Editorial: Why is the world scared of Pakistan?

The head of the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA), Mr Mohammad ElBaradei , says Pakistan's nuclear assets could fall into the hands of extremists: "I fear that chaos, or an extremist regime, could take root in that country which has 30 to 40 warheads". He made his fears more specific when he added that "nuclear weapons could fall into the hands of extremist groups in Pakistan or Afghanistan". Why has the chief nuclear watchdog of a UN agency decided to join other cassandras on the subject? Should we dismiss his statement to an Arab newspaper out of hand, as we did such speculations earlier?

When voices in the West arose about Pakistan's nuclear weapons, our foreign office pointed to our failsafe security system and gave an elaborate rationale of the impossibility of anyone penetrating it. Some political analysts were not satisfied but there were many experts in the West who recognised the professional soundness of the system Pakistan had mounted around its nuclear assets. Then certain events on the ground muddied the waters. No one in Pakistan was apparently safe from the suicide attacks organised by Al Qaeda. It even turned out that personnel of the intelligence agencies were not secure either. Then contingents of army commandos were attacked and killed in their secured cantonments.

The world was now compelled to weigh the authority of President Pervez Musharraf and his government against the political and strategic dominance of Al Qaeda and found the former wanting. The depth of incompetence on the part of the government passed the threshold of third world tolerance and doubts began to surface about the penetration of the state machinery by extremist elements who thought like Al Qaeda. On October 18, when the PPP leader Ms Benazir Bhutto was attacked in Karachi for the first time, she was convinced that it was an "inside" job. However if there was any suspicion in anyone's mind about the role of the state in the suicide-bombing it was deepened further when she was finally killed on December 27. Facts leaking out of the investigation point again and again to a facilitating hand inside the state structure.

Just before the assassination, an Al Qaeda asset named Rashid Rauf "” a British national involved in plans of terrorism in the UK and connected to Jaish-e Muhammad in Pakistan "” was taken from police custody and helped to vanish in the no-go territory of the Tribal Areas that have virtually been annexed by Al Qaeda and its Taliban followers. It was clear once again that this was an "inside job". The question now arises: how big is the number of those inside the state apparatus who owe allegiance to Al Qaeda or hate the United States enough to place the country's nuclear assets in the hands of those they regard as the most legitimate "Islamic response" to the policies of the US?

Add to this blurring of the line dividing Al Qaeda from the state of Pakistan the near-total reluctance of our politicians to even hint at standing up to the challenge of Al Qaeda and you have a massive "reverse indoctrination" problem on your hands. When the Newsweek magazine came out with its assessment of the situation it titled it "the most dangerous nation" in the world. This was before the Bhutto assassination. After the assassination The Economist took a fresh look at Pakistan and called it "the most dangerous place" in the world.

Leave alone the world, no Pakistani believes the government when it says it is not involved in the mischief of the Taliban in Afghanistan. At the least, many believe that Islamabad may not know what the "rogue" elements within the state machinery are doing on the ground. Names are being named of "retired" agency officers, located in Peshawar and Quetta, who are running another covert war that plays directly into the hands of Al Qaeda. Taliban warriors who enter Pakistan for "rest and recreation" and for treatment of wounds can reach medical facilities as far away from the Durand Line as Karachi, wondering why Pakistan, whose intelligence agencies are knowledgeable about them, does nothing to capture them. The conclusion drawn by the West is that they could be a part of Al Qaeda's war.

What Mr ElBaradei is saying is not that Pakistan's nuclear assets could be "stolen"; he says that they could fall into the wrong hands if there is a "transition of control" in Pakistan though some kind of "Islamist takeover". The world thinks it is witnessing Pakistan's fast falling into the control or orbit of elements who will not hesitate to use nuclear weapons against their large variety of enemies. The reference here is not to the "security systems" mounted around the nuclear programme, but to those who have charge of it. If the world was scared of Pakistan a month ago without Pakistanis believing it, today it finds resonance with many Pakistanis who are increasingly scared of living in Pakistan. The ElBaradei warning can longer be waved aside. *

Second Editorial: A retired major and terrorism

The big news on Wednesday was that the man who masterminded the attack on the bus of air force officers at the Sargodha air base, on November 1 last year, has been caught. The man is a retired army officer who works for Al Qaeda and organised the attack with the help of an "outlawed militant group". The attack had killed eight and crippled 40 for life.

The retired major, Ahsanul Haq, had six associates with him, most probably belonging to Jaish-e Muhammad or Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, organisations that have grown out of the mother jihadi organisation called Sipah-e-Sahaba. The Sipah supplied a chunk of the warriors that fought Pakistan's covert jihad in Afghanistan and Kashmir. Their Pakistani intelligence "handlers" allowed them to into the tutelage of Al Qaeda because of their faith in what Al Qaeda was doing but also because of the Arab money that flowed liberally in the wake of Osama bin Laden. Most of the suicide bombings in Pakistan are organised by these "outlawed" militias that are allowed by the Pakistani state to operate freely in Pakistan's civil society under changed names. *