Game on for Pakistan's nukes

Pakistani Army soldiers guard nuclear-capable missiles. Photo by Rizwan Tabassum/AFP/Getty Images.

In a video posted on jihadist websites on July 25, 2009, senior Al-Qaeda commander Abu Yahya Al-Libi urged Pakistanis to take up arms against the Pakistani army and government. -- MEMRI

Expressing concerns over the expanding terror threat, US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen has said Al-Qaeda is trying to get hold of nuclear weapons to wreak havoc across the world particularly in America.

“Terrorist organisations, al Qaeda in particular, have been very open and direct about their desire to get a nuclear device and continue to terrorise people in accordance with their strategic approach, killing as many Americans and westerners as they possibly can with a device like that,” Admiral Mullen said. -- source

In an essay in the National Interest, Bruce Riedel, the former CIA officer who led a review of strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan for President Barack Obama, lays out the implications of a worst case scenario. [His report is lengthy but, the best analysis on Pakistan that I've ever read.]

“A jihadist Pakistan would be the most serious threat to the United States since the end of the Cold War. Aligned with al-Qaeda and armed with nuclear weapons, the Islamic Emirate of Pakistan would be a nightmare. U.S. options for dealing with it would all be bad,” he writes.

Do read his essay in conjunction with this article in the CTC Sentinel (pdf), in which Shaun Gregory, a professor at Britain’s Bradford University, assesses the risk of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons falling into the hands of Islamist militants. The nuclear weapons, he argues, are well guarded by the Pakistan Army against the internal threat of a seizure by Islamist extremists. -- Reuters

Given Pakistan's reluctance to accept U.S. military operations within their country, we can only hope that he is correct.