nuclear-news

Security risks and Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal

the Punjab governor’s killing was a reminder that  one shouldn’t be too dismissive of the possibility of a breach in the nuclear security systems by an insider, however remote.

Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and the enemy within | , Reuters, 7 Jan 2011, Steve Coll, the president of the New America Foundation and a South Asia expert, has raised the issue of the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons in the wake of the assassination of the governor of most populous Punjab state by one of his bodyguards. It’s a question that comes up each time Pakistan is faced with a crisis whether it a major act of violence such as this or a political/economic meltdown or a sudden escalation of tensions with India obviously, but also the United States.

Pakistan’s security establishment bristles at suggestions that it could be any less responsible than other states in defending its nuclear arsenal, and its leaders and experts have repeatedly said that the professional army is the ultimate guardian of such “national assets.’

But Coll in a blog at  The New Yorker says at some stage in a domestic insurgency when your own people are fighting you, the lines between the guerrillas and the security forces often get  blurred with dangerous consequences. Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was killed by two of her Sikh bodyguards in 1984 incensed by her decision to send the Indian army into the holiest Sikh shrine to flush out militants a few months before. …..

Pakistan’s growing nuclear stockpile – about which we wrote here – is under the lock and key of the military. Coll says the Punjab governor’s killing was a reminder that  one shouldn’t be too dismissive of the possibility of a breach in the nuclear security systems by an insider, however remote.

Taseer’s betrayal should give pause to those officials in Washington who seem regularly to express complacency, or at least satisfaction, about the security of Pakistan’s arsenal…..

Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and the enemy within | Analysis & Opinion |

January 7, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | general