Pakistan's nuclear bases targeted by al-Qaeda

[Neo]

Pakistan's nuclear bases targeted by al-Qaeda

Pakistan's nuclear weapon bases have been attacked by al-Qaeda and the Taliban at least three times in the last two years, it has emerged.

By Dean Nelson in New Delhi
Published: 9:36PM BST 11 Aug 2009

A 2007 photograph taken at the scene of the al-Qaeda attacks in Wah Photo: 2008 AFP

The allegations, by a leading British expert on Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, increased fears that terrorists could acquire a nuclear device or could trigger a nuclear disaster by bombing an atomic facility.

In a paper for the respected anti-terrorism journal of America's West Point Military Academy, Professor Shaun Gregory, director of the Pakistan Security Research Unit at Bradford University, detailed three attacks since November 2007 and raised the spectre of more incidents in the future.

He said militants had struck a nuclear storage facility at Sarghoda on Nov 1 2007; launched a suicide bomb assault on a nuclear air base at Kamra on Dec 10 2007; and set off explosions at entrance points to Wah cantonment, one of Pakistan's main nuclear assembly plants, in August 2008.

These attacks had been launched despite an extensive security cordon around the facilities and millions of dollars in American technical aid to prevent militant infiltration.

Dr Anupam Srivastava, director of the Centre for International Trade and Security at Georgia University, who has advised the US government on nuclear security issues, told The Daily Telegraph he believed there had been more than three attacks on Pakistan's nuclear facilities and the Taliban and al-Qaeda militants would intensify its assaults.

The attack on Wah was reported at the time as the deadliest terrorist strike against Pakistan's armed forces, with 63 people killed in two suicide bombings. The target was referred to as a major conventional weapons and ammunition manufacturing factory, but according to Prof Gregory and other analysts it is in fact an assembly plant for nuclear warheads. "These sites are all identified by various authorities as nuclear weapons or related sites," he told The Daily Telegraph last night.

Pakistan's nuclear weapons establishments are protected with heavily armed soldiers who patrol a wide security cordon, while inside state-of-the-art sensors guard against intruders. Employees are screened by vetting staff from its Strategic Plans Division security force and officials from its ISI intelligence service. Warheads, detonators and launch vehicles are stored separately to prevent them being seized together.

But despite this "robust" security system, Prof Gregory said the facilities remain vulnerable because they are located in areas where "Taliban and al-Qaeda are more than capable of launching terrorist attacks".

The three attacks they have already launched on nuclear sites proved their own intelligence capabilities, and highlighted the threat of three terror scenarios, he said.

"An attack to cause a fire at a nuclear weapons facility, which would create a radiological hazard; an attack to cause an explosion at a nuclear weapons facility involving a nuclear weapon or components or an attack with the objective of seizing control of nuclear weapons components or possibly a nuclear weapon," he said.

The potential for nuclear staff or soldiers with militant sympathies to collude in a Taliban or al-Qaeda attack was a cause for greater concern, he said. The army has been Islamicised in the past and has senior officers who are known to be anti-Western and anti-American. "No screening programme will ever be able to weed out all Islamist sympathisers or anti-Westerners among Pakistan's military or civilians with nuclear weapons expertise," he said.

The risk of Taliban or al-Qaeda terrorists acquiring nuclear weapons, components or expertise is "genuine", he said, and could only be countered by continuing Western pressure on and support to its government to monitor the threat.

Dr Srivastava said he believed an increase in the number of attacks on nuclear facilities was inevitable because of the growing antagonism between the Pakistan military establishment and the militants it had previously supported. "Pakistan is at war with itself. They have created a Frankenstein and the intensity of attacks on these facilities will grow," he said.

[Neo]

Dr. Shaun Gregory’s ‘The Terrorist threat to Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons’

Written by David Miller Smith Blog Aug 15, 2009

Having served in the Pakistan military in sensitive posts for over three decades, at both the PAF bases where the purported terrorist attacks took place for over a decade and having interacted with Dr. Gregory in person and through e-mail, I have to say that I have not come across a more ludicrous piece of writing.

On one hand, he admits that Pakistan has been able to establish a ‘robust’ nuclear weapons security system while on the other, he shocks the reader by construing three blatant acts of terror to be attacks against Pakistan’s amply secure nuclear weapons arsenal.

Both of the attacks in the vicinity of the PAF bases were on vehicles plying on main thoroughfares – the one at Sargodha was on a military bus carrying personnel on their way to work at Kirana and occurred on the main Sargodha – Faisalabad road. The attack near Kamra was on a school bus, which was travelling on the main road connecting Kamra with Attock. Since the school children were from PAF families, the bus conveying them was a military vehicle.

The point is that even if any nuclear facilities exist in Sargodha and Kamra (remember I served at both places for almost 12 years), both these attacks were typical terrorist attacks targeting human lives, and innocent ones at that too. He conveniently forgets to highlight that since these two attacks on the vehicles occurred on main inter-city roads, there was no breach of security whatsoever in both instances.

As to the third attack on the main entrance of the Pakistan Ordnance Factories in Wah, his assumption that this was targeting Pakistan nuclear weapons is proved incorrect by the following:

* POF Wah is a civilian manned and run organization which comes under the Ministry of Defence. To think that the Pakistan military would select these factory premises for storing / assembling nuclear weapons is, to say the least, preposterous. The military which guards Pakistan’s nuclear assets jealously would never permit any significant involvement of a civilian set-up in such sensitive matters. To prove my point further, I might add that to my knowledge, there is no active unit of the Pakistan Army deployed in or around Wah with even the security of the POF being delegated to elements of the paramilitary Defence Services Guards (DSGs). Could anyone believe that the Pakistan military would have entrusted the security of an installation of nuclear significance to elements of the ill-equipped and inadequately trained DSGs.

* The attack in Wah also was aimed at causing maximum loss of human lives and did not target any facility or infrastructure whatsoever. Those who have travelled on the branch of the old Grand Trunk Road between Islamabad and Peshawar which traverses through POF Wah would know that the main worker’s entrance to the POF is located just a few hundred yards away from this busy thoroughfare and approaching it does not require one to negotiate any significant security barriers.

While I concur with Dr. Gregory in that the extremist militants have an eye on Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, I would fault his conclusion, which is based on painting the above mentioned three acts of terrorism as attacks against Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. This incorrect depiction of these three acts of terrorism has tainted an otherwise scholarly treatise with ‘sensationalism’ and has made the author’s conclusions border on the ridiculous.

Tariq Mahmud Ashraf
Air Commodore (Retired)
Fujairah, UAE

Originally Posted by Neo

The three attacks they have already launched on nuclear sites proved their own intelligence capabilities, and highlighted the threat of three terror scenarios, he said.

In recent months it has been firmly established that the TTP is getting money and weapons from India, Russia, and America. Only these countries have a robust spy network that could sniff something like this, not the TTP. And these are the countries that want to strip Pakistan off from its nuclear capabilities and are actively and passively pursuing their goal in that direction.

[Neo]

The N-terrorism threat?

Thursday, August 27, 2009

By Amjed Jaaved

Foreign media continues to express doubts about security and safety of Pakistan’s nuclear materials. It is suggested that terrorists may steal radioactive material to fabricate a ‘dirty bomb’, a euphemism for a radiological-dispersal device. It is claimed that facilities housing the nuclear and radiological material, including spent-fuel storage and fuel-cycle facilities, are an easy prey for the terrorists or religious extremists in Pakistan.

Dr Shaun Gregory, in his article ‘The terrorist threat to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons’, went as far as to claim that three attacks on Pakistan’s nuclear facilities have already taken place: one on nuclear-missile-storage facility at Sargodha (November 1, 2007), the second on Pakistan’s Nuclear Air Base at Kamra (December 10, 2007), and the third on Wah Armament Complex (August 20, 2008). Shaun’s article appeared in CTC Sentinel (July 2009 edition, vol 2, issue 7). The content, tone and tenor of his story was, understandably, orchestrated in pro-Israel Canadian newspaper National Post (July 18, 2009), the Times of India (August 11, 2009), and aired on Indian channel ‘Times Now’ orchestrated the story on August 11, 2009. The purpose was to bring into limelight ‘vulnerability’ of Pakistan’s nuclear sites and stores.

The truth about the attacks is that they are all figments of rotten imagination. The attack in Sargodha was on PAF staff bus, and the one at Kamra was on a school-children’s bus. The Wah attack was on labourers of the factory. For one thing, the factory does not produce nuclear armaments.

Professor Shaun Gregory had earlier also published a malicious report titled “Security of Nuclear Weapons”. It contends that those guarding about 120 nuclear weapon sites, mostly in northern and western parts of Pakistan, have fragmented loyalties. As such, they may aid or abet terrorists’ attacks on or theft of nuclear materials from the facilities. Shaun echoes ‘concern’, through baseless, expressed earlier by Frederick W Kegan and Michael O’Hanlen in their ‘research paper’ “Securing the Bomb”. The paper suggests that, in case of take-over of Pakistan by religious extremists (Taliban, al-Qaeda, et al.), the country’s nuclear material should be seized and stashed in some ‘safe’ place like New Mexico (USA).

Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins, authors of The Nuclear Jihadist, also suggest that Pakistan’s A-bombs may fall into hands of Osama Bin Laden who may use it against the West. Harvard professor Matthew Bunn says, he would not live either in New York or Washington for possibility of a nuclear attack.

Pakistan’s critics, mysteriously, fail to mention that there has been no security lapse in or theft of radioactive material from any of Pakistan’s nuclear establishments. It is worth mentioning that Pakistan is a party to the United Nations’ Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Materials. The steps taken by Pakistan to safeguard its nuclear assets conform to international standards.

Abdul Mannan, in his paper titled “Preventing Nuclear Terrorism in Pakistan: Sabotage of a Spent Fuel Cask or a Commercial Irradiation Source in Transport”, has analysed various ways in which acts of nuclear terrorism could occur in Pakistan (quoted in “Pakistan’s Nuclear Future: Worries beyond War”). He has fairly reviewed Pakistan’s vulnerability to nuclear terrorism through hypothetical case studies. He concludes that the threat of nuclear terrorism in Pakistan is a figment of imagination, rather than a real possibility.

There are millions of radioactive sources used worldwide in various applications. Only a few thousand sources, including Co-60, Cs-137, Ir-192, Sr-90, Am-241, Cf-252, Pu-238, and RA-226 are considered a security risk. The Pakistan Nuclear Regulatory Authority (PNRA) has enforced a mechanism of strict measures for administrative and engineering control over radioactive sources from cradle to grave. It conducts periodic inspections and physical verifications to ensure security of the sources. The Authority has initiated a Five-Year National Nuclear-Safety-and-Security-Action Plan to establish a more robust nuclear-security regime. It has established a training centre and an emergency-coordination centre, besides deploying radiation-detection-equipment at each point of nuclear-material entry in Pakistan, supplemented by vehicle/pedestrian portal monitoring equipment where needed.

Fixed detectors have been installed at airports, besides carrying out random inspection of personnel luggage. All nuclear materials are under strict regulatory control right from import until their disposal.

The ‘research work’ by well-known scholars reflects visceral hatred against Pakistan. The findings in fresh ‘magnum opuses’ are a re-hash or amalgam of the presumptions and pretensions in earlier-published ‘studies’. Will the Western press stop churning out reports about vulnerability of nuclear Pakistan? It is time that the West deflected its attention to India where movements of nuclear materials, under 123 expansion plan, would take place between nuclear-power plants sprawling across different states.

. The writer has been contributing free-lance, at home and abroad, for the past 37 years.

[vinod2070]

Originally Posted by Qsaark

In recent months it has been firmly established that the TTP is getting money and weapons from India, Russia, and America. Only these countries have a robust spy network that could sniff something like this, not the TTP. And these are the countries that want to strip Pakistan off from its nuclear capabilities and are actively and passively pursuing their goal in that direction.

I would love to understand the basis of that statement.

You believing in this is one issue, claiming that it has been "firmly established" needs to be backed up by sources.

The same USA helped you get rid of Baitullah, you are asking them for "resources" to fight your own domestic militants, they are arranging money to get you out of economic troubles, sending you F-16s. All these are facts.

What do you have to back up your statement?

Didn't the same TTP offer to fight India after the Mumbai massacre? Then they were suddenly patriots, now again they are other's stooges?