Taliban raid triggers Pakistan shockwave

The brazen attack on a Pakistani naval air base has sent shockwaves through the nuclear-armed country, raising concerns about the military’s ability to protect sophisticated weaponry.

The ease with which six Taliban militants stormed the PNS Mehran base in Karachi, close to the city’s busy commercial airport, and destroyed two newly US-supplied P-3C Orion maritime surveillance aircraft has unnerved Pakistan’s military establishment.

The militants held off security forces for more than 16 hours, killed 12 naval personnel and injured 14. Their primary objective appeared to be some of the military’s most sophisticated electronic warfare equipment, as they wiped out Pakistan’s anti-submarine warfare capability in a single stroke.

Ghazanfar Ali, a former brigadier general, said the Taliban attack would “hurt Pakistan’s reputation as a nuclear weapons state” in the eyes of the international community, by emphasising the country’s vulnerability.
In its arms race with arch-rival India, Pakistan developed nuclear weapons in the 1990s and carried out its first nuclear tests in 1998.
Pakistan’s security establishment insists that the nuclear arsenal is carefully guarded.
Some analysts, however, argue that nuclear material used in the earlier phases of weapons production is more vulnerable.

“There is more concern about the plutonium and highly enriched uranium in production facilities and laboratories, which involve considerably more people and facilities that aren’t as protected as well as military bases,” said David Albright at the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington.

“You [would worry that militants] could try to seize a reactor in order to have a very visible suicide mission where they could threaten to damage the reactor or cause a massive radiation release.”
“The biggest assurance is that Pakistan's nuclear weapons are not deployed,” said Mahmud Durrani, a former national security adviser to the prime minister. “They are kept disassembled and in different locations.”
But others are demanding an urgent review of military capabilities after the Karachi attack and this month’s cross-border raid by US special forces, which slipped across Afghan-Pakistan border undetected and killed Osama bin Laden in a hide-out just 50km from Islamabad.
“After the attack in Karachi there needs to be a comprehensive review of all aspects of security - both conventional and nuclear,” said Arif Nizami, the editor of Pakistan Today newspaper. “Many Pakistanis will be concerned ... It is vital to reassure them.”
Maleeha Lodhi, a former senior Pakistani diplomat, said there was considerable pressure on General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, head of the country’s military, from the US after the Bin Laden raid and from within his own ranks.
Militants also blew up a bridge on a highway from Islamabad to Peshawar. The road had been considered one of the most secure in Pakistan.

By By James Lamont and Farhan Bokhari and Daniel Dombey taken from http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c7c98ddc-84b1-11e0-afcb-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1ND3oGr3F