How Secure Are Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons?

Many are concerned about the security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and nuclear materials. American and Pakistani leaders insist that they want to prevent nuclear war and nuclear terrorism. If they are serious about this, they would actively collaborate on nuclear security, by for example, technical exchanges on how it can best be achieved. But currently, the two countries are locked into a hostile relationship. It is hard to be optimistic that will soon improve their relations.

The State of the Taliban

Pakistan has rejected a recent secret US military report that alleges that Pakistan’s intelligence services exercise tight control over the Taliban. The report, entitled The State of the Taliban 2012, is the latest of a series of reports drawn up by a US special operations taskforce using the findings from 27,000 interrogations with more than 4,000 captured Taliban, al-Qaeda and other foreign fighters and civilians.

Julian Borger, the diplomatic editor of the London-based Guardian newspaper, explains in an article published on 2 February 2012, that the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) “played down the report’s conclusions about the Taliban’s confidence of victory in the struggle for Afghanistan, saying that it simply reflected the mindset of insurgent detainees, which was not supported by the military situation” (1).

Both the Pakistani foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, and the Afghan foreign ministers, Zalmai Rassoul, also dismissed the report. Nevertheless, the report of extensive secret collaboration “between the Taliban and Pakistani and Afghan security forces behind the backs of NATO forces” is extremely damaging. Hina Rabbani Khar dismissively described the report as “old wine in an even older bottle”.

According to Borger, the report’s conclusions that the “Taliban’s strength and morale are largely intact despite the NATO military surge, and that large numbers of Afghan government soldiers are defecting, are in stark contrast to NATO’s line, that the insurgent movement has been severely damaged”. In spite of the denials, which are after all hardly surprising, the US military report rings true. And it helps justify the French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s decision to pull out France’s contingent from Afghanistan within a year, after an Afghan soldier killed four French soldiers.

NATO combat forces are scheduled to withdraw from Afghanistan in 2014. The report’s finding that the Taliban’s levels of confidence and morale are high is not surprising. All the Taliban has to do is sit tight for two years. No wonder that, in the words of the report, “Taliban commanders, along with rank and file members, increasingly believe that their control of Afghanistan is inevitable”.

Stability in Afghanistan depends on a good security relationship between America and Pakistan. The US-Pakistan alliance, already in trouble, was severely damaged by a number of incidents that occurred in the past year or so, the latest being the assault by American helicopters on two Pakistani army posts along the Afghan border, which killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. US officials expressed regret for the deaths but they did not apologize for the attack, as demanded by many Pakistanis.

A Pentagon investigation into the air strike blamed a lack of coordination by American and Pakistani officers for the incident. But in a letter to the American Congress, Pakistan said the episode has raised suspicions in the rank and file of the Pakistan army that it was a premeditated attack (2). Be this as it may, many Pakistanis now look on America as an enemy rather than an ally.

Pakistan’s instability

As an article in the London-based Economist magazine explains the Pakistani army, which is in effect a state within a state, wants “to be rid of Mr. Zardari (Pakistan’s president) but they do not want to stage another coup. Nor do they want to see the opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif, come to power since they do not trust him. The army’s tactic appears to be to apply pressure until Mr. Zardari snaps, or at least to weaken his government so that it can merely limp along until a more agreeable administration is somehow installed” (3).

The bad relations between the President and the army, Pakistan’s worsening relations with the USA and its dire economy, add up to a very unstable country. Instability in Pakistan threatens the security of the region. It also raises very serious questions about the security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.

Such questions were also raised by the relative ease with which a team of American Special Forces were able to fly from Afghanistan some distance into Pakistan and kill Osama bin Laden in his hiding place in Abbottabad, a suburb of Islamabad, Pakistan. In the raid, 120 miles (192km) inside Pakistan, the Americans swooped down in helicopters, swept through the buildings within the high walled enclosure and shot dead a total of five people including bin Laden. The operation took only 40 minutes.

There is a Pakistani military academy and other military facilities in Abbottabad but there was no effective military reaction to the US raid. This doesn’t bode well for the military’s ability to safeguard Pakistan’s nuclear facilities.

Pakistan’s stockpiles of fissile materials

Pakistan’s current nuclear weapons use highly-enriched uranium (HEU) as the fissile material. Pakistan also produces plutonium which could be used as an alternative fissile material in its nuclear weapons.

Pakistan produces plutonium in two nuclear reactors (Khushab-1 and Khushab-2) in operation near Joharabad. Each is capable of producing an estimated 6 to 12 kilograms of weapon-grade plutonium a year, giving a combined total of 12 to 24 kilograms a year – sufficient for between 3 and six nuclear weapons a year. Pakistan is constructing two new plutonium-production reactors at Joharabad - Khushab-3 and Khushab-4. When they are operational, these reactors will double Pakistan’s rate of production of plutonium. Pakistan is also building a new reprocessing facility to remove the plutonium from the reactor fuel elements.

According to Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris, Pakistan currently has between 90 and 110 nuclear weapons, up from between 70 and 90 warheads in 2009. They estimate that within ten years it could have a total of between 150 and 200 nuclear warheads (4). They point out that, even though it is politically unstable, Pakistan continues to steadily expand its nuclear capabilities; “in fact, it has the world’s fastest-growing nuclear stockpile”.

According to the International Panel on Fissile Materials (IPFM), as of 2010 Pakistan had a stockpile of about 2,600 kilograms of HEU and roughly 100 kilograms of weapon-grade plutonium (International Panel on Fissile Materials, 2010). This is enough to produce between 160 and 240 nuclear warheads, assuming that each warhead uses either between 12 and 18 kilograms of HEU or between 4 and 6 kilograms of plutonium.

Pakistan’s nuclear-delivery systems

Pakistan’s nuclear weapons can be delivered by combat aircraft or ballistic missiles. New nuclear-capable ballistic missiles and new nuclear-capable cruise missiles are being developed. Kristensen and Norris say: “The Pakistani government has not defined the number and type of nuclear weapons that its minimum deterrent requires. But Pakistan’s pace of nuclear modernization — and its development of several short-range delivery systems —indicate that its nuclear posture has entered an important new phase and that a public explanation is overdue” (4).

Are Pakistan’s nuclear weapons secure?

Given the large amount of nuclear materials Pakistan possesses and the significant size of its nuclear arsenal, it is hardly surprising that there is much concern about the security of them. There are good reasons for concern. Its nuclear weapons are stored in facilities and on bases scattered throughout the country. And Pakistan has been the major supplier of nuclear know-how and technology to countries such as Iran and North Korea.

As Jeffrey Goldberg and Marc Ambinder write in article entitled The Ally from Hell published in the National Journal on 5 November 2011 (6): “there are at least 15 sites across Pakistan at which jihadists could find warheads or other nuclear materials”. They argue that “Pakistan would be an obvious place for a jihadist organization to seek a nuclear weapon or fissile material: it is the only Muslim-majority state, out of the 50 or so in the world, to have successfully developed nuclear weapons; its central government is of limited competence and has serious trouble projecting its authority into many corners of its territory (on occasion it has difficulty maintaining order even in the country’s largest city, Karachi); Pakistan’s military and security services are infiltrated by an unknown number of jihadist sympathizers; and many jihadist organizations are headquartered there already”.

Goldberg and Ambinder quote Graham Allison, an expert on nuclear weapons who directs the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University: “There are three threats; the first is ‘a terrorist theft of a nuclear weapon, which they take to Mumbai or New York for a nuclear 9/11. The second is a transfer of a nuclear weapon to a state like Iran. The third is a takeover of nuclear weapons by a militant group during a period of instability or splintering of the state’”.

Conclusions

Although many in the west are worried about the Pakistan’s nuclear security, Pakistani leaders argue strongly that the country’s nuclear materials and nuclear weapons are secure. Both the USA and Pakistan say they want to prevent nuclear war and nuclear terrorism and should, therefore, collaborate on nuclear security, by for example, technical exchanges on how it can best be achieved.

The USA needs Pakistan’s help in dealing with its problems with Afghanistan and Pakistan needs direct financial support from America. Both countries suffer if they become open enemies. Moreover, Pakistan’s military can ill afford to lose its access to American weapons systems.

Nevertheless, Pakistan and America are locked into a hostile relationship. And there is no sign that it will soon improve. Let’s hope that common sense soon prevails, that the two countries can overcome their differences and work towards their common goal of preventing nuclear war in South Asia and preventing terrorists from acquiring nuclear weapons.

References

1. Julian Borger, Pakistan brushes aside State of Taliban report, The Guardian, 2 February 2012, page 30.

2. The world this week, The Economist, December 31st. 2011, page 6.

3. Pakistan’s febrile politics; open spats, The Economist, December 31st. 2011, page 39.

4. Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris, Pakistan’s nuclear forces, 2011, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, July/August 2011, vol.67, no.4, pp 91-99.

5. International Panel on Fissile Materials, Global Fissile Material Report 2010: Balancing the Books: Production and Stocks. Princeton: IPFM. http://fissilematerials.org/library/gfmr10.pdf.

6. Jeffrey Goldberg and Marc Ambinder, The Ally from Hell, Atlantic Magazine. December 2011 http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/12/the-ally-from-hell/8730/.