Pakistani sieve

By Aaron Mannes

One of the helicopters escorting Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf crashed Monday, a brigadier and three others were killed. There is no evidence of terrorist activity. It was a technical problem. Nonetheless, the crash highlights one of the most serious concerns about Pakistan.

The danger is not that Islamists would grab power if Musharraf were killed. There are sound reasons to believe the army would maintain control and continue following Musharraf’s overall policies. It is even possible, according to former Pakistani intelligence chief Lt. Gen. Assad Durrani, that the Pakistani military would return power to a civilian leader. The concern is that there are cracks at the very apex of Pakistan’s most powerful institution and core systems (human and machine) are not adequately supported and prone to failure.

Of course helicopters crash, but Marine One does not. One would imagine that helicopters attached to the President’s detail would receive the most stringent maintenance. This failing is not unique. In 1989 Pakistan’s then President General Zia al-Haq was killed in a plane crash. (Pakistani conspiracy theorists believe the United States was behind the crash, but the U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan was also killed in the plane crash.)

These failings are not limited to air safety issues. A pair of assassination attempts that missed Musharraf by minutes in December 2003 occurred in Rawalpindi – the headquarters of Pakistan’s army. Most famously, A.Q. Khan – father of Pakistan’s nuclear program – managed to run an extensive international smuggling network.

The leaks and cracks at the very core of the Pakistani state should be a matter of concern on many levels – but none more so than Pakistan’s nuclear program. Considering that the United States occasionally loses track of its nuclear weapons – concerns about Pakistan’s nuclear command and control system should be taken extremely seriously. Should a component of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal slip through one of these many cracks there should be little doubt that some of very bad people are waiting to snatch it up.

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