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All the terrorists would have to do is bribe a few guards, kill any who could not be bribed, and get away – if not with a full-blown nuclear weapon, then at least with enough nuclear material to set off a dirty bomb.

Thanks to the links between Pakistan’s intelligence service and terrorist elements, it is no longer possible to distinguish friend from foe. The Taliban have been reorganized, trained and sheltered by Pakistan’s intelligence agency. They have been bold enough to mount terror operations in Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi and other big cities.

Over the past eight years, new recruits and new Taliban leaders in association with al-Qaida have started waging war with Pakistani forces. Their grievances include Pakistan’s cooperation with NATO and the United States. After killing a large number of Pakistani troops in frontier provinces, the Pakistani Taliban has forced the civilian government to permit the practice of ancient Islamic Sharia law there.

The Taliban’s objective is to split the Pashto-speaking frontier provinces from Pakistan and join them with Pashto-speaking areas in Afghanistan to create a nation called Pashtunistan. The bombings in recent months and the daring attack on a police academy near Lahore were designed to avenge the excesses of Pakistani forces in the frontier area. Slowly the Taliban are moving to achieve their objective. Today Sharia law, tomorrow a separate homeland and later full nationhood.

Al-Qaida has its own objective amidst the turmoil – to grab a nuclear bomb or nuclear material and threaten the world. The Pakistani military is much more Islamic today than it has been in the past. It is possible that when pressured with religious zeal soldiers may put faith ahead of their duty. That could be the beginning of the end of U.S. and British-supplied security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. Individual soldiers are more prone to religious propaganda than their command structures; therefore they need to be watched.

Pakistan stores its nuclear materials at different locations, following British and U.S. advice to keep the warheads separate from the triggering devices. Also, the missiles or planes that could carry a bomb to its ultimate destination are far removed from the nuclear devices. Chaklala, Sargodha, Quetta and Karachi are high-security primary strategic materials storage depots.

The main research and centrifuge centers are still Kahuta and Khushab. The forward staging areas where the bombs are mated and loaded for action are much closer to the Indian border than previously known, to give India less time to react to a nuclear threat.

While in storage these materials are harder to compromise. The United States supplied permissive action links, or PAL locks, in 2002, which detect and alert authorities to any attempted tampering. Hence any theft would take place during nuclear transport or by sleeper cells working in nuclear facilities.

The nuclear facilities are under the command of a single three-star general and a command structure known as Strategic Plans Division. Still, a commando-style operation like the one carried out in Lahore could net al-Qaida the materials it needs.

For many years, the head of this command structure has been former General Khalid Kidwai. He is the human face of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. The British approached him in 2000 to set up the SPD; they and the Americans have feted him over the years as a very capable pro-Western establishment man. The media have heaped high praise on him and on Pakistan’s nuclear command and control; this was intended in part to chide India for not having such a system until recently.

Of course, in the event of a theft of nuclear materials, the chief suspects would be the people who guard them. They could be overcome by jihadi propaganda and feel morally obliged to act on behalf of the terrorists. Today their enemies are NATO, the United States, Israel and India; tomorrow they could be the rest of the world.

What must be done to pre-empt the worst-case scenario? Until jihadism and the Inter Services Intelligence are reined in, the United States should ask for temporary custody of all nuclear materials in Pakistan. U.S. President Barack Obama should make financial and military aid conditional upon this action.

Failing that, India, Israel, the United States, NATO and Russia should act jointly to take away these materials from Pakistan. If Pakistan does not agree, these nations should end all military deliveries, financial aid and trade relations with Pakistan. This may appear farfetched, but dying in a nuclear holocaust is more farfetched. This tragedy could be prevented with suitable action today.

The day a nuclear device ends up in al-Qaida’s hands will be a catastrophic day for the world. A dirty bomb may not appear in a city overnight, but it could be used to blackmail the United States, for example, forcing it out of the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the entire Muslim world. India could have a nuclear war at hand.

Pakistan’s argument has been that its nuclear security system is foolproof. General Kidwai has been harping on this for about 10 years. But he did not take into account the fall of the Taliban in Kabul and the rise of jihadi culture all around him. He may be a secular man, but he cannot be sure about the rest of his command.

The Pashtun tribesmen are now restive. They do not like the Pakistan army, which they believe is in the pay of the Americans. If they were to force the truncation of Pakistan and take away the Pashtun areas, there is not much Pakistan could do. If the Punjabi-dominated Pakistan army were to take harsher action in the region, it could cause unhappy Pashtun men in the army to revolt. This could pose a danger to the nuclear weapons depots, which are mostly in Punjab.

An alternative to this worst-case scenario is for Pakistan to seek accommodation with India. That would allow it to withdraw its forces from the border and redeploy them in the restive west. Their permanent presence may help to simmer down the tribesmen.

Another alternative, which would be hard for the Pakistanis to digest, is to allow the Pashtun-speaking areas to set up a new federation, loosely connected to Afghanistan and Pakistan. That would pacify the tribesmen for some time. A permanent solution would be to urbanize the dirt-poor frontier areas and provide people with employment other than smuggling drugs and guns.

Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence, which has been stirring up these tribesmen, would have to stay out of any of these solutions. The ISI has been short on civilian supervision; that authority needs to be reestablished within its ranks. The tribesmen know that they have picked a fight with their benefactors in Pakistan; they cannot hope it will last long. With no supplies or support their movement will die away, but it will take time.

In any case, it is no longer safe to trust terror-ridden Pakistan with nuclear materials. No amount of security can prevent their disappearance if the people guarding them are compromised. Al-Qaida, bent on acquiring nuclear materials, is a serious threat to Pakistan. It can no longer be taken lightly.

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(Hari Sud is a retired vice president of C-I-L Inc., a former investment strategies analyst and international relations manager. A graduate of Punjab University and the University of Missouri, he has lived in Canada for the past 34 years. ©Copyright Hari Sud.)