Who Controls Pakistan’s Nukes?

Pakistani leaders in recent days have gone out of their way to assure Washington that the country’s nuclear weapons are in safe hands, i.e. out of the reach of the Taliban and their confederates in al-Qeada. No one in Washington should find much comfort in this. Elements of the military establishment supposedly controlling Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal are openly sympathetic toward the very Islamic militants now battling the government for control of territory inside the country. The civilian government in Islamabad in fact is hoping for a return to the supposed Taliban truce. That "truce" essentially ceded whole portions of the country to fundamentalists brazenly vowing to host followers of Osama bin Laden, who has already made attempts to get a hold of a Pakistani nuclear weapon.

In other words, Pakistan’s nukes are already in the wrong hands, because the government may not be willing or able to fully ensure they are not gotten by militants increasingly thick on the ground in Pakistan after them. This has been the case for some time, as we know from the alarming disclosures of proliferation profiteering by Pakistan’s leading nuclear scientist, A.Q. Khan. How much worse the situation can get remains to be seen. But it is a safe bet to assume that whatever nuclear safeguards the Pakistani government has in place are eroding along with the breakdown of law and order surrounding Taliban advances.