Zardari: Taliban could get our nukes

Remember all the reassurances from the Pakistani government — and from both the Bush and Obama administrations in the US — that Islamabad’s nuclear arsenal could never fall into the hands of Islamic extremists?  The two White Houses told us that the US had “contingencies” to prevent it, and the civilian government repeatedly assured the world that such a scenario was impossible.  Suddenly, though, that impossibility has suddenly become a conditional (via HA reader Gaurav):

Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari has said there is a possibility that its nuclear arsenal could fall into the hands of the Taliban if democracy “fails” in his country and the world doesn’t help.

“If democracy in this country fails, if the world doesn’t help democracy — then any eventuality is a possibility,” he said in an interview to German newspaper Der Spiegel when asked whether he, like his late wife Benazir Bhutto, feared that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons could fall into the hands of Islamist extremists.

“But as long as democracy is there, there is no question of that situation arising. All important installations and weaponry are always under extra security,” Zardari said.

Isn’t that like saying, “As long as no one bombs us, we’ll be safe”?  After all, the Taliban’s entire mission is to rid Pakistan of its democracy and replace it with a theocratic tyranny of imams.  No one worried as much about the Taliban getting the nukes through infiltration.  The entire nightmare scenario gets triggered first by a coup d’etat.

Zardari attempted to reassure Der Spiegel readers by explaining that nukes aren’t Kalashnikovs, and that it takes a complicated series of commands to deploy them.  That’s certainly true, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that nukes would be useless to a Taliban-run Pakistan.  They could certainly find their own experts to install the warheads into different delivery devices, but the simpler method would be to take over the command structure of their nuclear attack force and learn the series of commands.  The Taliban certainly has its sympathizers in the military — and more than enough of them in the intelligence service.

I’d say the US had better brush up on those “contingencies.”  And if Zardari wants help in securing his democracy, he’d better start fighting for it himself against the Taliban rather than cut stupid deals with terrorists.

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