Whistling In The Dark

"While the Government of Pakistan has, since 1975, allowed at least a façade of democracy andautonomy to Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK), it has kept the NA (Northern Areas--Gilgit and Baltistan) undertight federal control, imposing an iron curtain in the area.  The reasons are its strategic locationadjoining China and the clandestine use of the Karakoram Highway for the movement of Chinese nuclear materialand missiles.

"Drawing attention to this in a paper titled "The Northern Areas: Behind Pakistan's IronCurtain" published in the September 1996 issue of the "Strategic Analysis", the monthly journalof the Institute of Defence Studies And Analysis, New Delhi, this writer had said: " The KarakoramHighway is also used for the movement to Pakistan of Chinese nuclear and military equipment like the M-11missiles, equipment for the nuclear power station being constructed with Chinese assistance etc.  The twocountries do not transport such sensitive equipment by sea to avoid detection by the USA.

"This has now been corroborated by "the Washington Times" story of August 6,2001, regardingthe movement of Chinese missiles to Pakistan by trucks.  "The Hindu" of Chennai (August 7) hasquoted the "Washington Times" as follows: "American satellite monitoring of the area detected ashipment on May 1 on the China-Pakistan border.  By US intelligence estimates, it was one of the 12consignments sent by ship and truck since the beginning of the year.

"In the past, Pakistan had been receiving its clandestine missile consignments from North Korea bysea.  Since the appointment of Mr. Richard Armitage as Deputy Secretary of State in the current BushAdministration, Pakistan and North Korea have been worried because in a paper on US policy options towardsNorth Korea submitted to the US House of Representatives on March 4,1999, Mr. Armitage had, inter alia,recommended as follows: "Should diplomacy fail, the United States would have to consider two alternativecourses, neither of which is attractive.  One is to live with and deter a nuclear North Korea armed withdelivery systems, with all its implications for the region.  The other is preemption, with the attendantuncertainties.  Strengthened deterrence and containment.  This would involve a more ready and robustposture, including a willingness to interdict North Korean missile exports on the high seas.  Our posturein the wake of a failure of diplomacy would position the United States and its allies to enforce 'red lines.'Preemption.  We recognize the dangers and difficulties associated with this option.  To beconsidered, any such initiative must be based on precise knowledge of facilities, assessment of probablesuccess, and clear understanding with our allies of the risks."

"It is understood that during the visit of the Chinese Prime Minister, Mr.Zhu Rongji, to Pakistan inMay,2001, Islamabad had taken up with China the question of allowing future missile consignments from NorthKorea to come to Pakistan by road via China and the Northern Areas. "

-- Extracts from an article dated August 7,2001,
titled Gilgit And Baltistan -- ChinaAnd North Korea by this  writer.

The firing on May 25,2002, of a North Korean made Nodong (I ?) missile, baptised Ghauri by Pakistan in 1998to hoodwink its own population and the international community that the missile was the result of research anddevelopment by its own scientists, should be a matter of greater concern to the Bush Administration in the USand Japan than to India because it provides one more piece of evidence, if it was needed, of the nexus betweenPakistan's military-intelligence establishment and the nuclear-missile establishment of North Korea, which hasbeen placed by President Bush in what he described in his State of the Union Message of January,2002, as theaxis of evil.

This nexus was first established during the second tenure of Mrs.Benazir Bhutto as the Prime Minister(!993-96) when she made a clandestine visit to Pyongyang and subsequently nursed by the Nawaz SharifGovernment and the Musharraf regime. Pakistan was initially  paying for the missiles and spare partspartly in kind ( Pakistani, US and Australian wheat to meet North Korea's acute food shortage in the 1990s)and partly through supply of nuclear technology to help North Korea in the development of its own militarynuclear capability.

During the last three or four years, Pakistani nuclear scientists and engineers have been working in NorthKorea and North Korean missile experts in Pakistan. Since September, 2001, the increased and still increasingcash flow into Pakistan from the USA, the European Union and Japan has enabled the military regime to pay forthe North Korean missiles and related technology in hard currency.

Since the beginning of this year, there has been a large-scale movement of military goods under militaryescort  to Pakistan from China  along the Karakoram Highway. While most of these containers weresaid to contain spare parts and replacements for the Chinese arms and ammunition and aircraft in Pakistan'sarsenal, one should not rule out the possibility that the Chinese might have accepted the Pakistani requestfor the movement of the missile-related goods from North Korea by train and road across China and then alongthe Karakoram Highway.

This carefully-nursed co-operation between North Korea and Pakistan could not only help North Korea todevelop a nuclear capability which could pose a threat to the USA and Japan, but could also make thesemissiles in Pakistan a tempting target for acquisition for the dregs of the present Afghan war from the AlQaeda, the Taliban and the Pakistani jehadi organisations, which have made Pakistan the new staging ground fortheir anti-US and anti-West activities.

What Pakistan carried out on the morning of May 25, 2002, was not a test firing of a missile underdevelopment through indigenous efforts as projected by Musharraf, but the demonstration firing of aready-to-fire missile acquired clandestinely from Bush's  axis of evil. It was meant as a demonstrationof Pakistan's self-proclaimed capability to the Pakistani public as well as to its Armed Forces in order tokeep up their morale at a time when Pakistan has come under great pressure from the international community tostop using terrorism as a weapon against India.

It was also meant to refurbish Musharraf's image in the eyes of his people at a time when his recentreferendum stands discredited due to large-scale rigging, large sections of the political class have beenquestioning the wisdom of his continuing in power at a time of national crisis and there have been growingsigns of disquiet in the military over his erratic ways of functioning and over his hugging desperately thepost of the Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) in the hope of thereby pre-empting any threat to him from insidethe Armed Forces.

He received a jolt during the recent referendum when more than 20 per cent of the votes cast in themilitary barracks were reportedly against him whereas only about three per cent of the civilian votes wentagainst him. This would show that the support to him in the military was not as overwhelming as he liked tothink. His colleagues and subordinates might not express their opposition to him in public, but did nothesitate to do so when they had an opportunity of doing so anonymously during the referendum.

Musharraf is hoping that his action in carrying out the missile firing would dilute, if not remove, thereservations in their minds about him and about his determination to resist outside pressure vis-a-vis India.

While India should take note of the firing, there is no reason to be concerned. India was already aware ofMusharraf's nexus with the axis of evil and of Pakistan's possession of the North Korean missiles under thecamouflage of indigenous missiles and one can be certain that this must have been factored into our thinkingand planning.

This was essentially an exercise of whistling in the dark by Musharraf. What is important is that Indiashould highlight to the US, Japan and other countries the nuclear-missile nexus between Pakistan and NorthKorea and the threat that this could pose to them and to international peace and security. 

(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently,Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai)