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By Kaushik Kapisthalam
Although Pakistani forces conducted their customary vigorous anti-terrorism operations near the Afghanistan border prior to visits by US officials, the real interest in Wednesday's meeting between President General Pervez Musharraf and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice centered on Iran.
Before Rice's whirlwind visit to India, Pakistan and Afghanistan (she also goes to Japan, South Korea and China) Washington was abuzz with talk that the Bush administration had convinced Musharraf to lend support to American action against Iran for its alleged nuclear weapons program.
This reinforces a number of reports by Asia Times Online's Syed Saleem Shahzad over the past months that Pakistan had agreed to host American troops and intelligence assets near its long border with Iran in Balochistan province in preparation for a possible attack on Iran, including the training of special US forces in Karachi - see, for example,
of January 28.
In return, the US seems to be more receptive to Pakistan's long-term request for F-16 fighter aircraft. On Wednesday, Rice thanked Musharraf for "superb support in the war on terror", according to State Department spokesman Richard Boucher. The possible sale of F-16 fighter planes came up, Boucher said, but he gave no details.
There are further contours of the deal - Pakistan has provided material evidence to the US and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of the items and scientific information that Pakistani scientists provided to support the Iranian nuclear weapons program.
Again, ATol's Syed Saleem Shahzad was the first to break the news that Pakistan was ready to surrender detailed material evidence of proliferation to Iran - see of December 15 of last year.
Since September, Musharraf had been resistant to US demands to provide material evidence of Pakistani proliferation, especially if it was intended to give the UScausus belli to act militarily against another Islamic country. However, Musharraf was the first to officially signal a Pakistani change of heart when in late February he made an acknowledgement that his country's scientists may have transferred some centrifuge parts to Iran.
Last week, Sheik Rashid Ahmed, Pakistan's information minister, said that Abdul Qadeer Khan, the mastermind of Pakistan's nuclear program, had given centrifuges - rather than just blueprints - to Iran as part of a package of materials that could be used to make a nuclear bomb. Centrifuges are used to enrich uranium, either to produce energy or nuclear weapons. The minister added, "He [Khan] helped Iran in his personal capacity, and the Pakistan government had nothing to do with it."
This declaration is significant because until now Pakistan has insisted that no nuclear material was ever sent from Pakistan and that the illegal trade was restricted to intellectual property, such as plans and blueprints.
Subsequently, a Reuters report from Vienna, where the IAEA is headquartered, said that Pakistan would submit to the long-term IAEA demand that it hand over its centrifuges similar to the ones its supplied to Iran, so that the agency could identify if Iran has been secretly enriching uranium or not. Uranium from various sources still maintains its radioactive "fingerprint" that experts can use to trace its origin. Even though the Pakistan Foreign Office denied the Reuters report, many don't find the denial credible, given that Pakistan has made angry denials in the past of nuclear-related allegations that eventually proved to be true.
Interestingly, as the December ATol piece noted, former Pakistan army chief General Mirza Aslam Beg has been linked closely to Pakistan's nuclear dealings with Iran. Beg has on many occasions openly endorsed nuclear cooperation with Iran and even called for a Pakistan-Iran-Afghanistan military alliance against the US. Some observers wonder if Musharraf would "sacrifice" Beg to both appease the US, as well as fend off those who are skeptical of Pakistan's blaming of the entire proliferation saga on one individual - Khan.
In this context, Beg has been recently writing op-eds published in the Pakistani and US media trying to justify Pakistan's proliferation acts. Strangely, Beg also called for an India-Pakistan tie-up to provide a nuclear shield to Iran. However, one Western analyst who recently visited Pakistan expressed skepticism that the Pakistani establishment would ever sacrifice one of their own (Beg), even if he is currently out of favor.
For the Americans, this Pakistani admission is vital since it gets the US off the hook from the task of proving that Iran is cheating on its promise not to develop nuclear weapons. Even though many people (especially in Washington) believe that Iran is working on enriching uranium for weapons purposes, material evidence carries enormous weight in the diplomatic world. Until now, Iran had been stalling the IAEA by arguing that Western intelligence sources are wrong about its nuclear program, a claim that is strengthened by the Iraq weapons of mass destruction fiasco.
But a centrifuge sample handover by Pakistan changes the playing field, making it hard for Iran to wriggle out of its dealings with the IAEA, should they contain incriminating material. As a result, should Iran's nuclear weapons program be found out publicly, the matter can theoretically be referred to the United Nations Security Council, leading to sanctions or even military action, although China may have something to say about that.
A few weeks ago, Richard Sale, the intelligence correspondent for United Press International, wrote that Musharraf had allowed Iranian anti-regime fighters to operate from Pakistan's Balochistan province that abuts Iran. Sale claimed that the fighters included those from the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), which is officially listed as a terrorist organization by the US State Department. This report once again tallies with ATol's January 28 story, which said that the US was using the MEK to work against Iran from southern Iraq, "... [the MEK] will attempt to play the role of a catalyst to organize an insurgency against the rule of Islamic hardliners in Tehran."
Anti-Iranian Kurdish groups could be based in Balochistan because the Kurds are ethnically similar to the Balochis. One factor complicating this alleged ploy is the Pakistani Baloch uprising against Islamabad, which has picked up steam after an alleged rape of a woman doctor by a Pakistani military officer. (See ATol's of January 15.)
Despite that, Balochistan's geography (long porous border with Iran) and sparse population make it too attractive for the US to pass up as a potential staging area as it weighs its options over Iran.
Meanwhile, for Musharraf and Pakistan, supporting the US against Iran fits into the pattern of behavior of acquiescing to one demand in order to deflect pressure off another. In this case, Pakistan has come under renewed pressure from the IAEA and the US to hand over Khan - he is currently under "informal" house arrest - and disclose more about the Pakistani nuclear network. Reuters reported this week that many European and American experts now have solid evidence of Pakistan trying to revive the nuclear underworld. In this context, one South Asia expert said that it makes sense for Musharraf to "give up" Iran in order to stave of the concerted pressure over Khan.
For the Pakistani establishment, this would also be a way to payback Iran for what Pakistani officials felt was Iran's betrayal when it secretly revealed details of Pakistani nuclear support to the IAEA. That, along with Libya's secret deal with the US directly provided enough evidence of Pakistani proliferation and led to the February 2004 televised confession by Khan. In a press conference following Khan's TV appearance, Musharraf was visibly angry at Iran and Libya for "caving in", and even mocked them for being weak-kneed in the face of international pressure.
In addition, the largely Sunni Pakistani establishment, despite the presence of mavericks like Beg, is generally suspicious of Shi'ite Iran. Pakistan-Iran ties hit rock bottom during the 1990s when Pakistan was sponsoring the Sunni extremist Taliban movement in Afghanistan, which took part in large scale massacres of Afghan Shi'ites, who were supported by Iran. The Taliban and allied Pakistani militants also killed nine Iranian diplomats in Mazar-e-Sharif, exacerbating the tensions.
Post-Taliban, Iran-Pakistan ties seem to have improved. Iran's concerns with regard to Pakistan's backing of the Taliban seem to have been allayed somewhat with the Pakistani government reversing its earlier policy of support to the Taliban. Tehran and Islamabad have taken big strides with regard to a proposed US$4.5 billion natural gas pipeline from Iran's oilfields through Pakistan to India, and the two have recently agreed to conduct joint naval exercises.
These, however, seem to be incidents of tactical cooperation between Iran and Pakistan. Mutual suspicion persists. Tehran blames Pakistan for the American presence in Afghanistan and Central Asia. It suspects Pakistan of cooperating with the US against Iran. Pakistan suspects an Iranian hand in the turmoil in Balochistan.
Pakistan's Iran suspicions only heightened when a string of reports came out stating that Iran had signed a secret defense agreement with India that included a provision for India to deploy "troops, armored personnel carriers, tanks and surveillance platforms in Iran" during any crisis with Pakistan. Though lower-level Iranian officials eventually denied such a provision, top Iranian figures did not deny that there was an agreement with India.
The reports also mentioned that India would develop the new Iranian port of Chahbahar. Separately, India also signed a deal with Iran to develop a road link connecting Chahbahar to Central Asian points of trade, through Afghanistan. For Pakistan, Chahbahar is a direct competitor to the port of Gwadar in Balochistan that Pakistan is developing with Chinese assistance. Pakistan's leaders have long marketed Gwadar as a destination point of choice for Central Asian commerce. Pakistan's establishment has also been historically sensitive about any Indian access to its western flank, especially in Afghanistan, and news of Iran-India cooperation started ringing alarm bells in Islamabad.
In any event, the idea that Musharraf has made a decision to allow access to US forces in Balochistan was strengthened when the general recently spoke at a conference in Islamabad, "We hope the US doesn't attack Iran. In the event of an attack, Pakistan will remain neutral." One Washington-based analyst contrasted this statement with Musharraf's past explicit denunciations of US actions against Iraq, as well as his opposition to military action against Islamic countries, and observed that this is about as close to an anti-Iranian statement as one could hope to get out of Musharraf publicly.
But the analyst also cautioned that while Musharraf may have agreed to allow the US forces to use Balochistan for now, he might be hedging by hoping that the US does not actually attack Iran. "Musharraf thrives by making carefully worded commitments that leave enough room for him to wriggle out should things change," quipped the expert. The expert also raised the point that this could also be a short-term move by Musharraf to get the Bush administration to approve the sale of long-sought F-16 fighters to Pakistan. India is after the same hardware.
Many Pakistani and Western experts have noted that Pakistan has followed the development paradigm of a "rent-seeking state", meaning that Pakistani leaders have always tried to parlay their country's strategic geographical location to greater powers in return for aid and diplomatic recognition. The US, obviously, has been the biggest partaker of the services provided by the Pakistani elite, from the days of the Cold War to the current "war on terror".
However, such acts of renting their country out have not always worked out well for Pakistan in the long term. It would be interesting to see how this latest move by Pakistan against Iran turns out, especially if the Iranian leaders are able to come out of the current nuclear crisis unscathed.
Kaushik Kapisthalam is a freelance defense and strategic affairs analyst based in the United States. He can be reached atcontact@kapisthalam.com.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us for information on and.) |
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