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Islamabad makes a
tradeoff
By Kaushik Kapisthalam
Although Pakistani forces conducted their
customary vigorous anti-terrorism operations near
the Afghanistan border prior to visits by US
officials, the real interest in Wednesday's
meeting between President General Pervez Musharraf
and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
centered on Iran.
Before Rice's whirlwind
visit to India, Pakistan and Afghanistan (she also
goes to Japan, South Korea and China) Washington
was abuzz with talk that the Bush administration
had convinced Musharraf to lend support to
American action against Iran for its alleged
nuclear weapons program.
This reinforces a
number of reports by Asia Times Online's Syed
Saleem Shahzad over the past months that Pakistan
had agreed to host American troops and
intelligence assets near its long border with Iran
in Balochistan province in preparation for a
possible attack on Iran, including the training of
special US forces in Karachi - see, for example,
US keeps Iran
in its sights
of January 28.
In return, the US seems to be more
receptive to Pakistan's long-term request for F-16
fighter aircraft. On Wednesday, Rice thanked
Musharraf for "superb support in the war on
terror", according to State Department spokesman
Richard Boucher. The possible sale of F-16 fighter
planes came up, Boucher said, but he gave no
details.
There are further contours of the
deal - Pakistan has provided material evidence to
the US and the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) of the items and scientific information
that Pakistani scientists provided to support the
Iranian nuclear weapons program.
Again,
ATol's Syed Saleem Shahzad was the first to break
the news that Pakistan was ready to surrender
detailed material evidence of proliferation to
Iran - see US goes back
to the nuclear source of December 15 of
last year.
Since September, Musharraf had
been resistant to US demands to provide material
evidence of Pakistani proliferation, especially if
it was intended to give the US causus belli
to act militarily against another Islamic country.
However, Musharraf was the first to officially
signal a Pakistani change of heart when in late
February he made an acknowledgement that his
country's scientists may have transferred some
centrifuge parts to Iran.
Last week, Sheik
Rashid Ahmed, Pakistan's information minister,
said that Abdul Qadeer Khan, the mastermind of
Pakistan's nuclear program, had given centrifuges
- rather than just blueprints - to Iran as part of
a package of materials that could be used to make
a nuclear bomb. Centrifuges are used to enrich
uranium, either to produce energy or nuclear
weapons. The minister added, "He [Khan] helped
Iran in his personal capacity, and the Pakistan
government had nothing to do with it."
This declaration is significant because
until now Pakistan has insisted that no nuclear
material was ever sent from Pakistan and that the
illegal trade was restricted to intellectual
property, such as plans and blueprints.
Subsequently, a Reuters report from
Vienna, where the IAEA is headquartered, said that
Pakistan would submit to the long-term IAEA demand
that it hand over its centrifuges similar to the
ones its supplied to Iran, so that the agency
could identify if Iran has been secretly enriching
uranium or not. Uranium from various sources still
maintains its radioactive "fingerprint" that
experts can use to trace its origin. Even though
the Pakistan Foreign Office denied the Reuters
report, many don't find the denial credible, given
that Pakistan has made angry denials in the past
of nuclear-related allegations that eventually
proved to be true.
Interestingly, as the
December ATol piece noted, former Pakistan army
chief General Mirza Aslam Beg has been linked
closely to Pakistan's nuclear dealings with Iran.
Beg has on many occasions openly endorsed nuclear
cooperation with Iran and even called for a
Pakistan-Iran-Afghanistan military alliance
against the US. Some observers wonder if Musharraf
would "sacrifice" Beg to both appease the US, as
well as fend off those who are skeptical of
Pakistan's blaming of the entire proliferation
saga on one individual - Khan.
In this
context, Beg has been recently writing op-eds
published in the Pakistani and US media trying to
justify Pakistan's proliferation acts. Strangely,
Beg also called for an India-Pakistan tie-up to
provide a nuclear shield to Iran. However, one
Western analyst who recently visited Pakistan
expressed skepticism that the Pakistani
establishment would ever sacrifice one of their
own (Beg), even if he is currently out of favor.
For the Americans, this Pakistani
admission is vital since it gets the US off the
hook from the task of proving that Iran is
cheating on its promise not to develop nuclear
weapons. Even though many people (especially in
Washington) believe that Iran is working on
enriching uranium for weapons purposes, material
evidence carries enormous weight in the diplomatic
world. Until now, Iran had been stalling the IAEA
by arguing that Western intelligence sources are
wrong about its nuclear program, a claim that is
strengthened by the Iraq weapons of mass
destruction fiasco.
But a centrifuge
sample handover by Pakistan changes the playing
field, making it hard for Iran to wriggle out of
its dealings with the IAEA, should they contain
incriminating material. As a result, should Iran's
nuclear weapons program be found out publicly, the
matter can theoretically be referred to the United
Nations Security Council, leading to sanctions or
even military action, although China may have
something to say about that.
A few weeks
ago, Richard Sale, the intelligence correspondent
for United Press International, wrote that
Musharraf had allowed Iranian anti-regime fighters
to operate from Pakistan's Balochistan province
that abuts Iran. Sale claimed that the fighters
included those from the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK),
which is officially listed as a terrorist
organization by the US State Department. This
report once again tallies with ATol's January 28
story, which said that the US was using the MEK to
work against Iran from southern Iraq, "... [the
MEK] will attempt to play the role of a catalyst
to organize an insurgency against the rule of
Islamic hardliners in Tehran."
Anti-Iranian Kurdish groups could be based
in Balochistan because the Kurds are ethnically
similar to the Balochis. One factor complicating
this alleged ploy is the Pakistani Baloch uprising
against Islamabad, which has picked up steam after
an alleged rape of a woman doctor by a Pakistani
military officer. (See ATol's Tribals
looking down a barrel in Balochistan of
January 15.)
Despite that, Balochistan's
geography (long porous border with Iran) and
sparse population make it too attractive for the
US to pass up as a potential staging area as it
weighs its options over Iran.
Meanwhile,
for Musharraf and Pakistan, supporting the US
against Iran fits into the pattern of behavior of
acquiescing to one demand in order to deflect
pressure off another. In this case, Pakistan has
come under renewed pressure from the IAEA and the
US to hand over Khan - he is currently under
"informal" house arrest - and disclose more about
the Pakistani nuclear network. Reuters reported
this week that many European and American experts
now have solid evidence of Pakistan trying to
revive the nuclear underworld. In this context,
one South Asia expert said that it makes sense for
Musharraf to "give up" Iran in order to stave of
the concerted pressure over Khan.
For the
Pakistani establishment, this would also be a way
to payback Iran for what Pakistani officials felt
was Iran's betrayal when it secretly revealed
details of Pakistani nuclear support to the IAEA.
That, along with Libya's secret deal with the US
directly provided enough evidence of Pakistani
proliferation and led to the February 2004
televised confession by Khan. In a press
conference following Khan's TV appearance,
Musharraf was visibly angry at Iran and Libya for
"caving in", and even mocked them for being
weak-kneed in the face of international pressure.
In addition, the largely Sunni Pakistani
establishment, despite the presence of mavericks
like Beg, is generally suspicious of Shi'ite Iran.
Pakistan-Iran ties hit rock bottom during the
1990s when Pakistan was sponsoring the Sunni
extremist Taliban movement in Afghanistan, which
took part in large scale massacres of Afghan
Shi'ites, who were supported by Iran. The Taliban
and allied Pakistani militants also killed nine
Iranian diplomats in Mazar-e-Sharif, exacerbating
the tensions.
Post-Taliban, Iran-Pakistan
ties seem to have improved. Iran's concerns with
regard to Pakistan's backing of the Taliban seem
to have been allayed somewhat with the Pakistani
government reversing its earlier policy of support
to the Taliban. Tehran and Islamabad have taken
big strides with regard to a proposed US$4.5
billion natural gas pipeline from Iran's oilfields
through Pakistan to India, and the two have
recently agreed to conduct joint naval exercises.
These, however, seem to be incidents of
tactical cooperation between Iran and Pakistan.
Mutual suspicion persists. Tehran blames Pakistan
for the American presence in Afghanistan and
Central Asia. It suspects Pakistan of cooperating
with the US against Iran. Pakistan suspects an
Iranian hand in the turmoil in Balochistan.
Pakistan's Iran suspicions only heightened
when a string of reports came out stating that
Iran had signed a secret defense agreement with
India that included a provision for India to
deploy "troops, armored personnel carriers, tanks
and surveillance platforms in Iran" during any
crisis with Pakistan. Though lower-level Iranian
officials eventually denied such a provision, top
Iranian figures did not deny that there was an
agreement with India.
The reports also
mentioned that India would develop the new Iranian
port of Chahbahar. Separately, India also signed a
deal with Iran to develop a road link connecting
Chahbahar to Central Asian points of trade,
through Afghanistan. For Pakistan, Chahbahar is a
direct competitor to the port of Gwadar in
Balochistan that Pakistan is developing with
Chinese assistance. Pakistan's leaders have long
marketed Gwadar as a destination point of choice
for Central Asian commerce. Pakistan's
establishment has also been historically sensitive
about any Indian access to its western flank,
especially in Afghanistan, and news of Iran-India
cooperation started ringing alarm bells in
Islamabad.
In any event, the idea that
Musharraf has made a decision to allow access to
US forces in Balochistan was strengthened when the
general recently spoke at a conference in
Islamabad, "We hope the US doesn't attack Iran. In
the event of an attack, Pakistan will remain
neutral." One Washington-based analyst contrasted
this statement with Musharraf's past explicit
denunciations of US actions against Iraq, as well
as his opposition to military action against
Islamic countries, and observed that this is about
as close to an anti-Iranian statement as one could
hope to get out of Musharraf publicly.
But
the analyst also cautioned that while Musharraf
may have agreed to allow the US forces to use
Balochistan for now, he might be hedging by hoping
that the US does not actually attack Iran.
"Musharraf thrives by making carefully worded
commitments that leave enough room for him to
wriggle out should things change," quipped the
expert. The expert also raised the point that this
could also be a short-term move by Musharraf to
get the Bush administration to approve the sale of
long-sought F-16 fighters to Pakistan. India is
after the same hardware.
Many Pakistani
and Western experts have noted that Pakistan has
followed the development paradigm of a
"rent-seeking state", meaning that Pakistani
leaders have always tried to parlay their
country's strategic geographical location to
greater powers in return for aid and diplomatic
recognition. The US, obviously, has been the
biggest partaker of the services provided by the
Pakistani elite, from the days of the Cold War to
the current "war on terror".
However, such
acts of renting their country out have not always
worked out well for Pakistan in the long term. It
would be interesting to see how this latest move
by Pakistan against Iran turns out, especially if
the Iranian leaders are able to come out of the
current nuclear crisis unscathed.
Kaushik
Kapisthalam is a freelance
defense and strategic affairs analyst based in the
United States. He can be reached at contact@kapisthalam.com.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
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on sales, syndication and republishing.) |
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