Terrorists 'have attacked Pakistan nuclear sites three times'

So how does the World protect itself from the Islamic Bombs, If at all the Pakistani Nuclear devices are gone whom shall we turn to, or who will be the looser. TIME

(EPA)

Pakistan's former President Pervez Musharraf poses with nuclear scientists in 2004: terrorists have targeted three of Pakistan's nuclear facilities in the last two years

Terrorists have attacked three of Pakistan’s military nuclear facilities in the past two years and there is a serious danger that they will gain access to the country’s atomic arsenal, according to a journal published by the US Military Academy at West Point.

The report, written by Professor Shaun Gregory, a security specialist at Bradford University, comes amid mounting fears that the Taleban and al-Qaeda will breach Pakistan’s military nuclear sites – most of which are in or near insurgent strongholds in the north and west of the country.

The most serious attack was a strike by two suicide bombers on the Wah Cantonment Ordnance Complex, thought to be one of Pakistan’s main nuclear weapons assembly plants, about 18 miles northwest of Islamabad, in August 2008.

The incident, which claimed 70 lives, was widely reported but little mention was made of the nuclear risk. 

Other attacks included the suicide bombing of a nuclear missile storage facility at Sargodha, in central Punjab, in November 2007 and a suicide attack on Pakistan’s nuclear airbase at Kamra, near Wah, on December 10, 2007.

In the Counter Terrorism Center Sentinel, Professor Gregory writes that the attacks illustrate “a clear set of weaknesses and vulnerabilities” in Pakistan’s nuclear security regime.

The strikes occurred as Pakistan sought to ramp up its nuclear capability — and as US special forces formulated contingency plans in the event of the country falling to insurgents.

A US Defense Intelligence Agency document revealed in 2004 that Pakistan had a nuclear arsenal of 35 weapons, a figure it planned to more than double by 2020.

In June, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, an al-Qaeda commander in Afghanistan, suggested that the group would show no hesitation in using nuclear weapons. “God willing... the mujahideen would take them and use them against the Americans,” he told al-Jazeera television.

Pakistan’s security regime is modelled on the American system and includes the separation of warheads from detonators, which are stored in underground bunkers staffed by highly vetted personnel. Many details of the country’s nuclear programme — including the location of many warheads and their exact number — remain unknown.

However, most of the country’s nuclear weapons sites were built in the north and west of the country in the 1970s and 1980s, mainly to distance them from India — a ploy which now means many are located in insurgent areas. There are also concerns that vetting programmes may not identify Islamist sympathisers, whose influence extends far up Pakistan’s military hierarchy.

Professor Gregory writes: “There is already the well-known case of two senior Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission scientists, Sultan Bashirrudin Mahmood and Chaudhry Abdul Majeed, who travelled to Afghanistan in 2000 and again shortly before 9/11 for meetings with Osama bin Laden himself, the content of which has never been disclosed.”