SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE: RESEARCHERS FOR , FOR NORTH KOREA, ENRICHMENT FOR ISRAEL Vladimir Novikov, The Problem of Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons at the Present Stage. Moscow: RISS, 2007, 328 pp. Reviewed by Anton Khlopkov

In this book, one of Russia’s few consistent researchers in nonproliferation, Vladimir Novikov, looks at the missile nuclear potential of the de facto states and those states which are closer than others to the creation of a nuclear explosive device (NED).1 The value of the study is to a large extent predetermined by the comprehensive approach taken by the author, who looks at both political and technological aspects (the author is a grad uate of the Moscow Institute of Aviation). Every reader of this book (as of any other) will probably disagree with some of the author’s conclusions (I, for one, find it much harder than the author to imagine a realistic situation in which North Korea would agree to the scrapping of existing NEDs), yet we must thank him for piecing together numerous data from nearly 400 sources, thus giving the reader plenty of scope to make sense of the present state of the nonproliferation regime and identify the caus es of its current crisis.

MADE IN U.S.A The author’s examination of the sources of expertise of Iranian nuclear scientists and researchers in related areas of applied science deserves special attention. Only seven or eight years ago, it was, as it were, accepted wisdom in Western literature (with a few exceptions) that the main successes of Iranian nuclear scientists were the result of cooperation with Russia in the 1990s–2000s (sometimes the dubious honor was shared by Russia and ). The myth was partly debunked following the exposure of ’s network, when irrefutable evidence emerged that the source of the centrifugal enrichment technology (and more besides) was and not Russia, as had been believed in the first weeks after the dis covery of the Iranian enrichment plant in . And yet there have been plenty of skeptics afterwards too: they started saying that even if technologies were not Russian the expertise of scientists had certainly come from Russia. Having studied the papers of the U.S. General Accounting Office, Novikov demonstrates in his book the extent of training of Iranian scientists at U.S. universities and research institutes. The author estimates that about 200 scientists were trained at leading U.S. laboratories and uni versities for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran during the Shah’s rule (p. 245).

Some may object that this was nearly thirty years ago, and that the scientists trained for the Book review Shah’s regime have long left Iran for Canada, the U.S.A, and other countries in search of a bet ter life. The facts tell a different story… Many did indeed stay on and carved out a career for themselves in the U.S.A. Thus Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) graduate Farid Bamdad has for many years now been a member of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. A significant number of U.S.

SECURITY INDEX No. 1 (86), Volume 15 127 educated Iranian scientists however have been successful in their home country. Thus Mohammad Zaker became chief of a nuclear research reactor, and Mansour Haj Azim, deputy head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran. The latter has been named by the Western media as the curator of a secret research centre involved in research in the area of making nuclear weapons. Ali Akbar Salehi, until recently Iran’s permanent representative at interna tional organizations in Vienna, is also a former MIT postgraduate student.2 In view of their high level of training, Iranian students are at present still being admitted by lead ing U.S. universities with strong technical programs, including Harvard and Stanford, the California Institute of Technology, MIT and others. In 2003, fifteen Iranian students were enrolled for postgraduate studies at the Electrical Engineering Department at Stanford alone; most of them were graduates of the Sharif University of Technology, for which the curricula were created in the 1960s1970s in cooperation with MIT. Moreover, according to the data from the Institute of International Education published in the annual Open Doors studies, a total of 2,420 students from Iran studied in the U.S.A in the academic year 2005–2006.3 According to the same study, a year later the number of Iranian students at U.S. universities «increased con siderably.»4 It is however not only U.S. universities that continue to teach Iranian students in hitech areas. In early 2006, the Japanese Foreign Ministry discovered that about 40 Iranian scientists at Japanese universities and research organizations were involved in «advanced dualuse nuclear research.» They had all easily obtained visas to study and do research in Japan. Furthermore, even though the Japanese government has included the University of Tehran on the list of for eign organizations arousing suspicion in terms of nonproliferation, the University of Tokyo, Tohoku University and the University of the Ryukyus have all concluded agreements on aca demic exchanges with the University of Tehran.5 Russia almost entirely wound up the training of Iranian graduate and postgraduate students in exact and applied science in the second half of the 1990s, thus stopping the export of its social, economic and technological standards, which is an important and integral part of build ing longterm bilateral relations. At that time (under pressure from the U.S.A) drastic measures were preferred, so instead of adjusting the programs of Iranian specialists’ studies and remov ing from them any disciplines with dualtechnology potential, the entire training programs were closed down. It may now be time to review the position of the state on this issue, obviously with due regard to the national interests and to Russia’s international obligations on nonprolifera tion. Everyone interested in the issue of training of personnel for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran is advised to study thoroughly the relevant section of the monograph (pp. 245–247).

URANIUM ENRICHMENT IN THE MIDDLE EAST: DO AS WE DO, DO IT WITH US, DO IT BETTER THAN WE DO In recent years, when discussing nuclear nonproliferation at the level of states, the focus has actively been shifted from the issues of universality to those of observing obligations under the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty (NPT) and safeguard agreements with the IAEA. The fact that , Pakistan and Israel are outside the NPT is therefore recalled ever less frequently. And when people talk of the right to uranium enrichment, they mean the right of Iran, Libya and other countries of the Middle East. In the book, the author raises the issue of Israel’s enrichment facilities. According to the author’s conclusions, «there is no doubt that laboratory facilities for uranium enrichment do operate in the country»; the author goes on to say that «one cannot rule out the possibility (however small) that Israel has semiindustrial facilities for uranium enrichment capable of pro ducing the necessary quantity of ‘nuclear explosives.’» Therefore, the author concludes, «the possibility that Israel has nuclear explosive devices based on weaponsgrade uranium does exist after all, and cannot be ignored» (p. 189). In these conditions, can one effectually demand that Iran should suspend work on uranium enrichment?

128 SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE: RESEARCHERS FOR IRAN, PLUTONIUM FOR NORTH KOREA, ENRICHMENT FOR ISRAEL THE BLACK MARKET IN NUCLEAR MATERIALS AND TECHNOLOGIES: THE SCALE OF THE THREAT Nearly 10 years ago I chanced to attend the defense of a thesis at one of the country’s leading universities on the subject of illegal sales of nuclear materials (NM) and a black market in NM and technologies (NT). Opposing the student’s conclusions, a member of the university’s teaching staff maintained that there was no black market in NM and NT, nor could there be. It has become clear since that there can… there can indeed… In the book, Novikov deliberates on the scale of the problem. The author turns to the problem of illegal sales of NM and technologies in the section devoted to the Pakistani nuclear program (pp. 117–174). According to his information, 70 companies in Germany alone, acting in contravention of their national law, supplied to Pakistan complex electronic equipment, complete plant for the production of , beryllium hexafluoride, zirconium hexafluoride, etc. (p. 117). Here it is once again worth recalling Abdul Qadeer Khan’s network, which later redistributed the technologies received to third countries, and another extensive organization, UmmaTameereNau, founded by a former senior official of the Pakistani Atomic Energy Commission, Bashiruddin Mahmood, which offered its expert ise in the production of nuclear weapons on the foreign market.6 And if we now multiply all this by the number of Pakistani state and private organizations involved in nuclear and missile pro grams – there are about 90 of them (p. 119), and also the number of countries whose individ uals and legal entities had, according to the IAEA, taken part in the operation of A.Q. Khan’s network (there are 40), then the potential scale of the black market becomes truly alarming… Clearly, to resolve this problem, constant coordination of efforts of the leading players on the international arena is required; yet for various reasons this is not happening so far, not least with regard to Pakistan.

ACCOUNTING FOR PLUTONIUM Anyone who follows closely the effort to settle the crisis involving the North Korean nuclear pro gram should be advised to look at p. 276, where the author examines North Korea’s facilities for the production of weaponsgrade plutonium. One of the topical issues at the sixsided negotiations on the North Korean nuclear program at the present stage is determining the amount of plutonium created at the reactor in Yongbyon. Representatives of the North Korean leadership maintain that about 30 kg of plutonium have been produced.7. At the same time, according to the calculations made by researchers from Russian and U.S. nuclear laboratories, the figure may be up to 60 kg. Thus VNIIEF expert Yury Yudin estimates that North Korea may have produced 42–67 kg of plutonium and separated 38–60 kg of plutonium.8 Former director of the Los Alamos laboratory Sig Hecker, who visited Pyongyang and the reactor in Yongbyon itself many times, estimates that North Korea may have produced 40–50 kg of plutonium.9 According to the respected Institute for Science and International Security, North Korea has produced 46–64 kg of plutonium.10

THE NUMBER OF COPIES AND READERS Unfortunately, the format of a journal review makes it impossible to mention all the author’s remarkable conclusions and calculations – and there are plenty in the 300 plus pages of this book. One can argue with him, one can disagree, but they are thoughtprovoking. In my view, what is the most important in this book is the search, the search for answers to the questions which new challenges and threats pose to the nonproliferation regime today. Book review In view of this, one can only envy the experts, political scientists and diplomats who can still look forward to reading and digesting this large and multifaceted work; and sympathize with those who have failed to obtain a copy for their libraries: this monograph undoubtedly deserves to be on the bookshelf of every serious researcher in international security and nonprolifera tion. Only 350 copies of the book have been published, which clearly does not match the

SECURITY INDEX No. 1 (86), Volume 15 129 demand for it among experts and makes it unlikely that it should find its way to the libraries of regional Russian universities. Suffice to say that arguably Russia’s biggest specialized library on nonproliferation, one at PIR Centre, only got hold of the book nearly six months after its pub lication. The problem of the limited number of copies could partly be solved by posting the full text of the book on the website of the Institute of Strategic Stability, which holds the copyright to the publication.11 Notes 1 Noteworthy among the author’s recent works are: «MissileNuclear Nonproliferation: the Iran Issue,» Yaderny Kontrol, 2002, No. 5, p. 49; «US Policy and the Fate of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime,» Yaderny Kontrol, 2003, No. 2, p. 17; «Drain of Nuclear Technologies from Pakistan,» Yaderny Kontrol, 2004, No. 2, p. 95. 2 Farah Stockman, «Iran’s Nuclear Vision First Glimpsed at MIT,» Boston Globe, March 12, 2007. 3 «U.S. Life for Iranian Students,» http://www.educationusairan.com/study_basics/us_life.htm (last accessed on May 18, 2008). 4 «Open Doors 2007: International Students in the ,» http://opendoors.iienetwork.org/? p=113743 (last accessed on May 18, 2008). 5 «Japanese Perspectives on Regional Proliferation,» Presentation made by Katsuhisa Furukawa, Research Fellow, RISTEX, Japan Science and Technology Agency, at the International Conference «Over theHorizon Proliferation: Challenges for Interdiction and CounterProliferation Policy,» Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA, USA, June 19, 2007, p. 27, http://www.ccc.nps. navy.mil/si/2007/Aug/OTHfurukawaAug07.pdf (last accessed on May 18, 2008). 6 For more details see: Gennady Evstafiev, «Politics Slam Dunk Style,» Security Index, 2008, No. 1, pp. 135–136. 7 «Estimate of North Korean Plutonium Stockpile Boosted,» Global Security Newswire, May 14, 2008, http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2008_5_14.html#AC597E59 (last accessed on May 17, 2008). 8 Yuri Yudin, «Technical Aspects of the North Korean Nuclear Programme,» Yaderny Kontrol, No. 1, 2006, pp. 135–136. 9 «Up Close with North Korea’s Nuclear Reactor,» New York Times, February 29, 2008. 10 David Albright, Paul Brannan, «The North Korean Plutonium Stock,» Institute for Science and International Security, February 20, 2007, http://www.isis online.org/publications/dprk/DPRKplutoniumFEB.pdf (last accessed on May 17, 2008). 11 At the time of writing, only the «Introduction» section was posted on the RISS website: http://www.riss.ru/library/nov_07.pdf (last accessed on May 18, 2008).

130 TEACHING WITH HISTORY: THE WEST AND PAKISTAN’S NUCLEAR WEAPONS Adrian Levy, Catherine ScottClark. Deception: Pakistan, the United States and the Global Nuclear Weapons Conspiracy. Atlantic Books, 2007, 514 p. Reviewed by Gennady Evstafiev

The publication of this fundamental book with an indicative title was extremely well timed. Recent political developments in Pakistan have served to confirm the steady growth in insta bility within that nuclear weapon state (NWS). Now, following the resignation of Gen. , this trend appears to be all the more alarming. Pakistan remains at the forefront of the war on terror; it is also a de facto NWS, but not a party to most international nuclear treaties. Potential chaos and political confusion in such a country harbor enormous threats to interna tional peace and stability. Numerous experts, including a number of Russian political gurus, used to reassure themselves and the rest of us that the military regime in Pakistan was a good thing and worth supporting politically. In her wellreasoned book Military Inc., prominent polit ical analyst Ayesha Siddiqa conclusively exposed the vicious, egotistic economic motives behind the military’s usurpation of power in Pakistan. The fact that the country’s nuclear arse nals are now under military control further exacerbates the situation, and places an unjustifi able burden on the shoulders of Pakistan’s already beggarly population.

PROJECT 706 AND THE BEGINNING OF DECEPTION Proliferation of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems remains a major challenge to inter national security. Certain positive changes have been achieved in the past 40 years: the adop tion of the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty (NPT); the decision by countries like Germany, Japan, Sweden and Switzerland to forgo a nuclear capability; the nuclear disarmament of South Africa and Libya; the signing of the Chemical Weapons Convention, etc. Yet the interna tional community has failed to ensure a decisive turnaround in its fight for complete elimination of weapons of mass destruction, primarily of nuclear weapons. This begs a detailed analysis of how Pakistan, «a country which could not make sewing needles» as the father of the Pakistani nuclear bomb Abdul Qadeer Khan once put it, could have achieved a fully developed nuclear infrastructure and become a de facto NWS with its own efficient weapons and delivery plat forms. The subtitle of the book includes the words global nuclear weapons conspiracy. The reviewer is not a conspiracy theorist, but this book – and particularly the sources it cites, some of them not yet widely known – lend seriousness to the authors’ work. The book attempts to show how a number of countries, first of all the United States, China, the and the , condoned and even unofficially supported Pakistan’s efforts to create a diverse Book review nuclear arsenal, doing so in violation of their obligations to prevent uncontrolled proliferation of nuclear technology. The true father of the Pakistani nuclear bomb was Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, a prominent political fig ure and multiple prime minister, executed by the military regime in 1979. In fact, Pakistan was the first country to realize that archrival India had started developing a nuclear device. In the

SECURITY INDEX No. 1 (86), Volume 15 131 spring of 1967, then a staff member of the Soviet Embassy to Pakistan, the reviewer personal ly translated Pakistan’s note to the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. The note warned that India was preparing to carry out a nuclear test in a specific location – pre cisely where the device was subsequently detonated. This warning came several months prior to the signing of the NPT. But such was the logic of the Cold War that nobody paid any atten tion to Pakistan’s concerns. Some experts believe this moment to have been the beginning of the global nuclear conspiracy, which is central to the work by Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott Clark. A particular merit of this absorbing book is the attempt to superimpose the problem of , including proliferation of dualuse technology, on the developments in and around Pakistan at the time. This method allows for much deeper understanding of why Pakistan, like India, failed to join the NPT but sparked a nuclear race on the Indian subconti nent instead. The authors prove that Mr. Bhutto, a sagacious and experienced politician, was aware of Pakistan’s insufficient capabilities to compete against the powerful India. At first he attempted to obtain nuclear umbrella guarantees for his country from Pakistan’s strategic ally, the United States. The book aptly describes the role of Mr. Bhutto’s longtime supporter (died in 2006). The results of Mr. Shahi’s meeting with U.S. National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger convinced to Pakistan that the United States remained true to its policy of taking what was being offered to it, but refusing to be bound by any strategic commitments. The only promise Mr. Kissinger made to Mr. Shahi was to supply Pakistan with fissile fuel from the uranium enrichment facility Washington was at that time planning to jointly build with the Shah’s Iran. That such a promise was made is confirmed by several recently declassified instructions signed by Mr. Kissinger. Mr. Bhutto realized the futility of relying on the United States for Pakistan’s nuclear security, and turned to China instead. Slightly earlier, he had been present ed with a letter by a littleknown Pakistani metallurgical engineer, who had returned from Holland with three suitcases of classified documents stolen from the leading European nuclear consortium URENCO and its suppliers. That engineer was Abdul Qadeer Khan, whose second personal meeting with the prime minister predetermined the course of events. The results of this meeting included the launching of Project 706, the construction of a uranium enrichment center in the settlement of , and the creation of a largescale network tasked with ille gal procurement of nuclearrelated documentation and equipment. The network, jointly run by Mr. Khan and Pakistani intelligence, had an impressive scale. The list of European individuals and companies collaborating with Mr. Khan runs to several dozen names. Some of the people on that list, such as German engineer Gotthard Lerch, remain on trial for their involvement in Mr. Khan’s network. In a number of instances, the nuclear smuggling activities (referred to as Project Butter Factory in Mr. Khan’s correspondence) were so crude and obvious as to be detected early on by local lawenforcement agencies and political administration. However, no measures were taken to stem these operations. Furthermore, in May 1979 the Dutch BVD intelligence and security agency informed the country’s government that Mr. Khan had gained access to «insignificant aspects of the URENCO centrifugal technology». Anyone questioning the legitimacy of Khan’s activity would be encouraged to «shut up, because [their questions] pose a danger to Holland». However, several months later the BVD admitted in a classified report that the situation was absolutely different to its earlier statements. According to the book’s authors, the documents Mr. Khan obtained and shipped to Pakistan prior to his final departure from the Netherlands had to do not just with the early centrifuge design SNOR but also with the advanced G2 machine and even the prospective 4M ultracentrifuge. A the insis tence of Israel, U.S. President Jimmy Carter instructed the CIA to find out exactly what Mr. Khan had obtained, where he had taken these materials from, and how. Thus began the saga of different U.S. administrations’ firm fight against the nuclear armament of Pakistan. The book’s authors argue that, fundamentally, there was no consistent fight at all. There were, indeed, the Glenn/Symington amendment and the Pressler amendment, which banned exports of military equipment to Pakistan. However, the Cold War developments of that period (the overthrow of the Iranian Shah, the key ally of the United States in the Middle East; the deployment of the Soviet military contingent in Afghanistan; the hostage crisis at the U.S. embassy in Tehran, etc.) would move Washington to abandon its contrived principled position. The United States quickly realized its huge dependence on Pakistan in its counteraction of the in Afghanistan. This approach bears unmistakable resemblance to the current

132 TEACHING WITH HISTORY: THE WEST AND PAKISTAN’S NUCLEAR WEAPONS U.S.led war on Al Qaeda and the Taliban movement. In reality, though, both these cases stem from the ideological groundwork laid by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the U.S. national security advisor of the time and the master on the grand global chessboard. Mr. Brzezinski thus proposed the longterm U.S. policy in a secret memorandum to President Carter: «We must both reassure Pakistan and encourage it to help the [Afghan] rebels. This will require a review of our policy toward Pakistan, more guarantees to it, more arms aid, and alas, a decision that our security problem toward Pakistan cannot be dictated by our nonproliferation policy.» This approach towards strategic allies has been successfully practiced by all subsequent U.S. administrations over the past 30 years. The reviewer ventures the guess that, had there been no Islamic revo lution in Iran, which removed the Pehlevi dynasty from power, then Iran could have obtained a nuclear capability even before Pakistan did. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was executed on April 4, 1979, on orders from Pakistan’s new leader – the U.S.backed dictator Gen. Muhammad ZiaulHaq. Mr. Bhutto knew before his death that he had been correct in putting his bet on Mr. Khan: a small cascade of centrifuges had been put into operation at the pilot facility in Kahuta. Naturally, nuclear export controls in the United States and Europe were tightened following numerous publications in Western media about the Kahuta center and Mr. Khan’s role in the Pakistani nuclear program. But it is worth noting that Mr. Bhutto had foreseen such developments. The book quotes from his last political treatise: «In the present context, the agreement of mine, concluded in June 1976, will perhaps be my greatest achievement and contribution to the survival of our people and our nation.» There can be no doubt that Mr. Bhutto, who is known to have kept Pakistan’s nuclear contacts with China in secret to the very end, was alluding to an agreement with Beijing. This agreement is men tioned in the memoirs of Mr. Shahi, who led the talks with Beijing. Mr. Shahi eventually secured China’s promise to supply Pakistan with UF6 (uranium hexafluoride), which Pakistan was not yet capable of manufacturing, as well as UF3 (uranium fluoride) and much more – including nuclear bomb schematics. In an interview for the book’s authors, Mr. Shahi said: «China’s sup port for Pakistan was a deliberate act of sabotage aimed at undermining the NPT, which the Chinese were refusing to sign.» In the meantime, Mr. Khan was not sitting on his hands. He had made a major breakthrough in building an industrial base for centrifuge production. Mr. Khan continued to obtain necessary equipment from Western Europe and the United States. China was at that point still using for uranium enrichment. Mr. Khan even bragged that there would come time when he would be supplying centrifugal technology to the United States and other countries, earning hard currency for Pakistan. It was at that point, apparent ly, that the foundation was laid for the global illegal black market of dualuse nuclear technol ogy, which certain countries would later be actively turning to. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has assured his U.S. counterpart George W. Bush that the black market was oper ating behind ’s back, but the book’s authors argue that Mr. Khan was simply made a scapegoat in the end. In reality, illicit trade in sensitive nuclear technology eventually turned into a profitable business for the military and political leadership of Pakistan. The most inter esting thing is that Pakistan’s nuclear industry was receiving significant sums of money – not only from Muslim countries sympathizing with the idea of an Islamic nuclear bomb, but also in the form of U.S. financial aid for «the fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and later for the fight against terrorism». According to expert estimates, Mr. Khan spent $550 million$700 mil lion on foreignmade equipment for Kahuta in 1984–1985 – an astronomical figure for eco nomically underdeveloped Pakistan. Money from the United States would be brought to Pakistan in sacks and delivered personally to Lt.Gen. Akhtar Abdur Rakhman, Director of InterService Intelligence, who would then deposit it into several banks – primarily into the National Bank of Pakistan. Mr. Khan’s research laboratories would then draw money from these accounts. Of special interest to the reader might be pp. 76–123 of the book under review, which describe the actions of the Reagan administration with regard to Pakistan. Conversations with Mr. Shahi and Gen. K.M. Arif, Chief of Staff of the Pakistani Army, culmi nated in a statement by U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Meigs Haig, Jr, who called Book review Islamabad’s nuclear program its personal affair. Quite a statement from one of the NPT depositaries! Within a period of 18 months the Reagan administration downgraded the priority of Pakistan’s nuclear problem, putting it on the back burner of the U.S. foreign policy agenda. In the meantime, Mr. Khan and the Pakistani military leadership had found an important new partner to support their plans. It should be noted that the authors have done a good work illus

SECURITY INDEX No. 1 (86), Volume 15 133 trating how, following the removal of Mr. Bhutto from power, the Pakistani military established total control over the country’s nuclear program – and how, due to this circumstance, Pakistan’s nuclear efforts took on a more targeted and applied character. The military, who had previously been in charge of building and protecting the Kahuta installation, now got determine the research and technological policy and strategy for the further development of the nuclear sector. It was during that period, in parallel with further enhancement of the country’s nuclear research and production capacities and the continued improvement of nuclear devices, that the Ras Koh testing area was commissioned ahead of schedule. The complex system of verti cal shafts and tunnels was used for cold tests of different nuclear device designs, and later – in 1998 – for a series of hot tests. Mr. Khan’s new partner of choice was North Korea. Cooperation with that country proved to be a longterm, mutually beneficial project. The father of the Pakistani bomb needed delivery sys tems for nuclear weapons. The international control regimes, including the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), continued to tighten, resulting in serious delays in the mating of war heads to delivery platforms. Additionally, it transpired that the General Dynamics F16 jet fight ers supplied by the United States could not be modified for nuclear delivery purposes. The solution came in the form of Chinasupplied M11 ballistic missiles. The most important achievement, however, was the agreement with North Korea on deliveries of its Nodong mis sile, and also on the transfer of documents pertaining to North Korea’s missile program. These documents were handed over on floppy disks to the new Pakistani prime minister , daughter of the hanged Mr. Bhutto, during her official visit to North Korea. In general, the book under review suggests that throughout her second premiership, Mrs. Bhutto remained a passive toy in the hands of the military and Mr. Khan when it came to the country’s nuclear program. Whatever the case, Pakistan and North Korea entered into a productive mar riage of convenience. The authors mention the visit to Pakistan in 1995 of a North Korean del egation led by ViceMarshal Choi Kwang, Minister of People’s Armed Forces. Mr. Choi became one of the few foreigners to be shown around the uranium enrichment lines at Khan Research Laboratories (KRL), the classified missile production facilities near Faisalabad, and the test range near the town of Jhelum. In the course of the visit the sides signed an agreement on deliveries of North Korean missile engines, fuel tanks, and 12 to 25 fully assembled Nodong missiles. Mr. Khan became a frequent visitor to North Korea. During his visits he consulted local specialists on nuclear issues. Mr. Khan is believed to have visited Pyongyang at least 14 times. The two countries started supporting each other’s efforts in overcoming export control regimes. The authors mention a wellreported incident when a consignment was ordered from the All Russian Institute of Light Alloys, to be delivered to Kang Thae Yun, an economic coun selor at the North Korean embassy in Islamabad. The ultimate recipient of the consignment was Mr. Khan. In 1998, according to the authors, Mr. Kang was among a group of technical specialists that attended Pakistan’s nuclear test in Baluchistan. The test gave off traces of plu tonium, moving U.S. experts to assume that it had been carried out in the interests of North Korea: unlike Pakistan, which had chosen the uranium path to the bomb, North Korea had focused on the plutonium path. The reviewer, however, believes this to be an erroneous con clusion. Even before Mr. Khan gained Mr. Bhutto’s favor, work was underway – under the aus pices of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) – to create a plutoniumbased nuclear device. This effort was led by Mr. Khan’s rival Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood (who, inci dentally, met Al Qaeda leaders to brief then on nuclear technology issues). Until 2000, Mr. Mahmood coordinated the construction of the nuclear center at Khushab.

PROJECT A/B – THE NEW PHASE IN PAKISTAN’S NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT AND A REAL THREAT TO INTERNATIONAL PEACE The authors explore the objective of Project A/B and try to establish when it was actually launched. We could assume with certainty that the project was launched in 1988–1989. There is an ideological, religious, political and economic rationale for this project. The political and ideological foundation was laid by Mr. Bhutto, who wrote from the death cell: «We were on the threshold of full nuclear capability when I left the Government to come to this death cell. […] The Christian, Jewish and Hindu civilizations have this capability. The Communist powers

134 TEACHING WITH HISTORY: THE WEST AND PAKISTAN’S NUCLEAR WEAPONS also possess it. Only the Islamic civilization was without it, but that position was about to change.» Having attained this capability, not least with the use of considerable funding from countries of varied Islamic doctrines, Pakistan itself became a source of nuclear proliferation, spreading technologies of dual and military use. It entered into dangerous cooperation with Iran, Libya, Syria and other countries. The international community could no longer tolerate this situation. However, little was done on the international level to exclude nuclear weapons from other countries’ national arsenals. Meanwhile, nonstate actors have emerged in the nuclear arena – these are so far extremist and radical Islamic organizations. They have already come to realize what a nuclear weapon is about, and they have competent and experienced specialists at their disposal. Mr. Khan, the book’s antihero, is a very religious follower of the extremist Deobandi movement, which is quite close in its doctrine to Wahhabism. Many top ranking Pakistani military officers are also followers of Deobandi. Their close contacts with Al Qaeda are not accidental. The possibility cannot be ruled out that nuclear devices, albeit prim itive ones, will end up in the hands of Jihad fanatics. Project A/B, which has been secretly led for years by Mr. Khan and the Pakistani military, has brought all of us to a dangerous point. The authors of this project have created an illegal nuclear market, similar to the uncharted Landi Kotal market that once existed on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan, where one could buy pretty much everything. Project A/B is Pakistan’s hefty contribution to the global nuclear con spiracy, which was triggered by the infamous American . The book’s authors have this to say: «What is truly scandalous is how the trade in judgment day technologies, and the Pakistani military’s role in this process, were exposed years ago by high ranking U.S. and European officials, but instead of putting an end to these practices they did their best to conceal them from the international community, acting as de facto accomplices.» This situation is best illustrated by the story of leading CIA analyst Richard Barlow. He spoke out in favor of objective analysis, and urged measures that would prevent Pakistan from turn ing into a nuclear power – only to be kicked out of U.S. government service. By mid2001, Mr. Khan’s activity had taken on such a provocative character that the new Pakistani dictator, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, was forced to dismiss him from his post as KRL Chairman. This move helped Gen. Musharraf score points in the book of U.S. President George W. Bush. The two leaders’ subsequent friendship prompted the Western press to refer to them as Bush and Mush. In reality, however, Mr. Bush and Gen. Musharraf were using each other for their own political ends. The firstever audit at KRL, which had operated for 25 years under Mr. Khan without any external control, revealed gross financial and other irregularities. The main irregularity was the disappearance of 40 vessels with from the stockroom. The fate of these ves sels was never established. However, Mr. Khan’s removal from his official post in no way affect ed the progress with Project A/B. It was precisely in the years following 2001 that Mr. Khan’s black traders set up a production plant for centrifuge components in Malaysia, opened a rep resentative office in Dubai and secured other footholds. The September 11, 2001 events came as manna from heaven for the Pakistani military. Not only were its criminal nuclear proliferation activities once again put on ice by the United States for purely political motives, but Pakistan regained its status as an indispensable strategic ally in the war on terror – the terror that the two countries themselves had nurtured in Afghanistan. The role of the primary nuclear prolif erant was assigned to Iraq, which the Pakistani military had vowed to square accounts with in its infamous 1998 manifesto, while still not in power. The outcome of this is now well known to everyone. The true monsters of nuclear proliferation – the Pakistani military leaderships and the key figures in the country’s nuclear sector – have continued to develop Project A/B, includ ing with the help of U.S. financial aid originally intended for funding the war on terror. Experts believe this aid to have amounted to some $11 billion over the past seven years. The Pakistani military leadership has been pocketing up to onethird of this aid, while the majority of Pakistani Book review top brass have continued to sympathize with Taliban and Al Qaeda, undermining the whole idea of the war on terror. In conclusion of this cursory review, the reviewer recommends the interesting book by Adrian Levy and Catherine ScottClark to experts on nuclear nonproliferation and Pakistan alike. It is worth adding to the list of literature shedding light on the hidden motives and driving forces

SECURITY INDEX No. 1 (86), Volume 15 135 behind the recent developments in the area of nuclear proliferation on the troubled Indian sub continent. It would be instrumental in learning the lessons of history, contributing considerably to the correct understanding of the driving forces behind the policies pursued by the United States and a number of other key states.

P.S. After this review was written, significant events took place in Pakistan. Gen. Pervez Musharraf, faced with impeachment, stepped down as the country’s president. A temporary coalition of opposition forces won the parliamentary election. The newly elected president is highprofile businessman and corruptionist Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of slain Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Many experts take this to herald the beginning of a new round of instability in Pakistan. According to reports from Washington, the United States now hopes to finally deploy an expe ditionary force in northern Pakistan to fight the Talibs and Al Qaeda inside the country. All this is fraught with a serious aggravation of the situation in the troubled region, and the possibility of an unforeseen outcome is high. Robert Kagan, a military expert who has recently become quite popular in Washington, is aware of these threats. He discusses various scenarios of what could be done about Pakistan’s nuclear potential, which might at some point be left without state control. Given the multitude of religious fanatics on the loose, and the numbers of dis honest people among Pakistani military officers and nuclear specialists, these arsenals might well end up in the hands of terrorists and extremists craving for them – with drastic conse quences for the international community. There is no doubt that Mr. Kagan’s scenarios are a product of stereotyped American political thinking. What is really called for in this situation is a joint attempt at aversion of the nuclear threat, not unilateral decisionmaking by the United States. In order to secure Pakistan’s nuclear disarmament, an overwhelming majority of UN members should join efforts in attempting to persuade Pakistan to follow the example of Germany, Sweden and South Africa in voluntarily abandoning its nuclear ambitions (persuade, not use force to deprive the country of a source of national pride). This would demand enor mous political will, and might require giving Pakistan unprecedented incentives and compre hensive security guarantees, including the international nuclear umbrella Mr. Bhutto was seek ing years ago. Such a scenario might sound utopian, but it’s worth a try.

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