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The
nuclear Jihad
B
Raman
Pakistan
is not the original birth place of the Islamic fundamentalist
and jihadi organizations. Islamic fundamentalism and jihadi
terrorism were born elsewhere in the Islamic Ummah and thereafter
spread to Pakistan after the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran.
But, Pakistan is
the original birth place of the concept of the nuclear jihad, which
highlighted the need for an Islamic atomic bomb and advocated
the right and the religious obligation of the Muslims to acquire
weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and use them, if necessary, to
protect their religion. The jihadi terrorists and their ideologues
in Pakistan perceived the nuclear weapon as the ultimate weapon of
retribution against States which they viewed as enemies of Islam,
particularly the USA and Israel.
It was, in fact,
the late Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto, a Western-influenced liberal and not
a religious fundamentalist, who first projected Pakistan’s
clandestine quest 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 as Libya, Saudi Arabia and Iran to fund
Pakistan’s clandestine military nuclear programme.
It was only
subsequently that Pakistani jihadi organizations such as 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 projected
it as rightfully belonging to the Islamic Ummah as a whole.
They described
Pakistan’s nuclear and missile capability as held by it on trust
on behalf of the Ummah. In 2000, when Abdul Sattar, Gen.Pervez
Musharraf’s then Foreign Minister, advocated Pakistan’s signing
of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), the Islamic
fundamentalist and jihadi organizations started a public campaign
against him and projected him as a traitor and as anti-Islam.
Thereafter, he gave up his advocacy.
After he shifted to
Afghanistan from the Sudan in 1996, Osama bin Laden of Al Qaeda
not only started speaking of the right and the religious obligation
of the Muslims to acquire WMD and use them, if necessary, to protect
Islam, but also initiated a project for the acquisition/ development
of WMD under the leadership of Abu Khabab in his training complex in
Afghanistan.
After 1998, Al
Qaeda and the International Islamic Front (IIF) for Jihad against
the Crusaders and the Jewish People launched a campaign for the
recruitment of students of science and scientists already working in
the scientific establishments of the Islamic countries for helping
them in their quest for the acquisition/development of WMD.
Many analysts of
what has come to be known as catastrophic or new terrorism have
remarked on the presence of a large number of educated persons in
the ranks of the jihadi terrorist organizations. Even the
pre-1991 ideological terrorist organizations of the world,
influenced by leftist ideologies, had attracted a large number of
educated youth. Thus, the attraction of educated youth 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 their ranks.
What is new about
jihadi terrorism is the gravitation of a number of students of
science or working scientists to the jihadi organizations to help
the terrorists in their jihad. While the students of science came to
the jihadi organizations from many Islamic countries of the world,
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 scientific community in the nuclear field. Just as
he started projecting the Pakistani Army not only as the Army of the
State of Pakistan, but also as the Army of Islam to serve the
Islamic cause, similarly, like Z.A. Bhutto whom he overthrew and
sent to the gallows, he started providing a religious justification
for Pakistan’s clandestine quest for the atomic bomb.
Zia’s policies
resulted in the injection of the fundamentalist virus into the
Pakistani Army and the scientific establishment. While the
increasing influence of fundamentalism in the lower and middle
levels of the Pakistani Armed Forces received the attention of the
analysts of the world, a similar increase in the influence of
fundamentalism in the scientific establishment did not receive
similar attention despite the fact that sections of the Pakistani
media had been reporting about the presence of unidentified
scientists of Pakistan’s nuclear establishment in the religious
conventions of Pakistani jihadi organizations such as the
Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET).
The first
indications of the presence of pro-jihadi scientists in Pakistan’s
nuclear establishment came to notice during the US military
operations in Afghanistan against Al Qaeda and the Taliban when
documents recovered by the US forces reportedly spoke of the visits
of Sultan Bashiruddin Ahmed and Abdul Majid, retired scientists of
Pakistan’s nuclear establishment, to Kandahar when bin Laden was
operating from there before 9/11. Sultan Bashiruddin was the
first head of the Kahuta uranium enrichment project before A.Q.Khan,
who subsequently became famous as the father of the Pakistani atomic
bomb, replaced him in the 1970s.
At the instance of
the USA, the Pakistani authorities detained the two 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 for
helping 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 project could be found, they
were released, but banned from traveling abroad. However, the
USA and, at its instance ,the UN Security Council initiated action
for banning their so-called humanitarian organization and for
freezing its bank accounts.
Since 9/11, one of
the major concerns of the US intelligence and counter-terrorism
agencies has been over the dangers of Al Qaeda and its jihadi
associates in the IIF managing to acquire a WMD capability. In this
connection, attention was particularly focused on Pakistan as the
most likely spot from which such leakage could occur.
Pakistan has been
the epicentre of State-sponsored nuclear proliferation since the
late 1980s. Having benefited from funds contributed by Libya,
Iran and Saudi Arabia for its clandestine military nuclear project,
the Pakistan State had to agree to requests from these countries for
helping them in acquiring a similar capability.
Large sections of
the media and the community of strategic analysts have been writing
as if the Pakistan State’s collusion with Iran in the nuclear
field came to light only last year. In fact, this came to light in
the early 1990s when Nawaz Sharif was the Prime Minister. The
Pakistani political and military establishment, including Nawaz
Sharif himself, had then strongly refuted these reports.
If one goes back to
the 1990s---immediately before and after the first Gulf war of
1991—one would find reports of the role played 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 for Pakistan in the US
on the following grounds: first, the reports about the co-operation
with Iran came from sources in the anti-Teheran Mujahideen-e-Khalq,
which were not reliable. Second, it did not sound logical that
Pakistan should be helping Iran as well as Iraq, both sworn enemies
of each other.
Such arguments have
no validity in the case of Pakistan. Duplicity has been the defining
characteristic of Pakistan’s foreign policy ever since it was born
in 1947. It co-operated with China against India and with the US
against China. It co-operated with the USA against Iran by allowing
the USA’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to use Pakistani
territory for its operations against the Islamic regime in Iran and
, at the same time, had no qualms about helping the Islamic regime
in strengthening its conventional capability and developing a
nuclear capability.
The political and
military leadership of Pakistan clandestinely helped 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 Korean missile
technology.
When Pakistan faced
difficulties in the late 1980s in developing its indigenous missiles
(based on the Hatf series), it was to China it turned. Beijing
helped it by supplying it with technology and fully tested short and
medium range missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons up to
Delhi and Mumbai in India, but was reluctant to supply long-range
missiles capable of striking Chennai and Kolkatta.
It was then that
Pakistan turned to North Korea when Benazir Bhutto succeeded Nawaz
as the Prime Minister in 1993. During a visit made by her to
North Korea from China, the agreement for co-operation in the
missile field was concluded. Gen.Pervez Musharraf, who was the
Director-General of Military Operations under her, was made
responsible for co-ordinating this project. He and A.Q.Khan had made
many secret visits to North Korea in this connection---together as
well as separately of each other.
Initially, Pakistan
paid for North Korea’s missiles and related technology with
dollars and wheat purchased from the US and Australia and diverted
to it. The supplementary agreement to help North Korea in developing
a military nuclear capability was reached after Musharraf assumed
power in October,1999.
Zia, Benazir, Nawaz,
Beg, Gen. Asif Nawaz Janjua, who succeeded Beg. Gen. Abdul Waheed
Kakkar, his successor, and Gen.Jehangir Karamat, his successor and
Musharraf’s predecessor, were all privy to the clandestine
nuclear/missile relationship with Iran,Libya and North Korea.
Right from its
inception, the clandestine nuclear and missile projects 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
the Government of Pakistan, but from private accounts in the BCCI,
which collapsed in 1991, and other Dubai and Geneva based banks.
These accounts were opened by the Gokul brothers of Geneva, one of
whom was jailed for cheating in the UK after the collapse of the
BCCI, Shaukat Aziz, Pakistan’s present Finance Minister, who was
working in the Gulf for the Citibank in the 1990s, Dawood
Ibrahim, the mafia leader who was designated by the USA as an
international terrorist in October last year, Dubai-based Pakistani
smugglers and A.Q.Khan and other trusted Pakistani scientists.
The financial
contributions from Libya, Iran and Saudi Arabia were transferred to
these accounts from numbered secret Swiss accounts and payments to
the overseas suppliers were made from these accounts.
In response to
periodic Western media reports about Pakistan’s clandestine
co-operation with these countries, Musharraf has been taking
shifting stands just as he has been doing 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-operation with North Korea
in the missile and nuclear fields appeared, he totally denied them
and repeatedly maintained that 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 first time North Korean inputs in
Pakistan’s missile programme. However, he continues to deny
any Pakistani inputs into North Korea’s nuclear programme.
At the same time, he sought to blame the previous Governments 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 the dangers of Pakistan’s
WMD assets falling into the hands of Al Qaeda, he asserted on
innumerable occasions that Pakistan’s nuclear capability was in
the secure hands of the military and that there was no question of
its leakage to anybody outside Pakistan.
After Libya and
Iran made a clean breast of the inputs received by them from
Pakistan, he has again shifted his stand. He is now trying to give
the impression as if this was the unauthorized doing of rogue
elements in Pakistan’s scientific community who, according to him,
betrayed Pakistan’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 served in the Kahuta
uranium enrichment factory and by projecting the proliferation which
has taken place, which he no 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’s nuclear and missile assets were in the safe hands of
the Army and that there was no question of their leakage to Al
Qaeda or other jihadi terrorists.
Putin added that
while he had no reasons to distrust Musharraf, he continued to be
concerned over the dangers of individual members of the Pakistani
scientific community helping the jihadi terrorists to develop a WMD
capability. Even though he did not say so explicitly, it was
apparent that he was having in mind the case of Sultan Bashiruddin
and Abdul Majid and was worried that they represented only the tip
of the jihadi rogue iceberg in Pakistan’s nuclear and missile
fields.
Putin’s concerns
have been justified by the recent discoveries of the role of over a
dozen members of Pakistan’s WMD community, civilian scientists as
well as their military supervisors, in the proliferation of nuclear
technology and material to Libya and Iran. Even if one were to
accept Musharraf’s unconvincing arguments that this was a rogue
operation by greedy scientists without the knowledge of the
military, these concerns would only be aggravated and not lessened
because if greedy scientists were prepared to help other States in
return for money, they would be equally capable of selling material
and expertise to jihadi terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda,
which can pay as well as these Islamic States.
If an Islamic
fundamentalist orientation was an additional factor in their
sale/transfer of these technologies to Iran and Libya, the
international community would have reasons to be even more
concerned. Till now, strategic analysts have been focusing only on
the dangers of a possible Talibanisation or Al Qaedisation of the
Pakistan Army. It is time now to pay more attention to the dangers
of a Talibanisation or Al Qaedisation of Pakistan’s scientific
community.
The recent
developments and the shifting stands of Musharraf only add to the
misgivings in the minds of many about him. If he has been
telling a lie by putting all the blame on individual scientists, it
shows how he continues to be as unreliable as before befitting his
reputation as "tricky Mush". If he is telling the truth,
it shows how ineffective is his control over the jihadi elements in
the Pakistani Army and scientific establishment.
B.
Raman is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt.
of India, and, presently, Director, Institute for Topical Studies,
Chennai, and Distinguished Fellow and Convenor, Advisory Committee,
Observer Research Foundation, Chennai Chapter. | 
