Pakistan Nuclear Weapons are safe--A Report

[silent roar]

Pakistan Nuclear Weapons

By Malik Qasim Mustafa

It is a well-known fact that since the birth of Pakistan, India has not accepted its separate identity and existence. Historical relations between India and Pakistan clearly suggest that competition between India and Pakistan was asymmetric; while the incentive for India’s nuclear build-up were extra-regional, Pakistan’s reasons were regional and originated from the Indian threat. The past 62 years of Indo-Pak antagonist relations have resulted in three major wars (1948, 1965, and 1971) and many near war situations (1990, Kargil 1999, 2002-2003 border mobilisation). Even today, both India and Pakistan, among other issues, still face territorial disputes (Kashmir and Sir Creek) and the issue of terrorism (most recently, the November 2008 Mumbai attacks). Especially after the Mumbai attacks, all major peace and confidence-building measures came to a halt. So, in order to neutralize and deter conventional superiority and nuclear capability of its traditional rival India, Pakistan was left with no choice except to go nuclear. Thus, Pakistan views nuclear weapons as an infrangible guarantee of its independence and physical integrity; they have made it possible for a weaker State to defend itself against a larger and more powerful adversary.
History of Concerns over security of Pakistan’s arsenal
After the of 9/11 terrorist attacks, Western nations, particularly their think tanks and the media, started to propagate about the safety and security of Pakistan’s nuclear assets.

On September 18, 2001, the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) raised concerns that “increased instability in Pakistan could make Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and stocks of nuclear explosive material dangerously vulnerable to theft by militant groups.”
ISIS identified the following security threat scenarios relevant to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons:

 Outsider threat: an armed group or individual from outside of a facility gains access to nuclear weapons.

 Insider threat: a person from within the setup gets control on nuclear weapon and sells or gives it to outsiders.

 Insider/outsider threat: insiders and outsiders conspire together to obtain weapons or weapon components.

 Leakage of sensitive information: someone provides key information about Pakistan’s nuclear weapons to outsiders.

 Loss of Central Control of Storage Facilities: in the event of a civil war in Pakistan, clear lines of communication and control over weapons, weapons components, and information may be broken or lost entirely.

Former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., John Bolton stated that the U.S. had made contingency plans to stop Pakistan’s nuclear weapons falling into the wrong hands. Pakistan’s Foreign Office said that Pakistan had sufficient “retaliatory capacity” to defend its nuclear weapons.

On September 22, 2008, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, described U.S. concerns that, “to the best of my ability to understand it—and that is with some ability—the weapons there are secure. And, that even in the change of government, the controls of those weapons haven’t changed.

On March 31, 2009, General David H. Petraeus, Commander, U.S. Central Command, testified that “Pakistani State failure would provide transnational terrorist groups and other extremist organizations an opportunity to acquire nuclear weapons and a safe haven from which to plan and launch attacks.”

National Command Authority
The NCA is the premier authority in Pakistan which oversees the employment, policy formulation, exercises, deployment, research and development, and operational command and control of Pakistan's nuclear arsenals. The National Command was established in 2000 as a successor of Air Force Strategic Command which was established by then-Chief of Air Staff General Anwar Shamim in 1983

It employs high profile civilian members of MoD and active duty senior military leaders and officers, representing all four combatant services of Pakistan Armed Forces including Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines.
Three Tier Structure
The NCA has a three-tiered structure
 Two committees, the Employment Control Committee (ECC) and the Development Control Committee (DCC), constituting one tier;
 The Strategic Plan Division (SPD), the permanent secretariat of the NCA, another tier;
 Strategic Force Command, the final tier, composed of three sub-services.

The Employment Control Committee is the NCA’s main policymaking organ. It functions as a political-military committee. It has the president of Pakistan as its chairman, the prime minister as the vice chairman, and the foreign minister as its deputy chairman. The Development Control Committee is a military-technical committee that translates the policy decisions taken by the Employment Control Committee into force goals and oversees their achievement by the strategic organisations.

The SPD plays a very important role in managing Pakistan’s nuclear assets by collaborating with all strategic organisations. It has four main directorates. The SPD has also formulated a standard operating procedure to regulate the conduct of strategic organisations. It has established a system which requires approval, reporting and monitoring of travel for all scientific personnel, especially those that possess sensitive information or expertise.

As an inadvertent compliment to SPD’s discreet services, an official of Bush administration told THE TIMES in 2008: “Every morning I could see what was happening inside Soviet Nuclear System. But I have never had a morning when I could see inside Pakistan’s”
To ensure individuals’ reliability based on generally accepted security norms, the SPD has instituted a Personnel Reliability Programme (PRP) for all scientists and officials working on sensitive projects.

Furthermore, that National Command Authority Ordinance, 2007, gives the SPD authority to investigate suspicious conduct, and can send for up to 25 years of imprisonment any serving and retired personnel, including military personnel, notwithstanding any other laws.

The Strategic Force Command comprises Pakistan Army Strategic Forces Command, known as Army SF Command, Air Force Strategic Command (AFS) and the Naval Strategic Command (NSC)

Physical Security
For physical security of weapons, Pakistan is signatory to many international conventions and has passed many internal legislations to secure its weapons. Some of them are as under

International conventions:
Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Materials (CPPNM)

 Convention on Nuclear Safety
 IAEA code of Conduct on Safety and Security of Radioactive Sources
 U.N. Security Council Resolution 1540.
 U.S.-sponsored Container Security Initiative (CSI)
 Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Materials
Internal Legislations:
 Export Control on Goods, Technologies, Material, and Equipment related to Nuclear and Biological Weapons and their Delivery Means Act, 2004
 National Security Action Plan (NSAP)
Geographic Distribution of weapons
As far as physical security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons and infrastructure is concerned, the nuclear establishments are distributed geographically. There is a multilayered system of security over these nuclear installations. This includes highly trained Special Forces at the inner perimeter, air defence systems, no fly zones, fencing of structures, monitoring by state of the art equipment, close-circuit cameras, sensors, and check posts at second and third level, and counterintelligence teams to identify any threat to nuclear installations.

Sequestration of warheads and delivery systems
It is estimated that Pakistan has around 60 nuclear warheads which are kept separate from their delivery systems, with the nuclear core removed from their detonators. According to General Khalid Kidwai, head of the SPD, the bombs can be assembled very quickly when the need arises.

PAL (Permissive action links) System
In addition to their disassembled status, Pakistan's nuclear warheads are now equipped with Permissive Action Links (PAL), which was publicly confirmed by General Kidwai in 2006. Pakistan has developed its own PAL systems which obviously ensure that even if an unauthorised person gets hold of a weapon, he cannot activate it unless he also has access to the electronic codes. Pakistan follows a two-man rule to authenticate the codes that call for the release of the weapons. It may in fact be a three-man procedure in some cases. Such authentication processes are standard in advanced nuclear-weapon States.

Fail-proof transportation scheme
As far as transportation of nuclear weapons and material is concerned, Pakistan is relying on secrecy in transporting its nuclear weapons rather than a highly visible security profile.

In 2004, Pakistan consolidated most of the previous regulations in a single legislation: the “Export Control on Goods, Technologies, Material, and Equipment related to Nuclear and Biological Weapons and their Delivery Means Act, 2004.”


Governance of civilian side of Pakistan’s nuclear program
The civilian side of Pakistan's nuclear security is governed by the Pakistan Nuclear Regulatory Authority (PNRA), which was established in 2001. The PNRA regulates all aspects of civilian nuclear energy which include licences for imports and exports, to create necessary legislations and regulations, and to ensure the physical protection of nuclear installation and nuclear material. The PNRA has also developed a five-year National Security Action Plan (NSAP) to enhance safety and security of all nuclear and related facilities

Conclusion
All nuclear-weapon States are equally concerned about the safety and security of their nuclear assets; so is Pakistan. Pakistan is passing through a troubled phase and confronting a lot of challenges. At this turning point, the propaganda by the Western nations, particularly their media, against the security of Pakistan's nuclear programmes is baseless. The West, especially the U.S., is using this propaganda as a pressure tactic to pursue its interests. Cases of nuclear theft, smuggling, and information leakage are on the rise even in the advanced nuclear-weapon States because more and more countries are seeking this technology. This heightened interest in nuclear technology will continue to pose safety and security challenges around the globe. However, international cooperation is required in this regard to make the world a secure place.


Source: http://www.issi.org.pk/publication-f...1_87535106.pdf