|
January 17, 2003
The Evil Behind the Axis?
The media in the United States is often described as a powerful institution. So it unarguably is. But does it derive strength from an objective portrayal of world events or its distorted platitudes? Is it a casualty of expediency or the torchbearer of principled dissent?
A sampling of the current trend is furnished by a first-page story in the Los Angeles Times of January 5, 2003. Headlined “The Evil Behind the Axis?” the story claims: “If one man sits at the nuclear fulcrum of the three countries President Bush calls the ‘axis of evil,’ it may well be Abdul Qadeer Khan…. the extent of his ties to all three ‘axis’ nations became public only recently as North Korea admitted resuming its nuclear weapons effort, satellite photos showed that Iran may be conducting nuclear work and Khan’s name appeared in a letter offering to ‘manufacture a nuclear weapon’ for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.”
Preposterous claims.
The nuclear programs of Pakistan and North Korea apparently have little in common. North Korea recently created a stir and all-round alarm when it embarked on the re-initiation of its reprocessing program. Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, however, is an enrichment specialist. His expertise could have hardly been instrumental in rejuvenating North Korea’s reprocessing program.
Politically, Pakistan and Iraq have been in rival camps and continually at loggerheads. The two have never seen eye to eye: Islamabad has been closely aligned with Washington while Baghdad has been a protégé of Moscow and a friend-in-glove of Pakistan’s arch rival, India. There is thus no way that a Pakistani scientist, however misguided or adventurous he be, could have harbored the idea of aiding Iraq’s nuclear program.
Iran and Pakistan have been good neighbors over the years yet their relations were far from normal when the Taliban were at the helm in Kabul. Their ties were manifestly strained. Given the circumstances, could Abdul Qadeer Khan have acted surreptitiously on his own while the Russians were busy in installing reactors in Iran?
Can a maverick scientist working alone succeed in defying the administration? Certainly not. David Kay, who headed the nuclear weapons evaluation program at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna from 1982 to 1992, is right in his opinion of Dr Khan: “ … he’s not a cat burglar who snatched some plans. He’s a very good scientist.”
One is rattled to find such erroneous reports surfacing in the media at regular intervals. What is particularly disconcerting, efforts to malign Pakistan over the years have followed a fairly consistent pattern. They tend to ignore the fact that besides Pakistan a few other countries have graduated to the nuclear power club. Yet, while Islamabad is invariably singled out on the slightest pretext and noble protestations are often voiced to chastise Pakistan, little concern is shown for the adventurous nuclear programs of other countries. How could, for instance, nuclear weapons be considered safe in India, a country where political turmoil is a recurring feature of daily life and where Hindu fundamentalists have been on the warpath?
Such lopsided display of fair play cannot, and in actuality has not, gone unnoticed. Independent academics, Kathleen Bailey to cite one, were not hesitant to pose the incisive question: “What about India, Israel and South Africa?” Their principled dissent is well founded. Let’s just take the case of India.
If the 1974 Pokhran nuclear explosion was a proof of India’s capability, its intents were laid bare much earlier. As earlier as April 16, 1948, Prime Minister Pandit Nehru had resolved: “…if we are compelled as a nation to use it (atomic energy) for other purpose, no pious sentiments of anyone of us can stop the nation from using it that way.” The OTHER purpose option has since been assiduously pursued in fulfillment of an incessant urge rather than a compulsion stemming from circumstances forced upon India.
One could thus impute a design to Nehru’s emotive slogan of “atomic colonialism” raised at the debate on the setting up of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and India’s reservation to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) at this formative stage and later. Dr Bhaba’s resolve in 1964 that “… there is no time to be lost …The only defense against (nuclear) appears to be a capability and threat of retaliation” was a more categorical assertion of the cherished goal.
Later, Mr. K. Subrahmanyam portrayed the sentiments of the Indian bomb lobby: “I refuse to be an Uncle Tom who would accept the right of the white nations to wield nuclear weapons and have developing world disarmed and subject to nuclear terrorism.”
By pursuing the OTHER option India successfully graduated into the nuclear weapon club. And in this transition, the USA unwittingly, if not discreetly, played a role. Congressional Committee hearings following the first Indian nuclear explosion revealed that over 1,100 Indian scientists and engineers were trained at various AEC facilities in the United States. A 72-million dollar US AID loan helped the installation of India’s first major reactor at Tarapur. In 1956, India imported 21 tons of heavy water for its CIRRUS reactor. Plutonium from this reactor was used for the Pokhran explosion in 1974; India has since continued to produce un-safeguarded plutonium.
A Washington report identified India as one of the nine sensitive countries “which obtained US government technology and computer codes useful for developing atomic weapons despite laws limiting the release of such data.” Many experts believe that the USA indirectly assisted India through the liberal publication of unclassified (fuel) reprocessing information to stage its 1974 nuclear explosion. This was one of the many acts of omission of the kind.
In 1989, India took a quantum jump in boosting its offensive capability with the test-firing of its first Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile. “Opting for missile-based defense system will bring in its wake exercising the nuclear option as well,” Air Vice-Marshal P.L. Purohit spelled out the somber foreboding in an article in the Indian Express. For him the time had come when India “can no longer afford to hide behind flimsy epithets like ‘peaceful’ nuclear explosions or ‘technology demonstrator’ missile firings… it is time we called a spade a spade and followed the Integrated Missile Development Program to its logical conclusion.” The implications of this stratagem for India’s neighbors in subsequent years have been only too well known.
Yet, they find little mention in the media and are conveniently ignored by writers like Maggie Farley and Bob Drogin who, regretfully, also appear quite unmindful of how Pakistan has been steadfastly supportive of the US policies and its friendly, loveable people. The report’s publication becomes all the more surprising in view of Secretary Powell’s recent observation appearing at the end of the Los Angeles Times story : “Musharraf assured me, as he has previously, that Pakistan is not doing anything of that nature… The past is the past. I am more concerned about what is going on now. We have a new relationship with Pakistan.” afaruqui@pakistanlink.com
|
