28 2007 - 9:17am

- from TomDispatch [1]

There they go again. While Somalia burns [2] at one end of "the arc of

instability" (as Bush administration officials liked to call a swath of

territory from North Africa to the Chinese border in the good old days

before they thoroughly destabilized it), at the other end, the Taliban is

now considered a "permanent presence" in more than 50% [3] of Afghanistan

and nuclear-armed Pakistan is in increasing chaos. As if that weren't

enough, Bush administration supporters and officials are already starting to

plan for, or call for, more of the same when it comes to solving

Washington's problems -- that is, militarizing them further. Various

possible military interventions in Pakistan are now clearly going on the

table. They range from sending American military trainers [4] into

Pakistan's tribal areas to train a supposedly pro-government militia force

to the mad suggestion that U.S. Special Forces extract Pakistani "nuclear

materials and warheads" from that country and somehow ship them to New

Mexico in the US of A.

That gem of a proposal, which appeared in a recent New York Times op-ed [5],

is the bizarre stepchild of an American Enterprise Institute/Brookings

Institution collaboration from the tag-team of Frederick Kagan and Michael

O'Hanlon. As journalist Jim Lobe comments [6], "I have no doubt that their

musings are indeed an indication of what is speeding to the top of the

administration's national-security agenda."

The urge to militarize anti-nuclear-proliferation efforts has been at the

heart of the Bush administration's post-9/11 planning. The potential for

"loose nukes" in Pakistan and the possibility of that country being a

"ticking nuclear time bomb" [7] for the proliferation of such weaponry is

indeed unnerving. But journalists Catherine Collins and Douglas Frantz, who

spent four years tracking the most sensational proliferation story in

history -- the troubling journey of the "father" of the Pakistani nuclear

bomb, A. Q. Khan -- for their just published book, The Nuclear Jihadist [8],

provide a timely reminder of exactly how hopeless a military response to

nuclear proliferation really is.

You just can't launch a war against an underground global business, one

that, until recently, the Bush administration showed a remarkable lack of

interest in pursuing in more peaceful ways in Pakistan, including by

questioning Khan himself [9]. Any military "solution" to the Pakistani bomb

crisis will undoubtedly prove as hopeless there as elsewhere. In the end,

A.Q. Khan's proliferation spree may be the most devastating horror story of

the nuclear age. It's also riveting, as Collins and Frantz show us, using

private letters that Khan exchanged with a Canadian-Pakistani friend and

collaborator.

--Tom

The Proliferation Game: How the World Helped Pakistan Build Its Bomb

By Catherine Collins and Douglas Frantz

Globalization, what a concept. You can get a burger prepared your way

practically anywhere in the world. The Nike Swoosh appears at elite athletic

venues across the United States and on the skinny frames of t-shirted

children playing in the streets of Calcutta. For those interested in buying

an American automobile -- a word of warning -- it is not so unusual to find

more "American content" in a Japanese car than one built by Detroit's Big

Three.

So don't kid yourself about the Pakistani bomb. From burgers to bombs,

globalization has had an impact. Pakistan's nuclear arsenal -- as many as

120 weapons -- is no more Pakistani than your television set is Japanese. Or

is that American? It was a concept developed in one country and, for the

most part, built in another. Its creation was an example of globalization

before the term was even coined.

A Proliferation Chain Reaction

So where to begin? Some argue that Pakistan started down the nuclear road

under President Dwight D. Eisenhower's 1953 Atoms for Peace program, billed

as a humanitarian gesture aimed at sharing the peaceful potential of atomic

energy with the world. But Atoms for Peace was a misnomer -- a plan to

divert growing domestic and international concern over radioactive fallout

from America's nuclear tests. It would prove to be a White House public

relations campaign to dwarf all others.

In fact, Atoms for Peace educated thousands of scientists from around the

world in nuclear science and then dispatched them home, where many later

pursued secret weapons programs. Among them were Israelis, South Africans,

Pakistanis, and Indians. Homi Sethna, chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy

Commission, spelled out the program's impact after his country tested its

first nuclear device in 1974. "I can say with confidence," he wrote, "that

the initial [Atoms for Peace program] cooperation agreement itself has been

the bedrock on which our nuclear program has been built."

If you think that India's program, in turn, did not inspire Pakistan's,

think again.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the late Pakistani prime minister and father of Benazir

Bhutto, first talked publicly about nuclear weapons in the early 1960s when

he was Pakistan's energy minister. In his 1967 autobiography, Bhutto wrote,

"All wars of our age have become total wars. and our plans should,

therefore, include the nuclear deterrent." But Pakistan's generals rejected

his ideas, arguing that the cost of producing a nuclear bomb would cut too

deeply into spending on conventional weapons. It wasn't until after Bhutto

became prime minister that he officially launched Pakistan's nuclear weapons

program in 1972.

Consider here, yet another atomic beginning: Pakistan, a poor, backward

country, with little indigenous technical or industrial infrastructure, made

next to no progress on the nuclear front, despite Bhutto's enthusiasm, until

the arrival of Abdul Qadeer Khan at the end of 1975.

The Indian-born Khan had fled his home in Bhopal in the 1950s to settle in

the new state of Pakistan. There, he went to university, quickly becoming

frustrated by the lack of opportunity. Study and advanced degrees in Europe

followed until, finally, Khan found himself working at the Physics Dynamics

Research Laboratory in Amsterdam in the spring of 1972.

At the time, powerful companies like Westinghouse and General Electric

controlled the facilities that provided enriched uranium to civilian

reactors throughout the Western world. In 1971, in an effort to protect the

fledgling U.S. commercial nuclear industry, President Richard M. Nixon had

ordered that the closely guarded enrichment technology not be shared with

any other country, not even allies. That led other nations to begin

developing their own enrichment technology to ensure continual access to an

adequate fuel supply. The lab where Khan was employed, known by its Dutch

initials FDO, was the in-house research facility for a Dutch conglomerate

that worked closely with Urenco, a consortium formed by the governments of

Britain, West Germany, and the Netherlands to design and manufacture

centrifuges.

To cut right to the chase, Khan, who was able to work at the lab without

serious scrutiny from the Dutch security police, found that he had easy

access to the latest uranium-enrichment technology. Within three years, he

had left the lab -- in possession of plans for Europe's most advanced

centrifuge and a shopping list of relevant equipment manufacturers, experts

for hire, and sources for the necessary raw materials to enrich uranium for

a nuclear bomb, all scattered across the globe.

Before leaving the lab, Khan wrote Prime Minister Bhutto, offering his

services and returned to Pakistan to launch that country's own

uranium-enrichment laboratory.

FDO was just the start of Khan's reliance on the outside world for

bomb-making help. With the support of Pakistani scientists and military

officers, working undercover as "diplomats" at the country's missions around

the world, he set up what became known as "the Pakistani pipeline," securing

high-tech equipment from literally hundreds of companies in 20 or more

countries.

While some of this is well known, a series of little-publicized letters

between Khan and a Canadian-Pakistani engineer, Aziz Abdul Khan, in 1978 and

1979 offer a revealing look at the degree to which globalization shaped

Pakistan's nuclear program. The so-called Islamic bomb turns out not to be

an indigenous product, but instead a little bit American, Canadian, Swiss,

German, Dutch, British, Japanese, and even Russian.

Aziz Khan was one of dozens of Pakistani scientists living abroad whom Khan

tried to recruit for what he described as a "project of national

importance." According to the letters between them, while Aziz Khan declined

the offer, he agreed to provide A.Q. Khan with scientific literature and to

spend his vacations at A.Q. Khan's laboratory outside of Islamabad, training

and mentoring young engineers.

We obtained the letters -- which cover the comings and goings of nuclear

experts from nine different countries -- from an American government

official, who, in turn, received them from Canadian law enforcement officers

after they were taken from Aziz Khan, following his arrest in Montreal in

1980.

These exchanges provide a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse into Khan's nuclear

Wal-Mart in its infancy, long before he began peddling his finished wares to

Iran, North Korea, and Libya. After a decade of diplomatic rhetoric about

the need to stop the spread of nuclear technology, they also offer a window

into the ineffectiveness of American and European export controls. By

setting these letters -- often colorfully translated from Urdu by the

Canadian authorities -- against the backdrop of the news coverage of the

time, you can see just how disturbingly international the assistance was

that Khan received.

Buying "Ducks" from Russia

It was an exciting time for Pakistan's fledgling nuclear program. On June 4,

1978, A.Q. Khan wrote to Aziz Khan, describing early tests of his centrifuge

designs, referring to the process of substituting helium for uranium gas as

putting "air in the machine."

"June 4 is a historical day for us. On that day we put 'air' in the

machine and the first time we got the right product and its efficiency was

the same as the theoretical. As you have seen, my team consists of crazy

people. They do not care if it is day or night. They go after it with all

their might. The bellows have arrived and like this we can increase the

speed of our work."

Khan's international nuclear shopping spree was soon on display as he wrote

proudly to his Canadian friend just a week later to recount the trip made by

a member of his clandestine procurement network to Japan to obtain some

critical, though unexplained help. "Colonel Majeed is back from Japan and

thanks God all the problems have been solved. Next month the Japanese would

come here and all the work would be done under their supervision."

The following month, he wrote Aziz Khan about one of his Pakistani prot