The Nuclear Jihad

An update of TheWMD Trail

Pakistan is not the original birth place of the Islamicfundamentalist  and jihadi organizations.  Islamicfundamentalism and jihadi terrorism were born elsewhere in the Islamic Ummah and thereafter spread to Pakistanafter the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. 

But, Pakistan is the original birth place of the concept of thenuclear jihad, which highlighted the need for an Islamic atomic bomb and advocated the right and the religious obligation of the Muslims to acquire  weaponsof mass destruction (WMD) and use them, if necessary, to protect their religion. The jihadi terrorists andtheir ideologues in Pakistan perceived the nuclear weapon as the ultimate weapon of retribution against Stateswhich they viewed as enemies of Islam, particularly the USA and Israel. 

It was, in fact, the late Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto, aWestern-influenced liberal and not a religious fundamentalist, who first projected Pakistan’s clandestinequest for an atomic bomb as the quest for an Islamic bomb to counter what he described as the Christian,Jewish and Hindu atomic bombs.  He used this depiction in order to convince other Islamic States such asLibya, Saudi Arabia and Iran to fund Pakistan’s clandestine military nuclear programme. 

It was only subsequently that Pakistani jihadi organizations suchas the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) and fundamentalist organizations such as the Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI) and the Jamiat-ul-Ulema Islam (JUI) adopted Z.A.Bhutto’s depiction of the Islamic bomb and projectedit as rightfully belonging to the Islamic Ummah as a whole. 

They described Pakistan’s nuclear and missile capability as heldby it on trust on behalf of the Ummah.  In 2000, when Abdul Sattar, Gen.Pervez Musharraf’s then ForeignMinister, advocated Pakistan’s signing of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), the Islamicfundamentalist and jihadi organizations started a public campaign against him and projected him as a traitorand as anti-Islam. Thereafter, he gave up his advocacy.  

After he shifted to Afghanistan from the Sudan in 1996, Osama binLaden of Al Qaeda  not only started speaking of the right and thereligious obligation of the Muslims to acquire WMD and use them, if necessary, to protect Islam, but alsoinitiated a project for the acquisition/ development of WMD under the leadership of Abu Khabab in his trainingcomplex in Afghanistan. 

After 1998, Al Qaeda and the International Islamic Front (IIF) forJihad against the Crusaders and the Jewish People launched a campaign for the recruitment of students ofscience and scientists already working in the scientific establishments of the Islamic countries for helpingthem in their quest for the acquisition/development of WMD. 

Many analysts of what has come to be known as catastrophic or newterrorism have remarked on the presence of a large number of educated persons in the ranks of the jihaditerrorist organizations.  Even the pre-1991 ideological terrorist organizations of the world, influencedby leftist ideologies, had attracted a large number of educated youth.  Thus, the attraction of educatedyouth to terrorism is not a new phenomenon. Most of them were students or graduates or teachers of humanities.There were hardly  any students of science or scientists in theirranks. 

What is new about jihadi terrorism is the gravitation of a numberof students of science or working scientists to the jihadi organizations to help the terrorists in theirjihad. While the students of science came to the jihadi organizations from many Islamic countries of theworld, working scientists came mainly from Pakistan. 

The late Gen.Zia-ul-Haq, who ruled Pakistan from 1977 to 1988,strengthened the Islamic motivation of not only the Pakistani Armed Forces, but also of its scientificcommunity in the nuclear field.  Just as he started projecting the Pakistani Army not only as the Army ofthe State of Pakistan, but also as the Army of Islam to serve the Islamic cause, similarly, like Z.A. Bhuttowhom he overthrew and sent to the gallows, he started providing a religious justification for Pakistan’sclandestine quest for the atomic bomb. 

Zia’s policies resulted in the injection of the fundamentalistvirus into the Pakistani Army and the scientific establishment. While the increasing influence offundamentalism in the lower and middle levels of the Pakistani Armed Forces received the attention of theanalysts of the world, a similar increase in the influence of fundamentalism in the scientific establishmentdid not receive similar attention despite the fact that sections of the Pakistani media had been reportingabout the presence of unidentified scientists of Pakistan’s nuclear establishment in the religiousconventions of Pakistani jihadi organizations such as the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET). 

The first indications of the presence of pro-jihadi scientists inPakistan’s nuclear establishment came to notice during the US military operations in Afghanistan against AlQaeda and the Taliban when documents recovered by the US forces reportedly spoke of the visits of SultanBashiruddin Ahmed and Abdul Majid, retired scientists of Pakistan’s nuclear establishment, to Kandahar whenbin Laden was operating from there before 9/11.  Sultan Bashiruddin was the first head of the Kahutauranium enrichment project before A.Q.Khan, who subsequently became famous as the father of the Pakistaniatomic bomb, replaced him in the 1970s. 

At the instance of the USA, the Pakistani authorities detained thetwo for some weeks and interrogated them. They reportedly admitted visiting Kandahar and meeting bin Laden,but maintained that the visit was in connection with the work of a humanitarian relief organisatiion forhelping the Afghan people which they had founded and had nothing to do with Al Qaeda’s quest for WMD. 

Since no evidence linking them to Al Qaeda’s Abu Khabab projectcould be found, they were released, but banned from traveling abroad.  However, the USA and, at itsinstance ,the UN Security Council initiated action for banning their so-called humanitarian organization andfor freezing its bank accounts. 

Since 9/11, one of the major concerns of the US intelligence andcounter-terrorism agencies has been over the dangers of Al Qaeda and its jihadi associates in the IIF managingto acquire a WMD capability. In this connection, attention was particularly focused on Pakistan as the mostlikely spot from which such leakage could occur. 

Pakistan has been the epicentre of State-sponsored nuclearproliferation since the late 1980s.  Having benefited from funds contributed by Libya, Iran and SaudiArabia for its clandestine military nuclear project, the Pakistan State had to agree to requests from thesecountries for helping them in acquiring a  similar capability. 

Large sections of the media and the community of strategicanalysts have been writing as if the Pakistan State’s collusion with Iran in the nuclear field came to lightonly last year. In fact, this came to light in the early 1990s when Nawaz Sharif was the Prime Minister. ThePakistani political and military establishment, including Nawaz Sharif himself, had then strongly refutedthese reports. 

If one goes back to the 1990s---immediately before and after thefirst Gulf war of 1991—one would find  reports of the roleplayed by Gen.Mirza Aslam Beg, the then  Chief of the Army Staff (COAS),and Dr.Abdul Qadir Khan, in the clandestine nuclear co-operation not only with Iran, but also with Iraq. Dr.A.Q.Khan had been the honoured guest of Saddam Hussein, the then President of Iraq, on many occasions. 

The reports of those years were dismissed by the apologists forPakistan in the US on the following grounds: first, the reports about the co-operation with Iran came fromsources in the anti-Teheran Mujahideen-e-Khalq, which were not reliable. Second, it did not sound logical thatPakistan should be helping Iran as well as Iraq, both sworn enemies of each other. 

Such arguments have no validity in the case of Pakistan. Duplicityhas been the defining characteristic of Pakistan’s foreign policy ever since it was born in 1947. Itco-operated with China against India and with the US against China. It co-operated with the USA against Iranby allowing the USA’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to use Pakistani territory for its operationsagainst the Islamic regime in Iran and , at the same time, had no qualms about helping the Islamic regime instrengthening its conventional capability and developing a nuclear capability. 

The political and military leadership of Pakistan clandestinelyhelped not only other Islamic countries, but also North Korea. Whereas in the case of the Islamic countries,the motivation was money and religion, in the case of North Korea it was the desire for the North Koreanmissile technology. 

When Pakistan faced difficulties in the late 1980s in developingits indigenous missiles (based on the Hatf series), it was to China it turned.  Beijing helped it bysupplying it with technology and fully tested short and medium range missiles capable of carrying nuclearweapons up to Delhi and Mumbai in India, but was reluctant to supply long-range missiles capable of strikingChennai and Kolkatta. 

It was then that Pakistan turned to North Korea when BenazirBhutto succeeded Nawaz as the Prime Minister in 1993. During a visit made by her  toNorth Korea from China, the agreement for co-operation in the missile field was concluded. Gen.PervezMusharraf, who was the Director-General of Military Operations under her, was made responsible for co-ordinatingthis project. He and A.Q.Khan had made many secret visits to North Korea in this connection---together as wellas separately of each other. 

Initially, Pakistan paid for North Korea’s missiles and relatedtechnology with dollars and wheat purchased from the US and Australia and diverted to it. The supplementaryagreement to help North Korea in developing a military nuclear capability was reached after Musharraf assumedpower in October,1999. 

Zia, Benazir, Nawaz, Beg, Gen. Asif Nawaz Janjua, who succeededBeg. Gen. Abdul Waheed Kakkar, his successor, and Gen.Jehangir Karamat, his successor and Musharraf’spredecessor, were all privy to the clandestine nuclear/missile relationship with Iran,Libya and North Korea. 

Right from its inception, the clandestine nuclear and missileprojects in Pakistan were treated as a top secret intelligence operation of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)to ensure deniability.  All payments to the foreign suppliers were made not from the accounts of theGovernment of Pakistan, but from private accounts in the BCCI, which collapsed in 1991, and other Dubai andGeneva based banks. These accounts were opened by the Gokul brothers of Geneva, one of whom was jailed forcheating in the UK after the collapse of the BCCI, Shaukat Aziz, Pakistan’s present Finance Minister, whowas working in  the Gulf for the Citibank in the 1990s, DawoodIbrahim, the mafia leader who was designated by  the USA as aninternational terrorist in October last year, Dubai-based Pakistani smugglers and A.Q.Khan and other trustedPakistani scientists. 

The financial contributions from Libya, Iran and Saudi Arabia weretransferred to these accounts from numbered secret Swiss accounts and payments to the overseas suppliers weremade from these accounts. 

In response to periodic Western media reports about Pakistan’sclandestine co-operation with these countries, Musharraf has been taking shifting stands just as he has beendoing so in the case of the Pakistani links with Al Qaeda and other jihadi terrorist groups.  

When the first reports about Pakistan’s clandestine co-operationwith North Korea in the missile and nuclear fields appeared, he totally denied them and repeatedly maintainedthat Pakistan’s medium and long-range missiles were totally indigenous and there was no North Korean role.In October last year, during a visit to South Korea, he changed this stand and openly admitted for the firsttime North Korean inputs in Pakistan’s missile programme.  However, he continues to deny any Pakistaniinputs into North Korea’s nuclear programme.  At the same time, he sought to blame the previousGovernments of Nawaz and Benazir for the missile co-operation with North Korea as if he had no role in it. 

After 9/11, when there was considerable speculation about thedangers of Pakistan’s WMD assets falling into the hands of Al Qaeda, he asserted on innumerable occasionsthat Pakistan’s nuclear capability was in the secure hands of the military and that there was no question ofits leakage to anybody outside Pakistan. 

After Libya and Iran made a clean breast of the inputs received bythem from Pakistan, he has again shifted his stand. He is now trying to give the impression as if this was theunauthorized doing of rogue elements in Pakistan’s scientific community who, according to him, betrayedPakistan’s nuclear secrets out of greed for money. 

He has been enacting an elaborate nuclear charade of detaining and"debriefing" A.Q.Khan and eight other nuclear scientists close to him and four ISI officers who had servedin the Kahuta uranium enrichment factory and by projecting the proliferation which has taken place, which heno longer denies, as the act of these rogue elements. 

When President Vladimir Putin of Russia visited India a year ago, he stated in an interview that Musharraf had repeatedly assured him that Pakistan’snuclear and missile assets were in the safe hands of the Army and that there was no question of their leakageto  Al Qaeda or other jihadi terrorists.  

Putin added that while he had no reasons to distrust Musharraf, hecontinued to be concerned over the dangers of individual members of the Pakistani scientific community helpingthe jihadi terrorists to develop a WMD capability. Even though he did not say so explicitly, it was apparentthat he was having in mind the case of Sultan Bashiruddin and Abdul Majid and was worried that theyrepresented only the tip of the jihadi rogue iceberg in Pakistan’s nuclear and missile fields. 

Putin’s concerns have been justified by the recent discoveriesof the role of over a dozen members of Pakistan’s WMD community, civilian scientists as well as theirmilitary supervisors, in the proliferation of nuclear technology and material to Libya and Iran.  Even ifone were to accept Musharraf’s unconvincing arguments that this was a rogue operation by greedy scientistswithout the knowledge of the military, these concerns would only be aggravated and not lessened because ifgreedy scientists were prepared to help other States in return for money, they would be equally capable ofselling material and expertise to jihadi terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda, which can pay as well asthese Islamic States. 

If an Islamic fundamentalist orientation was an additional factorin their sale/transfer of these technologies to Iran and Libya, the international community would have reasonsto be even more concerned. Till now, strategic analysts have been focusing only on the dangers of a possibleTalibanisation or Al Qaedisation of the Pakistan Army. It is time now to pay more attention to the dangers ofa Talibanisation or Al Qaedisation of Pakistan’s scientific community. 

The recent developments and the shifting stands of Musharraf onlyadd to the misgivings in the minds of many about him.  If he has been telling a lie by putting all theblame on individual scientists, it shows how he continues to be as unreliable as before befitting hisreputation as "tricky Mush". If he is telling the truth, it shows how ineffective is his control over thejihadi elements in the Pakistani Army and scientific establishment. 

B. Raman is Additional Secretary (retd), CabinetSecretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute for Topical Studies, Chennai, andDistinguished Fellow and Convenor, Advisory Committee, Observer Research Foundation, Chennai Chapter.