Pakistan is at the center-stage of the Western media. This "disenchanted ally" of the U.S. has become the key to the coalition in the war against Afghanistan.(1) The popular image of Pakistan in the West is that of a state on the brink of collapse. Seymour Hersh, leading alarmist orientations, contends in his recent New Yorker piece that the Pentagon may be contemplating the use of the elite undercover unit to disarm Pakistan of its nuclear weapons.(2) Such portrayals lead to the questions along the lines of those raised in the title of this piece, namely, Is Pakistan on a Taliban and Nuclear Fuse? My answer is a qualified "No" to both parts of this question. This does not mean, however, that Pakistan is an oasis of stability in the troubled region.

Pakistan is a country of over 140 million people, comprised of multiple ethnic and linguistic groups, people practicing various denominations of Islam, a society marked by socio-economic inequities of legendary proportions, and a state that lays claim to being the only overt nuclear-weapons state among the Organization of Islamic Countries. Combine all these factors with the U.S. decision to turn Pakistan into a conduit of war against neighboring Afghanistan, and one has a recipe for disaster if the situation is not sensitively handled on multiple fronts.

The popularity of militant Islamic parties in the country and their ability to whip up anti-American feeling depends on the shape, nature, scope, and length of U.S. action in the region. The installation of an unrepresentative and oppressive Northern Alliance government, made possible by American strikes against the Taliban, and the continuation of civilian casualties will serve as the fodder that the cannons of militant Islam need the most not only in Pakistan but throughout the so-called Islamic world.

The Pakistanis and Their Anti-Americanism

When one talks about the interplay of these factors in Pakistan, one should keep in mind the distinction between popular anti-U.S. sentiment and pro-Taliban sentiment in Pakistani society. Most Western analysts and media personalities, during their encounters with ordinary Pakistanis, find them complaining about or criticizing the U.S. In turn, these analysts equate this anti-Americanism of Pakistanis with pro-Taliban or pro-Osama-Bin-Laden feeling. This rather alarmist and naïve understanding of anti-Americanism in Pakistan overlooks the distinct context of somewhat bumpy relations between Islamabad and Washington over the last fifty years.(3)

Anti-Americanism in Pakistan, put simply, has bilateral, regional, and pan-Islamic dimensions. In bilateral terms, the U.S. is perceived as an unreliable ally that uses Islamabad in times of need, but abandons it when the latter is in economic, diplomatic, or strategic dire straits. The U.S.-imposed sanctions against Pakistan in the wake of the May 1998 nuclear tests are the most recent incidents that fuel the perception of Pakistan being a wronged party. The U.S. is also perceived as having abandoned Pakistan during its wars with India in 1965 and 1971.

In the regional context, the U.S. is accused of walking away from Afghanistan once the Soviets withdrew in the early 1990s leaving Pakistan to pick up the slack and to pay for the massive flow of arms and drugs in the region. Footprints of the likes of Osama Bin Laden can be traced to joint U.S.-Pakistan intelligence operations that were bent upon defeating the Soviets at any cost. In pan-Islamic terms, the U.S. is popularly viewed as the country whose alliance with Israel has cost scores of Palestinian lives. And finally, Washington is considered the savior of autocratic regimes throughout the oil-rich Arab world.

Given this context of first, anti-U.S. perceptions in Pakistan, and second, Washington's decision to wage war against Afghanistan, analysts have started mulling over the question whether the combination could lead to a Talibinization of Pakistan.

Is Pakistan Going The Taliban Way?

For over two decades, more than three million Afghan refugees have lived in Pakistan. The population of Peshawar-the capital of Pakistan's Northwestern Frontier Province-doubled in 1983 compared to what it was in 1979. With hardly any governmental or international programs to educate these refugees, quite a few of them ended up in local religious seminaries called Maderassahs. The anti-Soviet rhetoric and the glorification of the Jihad in the local as well as in the Western media coupled with the dogmatic education provided in these religious seminaries created a new crop of young warriors. The Taliban became the best known of these groups. The failures of the assorted Mujahideen groups who ruled Afghanistan from 1990 onward created a political gap to be filled by the Taliban with the help of some parts of the Pakistani government.

The second government in Pakistan led by Benazir Bhutto, with Naseerullah Babar-a Pashtun and an army veteran-as the Interior Minister, decided to back Pakistan-Maderrasah trained Taliban to install a pro-Pakistan government in Kabul in the mid-1990s. These Taliban students were mainly trained in Deobandi Madarassahs in Pakistan, and more particularly at Dar-ul-Uloom Haqqania in Akora Khattak town of the NWFP. The Taliban, who were predominantly (Durrani) Pashtun, controlled most of Afghanistan by 1996 and were initially treated by Americans as a source of stability in war-torn Afghanistan. However, the Taliban regime gradually became synonymous in the U.S. with systematic violation of human rights, repression of women, and haven for militants from various Muslim countries.(4)

The chances of Pakistan slipping into Talibanization are slim at present. There are three potential sources of government change in Pakistan. The first, through elections; the second, through a military coup; and the third, through a popular street agitation that would bring down an existing government. The groups that would like Pakistan to be Talibanized are unlikely to affect change through any of these three routes, however.

If the past performance of militant Islamic groups in Pakistani national elections is any indication, such groups are unlikely to attain power through the ballot. In Pakistan's first-past-the-poll electoral system (popularly termed the Westminster model), militant Islamic groups do not have the power to capture parliament. Major political parties - the Pakistan Peoples Party led by Benazir Bhutto, and various factions of the Muslim League - that have garnered approximately sixty percent of the votes cast during the last three general elections, have already assured the Musharraf regime of their support of the West in the present crisis.

Regarding change within the military, the track record of Pakistan does not warrant any alarmism. Certainly, there are people in the Army's high command who would rather see Pakistan side with the Taliban; but the structure, tradition, and discipline of the Pakistani Army suggest that Musharraf's decisions will be backed by his top brass.

That leaves only the street agitation option as a route of change for militant Islamists. Given the superior organizational structure and the access to pulpit that these organizations have, they can have, as in the past, a significant role in driving the political agenda in Pakistan. Some of the parties who have invested political capital quite heavily in the Taliban will organize protests and voice dissent to give the impression that the Pakistani people might bring down the government to show solidarity with the Taliban. But one should overestimate neither these parties' actual power nor the sympathy of the majority of Pakistanis' attitude toward them.

The primary Pakistani support for the Taliban comes from a combination of sectarian and ethnic sources. First, some religious parties support the Taliban. The main supporter of the Taliban in Pakistan has been the Jamiat Ulema Islam, a party that belongs to the Deoband school of thought. The Jamaat-I-Islami - arguably the most organized religious party but with limited electoral support - has also been at the forefront of recent anti-American demonstrations. Not all religious parties in Pakistan support the Taliban, however. Second, among the four major ethnic groups in Pakistan, only the Pashtuns, who are roughly fifteen percent of the population, share an ethnic lineage with the Taliban (who are almost exclusively Pashtuns and constitute forty percent of Afghanistan's population). Here, again, intra and inter-tribal rivalries warrant caution before taking Pakistani Pashtuns' support for the Taliban for granted.

How Safe Are Pakistani Nukes?

If my assessment is even partially correct, the likelihood of radical Islamic militants coming to power in the near future in Pakistan are quite slim. Yet concerns regarding the nuclear weapons of Pakistan continue to be voiced in the American press. This question of the safety of Pakistani nuclear weapons is raised for two reasons: First, these weapons could end up in the hands of militant Islamists if they ruled Pakistan; second, military higher-ups of similar leanings could take control of the Pakistan army and share these weapons with the likes of Osama Bin Laden.(5)

The probability of a group of radical Islamic generals taking control of the army appears low. Along with the political reasons outlined above, there are number of technical reasons which should dampen the concerns about Pakistani nukes. First, the size of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is quite small. Islamabad's enriched uranium stockpiles are sufficient to build perhaps 30-52 bombs. The small size of the arsenal makes it relatively easy for national command authorities to exercise tight centralized control over the warheads.(6) Second, Pakistani nuclear force is neither operational nor on a hair-trigger alert. Statements made by senior Pakistani civilian and military officials suggest that Islamabad's nuclear force probably remains unconstituted, that is, in times of peace, the fissionable cores are maintained separately from their non-nuclear assemblies. The unconstituted nature of the arsenal not only minimizes the risk of nuclear weapons use through an accident or a command-and-control failure, but it also lowers the possibility of complete weapon assemblies falling into the hands of terrorist groups.(7) Detailing various Army-led organizations that are in charge of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, Hasan Askari Rizvi reaches the conclusion that "the control of nuclear weapons is highly elaborate and centralized to ensure that there is no unauthorized, unintentional or accidental use and their security is fully guaranteed."(8) Finally, one should keep in mind that nuclear weapons are primarily used in Pakistan for their symbolic political value rather than for achievement of any military objective on the battlefield.(9)

In sum, Pakistan is far from being an ideally stable state but is certainly not on the brink of becoming another Afghanistan armed with nuclear weapons.

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1. "Disenchanted allies" is how Dennis Kux describes Pakistan-U.S. relations. Dennis Kux, Disenchanted Allies: The United States and Pakistan, 1947-2000, (Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, 2001).
2. Seymour M. Hersh, "Watching the Warheads: The Risks to Pakistan's Nuclear Arsenal," The New Yorker 5 (November 2001).
3. For a detailed account of the tumultuous nature of Pakistan-U.S. relations, see Dennis Kux, Disenchanted Allies.
4. The Taliban remained an understudied subject prior to the September 11 tragedy. For a background of the Taliban and their rule in Afghanistan, see Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000).
5. The alarmist view of Pakistani nuclear weapons ending up in terrorists' hands is best represented by Seymour M. Hersh, "Watching the Warheads," The New Yorker (5 November 2001). Other analysts in general talk of "the ultimate horror in our newly uncertain world is the prospect of terrorists with nuclear weapons." See Bruce Blair, "The Ultimate Hatred is Nuclear," New York Times (22 October 2001).
6. Gaurav Kampani, "Safety Concerns About the Command, Control of Pakistan's Strategic Forces, Fissile Material, & Nuclear Installations." <http://cns.miis.edu/research/wtc01/spna.htm> 28 September 2001.
7. Ibid.
8. Hasan Askari Rizvi, "Nuclear Assets are in Safe Hands," Dawn (12 November 2001).
9. For a detailed discussion of primacy of political over strategic rationale of nuclear weapons in South Asia, see Haider K. Nizamani, The Roots of Rhetoric: Politics of Nuclear Weapons in India and Pakistan (Westport, CT and London: Praeger, 2000).

Haider Nizamani holds a GSC Professional Fellowship. He is currently researching and training on his project entitled "Bringing the Subaltern Back In: A Case of Pakistan" and is based at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) in Islamabad, Pakistan.