World leaders are meeting in Seoul this week to discuss how to deal with the threat of nuclear terrorism. The effort to prevent the misuse of nuclear materials and the spread of nuclear weapons has long-placed most emphasis on defensive measures. These are essentially on the "supply side" -- aiming to choke off the flow of nuclear weapon components and radiological materials to terrorists. While there is a place for such steps, there is another, and perhaps more successful way, to accomplish the goal. One of the gravest threats to nuclear proliferation arises from the nations that use proxy groups -- seemingly independent organizations that are paid to further the interests of governments. Ending or reducing the use of such proxy groups has real potential to reduce the availability of such materials to terrorists.
Perhaps the single, most dominant security threat stems from the nuclear-tipped country of Pakistan, with its accepted use of proxy groups to promote the perceived national interest. Third-party transfer, where a country receiving weapons sells or gives them to another party, is always a danger, and with it looms the possible catastrophe of nuclear weapons in the wrong hands. It is clear that the U.S. government is working hard with Pakistani officials to ensure that security at nuclear facilities and radioactive material storehouses is more robust. This has been taking place for years. For example, David E. Sanger and William J. Broad's New York Times article in 2007 (U.S. Secretly Aids Pakistan in Guarding Nuclear Arms) describes initiatives undertaken from the time of the Clinton and Bush administrations and the complexities associated with efforts to work with an ally that remains fundamentally "suspicious" of our intentions.
But the broader question remains: Why does Pakistani leadership continue its half-hearted support for counterterror practices aimed at those in a position to acquire such materials? For one thing, Pakistan has a legacy of using proxy groups to promote its national security interests that goes back at least to the 1950s. At the time, Prime Minister Mohammad Daud Khan of Afghanistan worked to stoke nationalist demands and aspirations from the Pashtun population in geographical locales near the "Durand Line," the disputed border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. In turn, Pakistani leaders used Islam as a framework and its own proxies as counterweights, to promote an alternate vision of a unified region unfettered by political instability and social unrest.
Lashkar-e-Tayyiba ("Army of the Righteous") is perhaps the most prominent Pakistani proxy in the contemporary world because it is generally recognized as having carried out the Mumbai terrorist assaults in 2008. This terrorist group is long known for its fierce struggle in Kashmir against Indian-supported political leaders and Indian security forces. To be sure, Pakistan is not the only country in South Asia that practices international politics in this way; India has also used its own set of proxies to promote national interest in effective and sustained ways in places such as Afghanistan and Bangladesh. But while the use of proxies in the region is not especially new, the risks nowadays are compounded by the presence of nuclear weapons and radiological materials.
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How nations risk nuclear terrorism - CNN.com
