Bomb's Interests vs People's interest's in South Asia
See Report from a Pakistan Peace coalition seminar
Posted on: South Asians Against Nukes Dispatch, May 13, 2008
Posted on: South Asians Against Nukes Dispatch, May 13, 2008
Food or Weapons ? What's in people's interest?
Roti [Bread] or killing machines?
by Dr Farrukh Saleem
[Published in: The News, May 04, 2008]
Imagine; one out of every two Pakistanis is short on food. Imagine; one out of every two Pakistanis is food-insecure. Imagine; one out of every two Pakistanis is managing to subsist on less than 2,350 calories per day. In March 2007, there were 60 million Pakistanis short on food. That number now stands at 77 million; a 28 percent increase in just one year.
According to the World Food Programme (WFP), over the past year, "food prices in Pakistan have risen at least 35 percent, whereas the minimum wage has risen by just 18 percent, leading to a nearly 50 percent decline in the purchasing power of Pakistan's poor…" On March 27, the World Bank warned that "Pakistan must take immediate action to prevent its economy from collapse" and that "painful adjustments" would be needed to prevent a crisis.
All right, one out of every two Pakistanis is going hungry and what do we do. We go out and buy killing machines. Imagine, over the past five years our decision-makers have bought killing machines worth $4.55 billion from the US alone.
All right, Pakistan is now officially more water-stressed than is Ethiopia.
What have we done about it? Well, we have bought 500 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles, 1,450 two-thousand-pound bombs, 500 JDAM bomb tail kits and 1,600 Enhanced Paveway laser-guided bomb kits. The bill: $667 million entirely paid with Pakistani national funds.
All right, UNICEF says that 200,000 Pakistani children die annually because of unsafe drinking water--dysentery, diarrhoea, typhoid, and gastroenteritis. What do we do? We go out and buy 60 midlife update kits for F-16A/B combat aircraft. Total value: $891 million (of which $108 million was paid by the US under its Foreign Military Financing).
All right, we haven't built a major dam in 27 years but we have paid out a colossal $1.43 billion for 18 new F-16C/D Block 50/52 combat aircraft with an option to buy 18 more. Not just that, we have already transferred $298 million to the US treasury for a hundred Harpoon anti-ship missiles (of which 70 have been delivered) and $95 million for 500 Sidewinder air-to-air missiles (of which 300 have been delivered).
What is the US up to? They have provided us $1.6 billion in Foreign Military Financing when they know very well that we actually need food for our undernourished citizenry and clean drinking water for our children.
According to the Pakistan Water Gateway, within the next 15 years at least "one out of every three Pakistanis will face critical shortages of water threatening their very survival." And, how are we preparing for that eventuality? Well, we have four Agosta 90B and three Agosta 70 class submarines. To be certain, an Agosta 90B has a crew of 36 plus five officers, so in effect 164 of our brother Pakistanis will be safe.
According to Gallup Pakistan, "Sixty-six percent of a national sample of respondents from the rural and urban areas of all four provinces say they have lately faced difficulties in obtaining atta (flour) for their daily food consumption." What do we do? We go out and buy six AN/TPS-77 surveillance radars for a cool $100 million.
Roti or killing machines? The story doesn't end at $4.55 billion going into the U.S. treasury. Now we are looking at buying Class 214 submarines from Germany's Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft, or is it France's Direction des Constructions Navales Services. Our new big-ticket idea will cost us Euro1.2 billion.
Roti or killing machines? Imagine; the Islamic Republic routinely submerges into absolute darkness of the Dark Ages while our Muslim leaders contemplate buying ultramodern Class 214 submarines featuring air-independent propulsion using polymer electrolyte module hydrogen fuel cells. Imagine; no roti, no pani, no bijli [No bread, No Water]--and no justice. But, proud to be the 11th largest arms importer on the face of the planet.
by Dr Farrukh Saleem
[Published in: The News, May 04, 2008]
Imagine; one out of every two Pakistanis is short on food. Imagine; one out of every two Pakistanis is food-insecure. Imagine; one out of every two Pakistanis is managing to subsist on less than 2,350 calories per day. In March 2007, there were 60 million Pakistanis short on food. That number now stands at 77 million; a 28 percent increase in just one year.
According to the World Food Programme (WFP), over the past year, "food prices in Pakistan have risen at least 35 percent, whereas the minimum wage has risen by just 18 percent, leading to a nearly 50 percent decline in the purchasing power of Pakistan's poor…" On March 27, the World Bank warned that "Pakistan must take immediate action to prevent its economy from collapse" and that "painful adjustments" would be needed to prevent a crisis.
All right, one out of every two Pakistanis is going hungry and what do we do. We go out and buy killing machines. Imagine, over the past five years our decision-makers have bought killing machines worth $4.55 billion from the US alone.
All right, Pakistan is now officially more water-stressed than is Ethiopia.
What have we done about it? Well, we have bought 500 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles, 1,450 two-thousand-pound bombs, 500 JDAM bomb tail kits and 1,600 Enhanced Paveway laser-guided bomb kits. The bill: $667 million entirely paid with Pakistani national funds.
All right, UNICEF says that 200,000 Pakistani children die annually because of unsafe drinking water--dysentery, diarrhoea, typhoid, and gastroenteritis. What do we do? We go out and buy 60 midlife update kits for F-16A/B combat aircraft. Total value: $891 million (of which $108 million was paid by the US under its Foreign Military Financing).
All right, we haven't built a major dam in 27 years but we have paid out a colossal $1.43 billion for 18 new F-16C/D Block 50/52 combat aircraft with an option to buy 18 more. Not just that, we have already transferred $298 million to the US treasury for a hundred Harpoon anti-ship missiles (of which 70 have been delivered) and $95 million for 500 Sidewinder air-to-air missiles (of which 300 have been delivered).
What is the US up to? They have provided us $1.6 billion in Foreign Military Financing when they know very well that we actually need food for our undernourished citizenry and clean drinking water for our children.
According to the Pakistan Water Gateway, within the next 15 years at least "one out of every three Pakistanis will face critical shortages of water threatening their very survival." And, how are we preparing for that eventuality? Well, we have four Agosta 90B and three Agosta 70 class submarines. To be certain, an Agosta 90B has a crew of 36 plus five officers, so in effect 164 of our brother Pakistanis will be safe.
According to Gallup Pakistan, "Sixty-six percent of a national sample of respondents from the rural and urban areas of all four provinces say they have lately faced difficulties in obtaining atta (flour) for their daily food consumption." What do we do? We go out and buy six AN/TPS-77 surveillance radars for a cool $100 million.
Roti or killing machines? The story doesn't end at $4.55 billion going into the U.S. treasury. Now we are looking at buying Class 214 submarines from Germany's Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft, or is it France's Direction des Constructions Navales Services. Our new big-ticket idea will cost us Euro1.2 billion.
Roti or killing machines? Imagine; the Islamic Republic routinely submerges into absolute darkness of the Dark Ages while our Muslim leaders contemplate buying ultramodern Class 214 submarines featuring air-independent propulsion using polymer electrolyte module hydrogen fuel cells. Imagine; no roti, no pani, no bijli [No bread, No Water]--and no justice. But, proud to be the 11th largest arms importer on the face of the planet.
Tags: DefenceSpending, Pakistan, Food Crisis
India-Pakistan: 3 minutes to nuclear disaster, anybody listening ?
South Asians Against Nukes Mailing List
December 26, 2007
URL: groups.yahoo.com/group/SAAN_/message/1091
o o o o
TERROR BY CLERICAL ERROR
by Jawed Naqvi
(in Dawn, December 20, 2007)
INDIA’s top missile scientist unveiled plans last week to build a ballistic missile defence by 2010 that should effectively tackle the threat from Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. Dr V.K. Saraswat was also quoted as saying that the proximity of Pakistan’s assets would give India just three to four minutes to respond to a perceived attack.
The missile defence system now on the anvil would protect ‘high-value’ assets and major cities like Delhi and Mumbai. Informed people would consider the plan delusional, and therefore dangerous.
Russia and the United States, with far greater lead-time to respond to each other’s nuclear threat and with a highly refined command and control mechanism, still do not have a completely trustworthy system in place.
The official doomsday scenario written by the US government during the Cold War - called The Emergency Plan Book - would make countries like India and Pakistan look not just ill-prepared to consider the use of nuclear weapons but also ill-advised to flaunt them. For all its sophistication and years of preparedness for nuclear attack on its territory, the United States looked pretty vulnerable as recently as Sept 11, 2001. How the administration went round like a headless chicken in the aftermath is nicely recorded in The Doomsday Scenario, a 2002 book based mostly on the Emergency Plan, which author L. Douglas Keeney wangled from a library during a brief period when it
was declassified.
During the Cold War, more than $45bn was spent to protect both senior US government officials and the general public in the event of a nuclear attack. This funding supported everything from the production and distribution of films and pamphlets instructing citizens how to mitigate the effects of a nuclear blast and fallout to the secret construction of massive underground facilities to allow the government to continue to operate during and after a nuclear war.
The extensive and extremely expensive plans to build massive blast and fallout shelters for the populace were systematically rejected by US presidents on the grounds that they did not want to create a national panic. The Congress balked at the price tag and the military leaders argued that it was more sensible and cost-effective to invest in offensive weapons to deter war and, if need be, wage war. One fallout of the Sept 11 attacks was that for the first time the United States activated its Continuity of Government plans (COG), some of which have been lampooned in Michael Moore’s film Fahrenheit 9/11. But the real emergency envisioned in The Doomsday Scenario, cited by Keeney, pertained to “kiloton and megaton-sized bombs” that would “pummel our industrial, transportation, communication, and financial centres in a sustained downpouring of warheads”. The national landscape, according to the American response plans, “would be blurred with smoke and haze and littered with death and destruction and contamination, with only the most rudimentary fragments of community and government surviving”.
Said the Emergency Plans Book, “12,500,000 are suffering from blast or thermal injuries and have an immediate and evident need for treatment.” The surviving labour force is “engaged in large numbers in disposing of the dead”. America’s shipping ports would be clogged with sunken ships; it would
be a nation of people scrounging for food, “with crematoriums working around the clock”.
Ironically the current discourse on nuclear weapons in Islamabad and Washington DC and Dr Saraswat’s plans to defend India’s high-value assets, whatever that means in the context of millions dead, are so obviously unreal. America’s headache stems from the fear of Muslim extremists taking control of the nuclear trigger. That the bomb looks any more secure with the followers of other faiths is one of the big fallacies of our times.
We did feel (or know) during the 2002 India-Pakistan stand-off that a more real nuclear threat could come from any ‘mad major’ lurking within the chain of command of either country. And why blame the mad major when the political leadership of that period on both sides looked quite prepared to do the job of, let’s say, Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper?Do we remember the delusional commander of a US air force base in Dr Strangelove who initiated an attack plan to strike the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons? He had set out to thwart what he believed was a Communist conspiracy to “sap and impurify” the “precious bodily fluids” of the American people with fluoridated water which he believed had caused his impotence. Change the bodily fluids with some other catchphrase that sells with our people and we are in the same league with Stanley Kubrick’s villainous brigadier.
The advent of Al Qaeda as the all-pervasive ogre out to destroy the world tends to lull us into the false belief that the messianic zeal of the president of the United States is any less threatening. The readiness to use tactical nuclear weapons against Iran or any other country (don’t forget the Seventh Fleet flexing its muscles in the Bay of Bengal not too long ago) is at par with the clarion call for “aar paar ki larai” (fight unto finish) that emanated from the Indian leadership.
Pakistan’s nuclear doctrine too comes ironically from a highly disciplined and professional army, not gun-toting mullahs. It signals the readiness to be the first one to stage a nuclear strike. Add to this conundrum the bristling tensions between the United States and Europe on the one side confronted by an increasingly insecure but militarily powerful Russia, and we have a serious problem on our hands.
In our self-absorption with Narendra Modi in India and the hurly-burly of January elections in Pakistan, there has been a tendency to miss out on the subversive action underway in our vicinities that is of equal if not more serious consequence to the region. Last month Russia’s parliament voted to suspend compliance with a key Cold War treaty limiting conventional forces in Europe as Moscow signalled it was weighing new force deployments on its western flank. Last week Russia’s defence officials warned that any Iran-bound missile from Europe travelling over Russian air space could be read as enemy action by its trigger-ready retaliatory system.
Stanley Kubrick’s film was loosely based on Peter George’s Cold War thriller novel Red Alert, also known as Two Hours to Doom. Dr Strangelove satirises the Cold War and the doctrine of mutual assured destruction. For India and Pakistan, with just three to four minutes to take evasive action, if Dr Saraswat’s count is right, there won’t be any time for Brigadier General Ripper to deliver all his humorous lines before doom strikes us suddenly. Whether the threat comes from a Muslim cleric or a clerical error of a secular nature, it would still spell disaster for millions.
The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in New Delhi.
December 26, 2007
URL: groups.yahoo.com/group/SAAN_/message/1091
o o o o
TERROR BY CLERICAL ERROR
by Jawed Naqvi
(in Dawn, December 20, 2007)
INDIA’s top missile scientist unveiled plans last week to build a ballistic missile defence by 2010 that should effectively tackle the threat from Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. Dr V.K. Saraswat was also quoted as saying that the proximity of Pakistan’s assets would give India just three to four minutes to respond to a perceived attack.
The missile defence system now on the anvil would protect ‘high-value’ assets and major cities like Delhi and Mumbai. Informed people would consider the plan delusional, and therefore dangerous.
Russia and the United States, with far greater lead-time to respond to each other’s nuclear threat and with a highly refined command and control mechanism, still do not have a completely trustworthy system in place.
The official doomsday scenario written by the US government during the Cold War - called The Emergency Plan Book - would make countries like India and Pakistan look not just ill-prepared to consider the use of nuclear weapons but also ill-advised to flaunt them. For all its sophistication and years of preparedness for nuclear attack on its territory, the United States looked pretty vulnerable as recently as Sept 11, 2001. How the administration went round like a headless chicken in the aftermath is nicely recorded in The Doomsday Scenario, a 2002 book based mostly on the Emergency Plan, which author L. Douglas Keeney wangled from a library during a brief period when it
was declassified.
During the Cold War, more than $45bn was spent to protect both senior US government officials and the general public in the event of a nuclear attack. This funding supported everything from the production and distribution of films and pamphlets instructing citizens how to mitigate the effects of a nuclear blast and fallout to the secret construction of massive underground facilities to allow the government to continue to operate during and after a nuclear war.
The extensive and extremely expensive plans to build massive blast and fallout shelters for the populace were systematically rejected by US presidents on the grounds that they did not want to create a national panic. The Congress balked at the price tag and the military leaders argued that it was more sensible and cost-effective to invest in offensive weapons to deter war and, if need be, wage war. One fallout of the Sept 11 attacks was that for the first time the United States activated its Continuity of Government plans (COG), some of which have been lampooned in Michael Moore’s film Fahrenheit 9/11. But the real emergency envisioned in The Doomsday Scenario, cited by Keeney, pertained to “kiloton and megaton-sized bombs” that would “pummel our industrial, transportation, communication, and financial centres in a sustained downpouring of warheads”. The national landscape, according to the American response plans, “would be blurred with smoke and haze and littered with death and destruction and contamination, with only the most rudimentary fragments of community and government surviving”.
Said the Emergency Plans Book, “12,500,000 are suffering from blast or thermal injuries and have an immediate and evident need for treatment.” The surviving labour force is “engaged in large numbers in disposing of the dead”. America’s shipping ports would be clogged with sunken ships; it would
be a nation of people scrounging for food, “with crematoriums working around the clock”.
Ironically the current discourse on nuclear weapons in Islamabad and Washington DC and Dr Saraswat’s plans to defend India’s high-value assets, whatever that means in the context of millions dead, are so obviously unreal. America’s headache stems from the fear of Muslim extremists taking control of the nuclear trigger. That the bomb looks any more secure with the followers of other faiths is one of the big fallacies of our times.
We did feel (or know) during the 2002 India-Pakistan stand-off that a more real nuclear threat could come from any ‘mad major’ lurking within the chain of command of either country. And why blame the mad major when the political leadership of that period on both sides looked quite prepared to do the job of, let’s say, Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper?Do we remember the delusional commander of a US air force base in Dr Strangelove who initiated an attack plan to strike the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons? He had set out to thwart what he believed was a Communist conspiracy to “sap and impurify” the “precious bodily fluids” of the American people with fluoridated water which he believed had caused his impotence. Change the bodily fluids with some other catchphrase that sells with our people and we are in the same league with Stanley Kubrick’s villainous brigadier.
The advent of Al Qaeda as the all-pervasive ogre out to destroy the world tends to lull us into the false belief that the messianic zeal of the president of the United States is any less threatening. The readiness to use tactical nuclear weapons against Iran or any other country (don’t forget the Seventh Fleet flexing its muscles in the Bay of Bengal not too long ago) is at par with the clarion call for “aar paar ki larai” (fight unto finish) that emanated from the Indian leadership.
Pakistan’s nuclear doctrine too comes ironically from a highly disciplined and professional army, not gun-toting mullahs. It signals the readiness to be the first one to stage a nuclear strike. Add to this conundrum the bristling tensions between the United States and Europe on the one side confronted by an increasingly insecure but militarily powerful Russia, and we have a serious problem on our hands.
In our self-absorption with Narendra Modi in India and the hurly-burly of January elections in Pakistan, there has been a tendency to miss out on the subversive action underway in our vicinities that is of equal if not more serious consequence to the region. Last month Russia’s parliament voted to suspend compliance with a key Cold War treaty limiting conventional forces in Europe as Moscow signalled it was weighing new force deployments on its western flank. Last week Russia’s defence officials warned that any Iran-bound missile from Europe travelling over Russian air space could be read as enemy action by its trigger-ready retaliatory system.
Stanley Kubrick’s film was loosely based on Peter George’s Cold War thriller novel Red Alert, also known as Two Hours to Doom. Dr Strangelove satirises the Cold War and the doctrine of mutual assured destruction. For India and Pakistan, with just three to four minutes to take evasive action, if Dr Saraswat’s count is right, there won’t be any time for Brigadier General Ripper to deliver all his humorous lines before doom strikes us suddenly. Whether the threat comes from a Muslim cleric or a clerical error of a secular nature, it would still spell disaster for millions.
The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in New Delhi.
India Pakistan Arms Race and Militarisation Watch No 168
India Pakistan Arms Race and Militarisation Watch
Compilation (February 28, 2007)
Year Seven, No 168
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IPARMW/
produced by South Asia Citizens Web and South Asians Against Nukes
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Table of Contents:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 Eminent Jurists Begin Probe into Counter-Terrorism Laws in South Asia
2 India: So-called Anti-Terrorist Laws are Tools of State Terrorism
3 Pakistan: Militarisation of politics
4 War in Afghanistan and Pakistan
5 Pakistan: Sources of illegal weapons are all too well known to need investigation
6 India: Guns for pleasure, anyone?
7 Pakistan: New policy on military lands
8 Pakistan and India’s mad fantasy of keeping nuclear weapons free from risk:
- Nuclear accord designed to promote ‘stable’ environment
9 India and Pakistan’s tit for tat missile race:
- Pakistan military tests missile - Hatf VI missile test
- Pakistan test fires long-range ballistic missile
- India tests Brahmos Missile in February 2007
- India Plans 2nd ABM Test in June [2007]
10 India – Pakistan - Defence Spending:
- Big rise in Indian defence budget
- India hikes defence budget to Rs 96000 cr
- Hike in unproductive expenditure
11 The "disappeared" in Pakistan and India:
- Pakistani "disappeared" a growing problem: group
- Democracy disappears with persons who ‘disappear’
- Kashmir Solidarity Committee and APDP Hold protest Rally in Delhi
- Kashmir’s big lie
- India: Investigate All ‘Disappearances’ in Kashmir
- India: Government Should Act to Stop Murders in Custody
- Rogues in Khaki - Justice cannot be delivered on pick and choose basis
- Indian anti-terrorism troops accused of executing civilians
- Criminals in combat fatigues
- FIRs expose Army's hand in civilian killings
- Another body exhumed in Kashmir
- Body of carpenter killed in "encounter" exhumed
12 Siachen Madness or Mountain Peace
13 Victims of War on Terror in India and Pakistan:
- Trial and terror
- Voices of The Internally Displaced: Jammu & Kashmir
- Too many dubious convictions in Pakistan, say activists
14 Manipur and the Struggle Against AFPSA
- Manipur: The Irom Sharmila saga
15 Fire Bombing of Samjhauta Express :
- Peace and The Burning Train
- Samjhota Explosion
- Put The Joint Mechanism To Work
16 Arms Sales To The Region - Plans and The Players:
- Pakistan gets eight attack helicopters
- Russia Works To Remain India’s Top Supplier
- Aviation firms descend on India air show
- Reports: India plans aerospace military command to oversee space-based assets
- "Work on nuke deterrence for Navy underway"
- India sets sights on cruise missile market
FULL TEXT AT:
http://www.sacw.net/peace/IPARMW168.pdf
Compilation (February 28, 2007)
Year Seven, No 168
URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IPARMW/
produced by South Asia Citizens Web and South Asians Against Nukes
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Table of Contents:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 Eminent Jurists Begin Probe into Counter-Terrorism Laws in South Asia
2 India: So-called Anti-Terrorist Laws are Tools of State Terrorism
3 Pakistan: Militarisation of politics
4 War in Afghanistan and Pakistan
5 Pakistan: Sources of illegal weapons are all too well known to need investigation
6 India: Guns for pleasure, anyone?
7 Pakistan: New policy on military lands
8 Pakistan and India’s mad fantasy of keeping nuclear weapons free from risk:
- Nuclear accord designed to promote ‘stable’ environment
9 India and Pakistan’s tit for tat missile race:
- Pakistan military tests missile - Hatf VI missile test
- Pakistan test fires long-range ballistic missile
- India tests Brahmos Missile in February 2007
- India Plans 2nd ABM Test in June [2007]
10 India – Pakistan - Defence Spending:
- Big rise in Indian defence budget
- India hikes defence budget to Rs 96000 cr
- Hike in unproductive expenditure
11 The "disappeared" in Pakistan and India:
- Pakistani "disappeared" a growing problem: group
- Democracy disappears with persons who ‘disappear’
- Kashmir Solidarity Committee and APDP Hold protest Rally in Delhi
- Kashmir’s big lie
- India: Investigate All ‘Disappearances’ in Kashmir
- India: Government Should Act to Stop Murders in Custody
- Rogues in Khaki - Justice cannot be delivered on pick and choose basis
- Indian anti-terrorism troops accused of executing civilians
- Criminals in combat fatigues
- FIRs expose Army's hand in civilian killings
- Another body exhumed in Kashmir
- Body of carpenter killed in "encounter" exhumed
12 Siachen Madness or Mountain Peace
13 Victims of War on Terror in India and Pakistan:
- Trial and terror
- Voices of The Internally Displaced: Jammu & Kashmir
- Too many dubious convictions in Pakistan, say activists
14 Manipur and the Struggle Against AFPSA
- Manipur: The Irom Sharmila saga
15 Fire Bombing of Samjhauta Express :
- Peace and The Burning Train
- Samjhota Explosion
- Put The Joint Mechanism To Work
16 Arms Sales To The Region - Plans and The Players:
- Pakistan gets eight attack helicopters
- Russia Works To Remain India’s Top Supplier
- Aviation firms descend on India air show
- Reports: India plans aerospace military command to oversee space-based assets
- "Work on nuke deterrence for Navy underway"
- India sets sights on cruise missile market
FULL TEXT AT:
http://www.sacw.net/peace/IPARMW168.pdf
terrorism-hit train fails to move the South Asian peace process
by J. Sri Raman (truthout.org)
The hawks of India and Pakistan can heave a sigh of relief. A terrorism-hit train has failed to carry the South Asian peace process forward even fractionally, as many had fondly hoped.
This should come as no surprise to watchers of the region, considering the place for terrorism in the political themes official India and Pakistan have pursued in the past, especially in the post-9/11 period. Before coming to that, a brief look at the latest twist in the tale.
The bomb blasts of February 18 on the Samjhauta (Understanding) Express, taking a toll of 68 Pakistani and Indian lives (mostly the former), caused a surge of hope along with great sorrow on both sides of the border. The common tragedy was expected to make the rulers of the two countries move, even if reluctantly, towards a common approach to terrorism - to its perception as a common enemy.
For a short while, this seemed to be happening. Observers noted a series of negative gains.
For the first time, in the first place, an apparent terrorist strike did not lead to an abrupt break in the bilateral talks through which the peace process has proceeded thus far. The Mumbai train blasts of July 11, 2006, attributed officially and by the opposition in India to "cross-border terrorism," had applied a sharp, sudden brake to the process, with the scrapping of scheduled talks at the level of foreign secretaries. Pakistan's Foreign Affairs Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, was due to visit New Delhi on February 20.
The very next day, an India-Pakistan pact on nuclear risk reduction was signed. And, the two sides went ahead with their earlier plan to hold the first meeting of an India-Pakistan Joint Counter-Terror Mechanism (JCTM) in Islamabad on March 6-7.
The list of pluses ends here, and the longer one of pathetic minuses begins. Many may wonder how much of a plus the pact on nuclear risk reduction was, considering that it envisaged no more than alerting the other side in case of a "cross-border" fallout; and some may find strange the official safety promise following an accident of this scale. Let us, however, let that pass.
What we cannot forget is how fast the feigned anti-terrorist solidarity disappeared at the official level. The people of Panipat, where the bombs went off, rushed to rescue the Pakistanis, and passengers from across the border vowed to travel by the same train and not to concede a victory to terrorism. Representatives of the two governments, especially in the foreign affairs and railway ministries, however, started bickering even as the Samjhauta victims lay groaning in hospital beds.
While Kasuri and his Indian counterpart Pranab Mukhejee voiced the most virtuous sentiments, lesser officials traded charges over the charred bodies. Pakistanis were accused of impeding investigations, and Indians were accused of treating the victims as "suspects."
Pakistan's Railway Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed gave a new dimension to the ugly debate by insinuating that Kasuri was "compromising" Pakistan's position in India. We do not know whether it is an official policy to let Rashid get loudly anti-India while the rest of Pakistan's establishment, including President Pervez Musharraf, appears sober and responsible. But the Railway Minister has gone full steam ahead trying to derail the peace process.
Nothing much, in these circumstances, was really expected from the JCTM meeting, and nothing much has emanated. According to Indian accounts, based on official briefings, the Indian side shared "evidence and information" with Pakistan about the Samjhauta affair, though the evidence seems to have been confined to the picture of a single suspect, handed over for further investigation. According to similarly based Pakistani accounts, this picture was not accompanied by the person's passport number or other particulars. Denying this, New Delhi insists that specific details were given. The public has no way of knowing which of the reports is right.
The Pakistani side claimed to have given its counterpart "concrete evidence" of India's involvement in the Balochistan rebellion. The role of Indian consulates in neighboring Afghanistan's Kandahar, Jalalabad and Herat in this regard is said to have been documented in detail. The Indian side has, of course, indignantly denied this as well, claiming that the consulates were only devoting themselves to Afghan development projects.
The JCTM is scheduled to meet again in June. But, despite the Samjhauta tragedy, no serious observer expects New Delhi and Islamabad to become comrades-in-arms against terrorism. The barest possibility of such a partnership, in fact, disappeared when both of them became part of the Bush-led "alliance against global terror" in the aftermath of 9/11.
Both of them, after all, entered the alliance with eagerness only in a desperate bid to turn it decisively against each other. President Musharraf has repeatedly reiterated his hope that Islamabad's anti-terrorist partnership with Washington and the West will help its cause in Kashmir. New Delhi under former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee for its part, while forging a "strategic partnership" with the US, pressed for recognition of its right to stage "a pre-emptive strike" against Pakistan. Anti-terrorism, obviously, does not carry the same connotations in both the capitals.
It never did. B Raman, a former official of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), India's external intelligence service, illustrates the point in one of his recent articles. Recalling earlier efforts made in the late '80s and early '90s for a common mechanism of counterterrorism, he says that the Indian side then focused on the Khalistani separatist movement in Punjab, believed to have cross-border backing. The Pakistani side's counter was to present New Delhi with a dossier on India's involvement in the separatist struggle in the Sindh province.
Punjab and Sindh, in other words, have just been replaced by Kashmir and Balochistan in the supposed counterterror confabulations of the two countries. The game can be expected to go on.
We should not be surprised, however, that Richard Boucher, US assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, finds the outcome of the JCTM session "positive." Such charades do help to keep appearances of an anti-terror alliance, while keeping its South Asian members divided enough for cynical manipulation.
A freelance journalist and a peace activist of India, J. Sri Raman is the author of Flashpoint (Common Courage Press, USA). He is a regular contributor to t r u t h o u t.
The hawks of India and Pakistan can heave a sigh of relief. A terrorism-hit train has failed to carry the South Asian peace process forward even fractionally, as many had fondly hoped.
This should come as no surprise to watchers of the region, considering the place for terrorism in the political themes official India and Pakistan have pursued in the past, especially in the post-9/11 period. Before coming to that, a brief look at the latest twist in the tale.
The bomb blasts of February 18 on the Samjhauta (Understanding) Express, taking a toll of 68 Pakistani and Indian lives (mostly the former), caused a surge of hope along with great sorrow on both sides of the border. The common tragedy was expected to make the rulers of the two countries move, even if reluctantly, towards a common approach to terrorism - to its perception as a common enemy.
For a short while, this seemed to be happening. Observers noted a series of negative gains.
For the first time, in the first place, an apparent terrorist strike did not lead to an abrupt break in the bilateral talks through which the peace process has proceeded thus far. The Mumbai train blasts of July 11, 2006, attributed officially and by the opposition in India to "cross-border terrorism," had applied a sharp, sudden brake to the process, with the scrapping of scheduled talks at the level of foreign secretaries. Pakistan's Foreign Affairs Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, was due to visit New Delhi on February 20.
The very next day, an India-Pakistan pact on nuclear risk reduction was signed. And, the two sides went ahead with their earlier plan to hold the first meeting of an India-Pakistan Joint Counter-Terror Mechanism (JCTM) in Islamabad on March 6-7.
The list of pluses ends here, and the longer one of pathetic minuses begins. Many may wonder how much of a plus the pact on nuclear risk reduction was, considering that it envisaged no more than alerting the other side in case of a "cross-border" fallout; and some may find strange the official safety promise following an accident of this scale. Let us, however, let that pass.
What we cannot forget is how fast the feigned anti-terrorist solidarity disappeared at the official level. The people of Panipat, where the bombs went off, rushed to rescue the Pakistanis, and passengers from across the border vowed to travel by the same train and not to concede a victory to terrorism. Representatives of the two governments, especially in the foreign affairs and railway ministries, however, started bickering even as the Samjhauta victims lay groaning in hospital beds.
While Kasuri and his Indian counterpart Pranab Mukhejee voiced the most virtuous sentiments, lesser officials traded charges over the charred bodies. Pakistanis were accused of impeding investigations, and Indians were accused of treating the victims as "suspects."
Pakistan's Railway Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed gave a new dimension to the ugly debate by insinuating that Kasuri was "compromising" Pakistan's position in India. We do not know whether it is an official policy to let Rashid get loudly anti-India while the rest of Pakistan's establishment, including President Pervez Musharraf, appears sober and responsible. But the Railway Minister has gone full steam ahead trying to derail the peace process.
Nothing much, in these circumstances, was really expected from the JCTM meeting, and nothing much has emanated. According to Indian accounts, based on official briefings, the Indian side shared "evidence and information" with Pakistan about the Samjhauta affair, though the evidence seems to have been confined to the picture of a single suspect, handed over for further investigation. According to similarly based Pakistani accounts, this picture was not accompanied by the person's passport number or other particulars. Denying this, New Delhi insists that specific details were given. The public has no way of knowing which of the reports is right.
The Pakistani side claimed to have given its counterpart "concrete evidence" of India's involvement in the Balochistan rebellion. The role of Indian consulates in neighboring Afghanistan's Kandahar, Jalalabad and Herat in this regard is said to have been documented in detail. The Indian side has, of course, indignantly denied this as well, claiming that the consulates were only devoting themselves to Afghan development projects.
The JCTM is scheduled to meet again in June. But, despite the Samjhauta tragedy, no serious observer expects New Delhi and Islamabad to become comrades-in-arms against terrorism. The barest possibility of such a partnership, in fact, disappeared when both of them became part of the Bush-led "alliance against global terror" in the aftermath of 9/11.
Both of them, after all, entered the alliance with eagerness only in a desperate bid to turn it decisively against each other. President Musharraf has repeatedly reiterated his hope that Islamabad's anti-terrorist partnership with Washington and the West will help its cause in Kashmir. New Delhi under former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee for its part, while forging a "strategic partnership" with the US, pressed for recognition of its right to stage "a pre-emptive strike" against Pakistan. Anti-terrorism, obviously, does not carry the same connotations in both the capitals.
It never did. B Raman, a former official of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), India's external intelligence service, illustrates the point in one of his recent articles. Recalling earlier efforts made in the late '80s and early '90s for a common mechanism of counterterrorism, he says that the Indian side then focused on the Khalistani separatist movement in Punjab, believed to have cross-border backing. The Pakistani side's counter was to present New Delhi with a dossier on India's involvement in the separatist struggle in the Sindh province.
Punjab and Sindh, in other words, have just been replaced by Kashmir and Balochistan in the supposed counterterror confabulations of the two countries. The game can be expected to go on.
We should not be surprised, however, that Richard Boucher, US assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, finds the outcome of the JCTM session "positive." Such charades do help to keep appearances of an anti-terror alliance, while keeping its South Asian members divided enough for cynical manipulation.
A freelance journalist and a peace activist of India, J. Sri Raman is the author of Flashpoint (Common Courage Press, USA). He is a regular contributor to t r u t h o u t.
Citizens Groups respond to fire bombing of the train between India and Pakistan
(i)
20 Feb 2007
Pakistan-Indian Peoples' Forum for Peace and Democracy
condemns the fire bombing of Samjhauta Express
Pakistan-India Peoples’ Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD) strongly condemns the vicious terrorist bombing of the Delhi-Lahore Samjhauta Express in which 67 people were killed and more than 50 injured. Indians and Pakistanis are united in their deep grief at this heinous crime that cannot be justified by any cause and we express our deep condolences to the families of the innocent victims of this act of terror.
The train symbolizes the deep desire of the peoples of India and Pakistan to have good neighbourly relations and it has served as a crucial lifeline to maintain people to people contacts across the border. The terror attack on the train and its timings indicates that its purpose was to derail the peace process and to undermine people to people contacts, which has been a significant component of the process of building peace between the two countries. PIPFPD urges that this tragic incident should not be allowed to disrupt the process of normalizing relations as had happened last July. In this context, PIPFD is deeply appreciative of the efforts of the governments of India and Pakistan to continue with the peace process, and welcomes the move to continue without interruption the train service and other cross border links. Let this become an opportunity to affirm the urgency of normalising relations in recognition of the people of India and Pakistan’s commitment to peace and friendship.
Tapan Kumar Bose
General Secretary
o o o
(ii)
Press Release
February 19, 2007
Terror Attack on Samjhauta Express
As citizens of India committed strongly committed to peaceful and fruitful relations between India and Pakistan as also unequivocally to lasting justice and peace between all communities within India, our heart goes out to all the victims of the recent terror attack on board the Samjhauta Express. The attack reveals above all, that terror and terrorism has no religion and victims of all communities, Muslim and Hindu, rich and poor can easily become the victims of such an attack. We offer our deepest condolences to all the affected families in this moment of grief.
We unequivocally condemn this attack that is an attempt not only to de-rail peace talks but also to create schisms and rifts between communities. We thank the political leadership of both countries for using sombre and sensitive language at such a time and urge them -- specifically the intelligence and investigative authorities of India-- to go further and rigorously investigate and get to the bottom of such an attack.
Outfits of terror have no religion and should never be equated as such. The language and acts of terror can be perpetrated by fanatic outfits within any and all social, political and religious sections. Similarly victims of terror as today’s brutal incident shows, can hail and do hail from all sections. Terror and terrorism can be home grown as well as imported; both equally are not just anti-national, they strike at the fabric of our nation because they create schisms between communities.
Vijay Tendulkar, President CJP
Dr Prabhat Patnaik, noted economist
Teesta Setalvad, Secretary, CJP and co-editor Communalism Combat
Arvind Krishnaswamy, Treasurer, CJP,
Javed Akhtar, CJP and Muslims for Secular Democracy (MSD),
CP Chandraskehar, economist, JNU,
Javed Anand, CJP and MSD,
Nandan Maluste, CJP,
Anil Dharker, CJP,
Rajendra Prasad, SAHMAT
Ram Rehman, SAHMAT,
MK Raina, SAHMAT,
Hasan Kamal, MSD,
Rahul Bose, CJP
20 Feb 2007
Pakistan-Indian Peoples' Forum for Peace and Democracy
condemns the fire bombing of Samjhauta Express
Pakistan-India Peoples’ Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD) strongly condemns the vicious terrorist bombing of the Delhi-Lahore Samjhauta Express in which 67 people were killed and more than 50 injured. Indians and Pakistanis are united in their deep grief at this heinous crime that cannot be justified by any cause and we express our deep condolences to the families of the innocent victims of this act of terror.
The train symbolizes the deep desire of the peoples of India and Pakistan to have good neighbourly relations and it has served as a crucial lifeline to maintain people to people contacts across the border. The terror attack on the train and its timings indicates that its purpose was to derail the peace process and to undermine people to people contacts, which has been a significant component of the process of building peace between the two countries. PIPFPD urges that this tragic incident should not be allowed to disrupt the process of normalizing relations as had happened last July. In this context, PIPFD is deeply appreciative of the efforts of the governments of India and Pakistan to continue with the peace process, and welcomes the move to continue without interruption the train service and other cross border links. Let this become an opportunity to affirm the urgency of normalising relations in recognition of the people of India and Pakistan’s commitment to peace and friendship.
Tapan Kumar Bose
General Secretary
o o o
(ii)
Press Release
February 19, 2007
Terror Attack on Samjhauta Express
As citizens of India committed strongly committed to peaceful and fruitful relations between India and Pakistan as also unequivocally to lasting justice and peace between all communities within India, our heart goes out to all the victims of the recent terror attack on board the Samjhauta Express. The attack reveals above all, that terror and terrorism has no religion and victims of all communities, Muslim and Hindu, rich and poor can easily become the victims of such an attack. We offer our deepest condolences to all the affected families in this moment of grief.
We unequivocally condemn this attack that is an attempt not only to de-rail peace talks but also to create schisms and rifts between communities. We thank the political leadership of both countries for using sombre and sensitive language at such a time and urge them -- specifically the intelligence and investigative authorities of India-- to go further and rigorously investigate and get to the bottom of such an attack.
Outfits of terror have no religion and should never be equated as such. The language and acts of terror can be perpetrated by fanatic outfits within any and all social, political and religious sections. Similarly victims of terror as today’s brutal incident shows, can hail and do hail from all sections. Terror and terrorism can be home grown as well as imported; both equally are not just anti-national, they strike at the fabric of our nation because they create schisms between communities.
Vijay Tendulkar, President CJP
Dr Prabhat Patnaik, noted economist
Teesta Setalvad, Secretary, CJP and co-editor Communalism Combat
Arvind Krishnaswamy, Treasurer, CJP,
Javed Akhtar, CJP and Muslims for Secular Democracy (MSD),
CP Chandraskehar, economist, JNU,
Javed Anand, CJP and MSD,
Nandan Maluste, CJP,
Anil Dharker, CJP,
Rajendra Prasad, SAHMAT
Ram Rehman, SAHMAT,
MK Raina, SAHMAT,
Hasan Kamal, MSD,
Rahul Bose, CJP
What a bomb cannot buy: On the eighth anniversary of Pakistan's nuclear tests
pakistan
WHAT A BOMB CANNOT BUY
Eight years after the nuclear test, a lot many promises remain unfulfilled and costs unacknowledged
by Pervez Hoodbhoy
On the eighth anniversary of Pakistan's nuclear tests, there is little point in debating whether we should have followed India down the nuclear gutter. But there is need for a sober stock-taking that moves us away from the still rampant, simple-minded, nuclear triumphalism. So far the region's nuclear 'experts' and 'strategists', actively assisted on both sides of the border by their respective states, have effectively monopolised discussion on nuclear policy. But many promises remain unfulfilled and various political and social costs for Pakistan are barely acknowledged. What are these?
The most obvious fact is that testing the bomb speeded up the subcontinent's arms race, rather than slowing it down. If you had believed what the nuclear pundits used to say, it should have been the other way round. Their argument was so seductive and simple that even well-meaning people were taken for a ride. They said acquiring the bomb would ensure national security into eternity -- the threat of a nuclear response would deter territorial violations by the other, and hence the need for conventional arms would evaporate. Just a few bombs would do. Before the May 1998 tests, and even for several months after it, some Pakistanis cheerfully wrote that after going nuclear, little more than salaries for soldiers would be needed. Defence budgets could be slashed, and (at last) funds would go into development and education.
Instead, what have we seen? Today the need for acquisition of battle tanks, artillery, fighter aircraft, surface ships, submarines, anti-ballistic missile systems, early warning aircraft, and space-based surveillance systems is now claimed -- by many of the same people -- to be more urgent than ever before. The US-India nuclear deal, if ratified by Congress, will add fuel to the fire. After India's breeder reactors come on line, it will be able to produce as many nuclear warheads in just one year as it had in the previous 30. Pakistan is sure to react in various ways.
The once-popular concept of 'minimal deterrence' died after India's firm statement that the requirements for a deterrent force will be 'dynamically determined' and cannot be explicitly stated. In other words, it will never say how many bombs are enough. That is not how it used to be. I well remember my intervention during a conference in Chicago (1992) which provoked the Indian strategist K. Subramanyam to angrily protest that "arms racing is a Cold War concept invented by the western powers and totally alien to sub-continental thinking". We Pakistanis and Indians were supposed to be infinitely wiser than the compulsive Americans and Soviets. But one sees that Cold War racing has been followed to the letter on the subcontinent. Tactical nuclear war-fighting, once considered escalatory, is reported to be incorporated into current Indian and Pakistani military doctrines.
The fact is that nuclear racing and doctrines is everywhere and always driven by the same implacable, mad, runaway logic. Should there be the slightest danger of the race slackening, a nuclear 'expert' will point to the other side's latest acquisition and shout wolf. With every passing decade, advances in technology make it easier and cheaper to create ever more deadly nuclear weapons, buy or make longer range and more effective missiles, and go for various hi-tech weapon systems that could not have been imagined just a while ago.
For Pakistan, the nuclear cost -- political and social -- has been even higher than for India.
First, nuclear weapons led to Pakistan's Kargil debacle. The 1998 tests gave the country's leaders a false sense of security. This was the direct cause of a misadventure that ended in a stunning political and diplomatic defeat for Pakistan. If anything, it made clear that Pakistan could no longer hope for a military victory in Kashmir.
The Kargil episode offers the very first example in history where nuclear weapons, by dint of creating a presumed shield for launching conventional covert operations, were responsible for having brought about a war. The unrestrained propagation of false beliefs in nuclear security brought India and Pakistan to the brink of a full-blown confrontation that could well have been the very last one. Arguably it was the Bharatiya Janata Party that, by ordering Pokhran-II, fathered Kargil.
Second, Pakistan's acquisition of nuclear weapons has made it effectively a less independent state, rather than it being the other way round. While Pakistan became popular in Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries after testing, its inability to stand up for real Muslim interests remains as chronically weak as ever. Unlike many European and non-aligned countries -- which were vociferous in their opposition to the US war upon Iraq -- Pakistan chose the side of pragmatism. One can also be sure that if Iran's nuclear facilities are bombed by the US, Pakistan's leaders will do no more than shake their heads in mild disapproval. The Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline provides yet another example of weakness.
Although nukes have pushed up Pakistan's rental value for fighting the wars of other nations, the constraints on its behaviour have also greatly increased. The danger that our nukes may turn loose is a source of deep discomfort to Pakistan's chief patron and paymaster, the United States of America. The fiery rhetoric of religious parties, who claim the bomb for the entire Muslim Ummah rather than just for Pakistan, understandably terrifies many in the West. Moreover, the A. Q. Khan episode -- in spite of Pakistan's repeated assertions that the matter has now closed -- is still very much on the minds of the US establishment and media. These reasons account for the US's flat rejection of any kind of nuclear deal with Pakistan along the lines that it had proposed to India.
For the time being, with General Pervez Musharraf in power, the US is willing to tolerate Pakistan's nuclear arsenal -- and may even satisfy some of its needs for advanced conventional weaponry. But this could be shortlived. Many gaming scenarios played in the US strategic war planning institutions indicate there are well-rehearsed contingency plans if Pakistan's political situation changes radically in the event of General Musharraf's departure. Clearly, Pakistan is a country that is closely watched and monitored.
Third, and finally, while a connection is sometimes alleged, in fact nuclear weapons have been irrelevant to two of Pakistan's critical needs -- national integration and high technology. If anything, the effect has gone the other way.
National integration remains a distant goal, and the hope that the bomb would be a rallying call for all Pakistanis has disappeared. The tumultuous, officially inspired, 1999 celebrations of 'yaum-e-takbir' all over the country were supposed to infuse a new sense of national spirit in Pakistanis. Bomb and missile models were installed at every other street corner; many still survive. But instead of love for the centralised Islamabad-based Pakistani state, the ongoing widespread insurgency in Balochistan and rising bitterness in Sindh are sending clear messages of a dangerous disaffection. Nuclear weapons cannot compensate the absence of a democratic process, which alone can weld Pakistan's disparate people into a nation.
The failure is evident. Punjab celebrates the bomb while Balochistan protests it. It resents the fact that the nuclear test site -- now radioactive and put out of bounds -- is located on Baloch soil. Accused of dumping nuclear wastes, the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission is now being increasingly targeted by Baloch nationalists as an instrument of foreign domination. On May 15, 2006, Baloch insurgents reportedly launched a mortar attack on a Pakistani nuclear establishment controlled by the PAEC in the vicinity of the Dera Ghazi Khan-Quetta highway.
And, what of the Bomb being a technical miracle? Over thirty years ago, fearful of India's newly acquired nuclear weapons, Pakistan set out on its own quest to become a nuclear weapons state. It lacked a strong technological base. But its secret search of the world's industrialised countries for nuclear weapons technologies was successful. It now advertises itself as a high-tech state.
But in a world where science moves at super-high speeds, nuclear weapons and missile development is today second-rate science. The undeniable fact is that the technology of nuclear bombs is six decades old. Famine-stricken North Korea, with few other achievements, is probably also a nuclear power and clearly has a very advanced missile programme. In fact it had transferred this technology to Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, and other countries. While Pakistani and Indian weapons programmes have diverted substantial financial and material resources away from social and scientific needs, they have merely used scientific principles discovered and developed elsewhere. Not surprisingly, there are no worthwhile spin-offs. Surely it is time to drop the pretence that making nuclear weapons and guided missiles is a wonderful thing.
The author is professor of nuclear and high-energy physics at Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad. This article was published earlier in The News, Pakistan
WHAT A BOMB CANNOT BUY
Eight years after the nuclear test, a lot many promises remain unfulfilled and costs unacknowledged
by Pervez Hoodbhoy
On the eighth anniversary of Pakistan's nuclear tests, there is little point in debating whether we should have followed India down the nuclear gutter. But there is need for a sober stock-taking that moves us away from the still rampant, simple-minded, nuclear triumphalism. So far the region's nuclear 'experts' and 'strategists', actively assisted on both sides of the border by their respective states, have effectively monopolised discussion on nuclear policy. But many promises remain unfulfilled and various political and social costs for Pakistan are barely acknowledged. What are these?
The most obvious fact is that testing the bomb speeded up the subcontinent's arms race, rather than slowing it down. If you had believed what the nuclear pundits used to say, it should have been the other way round. Their argument was so seductive and simple that even well-meaning people were taken for a ride. They said acquiring the bomb would ensure national security into eternity -- the threat of a nuclear response would deter territorial violations by the other, and hence the need for conventional arms would evaporate. Just a few bombs would do. Before the May 1998 tests, and even for several months after it, some Pakistanis cheerfully wrote that after going nuclear, little more than salaries for soldiers would be needed. Defence budgets could be slashed, and (at last) funds would go into development and education.
Instead, what have we seen? Today the need for acquisition of battle tanks, artillery, fighter aircraft, surface ships, submarines, anti-ballistic missile systems, early warning aircraft, and space-based surveillance systems is now claimed -- by many of the same people -- to be more urgent than ever before. The US-India nuclear deal, if ratified by Congress, will add fuel to the fire. After India's breeder reactors come on line, it will be able to produce as many nuclear warheads in just one year as it had in the previous 30. Pakistan is sure to react in various ways.
The once-popular concept of 'minimal deterrence' died after India's firm statement that the requirements for a deterrent force will be 'dynamically determined' and cannot be explicitly stated. In other words, it will never say how many bombs are enough. That is not how it used to be. I well remember my intervention during a conference in Chicago (1992) which provoked the Indian strategist K. Subramanyam to angrily protest that "arms racing is a Cold War concept invented by the western powers and totally alien to sub-continental thinking". We Pakistanis and Indians were supposed to be infinitely wiser than the compulsive Americans and Soviets. But one sees that Cold War racing has been followed to the letter on the subcontinent. Tactical nuclear war-fighting, once considered escalatory, is reported to be incorporated into current Indian and Pakistani military doctrines.
The fact is that nuclear racing and doctrines is everywhere and always driven by the same implacable, mad, runaway logic. Should there be the slightest danger of the race slackening, a nuclear 'expert' will point to the other side's latest acquisition and shout wolf. With every passing decade, advances in technology make it easier and cheaper to create ever more deadly nuclear weapons, buy or make longer range and more effective missiles, and go for various hi-tech weapon systems that could not have been imagined just a while ago.
For Pakistan, the nuclear cost -- political and social -- has been even higher than for India.
First, nuclear weapons led to Pakistan's Kargil debacle. The 1998 tests gave the country's leaders a false sense of security. This was the direct cause of a misadventure that ended in a stunning political and diplomatic defeat for Pakistan. If anything, it made clear that Pakistan could no longer hope for a military victory in Kashmir.
The Kargil episode offers the very first example in history where nuclear weapons, by dint of creating a presumed shield for launching conventional covert operations, were responsible for having brought about a war. The unrestrained propagation of false beliefs in nuclear security brought India and Pakistan to the brink of a full-blown confrontation that could well have been the very last one. Arguably it was the Bharatiya Janata Party that, by ordering Pokhran-II, fathered Kargil.
Second, Pakistan's acquisition of nuclear weapons has made it effectively a less independent state, rather than it being the other way round. While Pakistan became popular in Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries after testing, its inability to stand up for real Muslim interests remains as chronically weak as ever. Unlike many European and non-aligned countries -- which were vociferous in their opposition to the US war upon Iraq -- Pakistan chose the side of pragmatism. One can also be sure that if Iran's nuclear facilities are bombed by the US, Pakistan's leaders will do no more than shake their heads in mild disapproval. The Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline provides yet another example of weakness.
Although nukes have pushed up Pakistan's rental value for fighting the wars of other nations, the constraints on its behaviour have also greatly increased. The danger that our nukes may turn loose is a source of deep discomfort to Pakistan's chief patron and paymaster, the United States of America. The fiery rhetoric of religious parties, who claim the bomb for the entire Muslim Ummah rather than just for Pakistan, understandably terrifies many in the West. Moreover, the A. Q. Khan episode -- in spite of Pakistan's repeated assertions that the matter has now closed -- is still very much on the minds of the US establishment and media. These reasons account for the US's flat rejection of any kind of nuclear deal with Pakistan along the lines that it had proposed to India.
For the time being, with General Pervez Musharraf in power, the US is willing to tolerate Pakistan's nuclear arsenal -- and may even satisfy some of its needs for advanced conventional weaponry. But this could be shortlived. Many gaming scenarios played in the US strategic war planning institutions indicate there are well-rehearsed contingency plans if Pakistan's political situation changes radically in the event of General Musharraf's departure. Clearly, Pakistan is a country that is closely watched and monitored.
Third, and finally, while a connection is sometimes alleged, in fact nuclear weapons have been irrelevant to two of Pakistan's critical needs -- national integration and high technology. If anything, the effect has gone the other way.
National integration remains a distant goal, and the hope that the bomb would be a rallying call for all Pakistanis has disappeared. The tumultuous, officially inspired, 1999 celebrations of 'yaum-e-takbir' all over the country were supposed to infuse a new sense of national spirit in Pakistanis. Bomb and missile models were installed at every other street corner; many still survive. But instead of love for the centralised Islamabad-based Pakistani state, the ongoing widespread insurgency in Balochistan and rising bitterness in Sindh are sending clear messages of a dangerous disaffection. Nuclear weapons cannot compensate the absence of a democratic process, which alone can weld Pakistan's disparate people into a nation.
The failure is evident. Punjab celebrates the bomb while Balochistan protests it. It resents the fact that the nuclear test site -- now radioactive and put out of bounds -- is located on Baloch soil. Accused of dumping nuclear wastes, the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission is now being increasingly targeted by Baloch nationalists as an instrument of foreign domination. On May 15, 2006, Baloch insurgents reportedly launched a mortar attack on a Pakistani nuclear establishment controlled by the PAEC in the vicinity of the Dera Ghazi Khan-Quetta highway.
And, what of the Bomb being a technical miracle? Over thirty years ago, fearful of India's newly acquired nuclear weapons, Pakistan set out on its own quest to become a nuclear weapons state. It lacked a strong technological base. But its secret search of the world's industrialised countries for nuclear weapons technologies was successful. It now advertises itself as a high-tech state.
But in a world where science moves at super-high speeds, nuclear weapons and missile development is today second-rate science. The undeniable fact is that the technology of nuclear bombs is six decades old. Famine-stricken North Korea, with few other achievements, is probably also a nuclear power and clearly has a very advanced missile programme. In fact it had transferred this technology to Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, and other countries. While Pakistani and Indian weapons programmes have diverted substantial financial and material resources away from social and scientific needs, they have merely used scientific principles discovered and developed elsewhere. Not surprisingly, there are no worthwhile spin-offs. Surely it is time to drop the pretence that making nuclear weapons and guided missiles is a wonderful thing.
The author is professor of nuclear and high-energy physics at Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad. This article was published earlier in The News, Pakistan
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