The Pakistani Spectator

Foreign media continue to express doubts about security and safety of Pakistan’s nuclear materials. It is suggested that terrorists may steal radioactive material to fabricate a `dirty bomb’, a euphemism for a radiological-dispersal device. It is claimed that facilities housing the nuclear and radiological material, including spent-fuel storage and fuel-cycle facilities, are an easy prey for the terrorists or religious extremists in Pakistan.

Dr Shaun Gregory, in his article `The terrorist threat to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons’, went as far as to claim that three attacks on Pakistan’s nuclear facilities have already taken place: one on nuclear-missile-storage facility at Sargodha (November 1, 2007), the second on Pakistan’s Nuclear Air Base at Kamra (December 10, 2007), and the third on Wah Armament Complex (August 20, 2008).   Shaun’s article appeared in CTC Sentinel (July 2009 edition, vol 2, issue 7).  The content, tone and tenor of his story was, understandably, orchestrated in pro-Israel Canadian newspaper National Post (July 18, 2009), the Times of India (August 11, 2009), and aired on Indian channel `Times Now’ orchestrated the story on August 11, 2009.   The purpose was to bring into limelight `vulnerability’ of Pakistan’s nuclear sites and stores.

The truth about the attacks is that they are all figments of rotten imagination.  The attack in Sargodha was on PAF staff bus, and the one at Kamra was on a school-children’s bus.  The Wah attack was on laborers of the factory.  For one thing, the factory does not produce nuclear armaments.

Professor Shaun Gregory had earlier also published a malicious report titled “Security of Nuclear Weapons”. It contends that those guarding about 120 nuclear weapon sites, mostly in northern and western parts of Pakistan, have fragmented loyalties. As such, they may aid or abet terrorists’ attacks on or theft of nuclear materials from the facilities. Shaun echoes `concern’, through baseless, expressed earlier by Frederick W. Kegan and Michael O’Hanlen in their `research paper’ “Securing the Bomb”.  The paper suggests that, in case of take-over of Pakistan by religious extremists (talibaan, al-qaeda, et al.), the country’s nuclear material should be seized and stashed in some `safe’ place like New Mexico (USA).

Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins, authors of The Nuclear Jihadist, also suggest that Pakistan’s A-bombs may fall into hands of Osama Bin Laden who may use it against the West. Harvard professor Matthew Bunn says, he would not live either in New York or Washington for possibility of a nuclear attack.

Pakistan’s critics, mysteriously, fail to mention that there has been no security lapse in or theft of radioactive material from any of Pakistan’s nuclear establishments. It is worth mentioning that Pakistan is a party to the United Nations’ Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Materials. The steps taken by Pakistan to safeguard its nuclear assets conform to international standards.

Abdul Mannan, in his paper titled “Preventing Nuclear Terrorism in Pakistan: Sabotage of a Spent Fuel Cask or a Commercial Irradiation Source in Transport”, has analysed various ways in which acts of nuclear terrorism could occur in Pakistan (quoted in “Pakistan’s Nuclear Future: Worries beyond War”).  He has fairly reviewed Pakistan’s vulnerability to nuclear terrorism through hypothetical case studies. He concludes that the threat of nuclear terrorism in Pakistan is a figment of imagination, rather than a real possibility.

There are millions of radioactive sources used worldwide in various applications.  Only a few thousand sources, including Co-60, Cs-137, Ir-192, Sr-90, Am-241, Cf-252, Pu-238, and RA-226 are considered a security risk. The Pakistan Nuclear Regulatory Authority (PNRA) has enforced a mechanism of strict measures for administrative and engineering control over radioactive sources from cradle to grave. It conducts periodic inspections and physical verifications to ensure security of the sources.  The Authority has initiated a Five-Year National Nuclear-Safety-and-Security-Action Plan to establish a more robust nuclear-security regime.  It has established a training centre and an emergency-coordination centre, besides deploying radiation-detection-equipment at each point of nuclear-material entry in Pakistan, supplemented by vehicle/pedestrian portal monitoring equipment where needed.

Fixed detectors have been installed at airports, besides carrying out random inspection of personnel luggage. All nuclear materials are under strict regulatory control right from import until their disposal.

The ‘research work’ by well-known scholars reflects visceral hatred against Pakistan. The findings in fresh `magnum opuses’ are a re-hash or amalgam of the presumptions and pretensions in earlier-published `studies’. Will the Western press stop churning out reports about vulnerability of nuclear Pakistan. It is time that the West deflected its attention to India where movements of nuclear materials, under 123 expansion plan, would take place between nuclear-power plants sprawling across different states.