No matter how a programme is run, it needs its own internal organisational and decision-making integrity By Ejaz Haider Following charges of proliferation against Pakistan, the government is 'debriefing' some scientists, technicians and security personnel from the Kahuta Research Laboratories.
The opposition calls it a conspiracy against Pakistan's nuclear programme and alleges that the government has buckled under external (read, US) pressure and before long will compromise the country's nuclear-weapons capability.
It wants the scientists immediately released.
Let's lay down some facts.
The first is that this is not a routine issue; anything related to the nuclear programme is a vital issue.
Therefore, the government is skating on very thin ice.
The anger of the people, and the conspiracy theories, are understandable for two reasons: Pakistan has invested very heavily in acquiring its nuclear-weapons capability.
The country was prepared to sacrifice so much because the capability guaranteed its security.
Despite all the political uncertainty, one thing remained a constant: it was essential for Pakistan to have the bomb.
That fact has not changed.
If anything, Pakistan needs to retain and augment this capability - both the weapons and the delivery systems - more than ever before.
The second reason is that people have seen General Pervez Musharraf make too many u-turns.
Even as one could argue that they were important, rapid about-turns do not instil confidence either in the leadership or the policymaking process.
Indeed, they betray deep structural flaws in the policymaking process.
The current crisis, like previous crises, affords a good study of those flaws, but that is for another time.
The Pakistani programme was secretly run, as were the programmes of all nuclear-weapon states.
It needed setting up secret channels of procurement and funding; again, this is not entirely peculiar to the Pakistani programme.
It was sustained and kept going in the teeth of opposition from the United States and Europe.
The same can be said about the Israeli and Indian programmes, though the degree of difficulty for Pakistan was much greater.
It is not surprising that some Pakistani scientists, intelligence officials, and other personnel involved in keeping the project afloat should know a few characters in the black market and even have friends within some foreign governments.
There is no real study of the Pakistani programme but one can get a fair idea of what it takes to run such a programme from Avner Cohen's study of the Israeli effort (Cohen; Israel and the Bomb).
But no matter how a programme is run, it needs its own internal organisational and decision-making integrity.
In other words, while it is perfectly legitimate to beg, borrow or steal from outside sources, personnel within the system cannot be allowed to run their own maverick operations.
The clandestine activity must have an epicentre and, given the nature of the activity, must have extraordinary control on personnel.
This is obviously important not only for maintaining utter secrecy but also for purposes of organisational integrity and decision-making.
What is the model for such a programme? The US programme was run highly secretively after President Roosevelt authorised it.
It was kept away from Congressional oversight, there was no policy debate, the normal procedures were bypassed and expenditures were embedded in the Department of War's budget.
But despite the secrecy, the decisions could be 'traced and timed' and were explicit.
The British programme followed the same pattern.
Most cabinet members didn't know about it, there were no parliamentary or public debates and the entire project was kept secret until it achieved maturity.
The French programme followed a different, 'fragmented' pattern.
There were smaller decision-making loops with personnel - ministers, bureaucrats and scientists - working secretly at various levels while the government at the top denied France was involved in developing nuclear-weapons capability.
Since there was no political decision to move forward, the pattern of working allowed for 'political deniability'.
The French nuclear cat came out of the bag when Guy Mollet, then-prime minister, decided in the wake of the Suez crisis that France needed an independent deterrent.
As Cohen notes, the Israeli programme was a combination of the US-British and French models.
The programme was very secretive (its extent was only revealed in September 1986 by Vanunu Mordechai).
There was an understanding at the highest level (Ben Gurion) that Israel needed a deterrent.
Following that, Shimon Peres set up and ran a large network of secret acquisitions and funding and Ernst David Bergmann operated the programme's technical side until he resigned during premier Eshkol's tenure.
Whatever little information is available on the Pakistani programme points to the fact that Pakistan, too, followed a trajectory quite similar to Israel's.
Most technical acquisitions and the running of the programme on the ground seem to have taken place through multiple loops after the initial decision to work it had been made.
This would, in theory, mean that the information and goodies could not only flow in but also flow out.
There is yet another angle.
How does one define the government, especially in Pakistan? During the nineties, we talked of a troika: the president, the chief of the army staff and the prime minister.
In a parliamentary system, technically, the prime minister is the chief executive.
This means that any decision taken by him or known to him and carried out with his approval will be considered official policy.
But what happens if the prime minister is not in the loop? The answer is that, notwithstanding the internal imbalance of power-sharing, it would still not be called official policy.
But such a course, of course, would have its consequences.
Also, foreign governments or their agents can exploit intra- and inter-organisational loopholes to their advantage.
A good example of this are the contacts Shimon Peres had cultivated within the French bureaucracy and government while securing French cooperation for the Israeli programme.
They worked to Israel's advantage even after De Gaulle became the president of France's Fifth Republic and, opposing French-Israeli nuclear cooperation, resolved to end it.
His opposition threatened the ongoing Dimona project.
At this point, Peres worked through Jacques Soustelle, minister of atomic energy, to keep the cooperation going for another two years until Soustelle resigned and De Gaulle was informed that despite his instructions to the contrary France had continued to help Israel with its nuclear programme! This happened right under de Gaulle's nose.
This means that even in a tightly run government, there can be room to exploit for an outside actor bent on doing so.
The problem is compounded if political decisions do not follow an accepted top-bottom approach for a host of reasons, not least because of civil-military imbalance.
This is why it is important, in the wake of this unfortunate episode, to not just clear the suspicions about Pakistan and increase the comfort level of the outside world, but also to review the decision-making processes and understand why it is important to not undermine the civilian principals in making crucial policy decisions.
This is also time to appreciate the importance of developing wider channels of policy input.
It makes no sense to keep falling headlong into a pit and wait to hit bottom to bounce back.
