Last Sunday’s attack by the Pakistani Taliban on Karachi’s international airport is a rude reminder that the extremist outfit — and presumably some other groups like it that have been nurtured over the years by Pakistan’s security establishment to wage proxy wars against neighbours like India, Afghanistan, and to a lesser extent Iran — can strike any major installation in the country virtually at will. In the summer of 2011, the terrorists had hit the Mehran naval base in the Karachi area, knocking out the P-3 Orion aircraft newly acquired from the United States.
The gravity of the situation is underlined when we consider the probability of such attacks being carried out with insider support, as was shown to be the case in the Mehran strike. Moreover, it is evident that Pakistan’s capacity to prevent attacks against key installations has in no way improved, and is unlikely to in the foreseeable future, for that would require rebooting the whole system.
As matters stand, key militant outfits are known to enjoy political and official patronage. The present chief of the Pakistan Taliban, Maulvi Fazlullah (once derided as “Mullah Radio”), had some years ago been described by the then ISI chief, Lt. Gen. Shuja Pasha, as a “true patriot”. Jihadist contingents have also been portrayed by people holding high rank as “force multipliers” against India. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has enjoyed happy political relations with jihadists and the so-called religious parties in his country.
A neighbour like India, which has had to learn to take precautions against deniable proxy attacks by Pakistan-nurtured jihadi militants, cannot but up its ante in the light of the deadly Karachi airport assault, and within 48 hours another attack on the premises of the security contingent which guards the airport — a strike that fortunately turned out to be more symbolic than successful.
Without sounding alarmist, we cannot but take on board the prospect of the jihadists finding ways to fire even a low-yield nuclear weapon against this country by breaching Pakistan’s nuclear installations. From time to time, Pakistan has sought to assure the Western world that its nukes are secured and there is no way rogue elements can get to them. The US state department has reiterated the assurance after the Karachi airport attack.
Being a neighbour constantly in the sights of Pakistani terrorists, India will be short-sighted to go by third-party observations. The Modi government should go over the ground with Pakistan as regards the safety of the latter’s nuclear weapons. Pakistani nuclear weapons and the delivery system are not mated and are reportedly kept on the move to evade rogue elements. But the issue is the risk of penetration of the safety protocols by jihadists and their sympathisers within the system.
