Two Worrisome Cases

Pakistani nuclear weapons fall under the control of the military, which is the most professional, disciplined and competent institution in the country. It takes nuclear security extremely seriously, and will surely adopt heightened measures to protect these weapons.

That said, authorities in every country possessing nuclear weapons worry about the possibility of insiders who are willing to assist terrorists steal a weapon or gain access to facilities containing nuclear weapons and materials. The United States, for example, has invested considerable resources in measures to prevent terrorists from recruiting people at nuclear sites.

But the U.S. does not have to secure nuclear weapons and materials amid rising extremism and instability in the country. No matter how assuring Pakistani authorities may sound publicly, one hopes they are quietly preparing to face possible sudden and unanticipated challenges to their control over nuclear weapons and facilities.

They face two fundamental problems in this regard.

First, there is no such thing as perfect security: the loss of one weapon or takeover of one nuclear facility would precipitate a crisis. The chain of security across a dispersed line of nuclear assets is only as strong as its weakest link. The risk is that extremists collaborating with insiders are able to seize an opportunity to exploit a lapse in the defenses.

Second, the insider threat is not theoretical.

Twice since the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. taken action to break up networks inside Pakistan's nuclear establishment who were collaborating with outsiders in efforts to help them build bombs. In both cases, rogue senior officials and their cohorts in the nuclear establishment were not caught by Pakistan's military, security and intelligence establishment.

The network run by the father of the Pakistani bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan, channeled sensitive nuclear technologies to Libya, North Korea and Iran for years under the noses of the Pakistani establishment, before it was taken down in 2003.

The second case involved the Umma-Tameer-E-Nau, which was founded by Pakistani nuclear scientists with close ties to Al Qaeda and the Taliban. It was headed by Bashiruddin Mahmood, a retired senior Pakistan Atomic Energy Agency official who had headed Pakistan's Khushab Atomic Reactor. He discussed Al Qaeda's nuclear aspirations with Osama bin Laden.

In assuring the security of nuclear weapons in Pakistan, we should remind ourselves that the insider threat is the key wild card. The record is troubling, especially when one considers the probable outcome had the U.S. not intervened as it did to neutralize threats as they became known. The next time a nuclear threat emerges, will Pakistani authorities catch it in time? The U.S. should do everything in its power to ensure they can.

Nuclear terrorism is not just a problem for Pakistan and the region. Terrorist acquisition and movement of nuclear materials represents a real and growing global threat, because the detonation of one nuclear bomb in any city in the world would change the course of history.