LAHORE: The apprehensions being expressed by senior American government officials about the possibility of al-Qaeda and Taliban-linked militias in Pakistan seizing the country’s nuclear arsenal seem over exaggerated keeping in view the fact that Pakistan does not maintain a nuclear force that is on a hair-trigger alert and in times of peace its nuclear warheads are maintained separately from their non-nuclear assemblies.
Senior officials responsible for the safety of the country’s nuclear weapons laugh off recent statements by US officials that the Pakistani nuclear arsenal could fall into the hands of the Taliban, saying its nukes are in an unconstituted state for doctrinal and safety reasons. Even otherwise, they say, it is almost impossible to get hold of these weapons due to the secrecy of the storage bunkers as well as the contingency planning to allay the dangers of that likelihood. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Fox News in an interview on April 27 that the Obama administration has serious concerns over what could happen to Pakistani nuclear arsenal if the advancing Taliban topples the government.
“One of our concerns, which we’ve raised with the Pakistani government and military is that if the worst, the unthinkable were to happen, and this advancing Taliban encouraged and supported by al-Qaeda and other extremists were to essentially topple the government for failure to beat them back – then they would have the keys to the nuclear arsenal of Pakistan,” Hillary Clinton said. “We can’t even contemplate that. We cannot, you know, let this go on any further. Which is why we’re pushing so hard for the Pakistanis to come together around a strategy to take their country back,” Clinton told Fox.
While trying to address the American apprehension, President Asif Zardari ruled out the very next day the possibility of the Pakistani nukes falling into the hands of the Taliban. In a wide-ranging interview with the international media on April 28, Zardari said: “I want to assure the world that the nuclear capability of Pakistan is under safe hands as Pakistan had a strong command-and-control system for its nuclear weapons that is fully in place”.
However, it is not clear if the President was giving this assurance on behalf of the civilian government or the Pakistan army. While in theory, it is President Zardari whose finger should be on the nation’s nuclear trigger, in practice, however, it is the military leadership which actually controls the country’s nuclear weapons programme and reins the National Command Authority (NCA) that has the final say in decision-making.
And going by the contents of his April 30 statement in Washington, it seems President Barack Obama too was fully aware of the Pakistani army’s firm control over the nuclear weapons program. At a news conference to mark 100 days of his presidency, Obama said: “I am confident that the Pakistan army will not allow its nuclear arsenal to fall into the hands of Islamic militant groups like the Taliban or al-Qaeda”. But he did not express the same faith in the civilian government led by Zardari, which he dubbed fragile, adding that the US was gravely concerned about the situation in Pakistan.
But senior Pakistani officials responsible for the safety of the country’s nuclear arsenal reject the American apprehensions, saying there is hardly any danger to either the security of the Pakistani fissile material installations or the safety of its nuclear command and control system. They claim that the un-constituted nature of the nukes, the enormous inter-organizational effort needed to reconstitute them and the secret location of their constituent parts, being maintained by the Strategic Planning Division (SPD) of the National Command Authority (NCA), make that possibility quite murky.
Established in February 2000 by then Army Chief General Pervez Musharraf, the National Command Authority is responsible for policy formulation and exercises employment and development control over all its strategic nuclear forces as well as strategic organizations like the Kahuta Research Laboratory and the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission KRL. The country’s nuclear arsenal is overseen by the National Command Authority, headed by the President (Asif Zardari) and with the Prime Minister (Yousaf Raza Gillani) as its vice chairman. Key cabinet ministers and the heads of the army, navy and air force are also members of the NCA, which controls all aspects of the nuclear program, including deployment and, if ever necessary, the use of the weapons.
However, practically speaking, it is the Director General of the Strategic Planning Division (SPD) of the NCA (Lt Gen Khaled Ahmed Kidwai), who controls and guards the nuclear arsenal, under the supervision of the Army Chief (Ashfaq Pervez Kayani) with the assistance of the Pakistan army. Most analysts believe that the will of the civilian government would hardly prevail when a decision about the possible use of the nuclear option is taken. They say Asif Zardari, being the president, has little or no control over the country’s nuclear arsenal and the armed forces, unlike General Musharraf, who was also the Army Chief besides being the all-powerful president.
Therefore, whatever is the formation of the National Command Authority, the fact remains that it is the Kayani-Kidwai duo and not the Zardari-Gillani one which practically controls the country’s nuclear arsenal and is in a position to take a decision about pulling the nuclear trigger.
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