Misreading Musharraf

The members of the Black Hand in Serbia's secret service had no control over the weapons they provided Gavril Princip's group and the results were quite devastating.
I see no reason why the same principle couldn't apply with nuclear weapons.

This leads to an interesting possibility that hadn't occurred to me before, perhaps explaining Mohamed Atta's interest in cropdusters.

First of all, back to World War I. As I recall, Gavril Princip was a member of the Black Hand. Hadn't the Black Hand positioned gunmen at various spots along the route that the Archduke was traveling on that occasion in Sarajevo? Princip was one of those gunmen. The assassination was a Black Hand plot.

Nevertheless, the analogy with today may actually be quite close. Austria-Hungary blamed Serbia for the assassination, but the consensus of historians is that the Serbian government itself was not aware of the plot. Extensive support and training were provided to the Black Hand, however, by a particular unit or faction within the Serbian army. [Read Pakistan for Serbia, and read ISI for the unit within the Serbian army.]

I'm not sure, however, whether this analogy applies to nuclear weapons in the way you suggest. To my knowledge, Serbian sympathizers did not provide the Black Hand with state-of-the-art weapons (devastating for the time). They set them up with guns and other normal military supplies, and they trained them as a military force. The result of the assassination was devastating, but the weapon of choice was just the gun. (Shades of Sept. 11 and boxcutters.) That weapon was applied to what turned out to be a point of great brittleness, and the geopolitical structure cracked.

I will concede, though, that somebody did provide the 09-11-01 terrorists with enough anthrax for a major biological attack (instead of just the warning that we got). However, that source did not provide the terrorists with the delivery mechanism required for using it in a real attack. (That's something like giving terrorists an atomic bomb, but not the cryptographic code needed to set it off. It could be used as a threat or perhaps even in a radiological attack, but not in a full-fledged nuclear attack.)

So imagine the following possibility. Somebody (Iraq, Pakistan, China?) provides al-Qaeda agent Mohamed Atta with anthrax in envelopes for mailing. Atta's instructions are to mail the envelopes (as a warning). This suits the source of the anthrax, but doesn't particularly suit al-Qaeda, which would prefer to stage a massive terrorist attack with the anthrax. So Atta starts to look into alternative delivery mechanisms that they could use. We know that he looked into cropdusters, but it was never clear exactly why. Maybe he was seeing if there was some easy way that he could take the anthrax that had been supplied to him and divert it for use in an actual attack. He discovered that doing that on the sly was harder than he had realized, and he had plenty to do just in organizing the logistics of 9/11. So he gave up on the idea and just arranged for the delivery of the anthrax letters as originally planned.

As I recall, Gavril Princip was a member of the Black Hand.

Not quite accurate.
Princip and his friends were NOT members of the Black Hand.

During a stay in Belgrade
he and his friends conceived of a plan
for the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

As they had no weapons
they endeavoured to obtain them from an acquaintance
Milan Ciganovic,
who formerly had been a Komitadji
but then was in the employment of the State Railways.

Ciganovic reached an understanding
with the Serbian Major Voja Tankosic,
who obtained Browning pistols for them.

Ciganovic instructed Princip and his friend Grabez
in shooting with a Browning pistol
at the military rifle range at Topcider.
He also familiarized them with the use of bombs
which later were given them
as well as revolvers, ammunition, money,
and a glass tube of cynaide of potassium
with which to poison themselves
after the accomplishment of the deed
in order that the secret might be kept.

At the frontier,
captain Major Rade Popoviec arranged
to have them smuggled secretly
across the frontier with their weapons.

It is not clear to what extent
the Black Hand was involved in all this.

Dimitrijevic-Apis,
a colonel in charge of Serbian intelligence,
seems to have been the leader of the Black Hand
(the Osama of the time)
and probably knew about the plot
though this never has been proved.

(After the war,
Apis bragged of his involvement
but this might only have been
to obtain political favour,
in which case his efforts were unsuccessful
because the king was afraid of Apis
and had him shot).

It is not even clear
whether Princip and friends knew of the existence of the Black Hand.

At the trial of the plotters
the Austrian government itself
did not know of the existence
of this organization.

Instead, the plot was blamed
on the Bosnian nationalist organization
Narodna Odbrana.

The plotters all were sentenced to prison terms.
(They were too young to be executed).
Princip died of tuberculosis during the war
but others survived
and one became a high school teacher
in the newly formed Yugoslavia
after the war.

The paralleles between Princip and Atta
are striking.

The fundamental US interest is in keeping WMD out of the hands of the Radical Islamists, the Paks have these weapons, so we need an excuse to destroy them, take them or see that they are destroyed. India and the Paks fighting provides the precept and the cover for us to do this, our special forces guys are right there to see it is accomplished.

So the shooting starts, we hope we know where the WMDs are located, we blow them up or take them, we get out and cover it up. We have an agreement with the Indians not to launch their missiles, just hang loose for a while. Kind of a high stakes game, but the risk of the Islamic crazies dropping one on India or in the US somewhere justifies the risk.

The questions are: Would Pakistan launch once it realized that its missiles were under attack? And do we really know where all of the Pakistani missiles and nuclear warheads are?

I stand corrected then. You're clearly much better read on this subject than I am. Thank you for the information.

I still find it hard to imagine ISI (or anybody) giving an atomic bomb to somebody without essentially retaining control -- having agreed in advance on a plan, probably only providing the cryptographic code required for detonation at the last minute, etc.

I agree that Atta was in a position very similar to Princip. Atta was given training and general support, not something on the order of an A-bomb. (Even the anthrax he may have been given doesn't count, since he wasn't provided with the delivery mechanism required to turn it into a WMD.) Princip was apparently given the same level of training and support -- solid, but nothing fancy.

I still find it hard to imagine ISI
(or anybody)
giving an atomic bomb to somebody
without essentially retaining control

According to the people at stratfor.com
the US has control over the Pakistani nuclear weapons.
They say that this was part of the deal
they reached with Musharraf before the Afghan war.
(They were afraid, with good reason,
they might fall into the hands of Al Qaeda)
Stratfor also claims that the US
(which recently, for the first time,
conducted joint military exercises with India)
is using the India card to put more pressure on Pakistan
to go along with anti-terrorist operations.
However, India also is playing its own game
and hopes to take this golden opportunity
to clean up the mess in Kashmir.
Take it for what its worth
I suspect there is some truth in this.

Of course, if the US is guarding the 'nukes'
this is reassuring news.

I don't know how reliable Stratfor is, or what agenda the people there might have.

A few questions come to mind about this idea that Musharraf has turned over control of Pakistan's nuclear weapons to the U.S.

First, are the weapons really Musharraf's to turn over? All of them?

Secondly, if this were true and widely enough known to have made its way onto the web, then India would know it. Why then isn't India being more aggressive in dealing with the Kashmir issue and with the Muslim terrorists. With Pakistan's nuclear weapons out of the picture, what would be stopping them?

Finally, would Pakistan really turn over control so easily? That seems very doubtful.

'Control' was the wrong word.
'Supervision' is better.

Obviously a lot of arm-twisting went on.

Remember,
the USA overturned a government in Afghanistan
that was installed by Pakistan
and strongly supported by the ISI.

I think, on the whole, stratfor is reasonably reliable.

(I got the story from Batchelor and Alexander tonight.
They interview the stratfor people frequently)

Why then isn't India being more aggressive
in dealing with the Kashmir issue
and with the Muslim terrorists.

What? Don't you think India is being extremely aggressive?

The kind of border incidents
that have occurred the past two weeks
have occured many times before
without blowing up into the threat
of an all out war.

So is Stratfor's claim that the U.S. got Pakistan to agree to this after the U.S. overthrew the Afghan government?

If this story is true, it must have taken far more than "arm-twisting" to have gotten it to happen.

India is being very aggressive, if the context is a nuclear-armed Pakistan. On the other hand, if Pakistan effectively has no nuclear weapons right now, I don't see why India would tolerate for a second the sorts of terrorist acts they've been subjected to (most recently, the slaughter of wives and children of Indian army officers -- one of those killed in cold blood was a baby).

So is Stratfor's claim that the U.S. got Pakistan to agree to this after the U.S. overthrew the Afghan government?

No, before.

And let me repeat.
The USA overthrew an Afghani government
installed by Pakistan
with the assistance of Pakistan.

What sort of power play
must have gone on behind the scenes
to bring on that weird,
almost unheard of event??

the slaughter of wives and children of Indian army officers

That sort of thing was going on
almost weekly
when I was in India.
It never made the news, outside India.
What has changed to make this newsworthy?

What has changed to make this newsworthy?

The ostensible fact that Pakistan is unable to use its nuclear weapons.

There's also been escalation in the terrorist attacks, I believe. The December attack on India's parliament was a significant escalation.

And, while it's true that terrorist attacks against civilians and against armed forces personnel have been quite common, it is particularly provocative to kill the families of army officers, as in this latest incident. Actions like that are clearly intended to goad India's military into starting a war with Pakistan.

I presume that the U.S. told the Pakistanis that if they didn't cooperate, then Pakistan would become the first target (before Afghanistan).

A "friendship" made under duress will be broken at the first opportunity -- and the forced "ally" will bear resentment for the humiliation suffered.

If this analysis is correct, then the U.S. made the right decisions, but we must be sure to remember that Pakistan is not a true ally.

Yes, I did say risky!

Yes and yes. Hence we have to be very fast. Hopefully we can bank on the Paks being incompetent Muslims, not unusual.