US government worried about Pakistan's nukes. Has plans to secure them.
Pakistan's bombs a dilemma for U.S.
WASHINGTON -- While the United States struggles to rein in Iran's nuclear ambitions, a more frightening nightmare is simmering right now in Pakistan, where a weak but nuclear-armed government is being buffeted by radical Islamic influences, terrorism and several bloody insurgencies.
Among all the perils the United States faces, "Pakistan is the most horrific and the hardest one to do anything about," said Charles Furguson, a senior nuclear proliferation expert at the Council on Foreign Relations who served as a naval officer on a nuclear missile submarine.
The United States does not have enough troops to speedily and simultaneously "lock down" all of Pakistan's nuclear weapons sites if that became necessary because of civil strife, an attempted coup or a terrorist attack, officials and outside analysts said.
The president's only option might be nuclear -- a desperate attempt to destroy Pakistan's weapons rather than risk their falling into terrorists' hands and ultimately detonating in an American city.
Time a big factor
"To date we don't have anything that can get there quickly, except for a nuclear weapon," Assistant Defense Secretary Peter Flory told a panel of the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 29. He was speaking generally about targeting terrorists possessing nuclear weapons, not about Pakistan in particular.
By "quickly," officials mean one to four hours. "For that small, highly important set of targets . . . a goal we have set is to be able to address those targets in one hour anyplace" with ballistic missiles, Marine Gen. James Cartwright, who commands all U.S. strategic missiles and bombers, told the senators.
Pakistan's loss of control over some or all of its nuclear weapons has been quietly discussed and war-gamed at senior levels in the Defense Department. But given the political sensitivity of discussing possible armed intervention in an allied country, Pentagon officials declined to answer questions. A spokeswoman, Lt. Col. Tracy O'Grady-Walsh, said, "Unclassified answers do not exist."
Though Pakistan is considered a close ally in the war on terrorism, its military and secret intelligence service have worked closely with radical Islamic insurgents operating in Kashmir, and with al-Qaida and the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan before Sept. 11, 2001. Starting that fall, the United States began using Pakistan as a major base for the war in Afghanistan and demanded that Pakistan cut its ties with Islamic groups.
Delicate balancing act
Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who seized power in a 1999 coup, has tried since 2001 to gingerly rein in domestic Muslims who are violently opposed to Pakistan's cooperation with the United States. Musharraf's dilemma, analysts said, is to respond to U.S. pressure without provoking an open revolt.
Pakistan announced in May 1998 that it had successfully conducted five nuclear tests. It is thought to have between 30 and 52 nuclear bombs and missile warheads, according to data compiled by the Natural Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit research organization in Washington.
Pakistan is not as unstable as it sounds, said Ashley Tellis, who recently directed strategic planning for South Asia in the White House and was a senior adviser to the U.S. ambassador to India. The Pakistani military has tight control over its nuclear weapons and it is "highly unlikely" that anything could crack that control, said Tellis, who now works for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.
But the risk must be considered, because failure would mean a "stealthy" terrorist nuclear attack on the United States, said John Gordon, a retired Army officer who is a strategic analyst at RAND Corp., a nonprofit think tank that works primarily for the Pentagon.
"If you fail to secure nuclear weapons in a country that may be torn by a civil war, coup attempt or insurgency, you fail massively," Gordon said.
Not up to task
According to analyses by operations experts, it would require tens of thousands of American troops to "kick in the door" and seize Pakistan's nuclear sites. The United States has neither the troops nor the airlift capacity to get to Pakistan within days, let alone the hours required in a crisis.
"We lack the military capability," said Bruce Nardulli, a specialist in ground warfare at RAND. "These sites would have to be brought down and secured, locked down, simultaneously, in the middle of a huge conflict and among a hostile population. You'd need an army much larger than what you have today."
Pakistan's nuclear weapons are believed to be kept, disassembled, at six separate missile and air bases. Other sites would have to be guarded in a crisis, including the nuclear reactor facility at Joharabad and the Kahuta uranium enrichment facility in northern Pakistan, which is believed to be producing plutonium.
Finding and securing such sites is a mission shared among the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the U.S. Special Operations Command and the U.S. Strategic Command under Cartwright. It requires fresh and precise intelligence, something the United States lacked in Iraq and elsewhere, U.S. officials acknowledge.
U.S. intervention could be complicated by opposition from elements of Pakistan's army, which is slightly larger than the U.S. Army. Pakistan's military is considered highly professional and well-equipped, and has well-developed air defenses that would make a U.S. air assault or paratroop landing risky.
"We'd be swallowed up in that country," said George Friedman, author of "America's Secret War" and founder of Strategic Forecasting Inc., a private intelligence firm.
"We'd have tremendous difficulty occupying it with speed, we'd have tremendous difficulty supplying our forces -- there are large cities and terrifically bad terrain, and we don't have enough troops," Friedman said.
"I can't think of a worse place to fight."
posted by India News Watch at 6:49 AM
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