The secret is out: The know-how and perhaps even the equipment to make nuclear weapons has been leaked from Pakistan to countries like Iran and Libya. The question now is: Who dunnit? Greedy scientists or the Pakistani military?
Greedy scientists is the explanation being offered by Pakistan's military rulers. What's more, they say, they weren't aware that such sales were going on until just a few weeks ago, when Libya and Iran began spilling the beans. They're shocked.
But that seems a bit of a stretch. After all, the weapons or the knowledge to make them would sell for billions of dollars, an amount that would have surely raised eyebrows in Islamabad, where corruption by politicians, money skimming and Swiss bank accounts are routinely investigated and published -- often as a result of leaks by Pakistani intelligence.
The truth is, the military itself is a more likely culprit in the sales. The military has ruled Pakistan for most of its history, either outright or by pulling the strings of weak and often corrupt governments. The military controls the intelligence agency and its nuclear weapons program.
Perhaps even more relevant, the military was strapped for cash during the 1990s after Washington ended military and humanitarian aid to Pakistan because of concerns about the country's nuclear program.
The cutoff was a case of "too little, too late," coming as it did after a decade-long spending spree by the U.S. in Pakistan. During that time, Washington knew that Pakistan was developing nuclear weapons technology but chose to ignore it. Why? The U.S. needed Pakistan, which had become the front-line state against the spread of communism. Pakistan was the staging arena for the U.S.-funded insurgency, which included Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, to defeat the Soviet Red Army after it invaded Afghanistan in 1979.
Washington's ally in the 1980s during the war to oust the Soviet invaders from Afghanistan was Pakistan's military dictator, Mohammed Zia ul-Haq. This was despite the fact that in 1977 Zia had overthrown and later hanged Pakistan's civilian leader, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
By the early 1980s, Zia's Pakistan was the third-largest recipient of U.S. aid after Israel and Egypt. Despite widespread knowledge that Zia, who was a hard-line Islamist, was developing nuclear weapons, U.S. presidents signed waivers year after year certifying that Pakistan was not defying a U.S. law that banned giving aid to nations developing nuclear weapons.
