Pakistan's chilling sense of humour

[Guest guest]

Pakistan's chilling sense of humour

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,8605579

%5E25377,00.html

February 07, 2004

YOU'VE got to love the Pakistanis, they're the world's greatest

jokers.

 

This week, their top nuclear scientist, Dr AQ Khan, told the nation

that he had sent nuclear weapons secrets to Iran, Libya and North

Korea, but that he had done it on his own. He was deeply sorry for

this, but he acted entirely on his own and, get this, entirely in

good faith, whatever that means.

 

Pakistan's dictator, General Pervez Musharraf, made another

broadcast confirming that Khan had acted alone and that no one from

the army had helped him.

 

This is pure farce and a grim theatre designed to offer the

flimsiest fig leaf to what is probably the single greatest act of

nuclear proliferation in the world's history.

 

Stopping the spread of nuclear weapons has always been one of

Australia's very highest foreign policy aims. It was one of the main

reasons we participated in the war in Iraq.

 

It is worth reflecting that Australia is, for a country of our size,

uniquely incapable of withstanding any nuclear strike, as virtually

all of our population is clustered in six isolated coastal cities.

 

Six missiles and the Australian story is more or less over. That

utter doom scenario has been made substantially more possible by the

grotesque actions of Pakistan, which has engaged in some of the

worst rogue state behaviour of any nation in our time. Musharraf, of

course, immediately pardoned Khan.

 

I don't think there is a single person anywhere in the world who

believes that Khan proliferated nuclear technology without the

complete connivance of the Pakistani military. And the key man in

the military for a long, long time has been Musharraf himself.

 

Khan's statement: "I also wish to clarify that there was never any

kind of authorisation for these activities by the Government" is

literally an insult to our intelligence.

 

If for a single second anyone took the statement seriously it would

mean that the Pakistani military and Government are the most

incompetent in history, manifestly unfit to be near any nuclear

weapon under any circumstances.

 

But, of course, the Pakistani military is nothing like that

incompetent. The Government knew exactly what he was doing at all

times.

 

Within Australia, we have not generally realised just what a

profound crisis the world faces in Pakistan. On the face of this

week's revelations, Pakistan has engaged in far worse nuclear

proliferation than North Korea has ever dreamed of. Yet the US,

under both Clinton and Bush, has kept the prospect of military

action against North Korea on the table to deter it from actually

going into full scale nuclear weapon production and possibly

exporting this to other nations. We know now that Pakistan has

actually done what the US, and the rest of us, only fear what the

North Koreans might do.

 

But this is not a historical crisis, something entirely in the past.

 

Musharraf has recently survived two assassination attempts. In New

Delhi, where I've spent the past week, there was some serious

speculation that the first assassination attempt was perhaps a fake,

designed to impress on the Americans the depth of domestic

opposition Musharraf faces and his indispensability. But no one

thinks the second assassination attempt, in which the bomb missed

Musharraf's car by seconds, was a fake and there is widespread

suspicion of involvement by dissident factions of the army.

 

The whole future of Pakistan is truly in play. Musharraf, despite

the shocking revelations of this week, is probably the least bad

alternative as a leader for Pakistan at the moment. But no one knows

whether his recent willingness to compromise and make peace with

India, much less his promise to co-operate in preventing nuclear

proliferation in the future, are a genuine strategic change of heart

by Pakistan or just another tactical feint.

 

This is one of the most important questions the world needs to

answer today. Under American pressure, the Pakistani military has

isolated its most extreme leaders and put in place a chain of

command in which secular officers, allegedly committed to the new

Musharraf doctrines, are the next several in line after Musharraf.

But if Musharraf were killed there would be chaos in Pakistan and

any new general would know Musharraf was killed because of

opposition to his new policies.

 

The future of the world's second largest Islamic nation, filled with

extremist groups, with a long history of supporting the Taliban and

exporting terrorism, and with we now know the world's worst history

in spreading nuclear weapons technology, and most important of all

with 30 to 40 of its own nuclear warheads, is truly in play.

 

The Americans bear a fair degree of indirect responsibility for this

state of affairs. They pioneered the jihad technique for attacking

the Soviets in Afghanistan, which Pakistan now uses against India in

Kashmir and which has become an uncontrollable, worldwide movement.

 

Now the US, and Australia, are caught in a horrible bind. Musharraf,

for all his appalling baggage, nonetheless is probably preferable to

the chaos and risk that would follow if he were gone. I heard an

American this week describe Pakistan as the scariest place on Earth.

He was right about that.