Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: Pakistan

  • Are You With Us…Or Against Us

    Originally published at www.tomdispatch.com

    The journey to the martial law just imposed on Pakistan by its self-appointed president, the dictator Pervez Musharraf, began in Washington on September 11, 2001. On that day, it so happened, Pakistan’s intelligence chief, Lt. General Mahmood Ahmed, was in town. He was summoned forthwith to meet with Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who gave him perhaps the earliest preview of the global Bush doctrine then in its formative stages, telling him, “You are either one hundred percent with us or one hundred percent against us.”

    The next day, the administration, dictating to the dictator, presented seven demands that a Pakistan that wished to be “with us” must meet. These concentrated on gaining its cooperation in assailing Afghanistan’s Taliban regime, which had long been nurtured by the Pakistani intelligence services in Afghanistan and had, of course, harbored Osama Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda training camps. Conspicuously missing was any requirement to rein in the activities of Mr. A.Q. Khan, the “father” of Pakistan’s nuclear arms, who, with the knowledge of Washington, had been clandestinely hawking the country’s nuclear-bomb technology around the Middle East and North Asia for some years.

    Musharraf decided to be “with us”; but, as in so many countries, being with the United States in its Global War on Terror turned out to mean not being with one’s own people. Although Musharraf, who came to power in a coup in 1999, was already a dictator, he had now taken the politically fateful additional step of very visibly subordinating his dictatorship to the will of a foreign master. In many countries, people will endure a homegrown dictator but rebel against one who seems to be imposed from without, and Musharraf was now courting this danger.

    A public opinion poll in September ranking certain leaders according to their popularity suggests what the results have been. Osama bin Laden, at 46% approval, was more popular than Musharraf, at 38%, who in turn was far better liked than President Bush, at a bottom-scraping 7%. There is every reason to believe that, with the imposition of martial law, Musharraf’s and Bush’s popularity have sunk even further. Wars, whether on terror or anything else, don’t tend to go well when the enemy is more popular than those supposedly on one’s own side.

    Are You with Us?

    Even before the Bush administration decided to invade Iraq, the immediate decision to bully Musharraf into compliance defined the shape of the policies that the President would adopt toward a far larger peril that had seemed to wane after the Cold War, but now was clearly on the rise: the gathering nuclear danger. President Bush proposed what was, in fact if not in name, an imperial solution to it. In the new dispensation, nuclear weapons were not to be considered good or bad in themselves; that judgment was to be based solely on whether the nation possessing them was itself judged good or bad (with us, that is, or against us). Iraq, obviously, was judged to be “against us” and suffered the consequences. Pakistan, soon honored by the administration with the somehow ridiculous, newly coined status of “major non-NATO ally,” was clearly classified as with us, and so, notwithstanding its nuclear arsenal and abysmal record on proliferation, given the highest rating.

    That doctrine constituted a remarkable shift. Previously, the United States had joined with almost the entire world to achieve nonproliferation solely by peaceful, diplomatic means. The great triumph of this effort had been the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, under which 183 nations, dozens quite capable of producing nuclear weapons, eventually agreed to remain without them. In this dispensation, all nuclear weapons were considered bad, and so all proliferation was bad as well. Even existing arsenals, including those of the two superpowers of the Cold War, were supposed to be liquidated over time. Conceptually, at least, one united world had faced one common danger: nuclear arms.

    In the new, quickly developing, post-9/11 dispensation, however, the world was to be divided into two camps. The first, led by the United States, consisted of good, democratic countries, many possessing the bomb; the second consisted of bad, repressive countries trying to get the bomb and, of course, their terrorist allies. Nuclear peril, once understood as a problem of supreme importance in its own right, posed by those who already possessed nuclear weapons as well as by potential proliferators, was thus subordinated to the polarizing “war on terror,” of which it became a mere sub-category, albeit the most important one. This peril could be found at “the crossroads of radicalism and technology,” otherwise called the “nexus of terror and weapons of mass destruction,” in the words of the master document of the Bush Doctrine, the 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States of America.

    The good camp was assigned the job not of rolling back all nuclear weapons but simply of stopping any members of the bad camp from getting their hands on the bomb. The means would no longer be diplomacy, but “preventive war” (to be waged by the United States). The global Cold War of the late twentieth century was to be replaced by global wars against proliferation — disarmament wars — in the twenty-first. These wars, breaking out wherever in the world proliferation might threaten, would not be cold, but hot indeed, as the invasion of Iraq soon revealed — and as an attack on Iran, now under consideration in Washington, may soon further show.

    …Or Against Us?

    Vetting and sorting countries into the good and the bad, the with-us and the against-us, proved, however, a far more troublesome business than those in the Bush administration ever imagined. Iraq famously was not as “bad” as alleged, for it turned out to lack the key feature that supposedly warranted attack — weapons of mass destruction. Neither was Pakistan, muscled into the with-us camp so quickly after 9/11, as “good” as alleged. Indeed, these distinctions were entirely artificial, for by any factual and rational reckoning, Pakistan was by far the more dangerous country.

    Indeed, the Pakistan of Pervez Musharraf has, by now, become a one-country inventory of all the major forms of the nuclear danger.

    *Iraq did not have nuclear weapons; Pakistan did. In 1998, it had conducted a series of five nuclear tests in response to five tests by India, with whom it had fought three conventional wars since its independence in 1947. The danger of interstate nuclear war between the two nations is perhaps higher than anywhere else in the world.

    *Both Iraq and Pakistan were dictatorships (though the Iraqi government was incomparably more brutal).

    *Iraq did not harbor terrorists; Pakistan did, and does so even more today.

    *Iraq, lacking the bomb, could not of course be a nuclear proliferator. Pakistan was, with a vengeance. The arch-proliferator A.Q. Khan, a metallurgist, first purloined nuclear technology from Europe, where he was employed at the uranium enrichment company EURENCO. He then used the fruits of his theft to successfully establish an enrichment program for Pakistan’s bomb. After that, the thief turned salesman. Drawing on a globe-spanning network of producers and middlemen — in Turkey, Dubai, and Malaysia, among other countries — he peddled his nuclear wares to Iran, Iraq (which apparently turned down his offer of help), North Korea, Libya, and perhaps others. Seen from without, he had established a clandestine multinational corporation dedicated to nuclear proliferation for a profit.

    Seen from within Pakistan, he had managed to create a sort of independent nuclear city-state — a state within a state — in effect privatizing Pakistan’s nuclear technology. The extent of the government’s connivance in this enterprise is still unknown, but few observers believe Khan’s far-flung operations would have been possible without at least the knowledge of officials at the highest levels of that government. Yet all this activity emanating from the “major non-NATO ally” of the Bush administration was overlooked until late 2003, when American and German intelligence intercepted a shipload of nuclear materials bound for Libya, and forced Musharraf to place Khan, a national hero owing to his work on the Pakistani bomb, under house arrest. (Even today, the Pakistani government refuses to make Khan available for interviews with representatives of the International Atomic Energy Agency.)

    *Iraqi apparatchiks could not, of course, peddle to terrorists, al-Qaedan or otherwise, technology they did not have, as Bush suggested they would do in seeking to justify his war. The Pakistani apparatchiks, on the other hand, could — and they did. Shortly before September 11, 2001, two leading scientists from Pakistan’s nuclear program, Dr. Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, the former Director General of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, and Chaudry Abdul Majeed, paid a visit to Osama bin Laden around a campfire in Afghanistan to advise him on how to make or acquire nuclear arms. They, too, are under house arrest.

    If, however, the beleaguered Pakistani state, already a balkanized enterprise (as the A.Q. Khan story shows) is overthrown, or if the country starts to fall apart, the danger of insider defections from the nuclear establishment will certainly rise. The problem is not so much that the locks on the doors of nuclear installations — Pakistan’s approximately 50 bombs are reportedly spread at sites around the country — will be broken or picked as that those with the keys to the locks will simply switch allegiances and put the materials they guard to new uses. The “nexus” of terrorism and the bomb, the catastrophe the Bush Doctrine was specifically framed to head off, might then be achieved — and in a country that was “for us.”

    What has failed in Pakistan, as in smashed Iraq, is not just a regional American policy, but the pillars and crossbeams of the entire global Bush doctrine, as announced in late 2001. In both countries, the bullying has failed; popular passions within each have gained the upper hand; and Washington has lost much of its influence. In its application to Pakistan, the doctrine was framed to stop terrorism, but in that country’s northern provinces, terrorists have, in fact, entrenched themselves to a degree unimaginable even when the Taliban protected Al-Qaeda’s camps before September 11th.

    If the Bush Doctrine laid claim to the values of democracy, its man Musharraf now has the distinction, rare even among dictators, of mounting a second military coup to maintain the results of his first one. In a crowning irony, his present crackdown is on democracy activists, not the Taliban, armed Islamic extremists, or al-Qaeda supporters who have established positions in the Swat valley only 150 miles from Islamabad.

    Most important, the collapsed doctrine has stoked the nuclear fires it was meant to quench. The dangers of nuclear terrorism, of proliferation, and even of nuclear war (with India, which is dismayed by developments in Pakistan as well as the weak Bush administration response to them) are all on the rise. The imperial solution to these perils has failed. Something new is needed, not just for Pakistan or Iraq, but for the world. Perhaps now someone should try to invent a solution based on imperialism’s opposite, democracy, which is to say respect for other countries and the wills of the people who live in them.

     

    Jonathan Schell is the Harold Willens Peace Fellow at The Nation Institute, and a visiting lecturer at Yale University

  • India’s Nuclear Disarmament Gets Critical

    In October 2006, eight years after India and Pakistan crossed the nuclear threshold, the world witnessed yet another breakout, when North Korea exploded an atomic bomb and demanded that it be recognised as a nuclear weapons-state. Talks aimed at persuading Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons, in return for security guarantees and economic assistance, collapsed last week.

    In 2006, the ongoing confrontation between the Western powers and the Islamic Republic of Iran over its nuclear programme got dangerously aggravated. The United Nations Security Council imposed harsh sanctions on Iran but these may prove counterproductive.

    Tehran dismissed the sanctions as illegal and vowed to step up its “peaceful” uranium enrichment programme. It added one more cascade of 164 uranium enrichment centrifuges during the year and is preparing to install as many as 3,000 of these machines within the next four months. (Several thousands of centrifuges are needed to build a small nuclear arsenal.)

    Developments in South Asia added to this negative momentum as India and the United States took further steps in negotiating and legislating the controversial nuclear cooperation deal that they inked one-and-a-half years ago. The deal will bring India into the ambit of normal civilian nuclear commerce although it is a nuclear weapons-state and has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

    Meanwhile, India and Pakistan continued to test nuclear-capable missiles and sustained their long-standing mutual rivalry despite their continuing peace dialogue. Looming large over these developments in different parts of Asia are the Great Powers, led by the U.S., whose geopolitical role as well as refusal to undertake disarmament has contributed to enhancing the global nuclear danger in 2006.

    According to a just-released preliminary count by the Federation of American Scientists, eight countries launched more than 26 ballistic missiles of 23 types in 24 different events in 2006. They include the U.S., Russia, France and China, besides India, Pakistan, North Korea and Iran.

    “One can list other negative contributing factors too,” says Sukla Sen, a Mumbai-based activist of the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace, an umbrella of more than 250 Indian organisations. “These include U.S. plans to find new uses for nuclear armaments and develop ballistic missile defence (“Star Wars”) weapons, Britain’s announcement that it will modernise its “Trident” nuclear force, Japan’s moves towards militarisation, and a revival of interest in nuclear technology in many countries.”

    “Clearly,” adds Sen, “61 years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the world has learnt little and achieved even less so far as abolishing the nucleus scourge goes. The nuclear sword still hangs over the globe. 2006 has made the world an even more dangerous place. The time has come to advance the hands of the Doomsday Clock.” The Doomsday Clock, created by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, published from Chicago in the U.S., currently stands at seven minutes to midnight, the Final Hour. Since 1947, its minute hand has been repeatedly moved “forward and back to reflect the global level of nuclear danger and the state of international security”.

    The Clock was last reset in 2002, after the U.S. announced it would reject several arms control agreements, and withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which prohibits the development of “Star Wars”-style weapons.

    Before that, the Doomsday Clock was advanced in 1998, from 14 minutes to midnight, to just nine minutes before the hour. This was primarily in response to the nuclear tests by India and Pakistan in May that year.

    The closest the Clock moved to midnight was in 1953, when the U.S. and the USSR both tested thermonuclear weapons. The Clock’s minute hand was set just two minutes short of 12.

    The lowest level of danger it ever showed was in 1991, following the end of the Cold War and the signature of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The Clock then stood at 17 minutes to midnight.

    “The strongest reason to move the minute hand forward today is the inflamed situation in the Middle East,” argues M.V. Ramana, an independent nuclear affairs analyst currently with the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and Development, Bangalore.

    “Iran isn’t the real or sole cause of worry. It’s probably still some years away from enriching enough uranium to make a nuclear bomb. But there is this grave crisis in Iraq, which has spun out of Washington’s control. And then there is Israel, which is a de facto nuclear weapons-state and is seen as a belligerent power by its neighbours in the light of the grim crisis in Palestine. All the crises in the Middle East feed into one another and aggravate matters,” adds Ramana.

    At the other extreme of Asia, new security equations are emerging, partly driven by the North Korean nuclear programme.

    “Today, this is a key factor not only in shaping relations between the two Koreas, but the more complex and important relationship between North Korea, China, Japan and the U.S.”, holds Alka Acharya, of the Centre of East Asian Studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University here. Adds Acharya: “The U.S. has failed to resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis diplomatically. North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme will spur Japan and South Korea to add to their military capacities. There is a strong lobby in Japan which wants to rewrite the country’s constitution and even develop a nuclear weapons capability. Recently, Japan commissioned a study to determine how long it would take to develop a nuclear deterrent.”

    Japan has stockpiled hundreds of tonnes of plutonium, ostensibly for use in fast-breeder reactors. But with the fast reactor programme faltering, the possibility of diversion of the plutonium to military uses cannot be ruled out. Similarly, South Korea is likely to come under pressure to develop its own deterrent capability. “Driving these pursuits are not just nuclear calculations, but also geopolitical factors,” says Prof. Achin Vanaik who teaches international relations and global politics at Delhi University. “The U.S. plays a critical role here because of its aggressive stance and its double standards. It cannot convincingly demand that other states practise nuclear abstinence or restraint while it will keep it own nuclear weapons for ‘security’. Eventually, Washington’s nuclear double standards will encourage other countries to pursue nuclear weapons capabilities too.”

    In particular, the joint planned development of ballistic missile defence weapons by the U.S. and Japan is likely to be seen by China as a threat to its security and impel Beijing to add to its nuclear arsenal. Adds Vanaik: “The real danger is not confined to East Asia or West Asia alone. The overall worldwide impact of the double standards practised by the nuclear weapons-states, and especially offensive moves like the Proliferation Security Initiative proposed by the U.S. to intercept ‘suspect’ nuclear shipments on the high seas, will be to weaken the existing global nuclear order and encourage proliferation. The U.S.-India nuclear deal sets a horribly negative example of legitimising proliferation.” “A time could soon come when a weak state or non-state actor might consider attacking the U.S. mainland with mass-destruction weapons. The kind of hatreds that the U.S. is sowing in volatile parts of the world, including the Middle East, could well result in such a catastrophe,” Vanaik said.

    The year 2006 witnessed a considerable weakening of the norms of nuclear non-proliferation. Until 1974, the world had five declared nuclear weapon-states and one covert nuclear power (Israel). At the end of this year, it has nine nuclear weapons-states — nine too many.

    No less significant in the long run is the growing temptation among many states to develop civilian nuclear power. Earlier this month, a number of Arab leaders met in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia and decided to start a joint nuclear energy development programme.

    “Although this doesn’t spell an immediate crisis, nuclear power development can in the long run provide the technological infrastructure for building nuclear weapons too,” says Ramana. “The way out of the present nuclear predicament does not lie in non- or counter-proliferation through ever-stricter technology controls. The only solution is nuclear disarmament. The nuclear weapons-states must lead by example, by reducing and eventually dismantling these weapons of terror.”

     

    The writer is a Delhi-based researcher, peace and human rights activist, and former newspaper editor.

  • The Time of the Bomb

    When he was told on August 6, 1945, that America’s new atom bomb had destroyed its first target, the Japanese city of Hiroshima, U.S. President Harry Truman declared “This is the greatest thing in history.” Three days later, on August 9, another atom bomb destroyed the city of Nagasaki.

    The coming of the bomb brought pain and death. A 1946 survey by the Hiroshima City Council found that from a civilian population of about 320,000 on the day of the explosion: over 118,000 were killed, over 30,000 seriously injured, with almost 49,000 slightly injured, and nearly 4,000 people were missing. In December 1945, the Nagasaki City Commission determined that because of the bombing there, almost 74,000 people had been killed and 75,000 injured. The injured continued to die for months and years later, one of the reasons being radiation sickness. Pregnant women who were affected produced children who were severely physically and mentally retarded. The Japanese created a new word — hibakusha, — a survivor of the atom bomb.

    In the sixty years since the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we have been spared the horror of a nuclear weapon attack on another city. But nuclear weapons have grown in their destructive power; each can now be tens of times, or even hundreds of times, more powerful that those used to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The number of nuclear weapons has grown; there are now tens of thousands. Where there was one country with the bomb, there are now perhaps nine (US, Russia, UK, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea). There are many more political and military leaders who, like Truman in 1945, see the bomb as “the greatest thing in history”.

    From the very beginning, there has also been opposition to the bomb. The French writer and activist Albert Camus wrote on August 6, 1945: “technological civilization has just reached its final degree of savagery… Faced with the terrifying perspectives which are opening up to humanity, we can perceive even better that peace is the only battle worth waging.”

    The American sociologist and critic Lewis Mumford wrote: “We in America are living among madmen. Madmen govern our affairs in the name of order and security. The chief madmen claim the titles of general, admiral, senator, scientist, administrator, Secretary of State, even President.” There are many more of these madmen now. They all mumble the same nonsense about “threats,” and “national security,” and “nuclear deterrence,” and try to scare everyone around them.

    Protest and resistance against the madness of nuclear weapons has brought together some of the greatest figures of our times with millions of ordinary men and women around the world. Albert Einstein and the philosopher Bertrand Russell gave the reason most simply and clearly. They published a manifesto in 1955 in which they identified the stark challenge created by nuclear weapons: “Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war?”

    The only way forward for humanity, Einstein and Russell said, was that “We have to learn to think in a new way. We have to learn to ask ourselves, not what steps can be taken to give a military victory to whatever group we prefer, for there no longer are such steps; the question we have to ask ourselves is: what steps can be taken to prevent a military contest of which the issue must be disastrous to all parties?” Their 1955 manifesto led to the formation of the Pugwash movement of scientists. It was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its work against nuclear weapons in 1995. There are now Pugwash groups in 50 countries, including in India and Pakistan.

    Global protests eventually forced an end to nuclear weapons testing in the atmosphere and under water. These explosions had been spewing radioactivity in the air, where it was blown around the world, poisoning land, water, food and people. But the “madmen” were blinded by the power of the ultimate weapon. They kept building more and bigger bombs and threatening to use them. They have been stopped from using them only by the determined efforts of peace movements and public pressure.

    The bomb and the madmen came to South Asia too. India tested a bomb in 1974 and Pakistan set about trying to make one. There was protest too. In 1985, a small group of people in Islamabad organised an event for Hiroshima Day, August 6, at the Rawalpindi Press Club. There was a slide show and talk about nuclear weapons and their terrible effects, with pictures of the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    Every picture brought gasps of horror and revulsion from the packed audience. The posters and placards and banners on the walls carried messages about the need to end war, to reduce military spending and increase spending on education and health, and to make peace between India and Pakistan. A small, short-lived peace group was born, the Movement for Nuclear Disarmament.

    That was twenty years ago. The Cold War is long over, the Soviet Union long gone, but there has been little relief. The United States still has five thousand weapons deployed, 2000 of which are ready to use within 15 minutes, and there are another five thousand in reserve. Russia has over 7000 weapons deployed and 9000 in reserve.

    The UK, France, and China are estimated each to have several hundred warheads, Israel may have almost as many, and India and Pakistan have a hundred or fewer. North Korea may have a handful. And, leaders are still mad; they send armies to attack and occupy other countries, and kill and maim tens of thousands. In America, they plan for newer and more useable nuclear weapons.

    In the meantime, India and Pakistan have also tested their nuclear weapons — which are about as powerful as the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They have threatened to use their weapons in every crisis since then. They are making more weapons and missiles as fast as they can. A nuclear war between Pakistan and India, in which they each used only five of their nuclear weapons, would likely kill about three million people and severely injure another one and a half million. What more proof is needed that we are ruled by madmen?

    If South Asia is to survive its own nuclear age, we shall need to have strong peace movements in both Pakistan and India. A beginning has been made. The Pakistan Peace Coalition was founded in 1999; it is a national network of groups working for peace and justice. In 2000, Indian activists established the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace. These movements will need all the help and support they can get to keep the generals and Prime Ministers in both countries in check. The leaders in both countries must be taught, over and over again, that the people will not allow a nuclear war to be fought. There should never be a word in any other language for hibakusha.

    Zia Mian, peace activist, is a physicist at Princeton University.

    A.H. Nayyar is a physicist, co-convener of Pugwash Pakistan, and president of the Pakistan Peace Coalition.

    Originally published by The News International

  • The Real Problem on the Indian Sub-continent

    In May 1998, India stunned the world when it successfully conducted nuclear tests in Pokhran, a desert site in the western state of Rajasthan. The tests were reciprocated by its traditional rival, Pakistan , dramatically raising the stakes in the stand-off over Kashmir , one of the world’s longest-running feuds.

    Subsequently, in mid-1999, India fought a brief but bitter conflict with Pakistani-backed forces that had infiltrated Indian-controlled territory in the Kargil area close to the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir. The confrontation between the two countries, just over a year after the nuclear tests, confirmed that the nuclear status didn’t remove the danger of conflict between India and Pakistan; rather, it has increased the stakes if war is to ever occur. Both countries were in an advanced state of nuclear readiness during the entire period of the Kargil conflict. Never before can I remember the tensions within both countries being so high.

    Yet, in a statement in 2001, President Abdul Kalaam of India , continuing to promote and defend the further development of nuclear weapons, asked, “When was the last war with Pakistan? That both sides are nuclear capable has helped not engage in a big war.” 1 However, Kalaam blatantly ignored the fact that tensions escalated during the Kargil conflict due to the nuclearization of the sub-continent. With blinkers on, both President Musharraf of Pakistan and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India are pressing on to develop more advanced nuclear arsenals. Despite limited resources, in a region where there is chronic social and economic problems with hunger and disease rampant in every corner of each country, India and Pakistan continue to reiterate their commitments to develop and deploy nuclear weapons as part of their national security programs.

    But what is needed, right now more than ever, is a realistic consideration of the problems that lie in the internal sphere of each country. Socio-economic, socio-religious, sectarian, and caste conflict in several parts of the two countries are epidemic. The chaos in Karachi including several street riots, ethno-nationalist insurgencies in Assam and Nagaland in Northeast India continue to claim over a hundred lives every year and the recent Hindu-Muslim riots that killed over a thousand innocent people in the western state of Gujarat in India all point to the increasing threats within each country’s domestic sphere. Nuclear weapons are not the answer to these social problems. Furthermore, more than four million in both India and Pakistan live in abject poverty – that is more than half of the combined population of both countries. Mass unemployment and illiteracy are on the rise. The internal debt figures in India alone have more than tripled. There is a lack of basic needs such as clean drinking water and sanitation facilities. Infrastructure and the quality of education continue to rapidly diminish. There are rising number of suicides by farmers in the southern Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. Unbridled drug and arms trafficking in Pakistan are becoming more common and widespread. Spending inadequate financial resources on nuclear weapons is not the way out of these pressing socio-economic problems.

    Additionally, incidents of terrorism within both countries have also increased to include suicide attacks on not only the Indian military and para-military but also on their families. Recent bomb blasts in commercial areas in Karachi are proof that Pakistan isn’t immune from terrorism, well within its own borders, either. Nuclear weapons cannot offer a solution to these flagrant acts of terror. Moreover, there is an increasing criminalization and corruption of politics in India and Pakistan. The degradation of politics is starting to question the credibility of both countries. Nuclear weapons provide no real answer to this range of domestic issues, yet this lesson remains unlearned.

    What is needed from both countries right now is a commitment to the welfare of their populations and a firm plan for decreasing poverty, eradicating disease and death from hunger and starvation. Spending limited resources – financial or otherwise on developing a more complete range of nuclear weapons is not going to help the people of India, Pakistan or, for that matter, the people of Kashmir. Providing basic needs such as drinking water, safe infrastructure and hygienic sanitation facilities is what is urgently required. Increasing the quality of education, decreasing the level of illiteracy and paving the way for increasing youth employment are the needs of the hour. Both India and Pakistan have traditionally focused on threats on their borders. It is now time for each country to look inward and form a strong resolve to solve these deep rooted issues within each society.

    Archana Bharath an is a senior at the University of Michigan and was a Lena Chang Intern at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in Summer 2004.

  • Sliding into Nuclear Abyss

    The more the rulers of countries like Pakistan and India emulate, collaborate with, or strain to demonstrate their loyalty to, hegemonic powers like the United States, the more they caricature themselves-and mock at their own national interest. That is what happened during the exchange of hostilities between Pakistani and US troops in Southern Waziristan when Washington asserted its “right” of “hot pursuit” in the “war against terrorism” and went on to bomb a madrassa.

    The US has once again shown just how disdainfully it treats its allies. This is not the first time it has done this, least of all to a state outside its core-alliance, NATO. America routinely treats NATO members much like an emperor treats his vassals. Within an alliance which is asymmetrical and demands unquestioning obedience from the top, the minor allies are at best “consulted”, or simply told what to do.

    For instance, there has never been a “dual trigger” on NATO’s weapons, one operated by the host member-state, and the other by the US. Operationally, there has always been a single, unified, line of command. Therefore, it’s not for nothing that the UK, America’s most loyal ally, has been called its “Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier”. The latest report of a Pakistan-US deal on “hot pursuit”, albeit to be conducted “quietly”, underscores the same asymmetry.

    India may soon experience Pakistan’s sense of hurt and humiliation thanks to its two latest acts: signing away some of its sovereign rights in Washington’s favour, and doctrinally emulating the US. On December 26, India signed a “bilateral” treaty with the US which gives impunity to their citizens who may be wanted by multilateral agencies or third countries for human rights offences including genocide or crimes against humanity. By signing it, India has joined the ranks of states like Gambia, Tajikistan, East Timor and Israel.

    These bilateral pacts are worse than Status of Forces Agreements. They are meant to sabotage the worthy global effort to bring into force the International Criminal Court, to try crimes against humanity. As of now, 139 states have signed the ICC’s Rome Statute; 87 have ratified it. Notable exceptions are the US, China, India and Pakistan. The US was originally a signatory, but “unsigned” the Statute under Bush.

    That isn’t all. America blackmailed the UN into delaying the functioning of the ICC and is asking a host of states to bypass the Court altogether. That means that, say, if Henry Kissinger were to be hauled up for war crimes while on a visit to India, New Delhi would refuse to surrender him. This will work against the interests of Indian (and American) citizens-as the Bhopal case shows.

    The second example, of imitation, is worse. On January 4, India’s Cabinet Committee on Security offered a general commitment to no-first-use (NFU) of nuclear weapons. But closely following the December 2002 US “National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction”, it said India would use nuclear weapons in response to “a major attack against India or Indian forces anywhere” made with “biological or chemical weapons” too. This means killing lakhs of non-combatant citizens in response to chemical or biological weapons which kill on a smaller scale ie, a few hundred soldiers.

    This further dents India’s claim to nuclear “restraint” and sobriety-even assuming that the embrace of horror weapons, and search for “security” based on them, is compatible with “restraint”. This is part of New Delhi’s further plan to “operationalise” its “nuclear deterrent” by setting up a Nuclear Command Authority.

    The NCA announcement validates this Column’s assessment that India and Pakistan are “hurtling towards inducting nuclear weapons into their armed forces” and getting into a form of rivalry from which they will find it hard to extricate themselves. The establishment of India’s NCA comes almost three years after Pakistan set up its own command. The principal difference between the two NCAs pertains to two items.

    First, in India, authorisation for a nuclear strike is solely vested with the civilian leadership, the Political Council, chaired by the Prime Minister. The Executive Council, which is expected to have military personnel and bureaucrats on it, will have a limited role: eg, advise on security threats, etc.

    In Pakistan, the military is unlikely to easily give up its hitherto-unquestioned control over nuclear weapons and policy. In February 2000, Islamabad announced that the NCA would be chaired by the Head of Government. Then, the head was Chief Executive Musharraf. Today, he is Prime Minister Jamali. But going by the NCA meeting last Monday, which Jamali “attended”, declaring Pakistan’s nuclear weapons to be in “good hands”, he seems loath to assert his authority over the NCA.

    Exclusive control over nuclear weapons by the military poses a problem: no military has the popular mandate to take a life-and-death security decision, although civilian control doesn’t guarantee “responsible” decision-making-witness Hiroshima-Nagasaki.The second difference is doctrinal. Pakistan has a nuclear first-strike policy. India doesn’t, but is under pressure to abandon NFU. According to one report, the last National Security Advisory Board-whose first avatar in 1999 produced the “Draft Nuclear Doctrine”-had recommended that New Delhi rescind NFU. In practice, it is unclear, given the lack of “strategic distance” between India and Pakistan, if NFU will mean much once hostilities break out. The temptation to retaliate the moment a strike is considered imminent will be high. Differences notwithstanding, both India and Pakistan face three similar problems in operationalising their “deterrents”; neither says how it proposes to resolve them. First, there is the question of survivability of nuclear “assets”, and, very important, command structures. This problem is acute in a situation of “decapitation” of military and political leaderships.

    Second, and related to this, is succession within the command authority and the ability of each state to install uninterruptible communications channels between different levels of succession. The general technological backwardness and accident- or disaster-proneness of both societies will complicate matters here.

    Third, India and Pakistan will inevitably have to move towards demonstrating their capacity to inflict “unacceptable damage” upon each other. This means they must be far more transparent in projecting their capabilities: through deployment and high-alert readiness to pull the trigger. This will impel both to escalate from a state of “existential deterrence” to actual threats, backed by battle-readiness.

    Given the secrecy prevalent in the subcontinent’s military establishments, the absence of adequate testing of many sub-systems, and lack of symmetrical perceptions of each other’s specific capacities, this could make for terrible strategic miscalculation and panic reaction, greatly raising the chances of a pre-emptive or launch-on-warning response.

    The only way to contain these risks is to undertake Nuclear Risk-Reduction Measures, discussed in this Column (July 4). But that presumes a high degree of transparency and the will to negotiate. That seems infeasible in today’s situation, marked by the lowest point in bilateral relations-lower even than in 1971.

    This makes a Nuclear Armageddon likelier than before-unless India and Pakistan urgently pull back from the brink. Kargil happened barely a year after they overtly crossed the nuclear threshold. With their NCAs and their ramshackle nuclear deterrents, the present situation may be infinitely worse-to the collective peril of 1.3 billion South Asians.

  • Stopping a Nuclear War in South Asia

    Stopping a Nuclear War in South Asia

    Two nuclear-armed countries stand on the brink of war and the world seems paralyzed as it watches events unfolding in what seems like slow motion. It is a war that could easily escalate into a nuclear holocaust taking millions or tens of millions of lives, and virtually nothing is being done to end the standoff. The US and the UK have advised their citizens to leave the region and the UN is pulling out the families of UN workers in the region, but the UN Security Council has not yet even put the matter on its agenda let alone put forward any constructive solution.

    The US has sent its Secretary of Defense to the region, but has lifted sanctions on the sale of military equipment to both countries that it imposed after they conducted nuclear tests in 1998. At the same time, the US continues to demonstrate its own reliance on nuclear weaponry, announcing on June 1st that it will resume production of plutonium “pits” used to trigger nuclear warheads.

    Here is what Indian novelist Arundhati Roy has to say about the situation:

    “Terrorists have the power to trigger nuclear war. Non-violence is treated with contempt. Displacement, dispossession, starvation, poverty, disease, these are all just funny comic strip items now. Meanwhile, emissaries of the coalition against terror come and go preaching restraint. Tony Blair arrives to preach peace and on the side, to sell weapons to both India and Pakistan. The last question every visiting journalist asks me: ‘Are you writing another book?’

    “That question mocks me. Another book? Right now when it looks as though all the music, the art, the architecture, the literature, the whole of human civilization means nothing to the monsters who run the world. What kind of book should I write? For now, just for now, for just a while pointlessness is my biggest enemy. That’s what nuclear bombs do, whether they’re used or not. They violate everything that is humane, they alter the meaning of life.

    “Why do we tolerate them? Why do we tolerate the men who use nuclear weapons to blackmail the entire human race?”

    Arundhati Roy is absolutely right. It is because we tolerate these men and their dangerous, inhumane and genocidal policies whether they be in the US, Russia, UK, France, China, Israel, India or Pakistan — that nuclear war is possible and increasingly likely.

    But what should we do now, while these men remain in control of the future of the fate of the people of India, Pakistan and the rest of the world? Here are a few modest suggestions:

    Call for the UN Security Council to take charge of the situation as a matter of highest priority, require Indian and Pakistani forces to stand down their nuclear forces, move back from their front line positions, interpose UN Peacekeeping forces between them and require mediated talks between the leaders of the two countries.

    Call for the permanent members of the UN Security Council (US, Russia, UK, France and China) to immediately cancel the sale and delivery of all military equipment to both India and Pakistan.

    To deal with the continuing dangers of nuclear war, so easy to visualize in the India-Pakistan standoff, we should also call for all nuclear weapons states to immediately commence good faith negotiations for the elimination of all nuclear weapons as required by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the International Court of Justice.

    Forty years ago, the world stood by helplessly as the US and former Soviet Union almost stumbled into nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. We obviously failed to learn the lesson then that nuclear weapons are too dangerous to be left in the hands of any military force. Now we run the risk that acts of terrorists in the Kashmir conflict could trigger a war in South Asia that could quickly escalate to nuclear war. Similar conditions exist in the Middle East.

    The potential for war in South Asia must be defused now before it erupts into large-scale conflict that could go nuclear. But it is not enough to only defuse the present crisis. The world must also become deadly serious about putting away forever these dangerous instruments of annihilation and genocide, before these instruments become seriously and massively deadly in wars that no one can truly desire or in the hands of terrorists.
    *David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility (INES) and INES Against Proliferation (INESAP) Statement on Nuclear Dangers

    India and Pakistan stand on the brink of war over Kashmir with serious dangers of nuclear war between the two countries.

    We call upon the international community, through the United Nations Security Council to immediately intervene diplomatically to prevent war and with peace keeping forces, if necessary, to ensure that neither country uses nuclear weapons under any circumstance.

    In this context we express our strong dissatisfaction with the United States Nuclear Posture Review and with the United States withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, and the recently signed nuclear arms treaty between the United States and Russia. This treaty, reflecting the United States Nuclear Posture Review, does far too little too slowly and continues to set the example to the world that nuclear weapons are useful even for the strongest nations.

    We urge the United States and Russia to return to the negotiation table to agree to deeper cuts, the irreversible destruction of dismantled warheads, and the immediate de-alerting of their nuclear arsenals.

    We further urge that all five declared nuclear weapon states begin multilateral negotiations to fulfill their obligation for an “unequivocal undertaking” to achieve the total elimination of nuclear weapons in the world, including those of India, Pakistan and Israel. The leadership of the United States and Russia, as well as that of the United Kingdom, France and China, is essential to achieve these ends and to present nuclear weapons from being used again.

  • India and Pakistan: A Crisis That Can Not Be Ignored

    India and Pakistan are moving dangerously toward war. On 22 May, Indian Prime Minister Atal Vajpayee told troops “to be ready for sacrifice…It’s time to fight a decisive battle.” The Pakistani government responded by saying they would use “full force” if India is to strike. The greatest concern not only to the region, but to the world is whether or not either country will resort to using nuclear weapons in order to “win” a war.

    Tensions have been mounting between South Asian nuclear rivals India and Pakistan, particularly since the 13 December terrorist attacks on the Indian Parliament. On 12 January, Pakistani President General Musharraf made a landmark speech condemning terrorism, promising internal reform and calling for a peaceful resolution with India over the disputed Kashmir region–the issue at the center of the standoff between the two nations. However, in India’s view, Musharraf has done substantively little to stop Islamic militants and Indian officials have charged Musharraf with continuing to support them.

    Statements from India and Pakistan in the past few months have indicated that both countries are willing to fight a nuclear war, should one side attack the other with a nuclear weapon. Pakistan has gone so far as to state that it is prepared to counter any attack from India. Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf stated on 6 January, “If any war is thrust on Pakistan, Pakistan’s armed forces and the 140 million people of Pakistan are fully prepared to face all consequences with all their might.” On 30 December 2001, Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes stated, “We could take a strike, survive and then hit back. Pakistan would be finished.”

    In a move viewed by Pakistan as a provocative gesture in the region, India conducted a test of a new version of its nuclear-capable medium-range Agni missile on 25 January. After India test-fired the Agni missile, General Musharraf made an offer to work with India for the de-nuclearization of South Asia. India rejected the proposal saying that without global disarmament, the denuclearization of South Asia is meaningless.

    Although the actual numbers of nuclear weapons in each arsenal are unknown, it is estimated that India has some 65 nuclear weapons and Pakistan has some 24-48 nuclear weapons. There are serious concerns about the military and intelligence infrastructures of both countries. Admiral L. Ramdas, retired Chief of the Indian Navy, stated earlier this year, “India and Pakistan lack effective command, control, communication and intelligence systems. When these infrastructures are not there, it makes the whole system more sensitive, accident-prone, and therefore dangerous. Global zero alert would be a major step towards providing a de facto security guarantee.”

    Both India and Pakistan must show restraint and resolve the current crisis before the conflict escalates any further, making the use of nuclear weapons in a war between the two countries even more likely. Neither country will win a war in which nuclear weapons are used. The situation in India and Pakistan evidences that the use, let alone the existence, of nuclear weapons is completely irrational because they do the exactly the opposite of what they purport to do. Nuclear weapons do not provide security. Neither India, nor Pakistan, nor anyone in this world is more secure because of the existence of nuclear weapons. In fact, at this moment India, Pakistan and indeed the whole world sit on the precipice of nuclear annihilation. It is time for global leadership, particularly from the nuclear weapons states, to rid the planet of these completely irrational weapons.

    More Resources on Nuclear South Asia

    Statements from Admiral L. Ramdas are available online at http://www.ieer.org/latest/ramdas2.html.

    “Pakistan’s Nuclear Forces 2001” from the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is now available in the January/February 2002 of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists at http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/nukenotes/jf02nukenote.html

    “India’s Nuclear Forces 2001” from the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is now available in the January/February 2002 of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists at http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/nukenotes/ma02nukenote.html

  • Nuclear Safety and Theft: Skeletons in Pakistan’s Cupboard

    Forebodings about the lack of safety and theft of weapons of mass destruction in the world’s newest nuclear state, Pakistan, have been incrementally rising since the September 11th terrorist attacks on America, generating nightmarish scenarios of mushroom clouds enveloping volatile and heavily populated South Asia and of satanic non-state actors gaining access to implements of annihilation for killing and crippling thousands of humans with devastating efficiency. The actions, assurances and explanations General Pervez Musharraf’s government has tendered to assuage the world’s anxieties in this regard have fallen short of certifiable guarantees. Not a day passes without new reports and analyses warning that the worst imagined apocalyptic fears of nuclear terrorism could materialize and that Albert Einstein’s “fourth world war fought with sticks and stones” may not be a far-fetched oracle after all.

    Safety of Pakistan’s nuclear explosives, fissile material and installations haunts many analysts and practitioners due to the widespread domestic unpopularity and unrest created by the military regime’s decision to support the war against terrorism in Afghanistan. The most common alarm among many US officials pertains to the possibility that the secrecy of location and storage of Pakistan’s so-called “strategic assets” could be compromised if there was an internal coup by Taliban sympathizers, ‘rogue elements’ of the military and the intelligence services, in a country whose history is replete with army overthrows of existing set-ups. This is a valid concern because of the emotional attachment religious fundamentalists of Pakistan entertain towards possession and deployment of the only ‘Islamic Bomb’ on earth. In response, Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi asserted on September 23rd that Pakistan had placed “multi-layered custodial controls with very clear command structure” on its nuclear program and that panic whistles were being “overblown”. A good month and a half later, however, came revelations in the Washington Post that Musharraf ordered an emergency redeployment of the country’s nuclear arsenal, missiles and aircraft to at least six secret new locations to prevent them from falling into irresponsible hands.

    In early October, Pakistan’s chief spy General Mahmoud Ahmed was sacked owing to alleged links with Mohammed Atta, mastermind of the September 11th attacks, and the very same pro-Taliban elements that were aiming to capture the nuclear arsenal. Once again, the act was officially described as a “routine reshuffle” that had nothing to do with the impending campaign in Afghanistan or with nuclear safety. Since there is complete porosity and camaraderie of service between the army and ISI in Pakistan unlike other countries where intelligence and military are often at loggerheads, and since the ISI chief knows the ins and outs of nuclear installations, one is left to wonder how much of the nuclear factor weighed in axing Ahmed and how many more Ahmeds are presently occupying ISI desks with knowledge of nuclear secrets.

    Theft or clandestine transfer of Pakistani nuclear weapons to terrorist outfits came one step nearer to reality when Osama bin Laden recently admitted to journalist Hamid Mir that Al Qaeda had acquired the capability as a ‘deterrent’ and when the IAEA conceded subsequently in the New York Times that with more than 400 cases of recorded fissile material smuggling in the last decade, renegade groups could assemble a ‘dirty bomb.’ Islamabad reflexively denied any leakage of nuclear raw material from its reservoir and the world began turning pages of the familiar script of ‘loose nukes’ in the former Soviet Union making their way into the sinister embrace of jihad. But mysteriously enough on October 23rd, Pakistani authorities arrested three top nuclear scientists with open Al Qaeda sympathies for ‘enquiry’ and kept releasing and re-arresting them until November 22nd when they were totally exonerated from all charges.

    There was a catch in this hush-hush enquiry too. Islamabad admitted that two of them had visited Afghanistan regularly and “met Bin Laden at least twice during visits to Kandahar in connection with the construction of a flour mill.” What professional scientists of atomic fission and ace terrorist of the world were doing in a flour mill is anyone’s guess, but the Musharraf government is now issuing predictable ‘clarifications’ that the physicists’ visits did not lead to any transfer of dual-use technology or material. Why did it take so agonizingly long and so many sessions of interrogation for this clean chit? It is a matter worth pondering over and asking Pervez Musharraf.

    Pakistan’s unconvincing record and demeanor on the twin aspects of nuclear safety and theft, coupled with the never-to-be discounted probability of the downfall of Musharraf, have prompted the Bush administration to maintain an “active review” of its nuclear program. The country’s leading daily, Dawn, quoted on October 6th an official in Washington saying, “We’re studying it. We’ve not made any particular proposal. We haven’t seen any need to make any proposal at this time.” In light of latest developments like Mullah Omar’s threat of unleashing a “big plan to destroy America”, Bin Laden’s chilling interview and the uncovering of covert lives of top Pakistani nuclear scientists, it may not be too early for the ‘proposal’ to be made by Washington.

    Ideally, it should be a swift pre-emptive seizure of Pakistan’s tenuously guarded “strategic assets” and minimally, it should comprise a thoroughly international and impartial investigation of all the hanky-panky happenings listed above as well as verification of the reliability of that country’s C-3 (command, control and communication) triad. The future of humanity hangs by slender threads of cast-iron nuclear safety and policing. When nations owning arsenals eschew responsibility for maintenance, accidents and fall-outs, it becomes the moral and legal right of the international community to un-proliferate them.
    *Sriram Chaulia studied History at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, and took a Second BA in Modern History at University College, Oxford. He researched the BJP’s foreign policy at the London School of Economics and is currently analyzing the impact of conflict on Afghan refugees at the Maxwell School of Citizenship, Syracuse, NY.

  • U.S. Needs a Contigency Plan For Pakistan’s Nuclear Arsenal

    There is growing concern, and evidence for concern, that the instability in Afghanistan could quickly spread to neighboring Pakistan and undermine the security of that country’s nuclear arsenal. Of all of the negative consequences this turn of events might bring, none would be more dangerous and catastrophic than nuclear weapons falling into the hands of the Taliban or Al Qaeda.

    Until Sept. 11, the Pakistani regime and the Taliban were very close, and there have been reports out of Pakistan that military officers assisted the Taliban in preparing for U.S. airstrikes—counter to direct orders from Pakistan’s leader, Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Top military officers, including the head of Pakistan’s intelligence services, recently have been sacked, reportedly for their pro-Taliban views.

    Violence in the streets, while not widespread beyond the border area with Afghanistan, speaks to the tensions inside Pakistan. A Newsweek poll this week found that 83% of Pakistanis polled sympathized with the Taliban in the current conflict. It is possible, therefore, that Pakistani forces assigned to protect Pakistan’s nuclear forces could be compromised.

    This is surely the nightmare scenario, and immediate steps should be taken to prevent such a turn of events from coming to pass.

    Pakistan possesses enough nuclear material for close to 40 nuclear weapons, if not more. The U.S., however, knows very little about how this material is stored, what security measures are applied to its protection, how personnel with access to nuclear weapons and materials are screened and where the material is located.

    Pakistan has a responsibility to ensure that its assets are adequately protected and to convince other countries that this responsibility is taken seriously. Other countries and organizations have a responsibility to help Pakistan keep these materials secure, without in any way assisting that country in modernizing or deploying its nuclear capability.

    The International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, a U.N.-affiliated organization, has decades of experience in developing and verifying security measures associated with nuclear weapons-usable materials. The agency routinely assists countries in ensuring that their peaceful nuclear programs are adequately protected. Despite its lack of membership in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Pakistan could receive advice and assistance from the IAEA.

    In addition, the U.S. and other IAEA members have extensive experience—publicly available—on how to protect nuclear materials and on how to ensure that weapons-usable uranium or plutonium cannot be diverted without being detected. States could make equipment available to Pakistan that did not directly assist in its development or control of nuclear weapons, such as alarm systems and polygraph equipment for personnel screening. In addition, corporations and nongovernmental organizations with significant expertise in nuclear matters could provide Pakistan with assistance on security.

    Pakistan has resisted any outside attempts to help secure its nuclear materials. There is the risk that receiving assistance for its nuclear program from outside powers might further destabilize the current situation. Yet Pakistan has already made its strategic decision to throw in with the West against terrorism. Taking this additional step, while difficult, may be part of the price it pays to reestablish itself as a responsible global partner.

    If Pakistan does not agree to these types of programs, the U.S. should begin to work immediately on contingency plans should the Islamabad regime lose control over its nuclear arsenal. These plans should include the ability to rapidly deploy forces to Pakistan to find and regain control of any lost nuclear materials and, only as a last option in a crisis, remove them from Pakistan to a secure location.

    These steps might seem extreme. Yet when faced with the real possibility of losing control of nuclear weapons to the types of organizations capable of the destruction seen Sept. 11, they could be considered realistic and even prudent. The consequences of not being prepared to act are too great for us to imagine, even with our new ability to imagine the horrible.

    *Jon B. Wolfsthal is an associate in the Carnegie Endowment’s nonproliferation program and a former nonproliferation policy advisor to the U.S. Department of Energy.