AnalysisPakistani jihadists attacked Pakistani nuclear sites three times since 2007
When Pakistan was developing its nuclear weapons infrastructure in the 1970s and 1980s, its main concern was that India would overrun these nuclear weapons facilities in an armored offensive; Pakistan thus chose to locate much of its nuclear weapons infrastructure to the north and west of the country — but this decision means that most of Pakistan’s nuclear sites are close to or even within areas dominated by Pakistani Taliban militants and home to al-Qaeda
Pakistan’s nuclear facilities have already been attacked at least three times by Pakistan’s home-grown extremists and terrorists in little reported incidents over the last two years, even as the world remains divided over the safety and security of the nuclear weapons in the troubled country, according to Western analysts. Times of India’s Chidanand Rajghattaw writes that the incidents, tracked by Shaun Gregory, a professor at Bradford University in the United Kingdom, include an attack on the nuclear missile storage facility at Sargodha on 1 November 2007, an attack on Pakistan’s nuclear airbase at Kamra by a suicide bomber on 10 December 2007, and perhaps most significantly the 20 August 2008 attack when Pakistani Taliban suicide bombers blew up several entry points to one of the armament complexes at the Wah cantonment, considered one of Pakistan’s main nuclear weapons assembly.
These attacks have occurred even as Pakistan has taken several steps to secure and fortify its nuclear weapons against potential attacks, particularly by the United States and India, says Gregory (see also Dinshaw Mistry, “The Security of Pakistan’s Nuclear Arsenal,” 8 May 2009 HSNW).
In fact, the attacks have received so little attention that Peter Bergen, the terrorism expert who reviewed Gregory’s paper first published in West Point’s Counter Terrorism Center Sentinel, said “he (Gregory) points out something that was news to me (and shouldn’t have been) which is that a series of attacks on Pakistan’s nuclear weapons facilities have already happened.”
Pakistan insists that its nuclear weapons are fully secured and there is no chance of them falling into the hands of the extremists or terrorists. Gregory, however, while detailing the steps Islamabad has taken to protect them against Indian and U.S. attacks, asks whether the geographical location of Pakistan’s principle nuclear weapons infrastructure, which is mainly in areas dominated by al-Qaeda and Taliban, makes it more vulnerable to internal attacks. Gregory points out that when Pakistan was developing its nuclear weapons infrastructure in the 1970s and 1980s, its principal concern was the risk that India would overrun its nuclear weapons facilities in an armored offensive if the facilities were placed close to the long Pakistan-India border.
As a result, Pakistan, with a few exceptions, chose to locate much of its nuclear weapons infrastructure to the north and west of the country and to the region around Islamabad and Rawalpindi — sites such as Wah, Fatehjang,
Golra Sharif, Kahuta, Sihala, Isa Khel Charma, Tarwanah, and Taxila. The
