Pakistan, Taliban and Global Security – Part I
Nuclear aim: Pakistan's plutonium production reactor at Khushab, above. The Taliban in Pakistan can still wreak havoc without a fully assembled bomb
WASHINGTON: As Afghan president Hamid Karzai and Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari meet with President Barack Obama on quelling the threat from the Taliban and Al Qaeda, a sword of Damocles hangs over their summit: the danger that the Islamic extremist groups may gain control of some or all of Pakistan’s nuclear assets. The success or failure of the anti-Taliban operation currently underway in Pakistan could be the first indicator of the seriousness of the danger ahead.
Securing these assets is not simply a matter of locking away Pakistan’s 80 or so nuclear weapons; a much wider array of nuclear resources are potentially at risk. Moreover, extremists have multiple means for causing mayhem with these assets and can exploit multiple avenues to try to gain access to them.
Pakistan’s nuclear weapon production complex is spread over roughly a dozen sites, and many produce or process weapon-grade nuclear materials – highly enriched uranium and plutonium. Acquisition of these materials could enable Taliban or Al Qaeda technicians to assemble their own nuclear device. Highly enriched uranium is the more dangerous, since it can be made into a nuclear explosive using a much simpler design than required for a plutonium bomb.
Building a weapon could be made much easier if the extremists received assistance from sympathetic Pakistani nuclear weapon specialists or obtained a copy of the nuclear weapon design sold to Libya (and probably Iran) through the nuclear technology smuggling ring run by Pakistani nuclear scientist A. Q. Khan. Moreover, once it was known that extremists had gained possession of the weapon-grade material, these groups could credibly claim to have a nuclear device, since no one could be sure how far they had actually advanced towards this capability.
Plutonium presents an additional risk. Though more difficult to use for a nuclear explosive than high enriched uranium, it is much more radioactive and can be easily fabricated into a very dangerous “dirty bomb.” If detonated in a major Western city, for example, even though the bomb would not have a nuclear yield, it could cause panic and great economic loss by contaminating the detonation site with one of the world’s deadliest materials, one particle of which can cause lung cancer if inhaled.
The weapon-material production sites, themselves, present another set of potential targets. Judging from satellite images, for example, one Pakistani plutonium production reactor is situated within a sizeable city. A Taliban or Al Qaeda insurgency set on destabilizing the Pakistani government could undermine public confidence in it by attacking the reactor to cause the release of highly radioactive debris and trigger mass panic. Pakistan’s nuclear power plants, plutonium separation facilities, and radioactive waste storage sites could also be attacked to cause significant radioactive releases. What is more, any successful attack on the high-security nuclear-weapon-production complex could sow doubt as to the ability of the government to protect the nation’s most vital national security resource, substantially undermining its credibility.
