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Bush's Pakistan
contradiction
By Seema Sirohi
WASHINGTON - After the long, riveting drama by
Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pakistan's nuclear hero-turned
high stakes proliferator, played to a packed world
audience, the Bush administration could do little more
than wring its hands in frustration because of the
competing compulsions on US policy towards Islamabad.
In short, Pakistan policy is a puzzle, a big
knot.
Washington was obliged to watch the
choreography of Khan's "confession" and "pardon" without
as much as a word of censure. There was only praise and
support for President General Pervez Musharraf, who has
made himself indispensable to US policy as the supreme
frontier man in the "war against terror", even as he
forgave Khan and vowed never to allow international
inspections of his leaky nuclear program.
The
Bush administration swallowed hard but gave Musharraf a
pass. Demanding punishment for Khan would have meant
forcing Musharraf to do the difficult job of prosecuting
a "national hero" who is perhaps the only scientist in
the world lionized for making the bomb. Rallies are held
and placards carried in his honor because he made it
happen - whether by begging, borrowing or stealing, it
didn't matter. So once again Washington looked the other
way, clenched its teeth and asked for the least
difficult option - information to shut down the nuclear
smuggling network.
While the US media raged and
fumed with a series of devastating articles about Khan's
greed and propensity to sell nuclear technology,
official spokesman in Washington gave tortured
explanations. They said that pardoning Khan was an
internal matter to be decided by Pakistan. The daily
grilling of Richard Boucher, the State Department
spokesman, brought forth long-winded explanations about
how the two countries have regularly been discussing
proliferation. Boucher repeatedly expressed the
administration's confidence in the ability of Musharraf
to do the right thing.
But the media dubbed Khan
a "nuclear Ali Baba" who ran the "nuclear Wal-Mart",
selling his wares to Iran, Libya and North Korea through
a shadowy network of companies and middlemen stretching
from Europe to Asia. The Washington Post wrote two tough
back-to-back editorials demanding action and reminding
President George W Bush that his first mission is "to
prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction to
terrorists" and rogue regimes and that his national
security doctrine advocates a preemptive strike in such
cases. "The general and his government have been lying
for years about the illegal traffic. Now that their
cover has been blown, they are attempting to pin all the
blame on a single scientist while stonewalling any
international investigation," the Post thundered.
Far from any military action, Boucher maintained
that there was no need even for US sanctions. As for the
future - if there is a future as America's leading
satirical news anchor Jon Stewart noted - Pakistan will
decide the course of action. "What penalties, sanctions,
controls or steps are used to prevent it from happening
again, those are up for individual governments to
decide. It is up to the Pakistani government to make
sure this sort of thing doesn't happen again," Boucher
said. But the US administration has demanded and got
intrusive international inspections for Libya and Iran,
two of the countries to which Khan supplied nuclear
technology and blueprints. By accepting the official
Pakistani line that the military wasn't involved in
Khan's dangerous adventures, Washington avoided having
to face tough questions about how to deal with Pakistan
- recognized by the chattering classes as the toughest
challenge for US policy makers. If the Khan scandal had
come to light before the terrorist attacks of September
11, 2001, American policy might have been tougher.
On Wednesday, Bush delivered a speech outlining
his plan to limit the spread of nuclear weapons by
cracking down on the nuclear black market, tightening
loopholes in the nuclear non-proliferation treaty,
expanding his 11-nation Proliferation Security
Initiative, restricting the sale of nuclear technology
and strengthening export control laws. "We must act on
every lead. We will find the middlemen, the suppliers
and the buyers. Our message to proliferators must be
consistent and it must be clear: We will find you, and
we're not going to rest until you are stopped," he
declared. He recounted the Khan story in great detail,
but never held anyone responsible in the Pakistani
establishment for what happened. The story was cited as
a great success of US intelligence by Bush at a time
when he is faced with tough questions about the veracity
of intelligence claims about the elusive Iraqi
stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.
George Perkovich, a proliferation expert and
author of a book on India's nuclear weapons program,
said that it is better to focus on the future instead of
demanding punishment. "First and foremost, the US should
demand complete details of Khan's interrogation and push
the Pakistanis to pursue every lead. Every node of this
network must be investigated," Perkovich said in an
interview. "People have to be grown up about it. In
criminal prosecution, you have a plea bargain which
allows you to get information on other people."
Perkovich termed Khan's network the "most
serious case of proliferation in history". But he also
added that Pakistan has never shared the West's ethos of
non-proliferation because many other objectives were
more important to Pakistan than the spread of nuclear
technology. "Their view is that these rules were created
by the United States and Israel. Why should we abide by
their rules? The challenge is to make Pakistan believe
in responsible stewardship of their nuclear arsenal."
Michael Krepon, founding president of the Henry
Stimson Center, a think-tank that studies proliferation,
said that there are some disturbing "morals" in the Khan
story - if you plan to hawk nuclear secrets, don't get
caught. The other moral for future proliferators - "be
an indispensable ally to the United States in the global
war on terror". Krepon said that if Khan had resided in
another country, or if Pakistan were led by the
religious leaders who are eager to unseat Musharraf, the
Bush administration's response would have been
different.
However, Musharraf's record on
proliferation is far from satisfactory despite his "400
percent" assurances to Secretary of State Colin Powell
to stop all illegal activities. In the past he has
flatly denied any nuclear technology leaking out, just
as he denied that Pakistan served as a base for
terrorists operating against India, even though US
officials raised red flags around Khan at least three
years ago. At least two transactions took place on
Musharraf's watch - a US-supplied Pakistani military
plane was spotted in the fall of 2002 in North Korea
with suspicious cargo and last year a ship was seized at
an Italian port carrying nuclear equipment for Libya.
Khan has since confessed to many such acts.
Analysts say that Washington is once again using
double standards, adding that history will repeat itself
as Washington repeats its mistakes. In the 1980s, the
Reagan administration gave Pakistan US$3.2 billion in
military aid as a quid pro quo for allowing the
Central Intelligence Agency to funnel weapons to the
Afghan mujahideen who were fighting the Soviets. But
there was a condition - Pakistan would not make the
bomb. Former Pakistani military ruler General Zia
ul-Haq, a deft politician just like Musharraf, collected
both American money and technology for a nuclear weapons
program through a clandestine network. The greater
American compulsion then was defeating the Soviets, and
Pakistan's activities were accepted as the "price"
Washington had to pay for the larger good. Today, the
compulsion is to find Osama bin Laden, who is believed
to be hiding somewhere around the Pakistan-Afghan
border. Pakistan is critical to achieving American
goals, and once again reality is being shaded.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
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