Explosive Secrets From Pakistan

The secret is out: The know-how and perhaps even the equipment to make nuclear weapons has been leaked from Pakistan to countries like Iran and Libya. The question now is: Who dunnit? Greedy scientists or the Pakistani military?

Greedy scientists is the explanation being offered by Pakistan’s military rulers. What’s more, they say, they weren’t aware that such sales were going on until just a few weeks ago, when Libya and Iran began spilling the beans. They’re shocked.

But that seems a bit of a stretch. After all, the weapons or the knowledge to make them would sell for billions of dollars, an amount that would have surely raised eyebrows in Islamabad, where corruption by politicians, money skimming and Swiss bank accounts are routinely investigated and published -- often as a result of leaks by Pakistani intelligence.

The truth is, the military itself is a more likely culprit in the sales. The military has ruled Pakistan for most of its history, either outright or by pulling the strings of weak and often corrupt governments. The military controls the intelligence agency and its nuclear weapons program.

Perhaps even more relevant, the military was strapped for cash during the 1990s after Washington ended military and humanitarian aid to Pakistan because of concerns about the country’s nuclear program.

The cutoff was a case of “too little, too late,” coming as it did after a decade-long spending spree by the U.S. in Pakistan. During that time, Washington knew that Pakistan was developing nuclear weapons technology but chose to ignore it. Why? The U.S. needed Pakistan, which had become the front-line state against the spread of communism. Pakistan was the staging arena for the U.S.-funded insurgency, which included Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, to defeat the Soviet Red Army after it invaded Afghanistan in 1979.

Washington’s ally in the 1980s during the war to oust the Soviet invaders from Afghanistan was Pakistan’s military dictator, Mohammed Zia ul-Haq. This was despite the fact that in 1977 Zia had overthrown and later hanged Pakistan’s civilian leader, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

By the early 1980s, Zia’s Pakistan was the third-largest recipient of U.S. aid after Israel and Egypt. Despite widespread knowledge that Zia, who was a hard-line Islamist, was developing nuclear weapons, U.S. presidents signed waivers year after year certifying that Pakistan was not defying a U.S. law that banned giving aid to nations developing nuclear weapons.

The U.S. ignored Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program until 1990, when Washington finally cut all military and humanitarian aid, ostensibly to punish Islamabad for its nuclear ambitions. What had changed? The Soviet Union had collapsed, the Cold War had just ended, Russia had left Afghanistan and, most significant, Pakistan was no longer needed.

But by then Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program was humming along. With no U.S. aid money coming in, what was the military to do? According to Mirza Aslam Beg, who was army chief at the time, Iran approached him, offering upward of $10 billion for nuclear arms technology. Beg told me in 2003 that Iranian emissaries contacted him and then-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. According to Beg, but never confirmed by Bhutto, the two played a game with the emissaries, sending them between the military chief’s house and the prime minister’s. One would say the other had the authority to decide whether to share the technology, but neither would give the Iranians an outright refusal.

When Bhutto’s successor, Nawaz Sharif, came to power, Beg was still talking to the Iranians, according to a former senior Cabinet minister who is now back in government with the opposition. The minister recalled a conversation in which Beg told him, “Iran is willing to give whatever it takes, $6 billion, $10 billion. We can sell the bomb to Iran at any price.”

Beg said no deal was cut, but he also said that no one ever said “no” to Iran. According to Beg, the offer was never rejected outright because no one in the military or the government wanted to be rude to their Iranian interlocutors. Now there’s an explanation to strain credulity.

Despite all this, the U.S. consistently has made the military its ally -- even though it is generally the military that brings the most grief to Washington. The U.S. ban on aid was again lifted after 9/11 in exchange for Pakistan’s help against the Taliban in Afghanistan and in the hunt for Al Qaeda suspects.

It was Zia who encouraged Islamists like Bin Laden and others to go to Afghanistan, while convincing Washington that they were its best bet to defeat the Soviets. Zia also imposed harsh Islamic rules on Pakistan. Yet Washington supported the military. Now, hard-line Islamic groups rule in two provinces, and madrasas -- religious schools that often preach hate of the West -- operate freely without government constraints.

Today, the military wants to keep Washington a friend while also helping militants in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir. This situation is becoming increasingly dangerous for Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who came to power in a military coup.

The only real guarantee for Pakistan’s future as a stable partner in the region is to invest in Pakistan’s civil society, which is neither militant in its Islamic belief nor a supporter of hard-line Islam. But the military has prevented its development to keep civil institutions weak, thereby keeping the military the most powerful institution in Pakistan. While many, if not the majority, of Pakistan’s soldiers are ideologically motivated, most Pakistanis are moderate in their beliefs.

The nuclear controversy could be an unexpected benefit for Pakistan if it persuaded Islamabad’s Western allies to focus on strengthening the civil society by investing heavily in the dilapidated public education system and not in madrasas, and by distancing themselves from the military.