Indian Defence Review

Pakistan is reported to have the fastest growing nuclear weapon arsenal in the world. The arsenal is also seen by many military planners in Pakistan as a low cost option to make up for lack of conventional symmetry vis-à-vis India. But for a small and unstable, terrorist-infested country which is economically weak, its ever increasing capacity, quantities, range and diverseness of nuclear weaponry and delivery means have startling portents, and are a matter of grave concern for the global community.

Just a few days back, the United States’ Director Defence Intelligence Agency, Vincent Stewart told the US Senate Armed Services’ Committee that, “Pakistan’s growing nuclear arsenal and its evolving tactical nuclear weapons doctrine pose increasing risk of an incident or accident”. So, why exactly does Pakistan need all these nuclear weapons? And, who is paying for them, and why? These are questions which the international community would need to analyse correctly to predict the related future course of events affecting regional and global security.

Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program had its origins in Foreign Minister ZA Bhutto’s famous statement following the India-Pakistan war of 1965, “If India builds the bomb, we will eat grass and leaves for a thousand years, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own”.  Subsequently, in early 1972, in the aftermath of the defeat in the India-Pakistan war of the previous year, Prime Minister ZA Bhutto directed Pakistan’s scientific community to build a nuclear bomb within three years.

The job was initially given to the country’s Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC), which had been set up in 1956 ‘to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes’. As part of this program, uranium was being mined from the Dera Ghazi Khan district. Pakistan’s first nuclear reactor had been commissioned in 1965. The US and Canada had a major role in training Pakistani nuclear engineers and providing nuclear knowhow to the PAEC for construction and upgradation of reactors for civilian purposes.

The IAEA had funded the building of a subsequent larger nuclear reactor, under IAEA safeguards.  Surprisingly, starting 1969, France’s CEA and UK-based BFNL signed a contract for supplying knowhow and parts for construction of a nuclear plant, which could also have been used for reprocessing weapons grade plutonium in small quantities annually, but reportedly cancelled the projects with PAEC in 1974.

However, much of the technology and material for developing the weapons and associated delivery systems was acquired from its all weather friend in the P5 and even from its rogue associates at various points of time, in breach of international conventions.  The steely determination to acquire the weapons, combined with a  ‘beg, borrow or steal’ approach, helped along by P5 acquiescence, resulted in Pakistan developing, by 1978, the requisite centrifuge technology at Khan Research Laboratories (KRL) at Kahuta and being capable of moderate enrichment of  uranium for the production of fissile material.

AQ Khan, reportedly with state blessings, also ran an atomic proliferation network from Pakistan to various countries, especially North Korea, which he reportedly visited thirteen times during this period.  Concurrently, Pakistan did not forego the plutonium route, and under PAEC and its Chairman Munir Ahmad Khan, who was AQ Khan’s rival, succeeded with this route too by the early 1980s.

Ostensibly, Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, when first developed, were meant to counter India’s superior combat power, in the context of being militarily weaker. However, by 1984, when Pakistan developed its nuclear weapon capability, using highly enriched uranium as fissile material, produced under Mr AQ Khan’s supervision at KRL, it provided President Zia-ul-Haq with an opportunity to muddy the waters in the Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir by launching ‘Operation Tupac’ in 1988, to trigger and support insurgency in Kashmir using the state policy of “applying a thousand cuts to India through the instrument of terror”.

Accordingly, post Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, Pakistan reoriented the infrastructure created for recruitment and training of the Afghan/ Islamist Mujahideen during the Soviet occupation, for this purpose. As part of this insidious plan, which continued even after Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif and General Pervez Musharraf came to/took over power, the nuclear weapons were now also meant to provide cover for the terror attacks into Kashmir and the Indian hinterland.

This became apparent during the Kargil intrusions of 1999 and the numerous terror attacks unleashed on Kashmir and other parts of J&K thereafter,  even spreading the ‘arc of terror’ to other parts of the country. Manifestations of these were the communal massacres of non-Muslim civilians in J&K in 2000, the  cross-border terror attacks on the J&K State Legislature and Indian Parliament in 2001, the attacks on Raghunath temple, Kasimnagar and Kaluchak cantonment in Jammu  and also the Akshardham temple, Gujarat in 2002, the Sanjuwan and Tanda army camp attacks and the Shopian Kashmiri Pandit massacre of 2003, the Jammu Railway Station attack of 2004, all these terror attacks actively abetted by the Pakistani Army, through its ISI.  Concurrently, nuclear ‘sabre-rattling’, aimed at India and the wider global community, was honed to a fine art by the Pakistani government and military, to dissuade the Indian government and Army from launching a punitive conventional response to its continuing state sponsored terror attacks.

In the meanwhile, the Indian Army had realized, after its year-long mobilization (Operation Parakram), which it had undertaken  throughout 2002 in response to the Parliament attack of December 2001, that there was a need for a more robust and pro-active response to manifestations of the Pakistani policy of terror. Hence, in what can be considered a brilliant strategic move, the Indian Army leadership developed a new pro-active doctrine, colloquially called the ‘Cold Start Doctrine’, to let the Pakistani Army know what was in store in case the terror attacks continued. Since 2004, this Doctrine has been honed to perfection, notwithstanding the Pakistani nuclear coercion.

The Indian nuclear doctrine, in its present robust form, fully supports the Cold Start Doctrine.  The Pakistani Army tested the waters by launching the Mumbai terror attack of December 2008 and knows how close it was to getting hit by the ‘Cold Start Doctrine’, in its aftermath.

The Pakistani Army, in 2011, responded to the Doctrine by launching the Nasr (Hatf IX) short range missile and making claims to have developed tactical nuclear weapons (TNWs) to stymie India’s ‘Cold Start Doctrine’. Subsequently, once the Hatf IX and TNWs officially entered service two years later, Pakistan recommenced cross-border terror attacks into the Indian hinterland, beyond Kashmir, with the ISI-controlled LeT attack on Hiranagar police station and a military unit in Samba in September 2013. Since then, there have been similar attacks by LeT/ JeM modules at  Janglote, Arnia and Rajbagh in the Jammu region, and more recently, at Dinanagar and Pathankot in Punjab, under the cover of the TNWs.  But with patience in India running thin, it is a moot point whether this cover will work for long. The development of TNWs could well end up in the nature of Pakistan having “cut its nose to spite its face”. And such an assessment is not only related to what India may do in response to continued terror attacks but what may happen in Pakistan itself as a result of the “incidents and accidents” that the US Director DIA spoke about.

Pakistan’s fast growing nuclear arsenal serves the purpose of others too, as evident from the source of its technologies, material and funds, and the extent to which Pakistan may go to satisfy its benefactors or return favours is yet to be fully discerned. But more importantly, the more weapons it makes, the more the possibility that its ‘non-state actors’ like TTP would step up efforts to lay their hands on them.  Thus, beyond a point, it comes under ‘the law of diminishing returns’ – the production of nuclear weapons becomes a self defeating game. And it needs no guesses to judge as to whom the “incidents or accidents” is likely to affect the most. Pakistan may then have to pay a very high cost for its ‘low cost option’.

Courtesy: http://www.claws.in/1529/the-salience-of-pakistans-nuclear-weapons-lt-gen-philip-campose.html