Descent Into Chaos (54 page)

At the same time, international pressure on the military regime mounted as a result of the dramatic disclosure of Pakistan’s extensive proliferation of nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea, and Libya. Since the late 1970s the army had directed Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, refusing to share control of it or even provide information or access to it to elected civilian leaders. In June 1989, when the United States warned Islamabad that it would face U.S. sanctions if it did not stop enriching uranium, American officials had to brief then prime minister Benazir Bhutto, as she had not been informed of what the army was up to. When the army refused to cease the process, Washington imposed sanctions—ending the decade-long U.S.-Pakistan cooperation in rolling back the Soviets from Afghanistan. Pakistan’s generals accused Washington of abandoning Pakistan, but in fact President Ronald Reagan had looked the other way regarding Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program for several years, so as to maintain Pakistan’s cooperation in the war in Afghanistan. There was no civilian oversight of the nuclear program and no accountability ever demanded from the army.

To develop its nuclear and missile program, Pakistan secretly imported critical equipment from willing allies. In 1982 China gave Pakistan the complete design of a twenty-five-kiloton nuclear bomb and enough weapons-grade uranium for two bombs. In 1996 China supplied industrial furnaces for a nuclear reactor.
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Similarly, since 1993 North Korea had sold missile technology to Pakistan. The Pakistani military had first deployed Chinese-made short-range M-11 missiles in 1991, and five years later, North Korean medium-range No-Dong missiles.
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However, Pakistan’s major acquisition of nuclear spare parts and materials came from an extensive global purchasing and manufacturing black market network, set up by Dr. A. Q. Khan, the revered godfather of the Pakistani bomb. Items were bought clandestinely in Europe and copied by Khan-run factories in Malaysia, Singapore, and Germany. Khan quickly realized that he could use the same network to sell equipment to other countries, as he believed in safety in numbers—the more third world countries that developed nuclear weapons, the less pressure there would be on Pakistan. His first customer, with the apparent approval of the army chief Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg, was Iran, which bought centrifuges to enrich uranium in 1987.
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Both India and Pakistan faced international economic sanctions after they tested nuclear devices in 1998. The sanctions crippled an already cash-strapped Pakistan. Thus when 9/11 occurred, Pakistan was under three layers of U.S. sanctions and had not received any U.S. aid for ten years.
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A. Q. Khan’s global network continued to function, but in 2001 Musharraf had been forced by a suspicious CIA to remove Khan as head of the Khan Research Laboratories.
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After 9/11, U.S. intelligence began to monitor up to nine cargo flights a month to North Korea flown by the Pakistan air force. The planes delivered large crates and took on missiles.
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Islamabad had speeded up research into miniaturizing nuclear bombs to fit North Korean missiles. When Pyongyang wished to restart its nuclear weapons program, after the breakdown of its earlier accord with the Clinton administration, it asked Pakistan for help. Nuclear experts concluded that a barter deal was struck whereby Khan provided uranium-enrichment technology to North Korea in exchange for missiles—“a perfect marriage of interests.”
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Pakistan denied any such barter deal, but when North Korea stunned the world by testing a nuclear device in October 2006, all eyes turned to Pakistan and Khan.

After 9/11, Washington was convinced that al Qaeda may have gotten its hands on some nuclear materials and could launch another attack on the United States. Nuclear proliferation went to the top of the list of concerns for the West. What has never been adequately answered was why the army allowed Khan to continue his marketing of nuclear parts after 9/11 when it was apparent that the West’s greatest concern was that nuclear devices would get into the hands of terrorists. In 2002, when news reports of the Pakistani flights to North Korea emerged, Musharraf received a mild rap on the knuckles from Colin Powell, but by now Khan was under surveillance by several Western intelligence agencies.
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He brazenly continued his activities, tying up a deal with Libya to deliver a full nuclear weapons program. On October 4, 2003, Khan’s network was caught red-handed when a cargo ship,
BBC China,
was stopped and searched on its way to Tripoli from Malaysia. Inside were containers loaded with centrifuges. The CIA now bluntly told Musharraf to shut down Khan and provided evidence that he had sold nuclear technology to Libya, North Korea, Iran, and one other unnamed country.

Musharraf procrastinated, worried about the possible political fallout at home if he named Khan a traitor and about how to protect the army from being implicated. On December 19, 2003, after Libya declared it would give up its nuclear program, Musharraf was forced to act. Khan and twenty-five of his aides were interrogated by the ISI; he was then placed under house arrest and was persuaded to sign a twelve-page confession. In a carefully staged television appearance on February 4, 2004, Khan told Musharraf he accepted full responsibility for all proliferation activities, insisted that neither the government nor the army was involved, and asked the nation for forgiveness. “It pains me to realize this,” said a strained-looking Khan, “that my entire lifetime achievement of providing foolproof national security to my nation could have been placed in serious jeopardy on account of my activities, which were based in good faith, but on errors of judgment related to unauthorized proliferation activities.”
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Most experts accepted that Khan could not have carried out his business without the military’s support. Pakistani journalists were discouraged from asking about his multiple bank accounts or where the money he earned had gone. Speculation was rife that although he had enriched himself, most of the profits had been ploughed back into Pakistan’s nuclear program. Before any of these questions could be adequately answered, the United States provided Musharraf and the army with a clean bill of health. As in the Reagan era, once again U.S. officials said they believed Musharraf’s assurances that the army was not involved in nuclear proliferation and had not supported Khan’s endeavors. A few weeks later the Bush administration asked Congress to sanction the sale of F-16 fighter aircraft to Pakistan. It was clear that by declining to push Islamabad for full disclosure, the Bush administration wanted to preserve Musharraf’s continued support in the war on terrorism. “This is the age-old problem with Pakistan and the U.S.,” said nuclear expert David Albright. “Other priorities always trump the U.S. from coming down hard on Pakistan’s nuclear proliferation.”
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Moreover, the Americans hoped they would now get more leverage over Islamabad in the hunt for al Qaeda. Paul Wolfowitz told me:
Musharraf had become a master at playing off Americans’ fears while protecting the army and Pakistan’s national interest. It was perhaps his finest moment as he refused to budge and continued to provide only minimal satisfaction to the United States and the world. He declined to give the CIA access to Khan, and there was no stepped-up hunt for bin Laden. The CIA was allowed to interrogate Khan only through written questions passed to him by the Pakistani government. Even after North Korea exploded a nuclear device and Iran’s nuclear weapons program went ahead, the Pakistanis refused to allow the CIA to interview Khan.
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He was kept heavily guarded at his Islamabad home, with no access to the telephone or visitors. His friends said he had been made a scapegoat by the military.

Eventually Pakistan paid a high price, for the United States now looked to ratify India’s nuclear and great power status. In March 2006, on a visit to New Delhi, President Bush offered Prime Minister Manmohan Singh an agreement that gave New Delhi virtual membership in the world’s nuclear club, allowing India to buy nuclear fuel and reactors for its civilian nuclear program—while Pakistan was still denied any such right. When Bush arrived in Islamabad, he said Pakistan was not responsible enough to have the same benefits. “Pakistan and India are different countries with different needs and different histories,” he said. “Our strategy will take in effect those well-known differences.”
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The military regime felt humiliated.

The years of praise by Bush and other world leaders, their unwillingness to impose tougher conditions on Pakistan’s military regime, and Musharraf’s ability to escape censure on all counts turned Musharraf’s head. He became increasingly arrogant and distant, relying on an ever smaller coterie of advisers, listening less and less to anybody. He talked incessantly, giving a speech or interview almost every day, while critical questioners at his press conferences were bluntly put down. He considered himself an expert on everything from earthquake relief to education to solving the problems of Iraq and Palestine. The ruling PML and the cabinet were ignored to an even greater extent than before. Musharraf adroitly played on Western fears that a return to civilian rule would lessen Pakistan’s role in the war on terrorism or that a free and fair election would bring the Islamic parties to power—although the likelihood of that was minimal.

As opposition to his rule grew, Musharraf diverted attention, insisting that there was nothing wrong with his policies but, rather, that Pakistan faced “an image problem” abroad. The government spent tens of millions of dollars hiring image consultants from London and Washington and staging fashion shows abroad to show Pakistan’s “soft image.” Musharraf’s autobiography,
In the Line of Fire,
published in September 2006, was hailed as the book of the decade by the regime.
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As long as Pakistan remained the center for Talibanization, terrorism, or nuclear proliferation, the world could not ignore the military regime or dispense with Musharraf. “It is essential for Musharraf that Pakistan be a ‘dangerous place’: he and his country . . . feed off the menace,” wrote academic Fouad Ajami.
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The West continued to view Musharraf as the only person capable of holding Pakistan together, even though some diplomats acknowledged that “Pakistan now negotiates with its allies and friends by pointing a gun to its own head.”
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Musharraf’s most significant achievement in this period was to convince the army of the need for peace with India and a resolution of the Kashmir dispute. He realized that Pakistan could no longer compete with India or undermine it, as India’s economic growth was turning it into a global power. The army also understood that if it wanted to continue ruling the country and to retain the largest share of the budget, then Pakistan had to concentrate on economic growth, which necessitated peace with India. Moreover, the international community would no longer tolerate Pakistani-backed insurgents entering Indian Kashmir. The ISI underwent a difficult balancing act with the Kashmiri extremist groups, secretly disarming and rehabilitating several thousand militants while still keeping a few in reserve in case the peace process floundered.

The devastating earthquake that hit northern Pakistan on October 8, 2005, did much to revive the militant groups and provide them with a new role. The earthquake, registering 7.6 on the Richter scale, killed 73,000 people and injured 75,000; half the victims were children, who were trapped in school buildings. Although the military took on the rescue effort and then dominated the rehabilitation and reconstruction of affected areas, it also allowed extremist groups to carry out relief work. They reemerged as NGOs setting up hospitals and shelters and competing alongside a host of well-wishers, including NATO and U.S. troops, who also took part in the relief effort. Seventeen extremist groups that were either on the UN list of terrorist organizations or banned by the Pakistani government were reactivated as Islamic NGOs. A year later Musharraf was preoccupied with how he was going to get himself elected as president for another five years while retaining his post as army chief. His hubris and overweening confidence and arrogance were ultimately to unleash the most severe political crisis in Pakistan’s history.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

America Shows the Way
The Disappeared and the Rendered

If war has been mankind’s most powerful negative urge, then the universal agreements that limit the horrors of war and protect civilians have been the hallmark of progress and have reflected man’s deeper instincts for civilization. The Geneva Conventions may not have halted the Jewish holocaust, Rwandan genocide, or terrorism but they have given us a code of conduct by which we can judge the actions of our leaders in the desperate times of war. That is why the decision by President Bush on February 7, 2002, to deny captured al Qaeda, Taliban, and other terrorist suspects prisoner-of-war (POW) status or any access to justice was a step backward for the United States and for mankind—one that has haunted the United States, its allies, and the international legal system ever since. Whereas in the West it created a furious debate about civil liberties, in the Muslim world it further entrenched dictatorship and abuse of civilians.

For the greatest power on earth to wage its “war on terrorism” by rejecting the very rules of war it is a signatory to, denying justice at home, undermining the U.S. Constitution, and then pressuring its allies to do the same set in motion a devastating denial of civilized instincts. America’s example had the most impact in Afghanistan, where no legal system existed; in Pakistan, ruled by a military regime; and in Central Asia, where the world’s most repressive dictatorships flourished. By following America’s lead in promoting or condoning disappearances, torture, and secret jails, these countries found their path to democracy and their struggle against Islamic extremism set back by decades. Western-led nation building had little credibility if it denied justice to the very people it was supposed to help. It could well be argued that over time Islamic extremists were emboldened rather than subdued by the travesty of justice the United States perpetrated. The people learned to hate America.