Musharraf faces a tricky situation given Pakistan's murky nuclear past,writes Rahul Bedi in New Delhi
The global nightmare of "rogue" nuclear scientists aiding terrorist groups to acquire "dirty" or radiological dispersal bombs leapt several steps closer to reality at the weekend. This followed the confession of detained Pakistani atomic scientist Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan.
Revered as the "father" of the Pakistani and Islam's atomic bomb, Dr Khan has allegedly admitted to providing sensitive nuclear information, technology and possibly even hardware to Iran, Libya and North Korea for pecuniary profit. Several other Pakistani scientists continue to be questioned.
But the involvement of the Pakistani authorities, although explicitly involved in developing atomic weapons capability to deter India, remains in doubt. President Pervez Musharraf recently suggested as much claiming that during the secretive phase of developing the nuclear bomb, Pakistani scientists, with little or no accountability, had enormous amounts to spend. But he faces a tricky situation. He wants to clear Pakistan's name, but, given its murky nuclear past, cannot afford a public trial of any of the "guilty" scientists, which may open a Pandora's box.
There is also the risk that once Pakistan admits that some of its scientists have leaked sensitive information, it may face international pressure to sign up to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and be required to open its facilities to international inspections.
Officials in Islamabad deny such a possibility, which would be disastrous for any Pakistani leadership. Underlying this is the visceral fear of the US "defanging" Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, leaving the country vulnerable to India's conventionally superior military.
So far Gen Musharraf's strategy appears to be to admit a degree of guilt, but to absolve the State by attributing proliferation to a few greedy scientists and to hope that the storm will pass.
But the Pakistani President knows he has to tread cautiously, as the powerful six-Islamic-party alliance supports Dr Khan, claiming that the Christian West is trying to curb the nuclear capability of a Muslim nation. Some of the alliance wants to create an Islamic crescent stretching from northern India's disputed Kashmir state to the Central Asian Republics with Pakistan at its centre.
Ultimately, the outcome of the nuclear proliferation scandal depends on the US, its alliance with Gen Musharraf against terrorism, and his ability to "deliver" Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader, in a US election year. Bin Laden is reportedly hiding in the tribal belt between Afghanistan and Pakistan and cannot be apprehended without the general's active co-operation.
Moreover, Washington's record with respect to Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme has, like many of its policies in the region, been far from honourable. Successive US administrations turned a blind eye to Pakistan's atomic weapons programme during the 1980s when Washington needed Islamabad's help to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan.
By 1984, five years after the Soviet Union marched into Kabul, Pakistan had acquired its first nuclear weapon design from China and begun producing weapons-grade uranium at the Khan Research Laboratories at Kahuta near Islamabad, named after Dr A. Q. Khan. A year later it "cold-tested" a device in China's Lop Nor desert region. And in 1987, then President Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq and Dr Khan admitted that Pakistan had nuclear weapons capability.
In 1990, shortly after the eviction of the Soviet occupation, the US, unable to certify that Pakistan did not possess atomic weapons, cut off all aid and military supplies. By then it was too late. Eight years later Pakistan conducted six underground nuclear tests in response to India's five. The nuclear race between the warring rivals had begun and the dangers of proliferation multiplied, many times over.
Pakistan's tests followed disturbing disclosures that some of its scientists subscribed to extreme ideologies.
In the 1980s, supported by President Zia-ul-Haq and the omnipotent Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), fundamentalist Muslim parties were allowed to recruit serving and retired service personnel to train their cadres in madrassas (Islamic seminaries). These, in turn, were supplied with weaponry by the CIA for use against the Soviets. Gen Zia also inducted religious teachers into the Education Department and recognised madrassa certificates for recruitment into government service.
This, in turn, led to the increased "Islamisation" of the lower and middle ranks of the defence services and the emergence of a parallel, "freelance" armed force comprising the military-trained and equipped madrassa graduates, an "army within an army". In the mid-1990s these cadres, again sponsored by the ISI, emerged as the Taliban.
"This irrationality was not just confined to the armed forces but spread to Pakistan's nuclear, space and scientific community," said B Raman, a retired senior operative from India's counter-intelligence agency, the Research and Intelligence Wing.
After the US-led war against the Taliban in 2001 several atomic scientists espousing extreme views were, at Washington's urging, questioned by the Pakistani authorities for their alleged links with al-Qaeda. Bashir-uddin Mahmood, a senior scientist with strong affiliations based on religious faith, was one such. Two others - Mohammad Ali Mukhtar and Suleman Asad - anticipating questioning about their alleged links with al-Qaeda and the Taliban, were secreted to Myanmar on the pretext of conducting research. Their whereabouts are unknown.