Gerald Posner: Pakistan -- the nightmare scenario
[Gerald Posner is the author of Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11. He is a member of HNN's board of directors.]
Counterterrorism officials warn that terror groups like al Qaeda are trying hard to obtain weapons of mass destruction. The possibilities include dirty bombs -- that can be made from readily available devices used at construction sites and hospitals -- to chemical and biological weapons. A nuclear device would cause havoc if detonated in a European or American city.
In October 2001, a CIA agent warned the government that al Qaeda had smuggled a nuclear bomb into New York. The Department of Energy dispatched a covert team to find it. There was no device. But the possibility so frightened the administration that Vice President Dick Cheney and several hundred key federal employees went into secure bunkers for weeks, in case a twin attack flattened Washington as well.
Since then, Homeland Security has developed safeguards. Manhattan will soon be ringed with radiation detectors. New York City also has 800 hand-held devices to detect radiation spikes. U.S. Customs, meanwhile, has installed 321 detectors at seaports and uses smaller units at large public events. A pilot program by Homeland Security will add nuclear screeners to 18-wheeler weigh stations in nine states.
Adding to the angst is the fear that Soviet scientists will sell terrorists technology or enriched uranium. In 2005, the International Atomic Energy Agency documented 18 seizures of stolen plutonium. And al Qaeda attempted, but failed, to buy highly enriched uranium from the Sudanese. The possibility of collusion with a rogue nuclear state, like North Korea, or a nuclear-wannabe, like Iran, cannot be discounted.
However, behind the scenes of U.S. intelligence, there is a more disturbing possibility, one in which all the money, time and technology used to prevent a nuclear device from entering America, might be misplaced. It involves a combination of the terrorists' fondness for suicide attacks with the nuclear arsenal of a country -- Pakistan -- whose long-term stability is questionable.
`Islamic bomb'
Pakistan joined the nuclear club when it exploded its first device -- what it dubbed the ''Islamic bomb'' -- in 1987. Today, intelligence agencies estimate that Pakistan has between 50 and 100 nuclear missiles. Last year, it successfully fired its latest missile, capable of 1,200 miles. That places much of India, Riyadh, and Eastern Iraq within range. Slight improvements in the rocket's boost phase -- not a difficult technological advance -- means Jerusalem could be hit.
Into such a setting is mixed the tremendous anger directed at the Musharraf government, virulently unpopular with radicals for its post-9/11 cooperation with the United States. Fundamentalists brand Pervez Musharraf a traitor.
How vulnerable is he? As early as 2004, 9/11 Commission member, John Lehman, Ronald Reagan's Navy Secretary, warned that if Pakistan fell to radicals, it would ''fundamentally change the balance of security in the world.'' Lehman worried because, ``the politics internally are very unstable, with very strong Islamist forces at work.''
His warning is even more urgent three years later. Pakistan straddles a fault line between secularism and fundamentalism. Musharraf has survived two al Qaeda-backed assassination attempts. Three subsequent plots have been foiled .
Many Pakistani military officers are markedly more radical than Musharraf. The intelligence agencies are still enraged by Musharraf's abandonment of both the Taliban and the Kashmiri Jihadis. Fundamentalist religious schools -- of which Pakistan has more than any other country -- churn out thousands of radical Islamists, and outlawed militant parties regularly resurface with new names....
The CIA's nightmare scenario is that Musharraf is killed or forcibly removed from office by his military, kicking off civil war. Such a vacuum would be ideal for fundamentalists to exploit....
Read entire article at Miami Herald
Counterterrorism officials warn that terror groups like al Qaeda are trying hard to obtain weapons of mass destruction. The possibilities include dirty bombs -- that can be made from readily available devices used at construction sites and hospitals -- to chemical and biological weapons. A nuclear device would cause havoc if detonated in a European or American city.
In October 2001, a CIA agent warned the government that al Qaeda had smuggled a nuclear bomb into New York. The Department of Energy dispatched a covert team to find it. There was no device. But the possibility so frightened the administration that Vice President Dick Cheney and several hundred key federal employees went into secure bunkers for weeks, in case a twin attack flattened Washington as well.
Since then, Homeland Security has developed safeguards. Manhattan will soon be ringed with radiation detectors. New York City also has 800 hand-held devices to detect radiation spikes. U.S. Customs, meanwhile, has installed 321 detectors at seaports and uses smaller units at large public events. A pilot program by Homeland Security will add nuclear screeners to 18-wheeler weigh stations in nine states.
Adding to the angst is the fear that Soviet scientists will sell terrorists technology or enriched uranium. In 2005, the International Atomic Energy Agency documented 18 seizures of stolen plutonium. And al Qaeda attempted, but failed, to buy highly enriched uranium from the Sudanese. The possibility of collusion with a rogue nuclear state, like North Korea, or a nuclear-wannabe, like Iran, cannot be discounted.
However, behind the scenes of U.S. intelligence, there is a more disturbing possibility, one in which all the money, time and technology used to prevent a nuclear device from entering America, might be misplaced. It involves a combination of the terrorists' fondness for suicide attacks with the nuclear arsenal of a country -- Pakistan -- whose long-term stability is questionable.
`Islamic bomb'
Pakistan joined the nuclear club when it exploded its first device -- what it dubbed the ''Islamic bomb'' -- in 1987. Today, intelligence agencies estimate that Pakistan has between 50 and 100 nuclear missiles. Last year, it successfully fired its latest missile, capable of 1,200 miles. That places much of India, Riyadh, and Eastern Iraq within range. Slight improvements in the rocket's boost phase -- not a difficult technological advance -- means Jerusalem could be hit.
Into such a setting is mixed the tremendous anger directed at the Musharraf government, virulently unpopular with radicals for its post-9/11 cooperation with the United States. Fundamentalists brand Pervez Musharraf a traitor.
How vulnerable is he? As early as 2004, 9/11 Commission member, John Lehman, Ronald Reagan's Navy Secretary, warned that if Pakistan fell to radicals, it would ''fundamentally change the balance of security in the world.'' Lehman worried because, ``the politics internally are very unstable, with very strong Islamist forces at work.''
His warning is even more urgent three years later. Pakistan straddles a fault line between secularism and fundamentalism. Musharraf has survived two al Qaeda-backed assassination attempts. Three subsequent plots have been foiled .
Many Pakistani military officers are markedly more radical than Musharraf. The intelligence agencies are still enraged by Musharraf's abandonment of both the Taliban and the Kashmiri Jihadis. Fundamentalist religious schools -- of which Pakistan has more than any other country -- churn out thousands of radical Islamists, and outlawed militant parties regularly resurface with new names....
The CIA's nightmare scenario is that Musharraf is killed or forcibly removed from office by his military, kicking off civil war. Such a vacuum would be ideal for fundamentalists to exploit....