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such dangerous wares as enriched Handle, described a gentleman in the
uranium, super-powerful magnets, taxi who said: "I know somebody in a
catalysts and alloys for making the shells nearby base, why don't you come and
of thermo-nuclear weapons. Traders said take a look at one of the major military
there are Iranian colonels and majors, pieces of hardware in the base?" So the
among other traders, walking around activist and his companions casually
with Samsonite suitcases full of hundred crawled under a fence, over a fence,
dollar bills, who are shopping for this under a fence, and there they were --
kind of material. The possibility of easily in one of Russia's nuclear storage
terrorists acquiring some nuclear areas.
weapons in Peshawar is real. Islamic
extremists from many countries Many of these nuclear materials were
converged on Peshawar as early as 1979 subsequently smuggled out of the former
to plan their jihad or holy war, first Soviet Union. One Western diplomat in
against the former Soviet Union and now the Pakistan capital, Islamabad, said:
their enemies abroad -- including the "Many of these things being hawked
United States. around are radioactive. Not only is this
dangerous to the individuals who are
The alarms are ringing the loudest over moving it around, but there's also the
Russia where there are tens of thousands potential for a terrorist group buying up
of atomic weapons left over from the bits and pieces."
Cold War -- not to mention more than a
thousand tons of highly enriched One Western art expert, expecting to see
uranium and plutonium. "As you look at plundered antiquities from Afghanistan
all of the possibilities out there now, I was instead shown a 1,200-kilogram
would conclude there's more chance that stash of enriched uranium, enough for
one or two or three weapons could be 100 nuclear bombs, hidden in a densely
used perhaps with unconventional populated area of Peshawar. Led inside a
delivery systems that would kill literally well guarded house, he watched as the
tens of thousands of people," said US floorboards were lifted and metal boxes
Senator Sam Nunn, the leading expert on revealed. Packed inside each box were
the military in the American Senate five-kilogram cylinders of uranium that
Armed Services committee. The he said looked like "medicine jars." He
prospect of tactical nuclear weapons, or said: "I got the impression that these
"loose nukes," as the phenomenon is smugglers didn't know how to handle the
called is the most sensational part of any stuff at all." 4 A super-hard alloy known
discussion of the former Soviet Union. as moraging steel, used in making
As many as 22,000 tactical weapons -- atomic submarine hulls and nuclear
nuclear artillery shells and short-range bomb casings, was also being peddled in
rocket warheads -- are held in storage, Peshawar by a Russian engineer. The
most of which are not subject to Russian claimed it had been brought
international verification systems. These down via Turkmenistan into northern
may be of far greater threat to Western Afghanistan along the old smuggling
security than any of the city-busting routes and carried across the pass of
behemoths on Russia's ICBMs. While in Parachinar into Pakistan's tribal
Russia, a Greenpeace activist, Josh territories.
