Reports noted that over the last two years, Pakistan’s nuclear facilities have been attacked at least thrice by its home-grown extremists and terrorists in incidents which have been not reported properly. While Pakistan insists that its nuclear weapons are fully secured and there is no chance of them falling into terrorist hands, there has been justifiable concern about their safety.

Analysts believed that the geographical location of Pakistan’s principal nuclear weapons infrastructure, which is mainly in areas dominated by al-Qaeda and the Taliban, makes it more vulnerable to internal attacks. Fearing an Indian attack when Pakistan was developing its nuclear weapons infrastructure in the 1970s and 1980s, Pakistan, with a few exceptions, chose to locate much of its nuclear weapons infrastructure to the north and west of the country and to the region around Islamabad and Rawalpindi and away from the border with India1.

• 1. “Jihadis thrice attacked Pak nuclear sites,” Times of India, August 11, 2009, at http://lite.epaper.timesofindia.com/getpage.aspx?pageid=17&pagesize=&edi...