Thursday, November 7, 2013
Afghanistan: The Role of the Jirga
http://www.tolonews.com/
The Jirga has played an important role in Afghan history as a traditional style of community decision-making used for issues both small and large. Today, the practice, in varying forms, continues to have a central influence on politics and governance in Afghanistan.
A Jirga in its original sense is a gathering of tribal elders, but in the modern context, Jirgas are often composed of government officials. In fact, the persistence of the Jirga practice in Afghanistan is one of the most obvious cases in which tribal traditions have fused into the country's modern state governing system.
Although the two chambers of the Afghan National Assembly in Kabul often go by the English titles of Upper House and Lower House, or Senate and House of Representatives, they also retain the names Meshrano Jirga – elders' Jirga – and Wolesi Jirga – people's Jirga.
The Loya Jirga, expected to convene this week to determine the fate of the Kabul-Washington Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA), is the biggest of the gatherings in today's Afghanistan, reserved for particularly salient national issues.
But these are forms of formal, centrally authorized Jirgas, organized under auspices of the Constitution. There remain today small-scale and independent Jirgas regularly convened on the provincial, district and village level throughout the country, and without the imprimatur of officials in Kabul.
The history of Jirgas in Afghanistan is long, garnering the country the nickname "the land of jirgas." The practice has rarely been seen outside of Afghanistan and certain Pashtun-dominated areas of western Pakistan.
Ahamad Shah Abdali was crowned the King of Afghanistan by a Jirga. During the reign of Amanullah Khan a Loya Jirga was held for approval of his constitution, and several Jirgas were held during Mohammad Zahir's time and later during the governments of Sardar Mohammad Dawoud Khan and Dr. Najibullah.
The current government in Kabul was itself forged through Jirgas. The transitional government following the U.S.-led invasion that toppled the Taliban regime as well as the current Afghan Constitution were both put in place by Loya Jirgas.
Some have criticized President Hamid Karzai's decision to leave the BSA, which will detail the U.S.' troop presence after the NATO withdraw in 2014, up to the thousands of leaders that will gather for the Loya Jirga this week. But many of the concerns about the President using the event as guise to pursue his own interests would not be anything new to the practice of Jirgas if valid.
"In most of the Jirgas, rulers strived to impose their own plans and objectives on the people, the fact is they misused the Jirgas," political analyst Mohammad Amin Farhang said about the history of Jirgas in Afghanistan.
Although many social scientists say the Jirga is past its day as more formal structures of governance on local and national levels have been established, the continued use of the term and the practice itself perhaps indicate Afghans are not ready to give up the role of the Jirga in their society.
In the long-term, as Afghanistan continues to modernize, the place of the Jirga within the country's democracy and vision of progress is uncertain.
However, with 2,500 leaders from around the country converging on the capital this week for the BSA Loya Jirga, the gathering will undoubtedly have an impact on Afghan affairs in the near term.
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Christians accused of blasphemy in Pakistan; store destroyed
Two Christians who own a fireworks store in a village near the northeastern Pakistani city of Wazirabad were accused of blasphemy after wedding guests discovered that their fireworks were wrapped in pages of the Qur’an, according to an AsiaNews report.
The guests immediately destroyed the store.
“We do not manufacture fireworks, we buy them from a factory near Gujranwala and we do not know what materials they use,” said Tariq Masih, one of the owners. “Moreover, these factories are owned by Muslims and no Christian works inside there.”
“We have not even touched the pages of the Qur’an,” he added. “The idea of using these pages for fireworks is beyond all imagination because we are well aware of the consequences.”
UCA News reported that police have arrested the other store owner, Arif Masih, and have detained another brother of Tariq Masih until he turns himself in.
Pakistan: Why isn’t the national flag flying at half-mast?
And why hasn’t a ten-day mourning period been declared for Hakeemullah Mehsud? To hear the tearful reaction from some of our politicos and television pundits it would seem it was the Grand Mufti of Palestine killed in a drone attack and not the chief of the Pakistani Taliban, an outfit at war with the state of Pakistan. When Osama bin Laden was killed the army went into mourning, citing breach of national sovereignty. Hakeemullah Mehsud’s killing has plunged much of the political class into mourning, Imran Khan and Nisar Ali Khan, the interior minister, the two mourners-in-chief. The Jamaat-e-Islami chief, Munawar Hasan, has dubbed him a shaheed (martyr). When Hazara Shiites were massacred in Quetta Nisar spoke in a roundabout manner, taking good care not to say anything about the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi which had claimed responsibility. When the Peshawar church was attacked and Qissa Khawani bazaar bombed there was not a word about the Taliban, and no blame on them for sabotaging peace prospects. Three PTI MPAs have been killed in Taliban attacks. There has not been a word of anger about the Taliban from Imran Khan. But Hakeemullah’s death has unhinged both our champions, Imran promising to block the Nato supply route through the Khyber Pass. Imran and Nisar were contemporaries at Aitchison College, both in the college cricket team. If Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton and Harrow – a typical bit of British exaggeration, for without Marshal Blucher’s Prussians the battle would have been lost – can some of the confusion being spread in Pakistani minds on the drone issue be traced to the playing fields of Aitchison? These are not double standards. This is just the way Imran and people like Nisar really are. They can see only one side of the picture and for them the spread of terrorism is only because of one source: drone attacks. There may be every variety of jihadist fighters in North Waziristan: Chechen, Uzbek, and Arab. The Taliban aim may be to impose their version of Islam on the whole of Pakistan. These factors are lost on our super-nationalists. Nawaz Sharif, to give him his due, is not of this uni-dimensional tribe. His take on the terrorism issue is more pragmatic than that of the single-issue Nisar (although Nisar too is pragmatic in a way, his family holding American citizenship). But Nawaz Sharif thinks he has to play to the gallery. So he says one thing in public, going into contortions before the media, and another when he sits across President Obama in the Oval Office. But because the public ranting can get out of hand, and even the Foreign Office adopts a posture that is pure hypocrisy, people tend to get confused by the crocodile tears shed and all the high talk of wounded sovereignty. So what is meant strictly for public consumption they take as the real thing, when it is not. We have to get one thing straight. Pakistan is capable of huge mistakes. We are all agreed on that. To a large extent we are the authors of our own misfortunes, Afghan policy and the entire business of jihad not the least of them. But when we have really wanted to do something we have done it. Against the world’s opposition we built the bomb. It was a move started by Bhutto and kept alive under Zia. We didn’t want to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty and to date we haven’t signed it. North Korea may be a problem state for the US but we’ve had strong defence ties with it for a long time. Pakistan is the only country in the world – this bears repeating – opposed to the Fissile Material Control Treaty and only because of our opposition the treaty has not been concluded (the terms of it requiring unanimity for conclusion). We wanted the Chinese in Gwadar and we have got them. Our hearts are really not in the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline, which is why conflicting signals emanate from us…now for it, now against it. If all sections of the establishment were convinced of its utility we would race ahead with it, regardless of what the Americans or the Saudis think. To repeat, we are capable of great folly. But mostly it has been self-inflicted folly. No one held a pistol to our heads to force us down those paths. Take our American alliances, from the 1950s to Musharraf’s time: none of them was forced on us. We accepted them willingly, often ecstatically. Even the myth of Musharraf prostrating himself before a single phone call from Washington…Musharraf and his generals really thought they were on to a smart thing and would be swept up in America’s embrace. We have to recall how Musharraf was feted and even lionised in those early days. And there was also the danger, real or exaggerated, that if we showed hesitation the Americans would go ahead and use India, specifically Rajasthan, for the impending attack on Afghanistan. Of course Musharraf could have held out for better terms. Gen Zia in 1979-80 could have concluded a better deal than he did. When Gen Yahya became a bridge between Beijing and Washington he could have asked for so much and did not. If we are bad bargainers, we should improve our negotiating skills. But we should keep the lackey thing in perspective: we are nobody’s yokels, snapping to attention at somebody’s click of the fingers. We can argue that we should be devoting our energies to other things, more to stuff like science and learning rather than bombs and missiles. But that’s another story. God in heaven, not so long ago, in the person of the one and only Dr AQ Khan, we were being accused of nuclear proliferation, there being no sin greater in the international calendar than that. When the Americans got wind of the whole thing, and it took them a while before they did so, Dr Khan was trotted out before the cameras and made to confess his sins. But much as the Americans wanted, they were given no direct access to Dr Khan. Why this lengthy explanation? Only to drive home the point that if we were really serious about drone attacks, we wouldn’t be saying one thing in public and another in private. The Americans are only able to launch them, and retain ties with the army at the same time, because we are in on this issue with them. If people here don’t get this it’s just too bad. The army is not confused, the politicians are. The Taliban have been waging a war against the state of Pakistan. Their havens, their rear bases, are located amongst some of the toughest terrain on earth. Google the geography and you’ll get an idea. Now the one thing able to beat this terrain is drone technology. The Taliban are not afraid of our tanks and helicopters. Only drones cause them sleepless nights. It was said of Hakeemullah that he never spent two nights in one location. On that eventful day he spent too long at his newly-constructed house near Miramshah and the drones got him. After claiming involvement in the deaths of several CIA agents in the Khost suicide bombing (the perpetrator a Jordanian) in Dec 2009, Hakeemullah was high on the list of the CIA’s wanted men. Only a fool would think that if the CIA had him in its sights it would let him go. To reduce terrorism and extremism to drone strikes is the greatest lie of all. Terrorism has other causes, going right down to the beginnings of our Afghan involvement. Yes, drones are a convenient alibi, freeing us of the responsibility of taking tough decisions. But let’s be careful what we wish for. Soon the Americans will be gone and with them will go, in all probability, their drone technology. Then we’ll be there and the mountains, and of course the Taliban, and we may just come to miss what we are denouncing so furiously today.BY Ayaz Amir
Saudi Arabia's Shadow War: Pakistan to train Syria’s rebels
The Kingdom is turning to Pakistan to train Syria’s rebels. It’s a partnership that once went very wrong in Afghanistan. Will history repeat itself?
Saudi Arabia, having largely abandoned hope that the United States will spearhead international efforts to topple the Assad regime, is embarking on a major new effort to train Syrian rebel forces. And according to three sources with knowledge of the program, Riyadh has enlisted the help of Pakistani instructors to do it.
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, along with the CIA, also supported the Afghan rebels against the Soviet-backed government during the 1980s. That collaboration contains a cautionary note for the current day: The fractured Afghan rebels were unable to govern after the old regime fell, paving the way for chaos and the rise of the Taliban. Some of the insurgents, meanwhile, transformed into al Qaeda and eventually turned their weapons against their former patrons.While the risk of blowback has been discussed in Riyadh, Saudis with knowledge of the training program describe it as an antidote to extremism, not a potential cause of it. They have described the kingdom's effort as having two goals -- toppling the Assad regime, and weakening al Qaeda-linked groups in the country. Prince Turki, the former Saudi intelligence chief and envoy to Washington, said in a recent interview that the mainstream opposition must be strengthened so that it could protect itself "these extremists who are coming from all over the place" to impose their own ideologies on Syria.
The ramped up Saudi effort has been spurred by the kingdom's disillusionment with the United States. A Saudi insider with knowledge of the program described how Riyadh had determined to move ahead with its plans after coming to the conclusion that President Barack Obama was simply not prepared to move aggressively to oust Assad. "We didn't know if the Americans would give [support] or not, but nothing ever came through," the source said. "Now we know the president just didn't want it."
Pakistan's role is so far relatively small, though another source with knowledge of Saudi thinking said that a plan was currently being debated to give Pakistan responsibility for training two rebel brigades, or around 5,000 to 10,000 fighters. Carnegie Middle East Center fellow Yezid Sayigh first noted the use of Pakistani instructors, writing that the Saudis were planning to build a Syrian rebel army of roughly 40,000 to 50,000 soldiers.
"The only way Assad will think about giving up power is if he's faced with the threat of a credible, armed force," said the Saudi insider.
A State Department official declined to comment on the Saudi training program.
Saudi Arabia's decision to move forward with training the Syrian rebels independent of the United States is the latest sign of a split between the two longtime allies. In Syria, Saudi officials were aggrieved by Washington's decision to cancel a strike on the Assad regime in reprisal for its chemical weapons attack on the Damascus suburbs this summer. A top Saudi official told the Washington Post that Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan was unaware of the cancelation of the strike. "We found about it from CNN," he said.
As a result, Saudi Arabia has given up on hopes that the United States would spearhead efforts to topple Assad and decided to press forward with its own plans to bolster rebel forces. That effort relies on a network of Saudi allies in addition to Pakistan, such as Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and France.
As Sayigh laid out in his Carnegie paper, Saudi Arabia is attempting to build "a new national army" for the rebels -- a force with an "avowedly Sunni ideology" that could seize influence from mainstream Syrian opposition groups. In addition to its training program in Jordan, Saudi Arabia also helped organize the unification of roughly 50 rebel brigades into "the Army of Islam" under the leadership of Zahran Alloush, a Salafist commander whose father is a cleric based in the kingdom.Given the increased Islamization of rebel forces on the ground, analysts say, it only makes sense that Saudi Arabia would throw its support behind Salafist groups. These militias "happen to be the most strategically powerful organizations on the ground," said Charles Lister, an analyst with IHS Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Centre. "If Saudi Arabia does indeed follow such a strategy... it could well stand to become a major power player in the conflict."
In calling on Pakistan to assist in toppling Assad, Saudi Arabia can draw on its deep alliance with Islamabad. The two countries have long shared defense ties: Saudi Arabia has given more aid to Pakistani than to any non-Arab country, according to former CIA officer Bruce Riedel, and also allegedly helped fund Islamabad's nuclear program. In return, Pakistan based troops in Saudi Arabia multiple times over three decades to protect the royals' grip on power.
The current Pakistani government, in particular, is closely tied to Saudi Arabia. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was ousted from power in 1999 by a military coup - the Saudis allegedly brokered a deal that kept him from prison. Sharif would spend the next seven years in exile, mainly in Saudi Arabia. "For the Saudis, Sharif is a key partner in a key allied state," said Arif Rafiq, an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute.
But despite close collaboration in the past, Saudi Arabia may find its old allies chafing at the sheer scope of its ambitions in Syria. One Pakistani source with close ties to military circles confirmed that Saudi Arabia had requested assistance on Syria over the summer -- but argued that Pakistani capabilities and interests were not conducive to a sweeping effort to train the rebels.
Pakistan is already grappling with its own sectarian bloodshed and must mind its relationship with Iran, while its foreign policy is focused on negotiations with the Taliban over the future of Afghanistan and its longtime rivalry with India. "They have their hands full," the source said. "And even if they want to, I don't think they'll be able to give much concrete help."
Jordan is also reportedly leery about fielding a large Syrian rebel army on its soil. The ambitious Saudi plan would require a level of support from Amman "that is opposed within the security and military establishment and is unlikely to be implemented," according to Sayigh.
As the Saudis expand their effort to topple Assad, analysts say the central challenge is not to inflict tactical losses on the Syrian army, but to organize a coherent force that can coordinate its actions across the country. In other words, if Riyadh hopes to succeed where others have failed, it needs to get the politics right -- convincing the fragmented rebel groups, and their squabbling foreign patrons, to work together in pursuit of a shared goal.
It's easier said than done. "The biggest problem facing the Saudis now is the same one facing the U.S., France, and anyone else interested in helping the rebels: the fragmentation of the rebels into groups fighting each other for local and regional dominance rather than cooperating to overthrow Assad," said David Ottaway, a scholar at the Wilson Center who wrote a biography of Prince Bandar. "Could the Saudis force [the rebel groups] to cooperate? I have my doubts."
Pakistan: To what end?: Talks with the Taliban
THE government wanted it and the opposition has granted it, but no one has quite been able to explain any of it: talks with the Taliban are to be attempted again, but how, when and on what terms? The only thing that is clear since last weekend’s drone strike is that Hakeemullah Mehsud is dead and that the political class wants the public to believe that his killing has dealt a major blow to the talks process. Beyond that, nothing is clear. Even Interior Minister Nisar Ali Khan’s claim that a three-member delegation was set to travel to the tribal areas the day Mehsud was killed remains unsubstantiated — and there is some reason to be sceptical of it. The problem is the government appears unwilling or unable to address any of the obvious problems with its dialogue strategy.
Start with the obvious. The killing of Hakeemullah Mehsud could not have in and of itself ended the possibility of dialogue, as the government appeared to suggest in the aftermath of the drone strike. For if the TTP can continue its attacks going into peace talks — set aside the attacks whose provenance is for whatever reasons disputed and that still leaves the killing of an army general in Upper Dir that was explicitly and in video evidence claimed by a branch of the TTP — then why does an attack on the TTP necessarily scuttle peace talks? If the TTP can talk about talking while still fighting, why is the political class so afraid to claim the state’s right to do the same? Surely, signalling fear and meekness so publicly to the TTP cannot possibly help the negotiating process. Or does the government intend to submit to whatever the TTP wants short of disbanding the government and scrapping the Constitution altogether?
More problematic still is if the government and pro-talks lobbies are taken at their word when they claim that the spate of attacks, since it was agreed that dialogue with the TTP will be pursued first, are the doing of anti-peace and hostile elements. If that is in fact true, then what is the point of talking to the TTP at all? For even if the TTP has kept its guns silent and temporarily put away its suicide vests, bombs and IEDS, there has still been an unacceptable level of violence in the country the past few months. So what kind of peace can the TTP guarantee anyway, even if dialogue is successful? Mystery and confusion, thy names are Pakistan, at least at present.
Pakistan: ''Wailing for the terrorists''
By Dr Mohammad Taqi
The most brutal terrorist is being presented like an apostle of peace who was about to lead his country to the Promised LandIt is rare that a country’s top leaders are seen virtually bawling over the death of its enemy number one. But Pakistan’s Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan and the chief of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) Mr Imran Khan did pull that off. The two leaders have led the national wailing over the killing of Hakeemullah Mehsud and his cohorts in a drone attack on his house in Dande Darpa Khel village, North Waziristan Agency (NWA). The two Khans made it sound like a helpful boy scout and not the ringleader of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) had been assassinated. The most brutal terrorist is being presented like an apostle of peace who was about to lead his country to the Promised Land. And, of course, the big bad US is the vicious villain according to the Interior Minister and his former college mate Mr Imran Khan. The lamentation for Hakeemullah Mehsud and the vitriol against the US is literally a replay of how Pakistan and its leaders had reacted to Osama bin Laden’s 2011 killing. After bin Laden’s death there was a lucid interval of a few days where the then president Mr Asif Zardari and his close aides sought to take the opportunity to make a clean break with Pakistan’s dubious past association with jihadist terrorism. But they could not withstand the drummed up anti-US sentiment and caved in. The leaked bin Laden Commission Report, which has still not been released by Pakistan, essentially identifies the US, not bin Laden or the terrorist outfit(s) he sired, as Pakistan’s enemy number one. The report said that the US had “acted like a criminal thug”, and it termed the US raid on bin Laden’s lair “an act of war”. Similar rhetoric was codified in the September 9, 2013 All Parties Conference’s declaration that condemned the US actions as “illegal and immoral” and responsible for the terrorist ‘blowback’. The same document, which elevated the murderous thugs like Hakeemullah Mehsud to ‘stakeholder’ level and threatened to take the drone attacks issue to the UN, now serves as the guideline for negotiating peace with the TTP. A pathological lack of insight into Pakistan’s own role in creating the terrorist monsters and then dragging its feet in countering them, along with a rabid anti-Americanism, is the centrepiece of Pakistan’s response to Mehsud’s killing. The Pakistani leadership is unwilling to even acknowledge that Mehsud was a ruthless killer, responsible for slaughtering thousands of innocent Pakistanis. In their zeal to take the drone issue to the UN, Pakistani leaders ignore that Mehsud had planned and ordered, from Pakistani soil, the December 2009 attack against the CIA’s Chapman base in Khost, Afghanistan that killed several Americans. The attack was the prime example of collaboration between the TTP, al Qaeda and the Haqqani terrorist network (HQN). The Jordanian double agent, Dr Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi alias Abu Dujana al-Khorasani, trained with the TTP in the areas of NWA under the HQN’s control. Al Qaeda was the first, in January 2010, to applaud the attack but interestingly did not claim direct responsibility, saying that appropriate groups will own the attack. The attack was then claimed by the TTP in a video (http://youtu.be/RTZQTC6ucVI) released by its propaganda wing Umar Media in which none other than Mehsud himself flanked the suicide bomber Abu Dujana. Mehsud also orchestrated the May 2010 Times Square attack by Faisal Shahzad which, according to Bob Woodward, would have entailed a formidable US response had the bomb gone off. Woodward had noted that up to 150 terrorist targets could have been bombed in response to a catastrophe that only luck had averted. Pakistan did little or nothing to put Mehsud out of commission in over two years after the Times Square attack. It appears that Mehsud continued to enjoy sanctuary in the territory virtually ceded to the HQN by Pakistan in a compound not far from an army garrison. The so-called bad Taliban thriving under the wing of the good Taliban a la HQN underscore the problem with Pakistan’s piecemeal fight against terrorism. Combine that with the political shrieking over Mehsud’s death and it is safe to predict that Pakistan will botch another opportunity to rally against the TTP when that terrorist cohort is weak. The leadership transitions in the TTP have never been smooth. When his predecessor Baitullah Mehsud was killed in a drone attack in 2009, the Mehsud faction fought the rival and later his number two, Waliur Rehman Mehsud. Both terrorists were reportedly wounded. Ultimately, Sirajuddin Haqqani arbitrated and Hakeemullah Mehsud became the TTP’s emir. There now is a three-way tussle within the TTP between the Mullah Fazlullah, Khan Said ‘Sajna’ and Asmatullah Shaheen Bhittani groups for Mehsud’s slot. Bhittani was tight with the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), is among the founders of the LeJ al-Alami, and had masterminded the December 2009 attack on the Muharram procession in Karachi that killed 45. He has been appointed the interim TTP chief. Pakistan had a chance to capitalise on this gain and bolster its negotiating position by further degrading and decapitating the TTP when it is certainly down. But that would have required a resolve not just to take the fight to the terrorist group but to also brace for their retaliation by rallying the nation. The Pakistani political leadership, especially Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, does not appear disposed to taking hard decisions. Mr Sharif has let his Interior Minister and Mr Imran Khan set an extremely harsh anti-American tone, which he will find difficult to scale back. Whether or not the belligerent Mr Khan can block the NATO supply route, he has succeeded in mainstreaming and deifying a merciless killer. Chances are that the sectarian mass murderer Asmatullah Bhittani will get the same white-glove treatment from the Pakistani leaders. Routed in the elections swayed by the TTP, the secular leadership is too weak and fearful to counter the pro-Taliban narrative. Even if some in the military helped take out Hakeemullah Mehsud, the security establishment itself will keep playing footsie with the ‘good’ Taliban. Pakistan’s counterterrorism policy, strategy or even tactics are unlikely to change soon. The US will remain a convenient piñata for a country that does not want to face its own demons. The US must cover all legal bases but should not cave in to the predominantly Punjab-based Pakistani wailing over the most wanted terrorists from Osama bin Laden to Hakeemullah Mehsud. As a Pashtun tribesman summed it up: khas kam, jahan paak (Good riddance to bad rubbish).
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Saudi nuclear weapons 'on order' from Pakistan
By Mark Urban
Saudi Arabia has invested in Pakistani nuclear weapons projects, and believes it could obtain atomic bombs at will, a variety of sources have told BBC Newsnight.
While the kingdom's quest has often been set in the context of countering Iran's atomic programme, it is now possible that the Saudis might be able to deploy such devices more quickly than the Islamic republic.
Earlier this year, a senior Nato decision maker told me that he had seen intelligence reporting that nuclear weapons made in Pakistan on behalf of Saudi Arabia are now sitting ready for delivery.
Last month Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israeli military intelligence, told a conference in Sweden that if Iran got the bomb, "the Saudis will not wait one month. They already paid for the bomb, they will go to Pakistan and bring what they need to bring."
Since 2009, when King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia warned visiting US special envoy to the Middle East Dennis Ross that if Iran crossed the threshold, "we will get nuclear weapons", the kingdom has sent the Americans numerous signals of its intentions.
Gary Samore, until March 2013 President Barack Obama's counter-proliferation adviser, has told Newsnight:
"I do think that the Saudis believe that they have some understanding with Pakistan that, in extremis, they would have claim to acquire nuclear weapons from Pakistan."
The story of Saudi Arabia's project - including the acquisition of missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads over long ranges - goes back decades.
In the late 1980s they secretly bought dozens of CSS-2 ballistic missiles from China.
These rockets, considered by many experts too inaccurate for use as conventional weapons, were deployed 20 years ago.
This summer experts at defence publishers Jane's reported the completion of a new Saudi CSS-2 base with missile launch rails aligned with Israel and Iran.
It has also been clear for many years that Saudi Arabia has given generous financial assistance to Pakistan's defence sector, including, western experts allege, to its missile and nuclear labs.
Visits by the then Saudi defence minister Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz al Saud to the Pakistani nuclear research centre in 1999 and 2002 underlined the closeness of the defence relationship.
In its quest for a strategic deterrent against India, Pakistan co-operated closely with China which sold them missiles and provided the design for a nuclear warhead.
The Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan was accused by western intelligence agencies of selling atomic know-how and uranium enrichment centrifuges to Libya and North Korea.
AQ Khan is also believed to have passed the Chinese nuclear weapon design to those countries. This blueprint was for a device engineered to fit on the CSS-2 missile, i.e the same type sold to Saudi Arabia.
Because of this circumstantial evidence, allegations of a Saudi-Pakistani nuclear deal started to circulate even in the 1990s, but were denied by Saudi officials.
They noted that their country had signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and called for a nuclear-free Middle East, pointing to Israel's possession of such weapons.
The fact that handing over atom bombs to a foreign government could create huge political difficulties for Pakistan, not least with the World Bank and other donors, added to scepticism about those early claims.
In Eating the Grass, his semi-official history of the Pakistani nuclear program, Major General Feroz Hassan Khan wrote that Prince Sultan's visits to Pakistan's atomic labs were not proof of an agreement between the two countries. But he acknowledged, "Saudi Arabia provided generous financial support to Pakistan that enabled the nuclear program to continue."
Whatever understandings did or did not exist between the two countries in the 1990s, it was around 2003 that the kingdom started serious strategic thinking about its changing security environment and the prospect of nuclear proliferation.
A paper leaked that year by senior Saudi officials mapped out three possible responses - to acquire their own nuclear weapons, to enter into an arrangement with another nuclear power to protect the kingdom, or to rely on the establishment of a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East.
It was around the same time, following the US invasion of Iraq, that serious strains in the US/Saudi relationship began to show themselves, says Gary Samore.
The Saudis resented the removal of Saddam Hussein, had long been unhappy about US policy on Israel, and were growing increasingly concerned about the Iranian nuclear program.
In the years that followed, diplomatic chatter about Saudi-Pakistani nuclear cooperation began to increase.
In 2007, the US mission in Riyadh noted they were being asked questions by Pakistani diplomats about US knowledge of "Saudi-Pakistani nuclear cooperation".
The unnamed Pakistanis opined that "it is logical for the Saudis to step in as the physical 'protector'" of the Arab world by seeking nuclear weapons, according to one of the State Department cables posted by Wikileaks.
By the end of that decade Saudi princes and officials were giving explicit warnings of their intention to acquire nuclear weapons if Iran did.
Having warned the Americans in private for years, last year Saudi officials in Riyadh escalated it to a public warning, telling a journalist from the Times "it would be completely unacceptable to have Iran with a nuclear capability and not the kingdom".
But were these statements bluster, aimed at forcing a stronger US line on Iran, or were they evidence of a deliberate, long-term plan for a Saudi bomb? Both, is the answer I have received from former key officials.
One senior Pakistani, speaking on background terms, confirmed the broad nature of the deal - probably unwritten - his country had reached with the kingdom and asked rhetorically "what did we think the Saudis were giving us all that money for? It wasn't charity."
Another, a one-time intelligence officer from the same country, said he believed "the Pakistanis certainly maintain a certain number of warheads on the basis that if the Saudis were to ask for them at any given time they would immediately be transferred."
As for the seriousness of the Saudi threat to make good on the deal, Simon Henderson, Director of the Global Gulf and Energy Policy Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told BBC Newsnight "the Saudis speak about Iran and nuclear matters very seriously. They don't bluff on this issue."
Talking to many serving and former officials about this over the past few months, the only real debate I have found is about how exactly the Saudi Arabians would redeem the bargain with Pakistan.
Some think it is a cash-and-carry deal for warheads, the first of those options sketched out by the Saudis back in 2003; others that it is the second, an arrangement under which Pakistani nuclear forces could be deployed in the kingdom.
Gary Samore, considering these questions at the centre of the US intelligence and policy web, at the White House until earlier this year, thinks that what he calls, "the Nato model", is more likely.
However ,"I think just giving Saudi Arabia a handful of nuclear weapons would be a very provocative action", says Gary Samore.
He adds: "I've always thought it was much more likely - the most likely option if Pakistan were to honour any agreement would be for be for Pakistan to send its own forces, its own troops armed with nuclear weapons and with delivery systems to be deployed in Saudi Arabia".
This would give a big political advantage to Pakistan since it would allow them to deny that they had simply handed over the weapons, but implies a dual key system in which they would need to agree in order for 'Saudi Arabian' "nukes" to be launched.
Others I have spoken to think this is not credible, since Saudi Arabia, which regards itself as the leader of the broader Sunni Islamic 'ummah' or community, would want complete control of its nuclear deterrent, particularly at this time of worsening sectarian confrontation with Shia Iran.
And it is Israeli information - that Saudi Arabia is now ready to take delivery of finished warheads for its long-range missiles - that informs some recent US and Nato intelligence reporting. Israel of course shares Saudi Arabia's motive in wanting to worry the US into containing Iran.
Amos Yadlin declined to be interviewed for our BBC Newsnight report, but told me by email that "unlike other potential regional threats, the Saudi one is very credible and imminent."
Even if this view is accurate there are many good reasons for Saudi Arabia to leave its nuclear warheads in Pakistan for the time being.
Doing so allows the kingdom to deny there are any on its soil. It avoids challenging Iran to cross the nuclear threshold in response, and it insulates Pakistan from the international opprobrium of being seen to operate an atomic cash-and-carry.
These assumptions though may not be safe for much longer. The US diplomatic thaw with Iran has touched deep insecurities in Riyadh, which fears that any deal to constrain the Islamic republic's nuclear program would be ineffective.
Earlier this month the Saudi intelligence chief and former ambassador to Washington Prince Bandar announced that the kingdom would be distancing itself more from the US.
While investigating this, I have heard rumours on the diplomatic grapevine, that Pakistan has recently actually delivered Shaheen mobile ballistic missiles to Saudi Arabia, minus warheads.
These reports, still unconfirmed, would suggest an ability to deploy nuclear weapons in the kingdom, and mount them on an effective, modern, missile system more quickly than some analysts had previously imagined.
In Egypt, Saudi Arabia showed itself ready to step in with large-scale backing following the military overthrow of President Mohammed Morsi's government.
There is a message here for Pakistan, of Riyadh being ready to replace US military assistance or World Bank loans, if standing with Saudi Arabia causes a country to lose them.
Newsnight contacted both the Pakistani and Saudi governments. The Pakistan Foreign Ministry has described our story as "speculative, mischievous and baseless".
It adds: "Pakistan is a responsible nuclear weapon state with robust command and control structures and comprehensive export controls."
The Saudi embassy in London has also issued a statement pointing out that the Kingdom is a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and has worked for a nuclear free Middle East.
But it also points out that the UN's "failure to make the Middle East a nuclear free zone is one of the reasons the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia rejected the offer of a seat on the UN Security Council".
It says the Saudi Foreign Minister has stressed that this lack of international action "has put the region under the threat of a time bomb that cannot easily be defused by manoeuvring around it".
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