Pakistan
Must Provide Proof of Reforming the ISI
By
Bernard-Henri Levy
PARIS:
There have been reports recently in the American press concerning
the probability that the government of Pakistan has traded nuclear
secrets and maybe even technology with Iran.
Such
disclosures were welcomed by those of us here in France who consider
ourselves part of the "anti-anti-American society" and
who have long wondered why the United States doesn't seem more
concerned with the character of its major ally in the war against
terrorism.
As
an observer of Pakistan for more than 30 years -- I first went
to the region in 1971 as a war correspondent covering the conflict
between India and Pakistan over Bangladesh -- I have seen the
government become ever more degraded as it fell from the hands
of the Bhuttos to military leaders such as Pervez Musharraf and
then to the point where now -- as the Daniel Pearl affair showed
-- it is doubtful that the executive branch of the country's government
is fully in charge.
Is
it known in the West that President Musharraf himself had to cancel
several trips to Karachi, the economic capital of his own country,
for safety reasons?
My
last few visits, including one on a diplomatic mission for France
following the Afghan war and several more as part of my investigation
into the death of journalist Daniel Pearl, brought this point
home and gave me a full sense of who really runs things there.
What
has become obvious is the tremendous power of the ISI, Pakistan's
secret service -- so dreaded by average citizens that they rarely
speak its name but refer to it instead as the "three letters"
-- and the deep infiltration of this powerful organization by
militant fundamentalists and jihadis.
The
most dominant factions in the ISI, in fact, have come to constitute
a virtual jihadi group itself. And this is why Pakistan has become
the subject of numerous other urgent questions: Did it shelter
Osama bin Laden and other members of al Qaeda after the Sept.
11 attacks? Has it provided bin Laden with medical attention since
the Afghan war, in the Binori Town Mosque in Karachi, which I
happened to visit? Was it involved, and to what extent, in the
murder of Pearl?
It
is in this context that it's advisable to consider the problem
of the Pakistani nuclear program and the dangers of proliferation
that it presents -- with Iran certainly, but also with al Qaeda
and the still-at-large elements of the Taliban.
In
my book I bring up the case of the so-called "father of the
Islamist bomb," the man after whom Pakistan's leading nuclear
laboratory is named, Abdul Qadeer Khan. He is a revered figure
in his country. He is cheered in the streets. His birthday is
sanctified in the mosques.
I
witnessed an Islamist demonstration in which gigantic portraits
of him led the march. But this man has long been not only a government
official but a fanatical Islamist. This public figure, this great
scientist, this man who knows better than anyone (since it is
he who developed them) the most sensitive secrets of Pakistan's
nuclear program, is both close to the ISI and a member of Lashkar
e-Toiba, a group closely allied with al Qaeda.
My
story concerned Khan's "vacations" to North Korea and
his links with bin Laden's men; one of my hypotheses is that Pearl
may have been killed to prevent him from reporting on such trafficking
of nuclear know-how.
It
is clear that the United States accepted the moral imperative
when it came to the Afghan war. It is also obvious that, after
Sept. 11, the war against terrorism had to be declared, and that
it has to be carried on, with all the necessary alliances.
But
what is the real necessity, in this framework, of the US-Pakistan
alliance? Was it necessary, after the most recent visit of Musharraf
to Washington, to continue the massive funding of his regime?
Is it not possible at least to tie this aid to certain simple
political conditions -- for example, that the Pakistanis must
give proof of a genuine effort to reform the ISI; or that they
impose the most severe sanctions on their high-ranking nuclear
scientists and officials who take "vacations" in Iran,
North Korea or Taliban-held areas of Afghanistan?
This
story, unfortunately, I'm unable to cover further, because I have
become part of a growing club of reporters who cannot return to
Pakistan, simply because they don't want to end up like one of
the best journalists to have covered the nuclear trading story,
Daniel Pearl.
But
I am convinced that a harsher tone, a reformulation of the terms
of alliance, is called for, so that our relationship with Musharraf
will be more than a gullible, naive embrace -- and will conform
to moral as well as political imperatives.
And
I would add that waiting for us is the other Pakistan -- that
which is liberal, democratic, secular, which fights, back against
the wall, against mounting Islamism, and which does not understand
why, in this combat, we are not at its side.
The
writer recently published the book "Who Killed Daniel Pearl?"
