PAK TURNS TO PLUTONIUM
On February 1, several news sources reported that independent experts have concluded that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons arsenal has now crossed the century mark and could contain as many as 110 warheads. The revelation complements recent assessments from U.S. government officials and diplomatic cables revealed by Wikileaks that suggest Pakistan is building nuclear weapons at a faster rate than any other country in the world and may have eclipsed India’s nuclear arsenal, which is believed to be somewhere between 60 and 100 warheads.
Only days after the new consensus on Pakistan’s expanded arsenal was reported, the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), a Washington, DC-based think tank, announced that it possesses satellite imagery showing what it believes to be a fourth plutonium-producing nuclear reactor under construction at the Khushab nuclear complex in the Punjab. The ISIS assessed that “Pakistan is determined to produce considerably more plutonium for nuclear weapons.” Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program initially centered on bombs that used highly enriched uranium but in 1998 Islamabad commissioned the first plutonium reactor at Khushab to diversify its options and build more advanced nuclear warheads. (Times of India February 10, 2011; Washington Post January 31, 2011)
INDIA SEEKS PEACE IN ASSAM
India is inching towards resolving one of its longest-running internal conflicts, with the initiation of peace talks between the Congress-led government in New Delhi and leaders of the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA). The group, which was initially formed to free Assam from Indian “occupation,” has been waging a 30-year-old insurgency against the Indian state that has claimed 10,000 lives, many during a surge in violence in the 1990s. Beginning in November 2009, the government in Bangladesh, where much of the ULFA leadership resided, began apprehending ULFA leaders and turning them over to New Delhi. In the interim, Indian authorities have been engaging the jailed leaders to reach a negotiated settlement and the strategy appears to be bearing fruit. New Delhi recently released the group’s chairman, Arabinda Rajkhowa, and several other leaders who are now committed to a “peace process.” However, ULFA’s military chief Paresh Baruah, remains at large in Myanmar and has condemned the peace efforts and ULFA leaders that are participating in them. (Asia Times Online January 8, 2011; Times of India February 20, 2011)
PAKISTAN COMES CLEAN ABOUT DRONES
Since the CIA began operating unmanned aerial drones out of Pakistan to target militants in that country’s tribal areas, Pakistani officials have regularly denied or denounced the program in public while privately cooperating. Pakistan’s media regularly reports that civilians are the main casualties of America’s drone campaign and the government’s official position is that they “do more hand than good.” However, in a rare public admission, Pakistani Major General Ghayur Mehmood, who controls Pakistan’s forces in North Waziristan, recently reveleaed “a majority of those eliminated [by the drone strikes] are terrorists, including foreign terrorist elements.” In a briefing to the press, Gen. Mehmood said “myths” about the strikes “and the casualty figures are many, but it’s a reality that many of those being killed in these strikes are hardcore elements…” He went on to offer statistics that showed nearly 1,000 “terrorists” had been killed by the drones between 2007 and 2011, including 171 foreigner fighters. The spokesman for the Pakistani Army, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, has since tried to distance the army from the general’s statements, saying they were “personal assessments” taken out of context. (New York Times March 9, 2011)
PAK SECURITY FORCES INFILTRATED BY EXTREMISTS
Pakistan’s security agencies are coming under fire for lax screening processes and indifference to militancy in their ranks in the wake of the assassination of Punjab governor Salman Taseer by one of his bodyguards. On January 4, Mumtaz Qadri, a Taseer bodyguard and member of an elite police force, put more than 20 bullets in the governor for his efforts to amend Pakistan’s blasphemy law, which sentences those who insult the Prophet Mohammed to death. Qadri was a member of a radical Islamist group who had been flagged as an extremist and removed from a separate counterterrorism unit for those views, yet was still promoted to the elite police force and assigned to guard VIPs, including foreign delegations. Qadri reportedly told several of his colleagues of his plot ahead of time.
More recently, the Wall Street Journal learned of the similar case of Zahid Bajwa. Pakistani law enforcement agents have learned that Bajwa downloaded secret data on investigations into militant groups, surveillance directives, and security arrangements for VIPs and passed it along to the Pakistani Taliban. What is particularly surprising about the case is that Bajwa was jailed in Pakistan for two years after police raided his home in 2003 and found “hand grenades, timers and loaded pistols.” At the time Bajwa admitted to police at the and his friends “were planning to kidnap the son of a wealthy steel mill owner so they could buy enough explosives to kill foreigners.” Yet only years after Bajwa’s release from prison, he was made computer section chief for the Punjab police’s intelligence wing, where he gained access to all the sensitive data he passed along to the Taliban. (Los Angeles Times February 6, 2011; Wall St. Journal January 5, 2011)