Dr. Shaun Gregory’s ‘The Terrorist threat to Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons’
Having served in the Pakistan military in sensitive posts for over three decades, at both the PAF bases where the purported terrorist attacks took place for over a decade and having interacted with Dr. Gregory in person and through e-mail, I have to say that I have not come across a more ludicrous piece of writing.
On one hand, he admits that Pakistan has been able to establish a ‘robust’ nuclear weapons security system while on the other, he shocks the reader by construing three blatant acts of terror to be attacks against Pakistan’s amply secure nuclear weapons arsenal.
Both of the attacks in the vicinity of the PAF bases were on vehicles plying on main thoroughfares – the one at Sargodha was on a military bus carrying personnel on their way to work at Kirana and occurred on the main Sargodha – Faisalabad road. The attack near Kamra was on a school bus, which was travelling on the main road connecting Kamra with Attock. Since the school children were from PAF families, the bus conveying them was a military vehicle.
The point is that even if any nuclear facilities exist in Sargodha and Kamra (remember I served at both places for almost 12 years), both these attacks were typical terrorist attacks targeting human lives, and innocent ones at that too. He conveniently forgets to highlight that since these two attacks on the vehicles occurred on main inter-city roads, there was no breach of security whatsoever in both instances.
As to the third attack on the main entrance of the Pakistan Ordnance Factories in Wah, his assumption that this was targeting Pakistan nuclear weapons is proved incorrect by the following:
* POF Wah is a civilian manned and run organization which comes under the Ministry of Defence. To think that the Pakistan military would select these factory premises for storing / assembling nuclear weapons is, to say the least, preposterous. The military which guards Pakistan’s nuclear assets jealously would never permit any significant involvement of a civilian set-up in such sensitive matters. To prove my point further, I might add that to my knowledge, there is no active unit of the Pakistan Army deployed in or around Wah with even the security of the POF being delegated to elements of the paramilitary Defence Services Guards (DSGs). Could anyone believe that the Pakistan military would have entrusted the security of an installation of nuclear significance to elements of the ill-equipped and inadequately trained DSGs.
* The attack in Wah also was aimed at causing maximum loss of human lives and did not target any facility or infrastructure whatsoever. Those who have travelled on the branch of the old Grand Trunk Road between Islamabad and Peshawar which traverses through POF Wah would know that the main worker’s entrance to the POF is located just a few hundred yards away from this busy thoroughfare and approaching it does not require one to negotiate any significant security barriers.
While I concur with Dr. Gregory in that the extremist militants have an eye on Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, I would fault his conclusion, which is based on painting the above mentioned three acts of terrorism as attacks against Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. This incorrect depiction of these three acts of terrorism has tainted an otherwise scholarly treatise with ‘sensationalism’ and has made the author’s conclusions border on the ridiculous.
Tariq Mahmud Ashraf
Air Commodore (Retired)
Fujairah, UAE
Dr. Shaun Gregory’s ‘The Terrorist threat to Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons’ | Pakistan Daily
