In evaluating Pakistan’s relations with its major benefactors we tend to consider only the US and China but normally overlook Saudi Arabia’s role. The Kingdom provides ideological succour and nowadays Wahhabi sustenance, financial support and exerts influence on Pakistan’s domestic politics. There has to be some mutuality of interests in this bilateral with Pakistan playing on the Kingdom’s insecurities in relation to Iran and Israel, its own domestic dissidence and its vulnerabilities as an oil rich country in a turbulent neighbourhood. While the rest of the world talks of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the issue of Saudi-Pakistan nuclear tie ups never got proven but never quite disappeared. Suspicions remain especially because Pakistan, a Sunni country sold nuclear secrets to Shia Iran with whom its relations were never on the same plane as with Saudi Arabia. Logically, Saudi Arabia should have been Pakistan’s market of first choice and gratitude. Although concrete evidence about Saudi intentions to acquire nuclear weapons’ capabilities is not there the story continues to attract international commentary.
The controversial father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb Abdul Qadeer Khan was back in the news when we heard earlier this month that the Pakistan government had sought permission to ‘investigate’ his clandestine nuclear bazaar. It made some sense to announce this on the eve of the visit of a high powered Pakistani delegation to the US where they planned to seek (and in fact did so) a civilian nuclear deal of the India-US kind. Pakistan could not be seen to be seeking CNE while one of its national heroes remained an unpunished clandestine peddler of nuclear weapons secrets to an unrepentant Iran.
However, A Q Khan’s travel itinerary during his days as the merchant of Armageddon was very instructive. In the ten years till his network was ‘discovered’ in 2004, Khan visited Dubai more than forty times apart from visiting eighteen other countries. Among the destinations were Syria, Egypt, Sudan Turkey and probably most often, Saudi Arabia. The role Saudi Arabia paid in the early years in the development of the Pakistan bomb in the 1970’s is well known. A grateful Zulfiqar Bhutto renamed Lyallpur, Pakistan’s third largest city as Faisalabad to acknowledge the Saudi monarch’s generosity.
The Saudis had established a nuclear research centre at Al-Suleiyyal south of Riyadh in 1975 and by the mid-1980s was providing financial assistance to Saddam Hussein’s nuclear projects and offered funds to rebuild the Osirak reactor after the Israelis had destroyed it in June 1981. Saudi scientists were being trained in Baghdad. The agreement between King Fahd and Saddam apparently was that some of the bombs would be transferred to Saudi Arabia but this agreement broke down after Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990. It also seems that the Americans were aware of this transaction at some level. By 1986, the Saudis had also acquired 36 CSS-2 intermediate range ballistic missiles from China. It was presumed at that time that these were for delivery of nuclear weapons.
In 1994, a Saudi diplomat at the UN, Muhammed Khilewi, defected with about 10000 documents. Among them there were some that showed linkages between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and a pact had been signed by the two countries that in case of a nuclear attack on Saudi Arabia, Pakistan would retaliate against the aggressor. It was during the 1990s that the Saudis began to provide financial assistance for Pakistan’s nuclear and missile programme when North Korean missiles were traded with the financial backing from Saudi Arabia. The Saudis also came to Pakistan’s rescue after the 1998 nuclear tests when they provided Pakistan with 50000 barrels of oil per day free to overcome the effect of sanctions.
In May 1999, Saudi deputy premier Prince Sultan bin Abdel al-Aziz, on a visit to Pakistan, was shown the Kahuta uranium enrichment plant, a privilege that was not granted by Pakistan’s military to their Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto some years earlier. A Q Khan had briefed the visiting Saudi minister. Prince Sultan also visited the Ghauri missile factory. Later in the year, during his visit to Saudi Arabia, A Q Khan discussed possibilities of co-operation in the peaceful use of nuclear energy in agriculture and genetic engineering.
The US withdrawal of its forces from Saudi Arabia to relocate in Qatar in August 2003, led the Saudis to seek to strengthen its strategic relations with Pakistan and welcome Pakistani troops in replacement. There was probably a strategic review by the Saudis which examined the need to acquire nuclear capability as a deterrent, forge an alliance with an existing nuclear power that would offer protection. This was doubtless denied officially in September but there were also reports that the Saudis were considering replacing their outmoded CSS-2 with the nuclear-capable 500 km range CSS-5 missile in an oil-for-missile deal with China.
In October 2003 Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz led a huge delegation to Pakistan. At the end of the visit, the Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal, said in a press conference that India-Israel defence co-operation would inflame the region, escalate the arms race and trigger instability. This clearly left unsaid that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan were going to react to this ‘threat’. A few years later, a German magazine Cicero, in its April 2006 edition alleged that Pakistan had been collaborating with Saudi Arabia for several years to build a “secret nuclear programme.” Citing western experts, the report stated that Pakistani scientists had travelled to Saudi Arabia for the last three years. They would come disguised as Haj pilgrims and then disappear for weeks at a time to work on this programme. Further, that the al-Sulaiyyal missile base was being upgraded and that there was a “secret underground city” with dozens of silos to house Ghauri missiles
According to assessments in 2008 and 2009, Saudi Arabia as a signatory to the NPT, is unlikely to move towards open nuclearisation for fear of international reactions but at the same time should Iran go nuclear, Saudi Arabia may do likewise. Meanwhile, Pakistan would remain the main proliferator in an era of non-proliferation.
A great deal would depend on how the US reacts to these developments and it is reasonable to assume that the US is aware of this Pakistan-Saudi co-operation since 1994. American reactions would depend on how Washington sees the international geo-strategic situation. It is by no means guaranteed that the US will react harshly. National strategic interests will overweigh issues of morality. Recall that the US government had encouraged the spread of nuclear knowledge through its Atoms for Peace programme in the 1950s to counter Soviet influence. President Carter abandoned sanctions against Pakistan in 1979 after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. His successor Reagan routinely certified that Pakistan was not going nuclear in the 1980’s despite evidence to the contrary, because Pakistan was indispensable to the Afghan jihad. Pakistan was left alone in the 1990’s as A Q Khan went about his nuclear Walmart. When the war on terror was to be fought after September 11, 2001, President George Bush was benign towards General Musharraf and the entire A Q Khan expose was hastily swept under the carpet.
Adverse US reaction against a Saudi nuclearisation following an Iranian nuclearisation, is not a given. Pakistan, as a cash strapped country, could sell its lethal goods to an insecure regime and acquire nuclear depth.
Source: Hindustan Times, 30 March 2010, Former Head of R&AW
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