The plan Obama unveiled last week for Years 9 and 10 of the war in Afghanistan left a basic question begging for an answer: If Al Qaeda is the threat, and Al Qaeda is in Pakistan, why send another 30,000 troops to Afghanistan?
In his address Tuesday night, Obama mentioned Pakistan and the Pakistanis some 25 times, and called Pakistan and Afghanistan collectively “the epicenter of the violent extremism practiced by Al Qaeda.”
But he might have had an easier time explaining what he was really proposing had he set the national boundaries aside and told Americans that the additional soldiers and marines were being sent to another land altogether: Pashtunistan.
That land is not on any map, but it’s where leaders of Al Qaeda and the Taliban both hide. It straddles 1,000 miles of the 1,600-mile Afghan-Pakistani border. It is inhabited by the ethnic Pashtuns, a fiercely independent people that number 12 million on the Afghan side and 27 million on the Pakistani side. They have a language (Pashto), an elaborate traditional code of legal and moral conduct (Pashtunwali), a habit of crossing the largely unmarked border at will, and a centuries-long history of foreign interventions that ended badly for the foreigners.
Whether Obama will have better luck there than Bush, the Soviet Politburo and British prime ministers back to the early 19th century remains to be seen. But it is there that the war will be fought, because it is there that the Taliban were spawned and where they now regroup, attack and find shelter, for themselves and their Qaeda guests.
Today, the enemies of the United States are nearly all in Pashtunistan, an aspirational name coined long ago by advocates of an independent Pashtun homeland. From bases in the Pakistani part of it — the Federally Administered Tribal Areas toward the north and Baluchistan province in the south — Afghan Taliban leaders, who are Pashtuns, have plotted attacks against Afghanistan. It is also from the Pakistani side of Pashtunistan that Qaeda militants have plotted terrorism against the West.
And the essential strategic problem for the Americans has been this: their enemy, so far, has been able to draw advantage from the border between the two nation-states by ignoring it, and the Americans have so far been hindered because they must respect it.
That is because Pakistan and Afghanistan care deeply about their sovereign rights on either side of the line, but the Pashtuns themselves have never paid the boundary much regard since it was drawn by a British diplomat, Mortimer Durand, in 1893.
And that has enormously complicated the war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The Taliban can plan an attack from Pakistan and execute it in Afghanistan. Their fighters — or Al Qaeda’s leaders — can slip across the border to flee, or to rejoin the battle. At the same time, the Americans can fight openly only in Afghanistan, not in Pakistan, and the Taliban know it.
That has been changing all year, however, and it is about to change even more, as the Americans gear up for an intensified war on both sides of the line simultaneously. The dispatch of 30,000 additional Americans to the Afghan side of the border will occur simultaneously with more intensive missile strikes from drone aircraft and Pakistani army offensives on the other side.
Ever since Osama bin Laden escaped American forces in December 2001, crossing the mountains of Tora Bora from Afghanistan into Pakistan, American strategists have spoken of a “hammer and anvil” strategy to crush the militants. Until now, the border has proven so porous, and Pakistani governments so squeamish about a fight, that the American hammer in Afghanistan was pounding Taliban fighters there against a Pakistani pillow, not an anvil.
Now, Obama’s added troops are likely to be concentrated in the Taliban stronghold in Helmand and Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, and near Khost in the east. At the same time, the president has approved a major intensification of drone strikes in Pakistan, even as the Pakistani army continues a campaign against the militants launched this fall in South Waziristan, following on a counterattack that swept militants last spring from the Swat Valley.
For years, in fact, Pakistani intelligence has played a double game with Islamist extremists, nurturing them as a force to use against Pakistan’s archrival India in the disputed territory of Kashmir and helping create the Taliban as a buffer against Indian influence in Afghanistan.
But as the mujahedeen who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s later turned on their American benefactors, so some militants in Pakistan have begun attacking the state that once encouraged them. Many in the Pakistani elite were stunned by the emergence in 2007 of the Pakistani Taliban and by the subsequent campaign of terrorist attacks against Pakistan’s power structure, including the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, suicide bombings in cities and an attack on the army headquarters in Rawalpindi in October.
These slaughters has changed the attitude of many Pakistanis, including government officials, about the wisdom of tolerating radical groups. And since last year, Pakistan has offered quiet but crucial support for the C.I.A.’s use of missile-firing drones, including intelligence on militants’ whereabouts.
Still, Pakistan is deeply divided, conditioned for decades to focus its security concerns on India. Popular opinion runs strongly against the United States. And Obama administration officials say they have not yet won Islamabad’s support for major elements of the new war strategy.
Most significantly, Pakistan has yet to agree to go after the leaders of the Afghan Taliban, or to permit American drones to hunt them in the province of Baluchistan, across the border from their former Afghani base in Kandahar. Mullah Muhammad Omar, the cleric to whom even Mr. bin Laden has pledged fealty, operates now from near the Pakistani city of Quetta, as he helps oversee the Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan.
And history offers unnerving precedent for the Americans. In Waziristan, the patch of Pakistan where the Central Intelligence Agency now kills militants with missiles fired from drones, the British conducted what may have been history’s first counterinsurgency air campaign, bombing from biplanes between 1919 and 1925.
In the shifting American policies We see an echo of the British experience; the British found themselves caught for decades in a cycle of rebellion, brutal suppression, payoffs for tribal leaders, and then a period of peace followed by a new rebellion.
Given the realistic time limits to American involvement,the best possible outcome may be modest- to force the Taliban to come to terms and allow the U.S. an exit.
But even the prospect of an exit has hazards for the United States. The long Pashtun experience with war has taught them to favor those who look like winners, which is why the Taliban’s successes in the last few years have lured fighters to their side.
In other words, the fate of Obama’s surge depends a lot on the hearts and minds of the Pashtuns — and who seems a winner.
A Taliban victory could give Al Qaeda not just a physical haven but a philosophical victory with profound consequences. The lesson of the Taliban’s revival for Al Qaeda is that time and will are on their side, that with a Western defeat they could regain their strength and achieve a major strategic victory. Rolling back the Taliban is now necessary, even if not sufficient, to the ultimate defeat of Al Qaeda.
Read more!
Tuesday, December 15
Saturday, December 5
Nuclear Energy Commerce - No effect of economic recession
At the beginning of 2008, the nuclear power industry's euphoria over the much-hyped "nuclear renaissance" was in full swing. But as that year drew to a close, the hopes for a revival seemed delayed, if not derailed, due to faltering world economies. Little has changed this year to alter that prospect. As the global financial crisis has continued, demand for energy has plummeted along with the world's stock markets. Such news may help calm international security experts, who fear that a proliferation of nuclear energy know-how could lead to nuclear weapons proliferation. Yet in the current economic environment dangers persist and there are still plenty of reasons to worry.
Nuclear distrust. Even if the majority of new nuclear plans never come to fruition, mere high-level discussion of the nuclear energy option can lead neighboring states to develop nuclear technologies themselves. The links between nuclear energy and nuclear weapons create strong incentives for states to respond to any nascent nuclear weapons capability in a rival by preparing against that eventuality. The rival may merely be interested in nuclear power--but it might also be acquiring a weapons capability. Whether a single centrifuge ever spins or a single kilowatt is generated, the lurking fear of the dual-use option will lead to regional mistrust.
It already has.
The Middle East is a prime example. Iran, with each revelation about the extent of its ostensibly peaceful nuclear program, has given its neighbors more reasons to acquire their own dual-use capabilities. For instance, Egypt has announced plans to build a reactor at El-Dabaa on the Mediterranean. Similarly, the Gulf Cooperation Council (consisting of the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, and Kuwait) decided in 2006 that its members would cooperate on civil nuclear power with the first joint plant to be announced next year. Additionally, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates each have signed agreements to cooperate with the United States on nuclear energy. Algeria, Jordan, and Morocco also have shown interest in nuclear power—all after Iran's program came to light.
Aware of the growing concerns in the Persian Gulf, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hinted earlier this year that Washington would be willing to offer security guarantees to help reassure its regional allies (e.g., upgrading allies' defenses and extending the U.S. nuclear umbrella). Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, however, brushed off this suggestion pointing out that such an agreement would necessitate foreign troops in Egypt and implicitly accept Iran as a regional nuclear power.
South Asia's nuclear arms race is a case in point of what could happen in the Middle East. In 1974, India tested its "peaceful" nuclear device in the Rajasthan desert (manufactured partly by diverting technology and material from its civilian nuclear program). Prime Minister Indira Gandhi contacted her Pakistani counterpart Z. A. Bhutto, dismissing fears that the move had destabilized regional security. She wrote that the energy crisis, especially acute at that time, made it vital to exploit the potential of nuclear energy, which she described as a "ray of hope for mankind." Bhutto, however, had already begun a Pakistani military nuclear program, and the Indian detonation only added impetus to Islamabad's quest for the bomb. The race for a Pakistani nuclear weapon in the decades that followed allowed A. Q. Khan to create his nefarious proliferation network that sold nuclear secrets to North Korea and Iran.
New Delhi's leadership long claimed that its nuclear program was part of its economic development efforts. (Tehran has echoed such claims.) This rationale, along with Cold War considerations, enabled New Delhi to successfully cajole donor countries that were worried about the diversion of civilian technology to military aims. Linking the country's nuclear program to development also allowed New Delhi's nuclear energy establishment to build domestic support and harness the combined strength of the country's democratic institutions, nationalism, and hopes for upward mobility.
Today India continues to use such arguments to defend its nuclear program, even as it has emerged as a major world economy. The U.S.-India agreement on civil nuclear cooperation--which is widely seen as tacit U.S. acceptance of India's nuclear arsenal--was promoted by New Delhi as a recognition of the country's technological sophistication and a way to ensure its future energy supplies and sustain its economic growth rate.
Blasts from the past. Beyond the security threats posed by individual countries seeking dual-use nuclear technologies, the international nonproliferation system itself has proven weak at stopping proliferation--specifically the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
When the NPT and the IAEA were created, they weren't given the full powers they needed to do their jobs effectively. In the decades after World War II, countries viewed nuclear power as an incredibly positive discovery, which was why developing countries fought to retain the right to nurture it indigenously. It was believed at the time that nuclear fission offered these countries the potential for a revolutionary leap into the future, enabling them to skip several stages of development. Thus developing nations fought long and hard to secure the inclusion of Article IV in the NPT, allowing the development of nuclear energy for specifically peaceful purposes.
And so, the pillars of the nonproliferation regime were founded with a divided mandate--both to control the spread of nuclear weapons through safeguards and verification regimes and to encourage the peaceful development of nuclear energy and science. The IAEA's founding statute vows that it "shall seek to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health, and prosperity throughout the world." At the same time, the agency was intended to verify that there would be no "diversion of nuclear energy from peaceful uses to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices." Yet such a distinction is difficult to make since knowledge of nuclear technology can be used both for good and for ill.
At the same time, certain non-nuclear weapon states wanted to guarantee that the agreement wouldn't deny them the potential to build a viable nuclear deterrent if it was some day required. Accordingly, the NPT doesn't restrict the size of civilian fissile material stockpiles. The treaty also has an exit provision that is relatively simple--a state can withdraw with 90 days notice if it judges that continued compliance would harm its "supreme interests." These flawed institutions and their mandates continue to stymie effective international nonproliferation efforts today.
Many have recognized the faults in the existing nonproliferation regime, and as such solutions have been proposed. Technical answers include so-called proliferation-resistant reactors. Other solutions involve institutional fixes, with different strategies for parceling out the various processes of the nuclear fuel cycle so that no one country can control or divert fissile material. These proposals PDF include arrangements for guaranteeing nuclear fuel supplies, international fuel banks, and multilateral control of reactors. While some nations are willing to accept such arrangements, others have balked.
A safer nuclear revival. If the international community truly hopes for a safe nuclear revival responses must go deeper. First, the international community must spare some time from tackling full-blown proliferation crises in Iran and North Korea to work with states like Egypt that are just starting civilian nuclear programs. To help build and sustain a coalition interested in keeping the application of nuclear energy strictly peaceful, the international community should:
Read more!
Nuclear distrust. Even if the majority of new nuclear plans never come to fruition, mere high-level discussion of the nuclear energy option can lead neighboring states to develop nuclear technologies themselves. The links between nuclear energy and nuclear weapons create strong incentives for states to respond to any nascent nuclear weapons capability in a rival by preparing against that eventuality. The rival may merely be interested in nuclear power--but it might also be acquiring a weapons capability. Whether a single centrifuge ever spins or a single kilowatt is generated, the lurking fear of the dual-use option will lead to regional mistrust.
It already has.
The Middle East is a prime example. Iran, with each revelation about the extent of its ostensibly peaceful nuclear program, has given its neighbors more reasons to acquire their own dual-use capabilities. For instance, Egypt has announced plans to build a reactor at El-Dabaa on the Mediterranean. Similarly, the Gulf Cooperation Council (consisting of the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, and Kuwait) decided in 2006 that its members would cooperate on civil nuclear power with the first joint plant to be announced next year. Additionally, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates each have signed agreements to cooperate with the United States on nuclear energy. Algeria, Jordan, and Morocco also have shown interest in nuclear power—all after Iran's program came to light.
Aware of the growing concerns in the Persian Gulf, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hinted earlier this year that Washington would be willing to offer security guarantees to help reassure its regional allies (e.g., upgrading allies' defenses and extending the U.S. nuclear umbrella). Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, however, brushed off this suggestion pointing out that such an agreement would necessitate foreign troops in Egypt and implicitly accept Iran as a regional nuclear power.
South Asia's nuclear arms race is a case in point of what could happen in the Middle East. In 1974, India tested its "peaceful" nuclear device in the Rajasthan desert (manufactured partly by diverting technology and material from its civilian nuclear program). Prime Minister Indira Gandhi contacted her Pakistani counterpart Z. A. Bhutto, dismissing fears that the move had destabilized regional security. She wrote that the energy crisis, especially acute at that time, made it vital to exploit the potential of nuclear energy, which she described as a "ray of hope for mankind." Bhutto, however, had already begun a Pakistani military nuclear program, and the Indian detonation only added impetus to Islamabad's quest for the bomb. The race for a Pakistani nuclear weapon in the decades that followed allowed A. Q. Khan to create his nefarious proliferation network that sold nuclear secrets to North Korea and Iran.
New Delhi's leadership long claimed that its nuclear program was part of its economic development efforts. (Tehran has echoed such claims.) This rationale, along with Cold War considerations, enabled New Delhi to successfully cajole donor countries that were worried about the diversion of civilian technology to military aims. Linking the country's nuclear program to development also allowed New Delhi's nuclear energy establishment to build domestic support and harness the combined strength of the country's democratic institutions, nationalism, and hopes for upward mobility.
Today India continues to use such arguments to defend its nuclear program, even as it has emerged as a major world economy. The U.S.-India agreement on civil nuclear cooperation--which is widely seen as tacit U.S. acceptance of India's nuclear arsenal--was promoted by New Delhi as a recognition of the country's technological sophistication and a way to ensure its future energy supplies and sustain its economic growth rate.
Blasts from the past. Beyond the security threats posed by individual countries seeking dual-use nuclear technologies, the international nonproliferation system itself has proven weak at stopping proliferation--specifically the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
When the NPT and the IAEA were created, they weren't given the full powers they needed to do their jobs effectively. In the decades after World War II, countries viewed nuclear power as an incredibly positive discovery, which was why developing countries fought to retain the right to nurture it indigenously. It was believed at the time that nuclear fission offered these countries the potential for a revolutionary leap into the future, enabling them to skip several stages of development. Thus developing nations fought long and hard to secure the inclusion of Article IV in the NPT, allowing the development of nuclear energy for specifically peaceful purposes.
And so, the pillars of the nonproliferation regime were founded with a divided mandate--both to control the spread of nuclear weapons through safeguards and verification regimes and to encourage the peaceful development of nuclear energy and science. The IAEA's founding statute vows that it "shall seek to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health, and prosperity throughout the world." At the same time, the agency was intended to verify that there would be no "diversion of nuclear energy from peaceful uses to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices." Yet such a distinction is difficult to make since knowledge of nuclear technology can be used both for good and for ill.
At the same time, certain non-nuclear weapon states wanted to guarantee that the agreement wouldn't deny them the potential to build a viable nuclear deterrent if it was some day required. Accordingly, the NPT doesn't restrict the size of civilian fissile material stockpiles. The treaty also has an exit provision that is relatively simple--a state can withdraw with 90 days notice if it judges that continued compliance would harm its "supreme interests." These flawed institutions and their mandates continue to stymie effective international nonproliferation efforts today.
Many have recognized the faults in the existing nonproliferation regime, and as such solutions have been proposed. Technical answers include so-called proliferation-resistant reactors. Other solutions involve institutional fixes, with different strategies for parceling out the various processes of the nuclear fuel cycle so that no one country can control or divert fissile material. These proposals PDF include arrangements for guaranteeing nuclear fuel supplies, international fuel banks, and multilateral control of reactors. While some nations are willing to accept such arrangements, others have balked.
A safer nuclear revival. If the international community truly hopes for a safe nuclear revival responses must go deeper. First, the international community must spare some time from tackling full-blown proliferation crises in Iran and North Korea to work with states like Egypt that are just starting civilian nuclear programs. To help build and sustain a coalition interested in keeping the application of nuclear energy strictly peaceful, the international community should:
- Invite diplomats and scientists from nuclear aspirant countries to international forums and appeal to their professional and national interests by offering genuine technology transfers. The nuclear industry has a role to play here as well, once it recognizes that proliferation in one state or region will ruin its business prospects elsewhere.
- Reduce the prestige associated with nuclear technology. Iran's pursuit of nuclear technology has been motivated by a desire to raise its regional and international profile as much as it has been about providing energy and, potentially, weapons.
- Candid and objective discussion about the reality and feasibility of nuclear power plants (e.g., whether national electricity grids can accommodate them, whether a sophisticated and trained workforce exists to build and operate them, and whether countries can handle the long time frames that nuclear power entails from construction to eventual decommissioning) would help sort those that are genuinely interested in pursuing nuclear energy from those that are simply interested in raising their prestige and/or developing weapons.
- A genuine commitment from the dominant nuclear powers to the security concerns and requirements of weaker states. This would involve admitting that such states have genuine security needs, and viewing their nuclear choices not in isolation, but as responses to regional and global decisions. In the Middle East, for example, it would be a mistake to evaluate each attempt at nuclear development individually. Egypt seeks to frame the problem in terms of the denuclearization of the entire Middle East, thus drawing attention to both Israel and Iran, which is the focus of global attention.
- The nuclear weapon states should seriously rethink the wisdom of signing bilateral nuclear energy deals with supposedly "safe" allies in light of the persistent security challenges that nuclear technology poses and the ramifications of its development.
Read more!
Would Britain and US let Africa be Nuclear-weapon-free?
On July 15, the Pelindaba Treaty, which established Africa as a nuclear-weapon-free zone, finally entered into force. The treaty is the latest regional agreement to ban nuclear weapons in its area of application.
The Pelindaba Treaty--named for the former South African nuclear weapons facility near Pretoria--requires each party "to prohibit in its territory the stationing of any nuclear explosive devices," while allowing parties to authorize visits or transits by foreign nuclear-armed ships or aircraft. It also prohibits nuclear weapon tests and radioactive waste dumping. Two supplementary protocols to the treaty provide for non-African nuclear powers to agree that they won't "contribute to any act which constitutes a violation of this treaty or protocol." The United States co-signed the treaty's protocols under the Clinton administration in 1996, but after a heated political debate, Washington didn't submit them to the Senate for ratification. China, France, and Britain have ratified them, however,
ostensibly supporting the International Atomic Energy Agency's enthusiastic claim that the treaty made the "entire Southern hemisphere free of nuclear weapons."
Underneath this international support for an African nuclear-weapon-free zone, however, is a low-profile but high-stakes dispute over the status of the Chagos Archipelago, which includes Diego Garcia. This coral atoll in the British Indian Ocean Territory happens to be the site of one of the most valuable (and secretive) U.S. military bases overseas. Both Britain and Mauritius claim sovereignty over the archipelago.
According to the map appended to the Pelindaba Treaty, the nuclear-weapon-free zone explicitly covers the "Chagos Archipelago--Diego Garcia," with a footnote (inserted at the British government's request) stating that the territory "appears without prejudice to the question of sovereignty." Although all of the participating African countries agreed that the Chagos Islands should be included in the treaty parameters, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) did not, stating that it had no doubt as to its sovereignty over the British Indian Ocean Territory, and upon signing the protocols noted that it did "not accept the inclusion of [the Chagos Islands] within the African nuclear-weapon-free zone" without consent of the British government.
While Russia refused to sign the Pelindaba protocols because of the ambiguity created by that unilateral statement, Britain's interpretation of the footnote was supported by the United States and France, with a representative of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency explaining that it was adequate to "protect U.S. interests because any resolution of the [sovereignty] issue will occur outside the framework of the treaty."
But what are the U.S. interests and what exactly does this sovereignty debate have to do with Africa's nuclear-weapon-free zone? In the last 40 or so years, thanks to a series of U.S.-British bilateral agreements (some of them secret), the expulsion of the atoll's indigenous population between 1967 and 1973, and a $2.5 billion U.S. military construction program, Diego Garcia has developed into a robust naval support facility, satellite tracking station, and bomber forward-operating location. It played a central role in all offensive combat missions against Iraq and Afghanistan from 1991 to 2006 and was used as a staging area for 20 B-52 bombers prominently deployed as a "calculated-ambiguous" tactical nuclear deterrent against any possible chemical or biological weapons used by Iraq against U.S. forces. The Diego Garcia internal lagoon--a gigantic natural harbor, measuring 48 square miles and dredged to a depth of 40 feet as a turning basin for aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines--is currently being upgraded to accommodate the U.S. Navy's new nuclear-powered, guided missile attack submarines. Considering the base's strategic location, current U.S. needs in the Middle East and Central Asia, and what is known about past uses of the base, it would be irresponsible to rule out the potential for nuclear weapons at Diego Garcia.
That the United States found the Pelindaba footnote to be adequate protection against the "bite" of the treaty protocols may have been overly confident. Now that the treaty has entered into force, Mauritius and Britain are legally bound by its provisions--though the British FCO would vehemently disagree, citing the footnote as disclaimer. A recent editorial in the Mauritius Times called on the government to broaden its ongoing bilateral negotiations (which will resume in London in October) with the FCO on the Chagos Archipelago to include U.S. authorities (pointedly referring to President Barack Obama's Prague speech), with a view toward making Diego Garcia nuclear-weapon-free. Until that time, in the eyes of Mauritius and the other African signatories to the Pelindaba Treaty, Mauritius will not be able to meet its treaty obligations.
One key to these talks may be the precedent of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, which also contains a disclaimer for sovereignty issues. Thus far, nobody has interpreted this disclaimer as excluding the British Antarctic Territory from the geographic scope of that treaty. As such, Britain may be forced to confront some inconvenient internal contradictions lurking in the wake of the Pelindaba Treaty. To the embarrassment of the FCO, the Diego Garcia base also has been confirmed by the CIA as a destination or transit point for several "extraordinary rendition flights" for suspected terrorists--branding the island as yet another "legal black hole" à la Guantánamo Bay, where neither the British Human Rights Act nor Britain's ratifications of the Geneva Conventions, the U.N. Human Rights Covenants, or the U.N. Convention against Torture apply.
The Pelindaba Treaty should mark the beginning of a momentous new era in Africa, including regional cooperation for the peaceful uses of nuclear science and technology through a new African Commission on Nuclear Energy. But there is the possibility that the Diego Garcia footnote could stand in the way of progress. If Britain, the United States, and Mauritius cannot resolve this debate, then the entry into force of the Pelindaba Treaty hasn't truly made Africa free from nuclear weapons after all.
Read more!
The Pelindaba Treaty--named for the former South African nuclear weapons facility near Pretoria--requires each party "to prohibit in its territory the stationing of any nuclear explosive devices," while allowing parties to authorize visits or transits by foreign nuclear-armed ships or aircraft. It also prohibits nuclear weapon tests and radioactive waste dumping. Two supplementary protocols to the treaty provide for non-African nuclear powers to agree that they won't "contribute to any act which constitutes a violation of this treaty or protocol." The United States co-signed the treaty's protocols under the Clinton administration in 1996, but after a heated political debate, Washington didn't submit them to the Senate for ratification. China, France, and Britain have ratified them, however,
ostensibly supporting the International Atomic Energy Agency's enthusiastic claim that the treaty made the "entire Southern hemisphere free of nuclear weapons."
Underneath this international support for an African nuclear-weapon-free zone, however, is a low-profile but high-stakes dispute over the status of the Chagos Archipelago, which includes Diego Garcia. This coral atoll in the British Indian Ocean Territory happens to be the site of one of the most valuable (and secretive) U.S. military bases overseas. Both Britain and Mauritius claim sovereignty over the archipelago.
According to the map appended to the Pelindaba Treaty, the nuclear-weapon-free zone explicitly covers the "Chagos Archipelago--Diego Garcia," with a footnote (inserted at the British government's request) stating that the territory "appears without prejudice to the question of sovereignty." Although all of the participating African countries agreed that the Chagos Islands should be included in the treaty parameters, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) did not, stating that it had no doubt as to its sovereignty over the British Indian Ocean Territory, and upon signing the protocols noted that it did "not accept the inclusion of [the Chagos Islands] within the African nuclear-weapon-free zone" without consent of the British government.
While Russia refused to sign the Pelindaba protocols because of the ambiguity created by that unilateral statement, Britain's interpretation of the footnote was supported by the United States and France, with a representative of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency explaining that it was adequate to "protect U.S. interests because any resolution of the [sovereignty] issue will occur outside the framework of the treaty."
But what are the U.S. interests and what exactly does this sovereignty debate have to do with Africa's nuclear-weapon-free zone? In the last 40 or so years, thanks to a series of U.S.-British bilateral agreements (some of them secret), the expulsion of the atoll's indigenous population between 1967 and 1973, and a $2.5 billion U.S. military construction program, Diego Garcia has developed into a robust naval support facility, satellite tracking station, and bomber forward-operating location. It played a central role in all offensive combat missions against Iraq and Afghanistan from 1991 to 2006 and was used as a staging area for 20 B-52 bombers prominently deployed as a "calculated-ambiguous" tactical nuclear deterrent against any possible chemical or biological weapons used by Iraq against U.S. forces. The Diego Garcia internal lagoon--a gigantic natural harbor, measuring 48 square miles and dredged to a depth of 40 feet as a turning basin for aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines--is currently being upgraded to accommodate the U.S. Navy's new nuclear-powered, guided missile attack submarines. Considering the base's strategic location, current U.S. needs in the Middle East and Central Asia, and what is known about past uses of the base, it would be irresponsible to rule out the potential for nuclear weapons at Diego Garcia.
That the United States found the Pelindaba footnote to be adequate protection against the "bite" of the treaty protocols may have been overly confident. Now that the treaty has entered into force, Mauritius and Britain are legally bound by its provisions--though the British FCO would vehemently disagree, citing the footnote as disclaimer. A recent editorial in the Mauritius Times called on the government to broaden its ongoing bilateral negotiations (which will resume in London in October) with the FCO on the Chagos Archipelago to include U.S. authorities (pointedly referring to President Barack Obama's Prague speech), with a view toward making Diego Garcia nuclear-weapon-free. Until that time, in the eyes of Mauritius and the other African signatories to the Pelindaba Treaty, Mauritius will not be able to meet its treaty obligations.
One key to these talks may be the precedent of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, which also contains a disclaimer for sovereignty issues. Thus far, nobody has interpreted this disclaimer as excluding the British Antarctic Territory from the geographic scope of that treaty. As such, Britain may be forced to confront some inconvenient internal contradictions lurking in the wake of the Pelindaba Treaty. To the embarrassment of the FCO, the Diego Garcia base also has been confirmed by the CIA as a destination or transit point for several "extraordinary rendition flights" for suspected terrorists--branding the island as yet another "legal black hole" à la Guantánamo Bay, where neither the British Human Rights Act nor Britain's ratifications of the Geneva Conventions, the U.N. Human Rights Covenants, or the U.N. Convention against Torture apply.
The Pelindaba Treaty should mark the beginning of a momentous new era in Africa, including regional cooperation for the peaceful uses of nuclear science and technology through a new African Commission on Nuclear Energy. But there is the possibility that the Diego Garcia footnote could stand in the way of progress. If Britain, the United States, and Mauritius cannot resolve this debate, then the entry into force of the Pelindaba Treaty hasn't truly made Africa free from nuclear weapons after all.
Read more!
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