Disable Pakistan's nuclear weapons

Kapil Komireddi

Pakistani leaders often blame outsiders for their problems, but Pakistan is a country defeated by its origins. Created for India's Muslims on the premise that, in Pakistan, no Muslim would be killed for being Muslim, it bred an atmosphere where Muslims are today being killed for not being "good Muslims". Legitimising religious exclusivism promoted militant puritanism.
So it is hardly surprising that Pakistan's president, Asif Ali Zardari, went on television last week to admit that his country was fighting for its survival against religious extremists. "The Taliban [are] trying to take over the state of Pakistan," he told CBS's Steve Kroft. "We are fighting for the survival of Pakistan." Last year, the Taliban struck at the heart of Islamabad, reducing the Marriott Hotel, redoubt of Pakistan's rich and powerful, to rubble; and the CIA believes that Benazir Bhutto's assassination a year before was helped by tribal leaders in the Swat region aligned with the Taliban.
Yet, unable to prevail by force, a day after the interview's broadcast Zardari's government struck a deal with the Taliban in the Swat region, effectively ceding authority to its principal nemesis in an area that is only 100 miles away from Pakistan's capital. Having made incremental gains over many years, the Taliban are now at the gates of Islamabad – and Islamabad possesses at least 55 nuclear warheads.
Anticipating such an event, the Bush administration had moved to safeguard Pakistan's nuclear arsenal by offering to share with Islamabad the sophisticated Pals ("permissive action links") technology, which would have linked Pakistan's nuclear weapons to secret codes that would control their activation. Legal restrictions prevented this from happening.
But in a country where the civilian government is in a sempiternal struggle for supremacy against its powerful military and intelligence services – and where elements within the military and intelligence services have a proven track record of sponsoring terrorism against countries the civilian government has taken pains to befriend – even the Pals would have proved inadequate.
Rebuilding Pakistan with long-term fiscal aid has been a top priority so far, but Islamabad's paymasters in the west must now seriously consider the option of comprehensively de-nuclearising Pakistan. It is dangerously delusional to carry on pretending that Pakistan's nuclear weapons are perfectly safe when the custodian of those weapons, the president of Pakistan, is vulnerable to terrorist attacks, and when the country itself is on the brink of collapse.
The consequences of Pakistan's failure have been felt most severely by Pakistanis; and India, as Ashley J Tellis noted, has unfortunately become the "sponge" that has protected the west by absorbing many of the attacks emanating from Pakistan. But the implications of nuclear-armed Pakistan's instability, and the results of its decades-long flirtation with religious fundamentalists, go beyond the subcontinent. As Gordon Corera has documented in his book Shopping for Bombs, it was Pakistan that supplied nuclear secrets to bidders in North Korea and Iran, among others.
Islamabad is not likely to yield easily to requests to de-nuclearise, but the most plausible way to start the process would be to use the leverage that Pakistan's donors, particularly in Washington and London, have gained over the last decade to begin talks to ship its nuclear weapons out of the country. In return, as Bret Stephens has suggested, the US should promise increased fiscal aid, superior conventional arms and even nuclear protection.
Numerous proposals to safeguard Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, indubitably the most vulnerable in the world, have been offered, but western attempts have been repeatedly frustrated by Islamabad. Now, however, things have moved beyond the point at which western inaction can be explained away as deference to Pakistani sensibilities. The price of respecting the supposed sovereignty of an imploding state which in reality is incapable of controlling much of the territory it claims will be too heavy. The west will pay a heavy price if it does not act now.

Guardian