EDITORIALS & ANALYSIS

US’ job is yet not done

It must find those missing nuclear scientists

HARINDER S. SIKKA

The UN hopes to create peace and tranquility in war torn Afghanistan. It is a tall order indeed. It will not be easy to contain the volcano of anti-US hatred that still simmers. 

America’s brute power did send a strong signal to Islamic nations that harbour terrorists. But by its self-centered ‘US first’ policy that often reflects double speak, it is courting danger. It is possible that the real culprits behind the World Trade Center attack are lurking elsewhere, biding time and carefully planning their next move. Given the fact it has an enormously large coast to defend, the next attack could well be from the sea and more frighteningly, it could be a nuclear one. The US would do well by not underestimating Osama bin Laden’s threat of use of weapons of mass destruction. Even if the Al-Qaeda itself does not possess one, he has cleared the path for those who, in Osama’s name, could expose the human race to deadly radiation.

It’s a well known fact that after the break up of the USSR, dozens of nuclear war heads went missing from the depots located in the Central Asian Republics. Many have been reported to be in the hands of fundamentalists. While it would be difficult to substantiate which nation is holding how many, it is possible to track them down with a fair degree of accuracy. The US should first track down the whereabouts of dozens of former Soviet nuclear scientists who have taken up assignments outside their country of birth. After its breakup, most of these jobless scientists were reduced to selling cigarettes till such time that they were picked by rogue nations who had by then laid their hands on nuclear armament.

Bashiruddin Mehmood and other Pakistani nuclear scientists have been closely associated with the Taliban. Given the fact that this cooperation could not have been undertaken without the tacit approval of the ISI, the US must explore the extent to which this association has benefited the Taliban militia and others. Similarly, before appeasing Pakistan with huge financial and military aid, it should pause and calculate the price it is paying for doling out largesse in the past.

It is relatively easy to tighten security at airports. But it will be nearly impossible to detect if an oil tanker has been armed with a nuclear payload by a small ferry boat in the middle of the ocean, set to explode at its destination. Even in the absence of a sophisticated detonator, which the former Soviet scientists could be putting together, a ship can easily be set off on an autopilot to trigger off a nuclear catastrophe. No nation, however powerful and well equipped, can avoid the movement of cargo ships entering its harbor under legal charters. It is even more difficult to avoid a ship on a self-destruction course from ramming into the open coast.

Also, the American honeymoon with a military ruled state can only bring on more vengeance and hatred. It would therefore be prudent for the US to distance itself from military ruled nations and set up a think tank drawn from the intelligentsia across the globe.