A disaster waiting to happen?
James Forsyth 3:36pm
There’s some tough competition but Pakistan is probably the scariest foreign policy problem the world faces. It is where the issues of weak states, Islamic extremism, nuclear weapons and terrorism all come together. Considering Britain’s ties to the place it is a problem that should cause particular concern here.
If you doubt how big a problem Pakistan is, read David Sanger’s excellent piece on the safety, or otherwise, of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal in The New York Times magazine. Here is the key section:
‘By now Obama has almost surely been briefed about an alarming stream of intelligence that began circulating early last year to the top tier of George W. Bush’s national-security leadership in Washington. The highly restricted reports described how foreign-trained Pakistani scientists, including some suspected of harboring sympathy for radical Islamic causes, were returning to Pakistan to seek jobs within the country’s nuclear infrastructure — presumably trying to burrow in among the 2,000 or so people who have what Kidwai calls “critical knowledge” of the Pakistani nuclear infrastructure.There is no tidy answer to how to deal with this problem. Seizing Pakistan’s nuclear weapons is pretty much out of the question. But at the same time, it is hard to feel confident that the weapons are safe as Islamabad won’t let Washington see what it is doing with the money provided to secure them.“I have two worries,” one of the most senior officials in the Bush administration, who had read all of the intelligence with care, told me one day last spring. One is what happens “when they move the weapons,” he said, explaining that the United States feared that some groups could try to provoke a confrontation between Pakistan and India in the hope that the Pakistani military would transport tactical nuclear weapons closer to the front lines, where they would be more vulnerable to seizure. Indeed, when the deadly terror attacks occurred in Mumbai in late November, officials told me they feared that one of the attackers’ motives might have been to trigger exactly that series of events.
“And the second,” the official said, choosing his words carefully, “is what I believe are steadfast efforts of different extremist groups to infiltrate the labs and put sleepers and so on in there.”’
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Verity
January 12th, 2009 4:23pm Report this commentWell horse, bolted, stable door, shutting ... but we should never have allowed Pakistan to get its mits on nuclear weapons. India - no problems and I'm glad they have them. Pakistan - no.
Austin Barry
January 12th, 2009 4:34pm Report this commentThis looks like what the Americans call a 'no-brainer': you bomb Pakistan's nuclear facilities as soon as possible. Apart from the usual tedious wail of anger from the Ummah, what's the downside?
Kevyn Bodman
January 12th, 2009 4:58pm Report this commentVerity is right.
India,despite all the problems of being a huge country developing from a base that had a great deal of poverty, is making obvious progress economically and technologically.
It also has a pretty good record of changing its governments peacefully.
On the other hand Pakistan is a mess in lots of ways.
What aspect of Pakistan's culture has done most to bring about its relative failure?
Forlornehope
January 12th, 2009 5:24pm Report this commentThe downside is that you won't just have to worry about the North-West Frontier Province being under Taliban control but the whole damn country.
Austin Barry
January 12th, 2009 5:47pm Report this commentForlonehope
So you'd just hasten the inevitable. Pakistan is already lost. It's a mess.
Verity
January 12th, 2009 6:00pm Report this commentForlornehope - Rubbish. Indians are the most democratic people you could wish for - partly because they're so damn quarrelsome. They also have a high proportion of brilliant people - as even those who don't know the country itself, know from the NRIs in Britain and other countries. Most of them are doctors, fiercely clever lawyers, entrepreneurs or physicists. (They produce more physicists, per capita, than any other country in the world. And while I'm at it, they hold the most patents for technological innovations after the United States and Germany). They have the brainpower, and the energy - my God! the energy of India! - to find themselves at the top table within the next 12 or so years. I used to think it would take 30 years, then set it at 20, but now I think India will be one of the four major players in the Anglosphere within 12 years. (The US, Britain, Oz, India. I would put Singapore 5th.)
Pakistan should be relieved of its nuclear capability.
Alf Tupper
January 12th, 2009 6:15pm Report this comment"Considering Britain’s ties to the place"
There's cosy.
But those ties are vital, for without the diverse vibrancy which such cultures as this bring to our country, we would surely flounder, it just wouldn't be the same.
In fact, the miracle is that the British race managed to survive as long as it did prior to the 'introduction' of our Pakistani fellow citizens.
Hysteria
January 12th, 2009 8:20pm Report this comment"Pakistan should be relieved of its nuclear capability" - Verity - interesting idea - but do you mean by force?
I am afraid that Pamdora's box is open and containment is our only option now
Max Kaye
January 12th, 2009 8:58pm Report this commentAustin Barry,
It will be soon, anyway.
So it is vital to ensure that when the Taleban take power, Pakistan's nuclear capability no longer exists.
Max Kaye
January 12th, 2009 9:02pm Report this commentKevyn Bodman - I think you know the answer: the fact that it was constituted as an Islamic State.
(BTW, I think my previous post should have been addressed to Forlornehope).
Austin Barry
January 12th, 2009 9:22pm Report this commentHysteria
Oh, dear, your supine view epitomises the feeble inertia of Appeasementstan, where we in the West currently reside. Containment is not an option because we are dealing with "We love death" Islamists. The best option is for a US-led coalition to bomb Pakistan's nuclear facilities to oblivion. And if that means "We are all Taliban now" nutters marching through Londonistan, well so be it.
Gil
January 12th, 2009 9:22pm Report this commentFor heavens's sake, will people calm down? Is it this week's scare story? The article makes clear that there is no threat to the warheads which are separate from the launchers. Also, these systems have codes and keys with multiple safety mechanisms. Systems so that more than one person can carry out the 'procedure'. I'm sure that there are things going on behind the scenes (naturally) to prevent an incident.
I'm not worried about Pakistan. I'm more concerned that a terrorist organisation has a warhead and there is nothing any of the readers of this blog can do about it. Unfortunately.
Nicholas
January 12th, 2009 9:30pm Report this commentIt is inevitable that rogue states and groups will acquire nuclear and chemical weapons and use them. That day seems to be coming soon. Deterrence means nothing to people prepared to blow themselves to dust in order to sport with virgins.
But don't worry, we'll have ID cards, a girt big database and a load of senior policemen that don't know their arses from their elbows led by a mediocre marxist who does a fine line in East German repression and surveillance. That'll show 'em. These champions of justice will have no problem investigating who caused the nuclear winter by sifting through the billions of spam emails in their underground bunkers. Won't be anyone left to prosecute but let's not worry about that minor detail.
Verity
January 12th, 2009 9:49pm Report this commentHysteria, do I mean by force? Well, I wasn't going to suggest that over tea and crumpets there should be a sudden suggestion that they rearrange the furniture, change the curtains oh, and also shut down their nuclear capability.
I would submit, by strong persuasion. I'm sure there could be financial incentives (when the world gets back on its feet), such as giving every emigrant (including second generation) Pakistani £15,000 to return to their "homeland". That would be a tidy sum of revenue to be trickling into the country. Also maintaining its Commonwealth status and all the advantages in trade that gives it.
Anyway, whatever. It should be done. I am guessing that they certainly did not invent their own atomic device. Probably the Soviet Union gave them some neighbourly help. This is probably already known, although I don't know it.
TGF UKIP
January 12th, 2009 10:23pm Report this commentNice one, Alf Tupper!
Verity
January 13th, 2009 2:16pm Report this commentGil - Then you are one naive puppy and know absolutely nothing, zilch, nada about Islam. And Pakistan is an Islamic state. It was created especially thus.
Given the thousands of young men born in Britain who return to the homeland for "computer courses" - in which Britain is sadly lacking, plans are afoot for ... something. We would do well to keep wondering "what?".
Forlornehope
January 13th, 2009 6:26pm Report this commentThe fact that India is a wonderful country, while true, is not really relevant. Partition was a disaster not least for the ordinary people of both India and Pakistan. The challenge now is to deal with Pakistan's nuclear weapons without making the situation much worse than it is already. While Pakistan is a mess it could still be prevented from getting much worse. Given the history of that country since independence, bribery and corruption is likely to be more effective and less damaging than military action.
It was, after all, a proverb among Indian princes that it was better to be England's enemy than its friend as "The English sell their friends and buy their enemies."
Verity
January 13th, 2009 7:35pm Report this commentForelornhope - I ask out of genuine interest - why was partition a disaster (other than the gruesome tragedy of over a million murders as populations migrated to (and away from) the Pakistani area?
Of course, you could say that if Pakistan weren't a country, they wouldn't have a nuclear capability, and that would be irrefutable.
Forlornehope
January 13th, 2009 10:11pm Report this commentA million murders, at least, is a pretty good definition of a disaster. My father was there at the time - it was not good. Another aspect is that the strength of Indian democracy would have kept the states that make up Pakistan on a more constructive path. Islam within India is a relatively moderate religion and one might hope that it would have helped to keep the more extreme versions out of what is now Pakistan. Of course it could have gone the other way, but that would still leave a great deal of human suffering.
Thirty years ago I did some travelling in Pakistan. It was far from being the problem state that it is now. The further it has moved away from India the worse it has got.
Verity
January 14th, 2009 2:31pm Report this commentForlorne Hope, I wrote you a reply last night, but it has fluttered out of the Speccie system somehow.
Verity
January 14th, 2009 4:13pm Report this commentForlornehope - Yes, because the further away it has moved from India , the further away it has moved from an ancient, civilised, inellectually curious belief system followed by tens of millions for 3,000 years or longer. Yes, I know the Indians practised suttee, but by and large their belief system is benevolent and tolerant.
You say that 30 years ago, Pakistan "was far from being the problem state that it is now. The further it has moved away from India , the worse it has got."
To be sure. I am not sure that no partition would have been a good idea, either. They would still, sooner or later, have, in the modern age, militated for shariah law in India , then more and more accommodations, as they do in Britain . India 's well shot of them.
I don't know what we, and India, can do about Pakistan, but it needs to be contained. The only way that I can see is by taking out their nuclear capability, which they got illegally anyway.
Inayat
January 19th, 2009 10:37pm Report this commentBeing an Indian, and from Jammu & Kashmir, I have grown up in the lap of the 'Kashmir intifada'as the Pakistanis call it.It was (& remains today) an 'uprising' sponsored, financed and choreographed by Islamabad. Having seen Kashmiri Pandit Hindus ethnically cleansed from Kashmir, and Kashmir's famously tolerant 'sufi' Islamic tradition hijacked by wahhabists, I should be bitter, and wish for Pakistan's ruin. Yet I realise we are condemned to our geography---like bickering siamese twins joined at the hip trading body blows, India & Pakistan MUST learn to live together.The only way for this to come about is for India to invest in Pakistan, and encourage import of Pakistani agricultural produce. Better business ties will help lift Pakistan from its dire economic condition, and eventually dilute the Pakistani desire for Indian balkanisation. One day they will come to accept their dream to 'liberate' Kashmir is just that---a pipe dream
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