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| Author: | Esther Pan |
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February 12, 2004
Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the so-called father of Pakistan's nuclear program, confessed on February 4 that he had shared nuclear designs and information with other countries, confirming experts' long-held suspicions. "Pakistan is absolutely the biggest and most important illicit exporter of nuclear technology in the history of the nuclear age," says Jim Walsh, executive director of the Managing the Atom Project at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. His capture will likely slow down the international black market, experts say, driving participants even further underground--but, they warn, probably not for long.
Pakistan, North Korea, Libya, and Iran. Pakistan traded nuclear technology to North Korea in exchange for ballistic missile technology, says Robert W. Nelson, the MacArthur fellow in science and technology at the Council on Foreign Relations. Libya acquired highly restricted centrifuge and warhead designs and components that nearly constituted "turn-key"--or functional--fuel-enrichment systems, Walsh says. Iran built illicit plants to enrich uranium. And experts suspect that other countries also benefited from the market, but they can't prove which ones. "At this point, we don't know who else" has nuclear materials, says Walsh. "Khan went out there and offered it--what happened after continues to be unclear."
Possibly. Experts worry that nuclear material--including 600 metric tons of highly enriched uranium and plutonium still left in the former Soviet Union, according to Walsh--is vulnerable to theft or could be sold or traded by disaffected scientists or opportunists. And the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) has warned that several other nuclear stockpiles around the world have inadequate security, Walsh says.
The Pakistan-based network traded everything from blueprints for centrifuges that enrich uranium--creating fuel for nuclear weapons--to weapons' designs and parts. It also included a sophisticated transportation system to move the goods from the supplier to the buyer.
Experts say that before Khan, proliferators bought bits and pieces of nuclear components from private middlemen, then had to assemble them to set up functional nuclear systems. Khan changed all that, experts say, by creating a centralized "one-stop shop" that offered technical advice, parts, and customer support. The network's efficiency led Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the IAEA, to call it the "Wal-Mart of private-sector proliferation." Khan's eponymous Khan Research Laboratories, a government-supported nuclear facility outside Islamabad, reportedly offered 24-hour technical assistance to customers and even had color brochures printed up--advertising centrifuges and other components for sale--to give to prospective clients at arms fairs, says Walsh.
Experts had suspected Khan for a long time, but couldn't confirm their suspicions until October 2003, when Italian authorities seized a German ship carrying 1,000 centrifuges headed for Libya. The parts were made in Malaysia and shipped through the Middle East, according to news reports. Libya was able to get nearly complete centrifuges through the network, as well as blueprints for a Pakistani-designed nuclear warhead.
Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi's December 2003 decision to give up his country's nuclear program and cooperate with international inspectors gave authorities access to a mother lode of information. Documents turned over by the Libyans included centrifuge designs and plans for a nuclear bomb, wrapped in plastic bags from an Islamabad dry cleaner, The New York Times reported February 9. The documents also revealed the source of the nuclear components that Libya bought: Scomi Precision Engineering, or SCOPE, in Selangor, Malaysia.
SCOPE is part of a publicly traded oil and gas conglomerate whose largest shareholder, Kamaluddin Abdullah, is the son of Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi. "The evidence suggests that the Malaysian factory was able to manufacture parts to Pakistani designs for centrifuges that could then be shipped on to Libya and Iran," Shannon Kyle, a nuclear weapons analyst at the Stockholm International Peace Institute, told The South China Morning Post. Kamaluddin Abdullah has not commented on the case, but the prime minister said at a news conference February 5 that "there is no capability within the country or within the company concerned to produce nuclear bombs or any complete components to make nuclear weapons."
The Libyan investigation has revealed a sophisticated transportation network spanning the globe from East Asia to Africa. The centrifuge shipment that authorities seized last October was arranged by a middleman named B.S.A. Tahir, a Sri Lankan businessman based in Dubai, according to The New York Times. Tahir is the controlling shareholder in Gulf Technical Industries, a Dubai-based concern that received the centrifuge shipments from Malaysia, then loaded them onto a German ship to send to Libya by way of Italy. In Khan's confession, he said middlemen in Sri Lanka, Germany, and the Netherlands helped transport plans, parts, and materials to his international clients.
That Khan sent hardware, designs, and technology to countries around the world from the late 1980s until he was forced to retire in March 2001, according to experts and Khan's confession. "There's no question that the nexis of this exchange has been Pakistan," says Lee Feinstein, deputy director of studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Experts say the traded items included:
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf pardoned him on February 5. Experts say Khan's revelations have damaged the international nuclear black market. In a speech at the National Defense University on February 11, Bush said, "Khan and his top associates are out of business... other members of the network [who] remain at large ... will be found and their careers as proliferators will be ended." Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet said in a speech on February 5, "Khan['s] ... network is now answering to the world for years of nuclear profiteering."
Musharraf has denied that his government had any involvement in Khan's dealings. The scientists involved in the nuclear program "moved around with full autonomy in a secretive manner," Musharraf said on January 25, adding that the program "could succeed only if there was total autonomy and nobody knew." But many experts doubt that, in a country run by the military, these transactions were kept truly secret. "It's becoming increasingly implausible that these kinds of things could have gone on without Musharraf knowing," Leventhal says. Musharraf was the head of the army when he seized power in 1999; he is scheduled to give up control of the armed forces at the end of this year. "It borders on the incredible that the military leadership did not know."
Malaysian authorities have denied knowledge of nuclear trafficking. Officials of the Scomi Group, SCOPE's parent company, confirmed that they made "14 semi-finished components" and sent them to Dubai in four shipments between December 2002 and August 2003 in a transaction worth $3.4 million, according to the Associated Press. But they say they didn't know the parts were headed to Libya and point out that centrifuges are used in many other procedures, from water treatment to protein separation for molecular biology. Najib Raza, Malaysia's defense minister, said on February 5 that Malaysia has no nuclear weapons program and has "absolutely" no intention of becoming a nuclear power. Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi told investigators to look into charges involving his son Kamaluddin, 35, "without fear or favor." But some experts are wary of the Malaysian government's intentions. "Any state that has the capability to manufacture centrifuges to enrich uranium has the capability to enrich uranium to weapons grade," Leventhal says.
Walsh says a joke is making the rounds of the nuclear anti-proliferation community: "If you want to know who's a proliferator, follow A.Q. Khan's travel schedule." Khan has long argued that Muslim countries are entitled to the bomb. He traveled freely for years, meeting with officials in other countries. Experts warn that many of these nations are now potential proliferation suspects, including:
"Basically, any major member of the Muslim world is unfortunately now suspect," Walsh says. Most worrisome to experts are terrorist groups like al Qaeda, which could also be involved in buying or trading nuclear components. "We've known for many years that there's a market for nuclear technology with weapons applications," says Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association.
Experts say the following countries could be trading nuclear information on the black market:
After the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration devoted intensive efforts to combating the spread of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and particularly to keeping them out of the hands of terrorists, experts say. The U.S.-led war in Iraq in March 2003 was fought in large part over the issue of Saddam Hussein's WMD, which experts say made other countries take note that U.S. policymakers were willing to go to war over illicit weapons. In addition to recent revelations from Libya and Pakistan, Iran has also revealed significant information about its nuclear supply routes, experts say, under pressure from the United States and the IAEA.
A Proliferation Security Initiative, announced by President Bush on May 31, 2003, is an agreement between 11 developed countries to stop and search vessels in their territories suspected of carrying banned weapons or technology in order to "stop the flow of such items at sea, in the air or on land." The initiative gives countries broad powers to board vessels and seize illicit cargo. It was under this initiative that authorities seized the centrifuges headed for Libya last fall. On February 11, President Bush proposed expanding the initiative and announced a new proposal to limit the number of nations allowed to produce nuclear fuel. He appealed to the Nuclear Suppliers Group--a 40-nation group that cooperates on proliferation issues--to refrain from selling nuclear equipment to any country not already allowed to produce nuclear fuel.
Walsh says U.S. and Pakistani authorities are doing "old-fashioned police work" on the Khan case, including reviewing his travel records and tracking his phone calls and money transfers to find out who his other clients were. In his February 11 speech President Bush praised U.S. and British intelligence agencies, saying their officers had uncovered the network, identified the key individuals, followed transactions, and monitored the movement of material.
Experts say the current IAEA safeguards against nuclear proliferation need to be strengthened, and the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which bans the sale or transfer of prohibited items, extended even to countries that have not signed--including India and Pakistan. Some experts say the threat of the nuclear black market highlights the need to disarm countries like Pakistan of nuclear weapons entirely. "There has to be some hard thinking about how long [Pakistan's nuclear] program can be tolerated," Leventhal says.
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