Report prepared by Dr. Ali Raza Khan Afridi, Project Coordinator PAKPPNW, member IFMSA PAKISTAN
Why has this happened? What can be done to bring India and Pakistan into the arms control process? The answers lie in the story of how nuclear weapons came to South Asia.
The story begins with US use of nuclear weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Jawaharlal Nehru, soon to be independent India's first prime minister, feared the start of a new age of nuclear-armed imperialism. At the same time, he believed that his country had a great destiny and, to realize it, would have to "defend herself by every means at her disposal."
Nehru's concerns became only too real when the United States began looking in South Asia for allies against the Soviet Union and China. India was the obvious choice, but Nehru was committed to nonalignment. That left no option but Pakistan, which US military planners saw as a base for air operations against the central USSR and as a staging area for ensuring access to Middle East oil areas.
Pakistan welcomed this relationship with the United States. It soon joined two US-led military alliances -- the Central Treaty Organization and the South East Asia Treaty Organization -- and began receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid. Why was Pakistan so eager to become a US ally? It was a weak state, born out of insecurity. Pakistan was intended to be a home for the Muslims of British India who worried about their future in a free India, where Hindus would constitute a large majority. But partition fed, rather than alleviated, this insecurity, since Pakistan inherited virtually no industry, infrastructure, or armed forces.
In the decades after independence, Pakistan's insecurity increased, partly as a result of the two wars it fought with India over Kashmir. In addition, the 1971 civil war in Pakistan, which led to the creation of Bangladesh from East Pakistan, ended with Indian intervention and humiliating defeat for Pakistan.
Shortly thereafter, Indian policy-makers bowed to an increasingly assertive domestic lobby and decided to develop a nuclear weapons capability. They believed that this would confirm India's new-found power and would also respond to China's acquisition of nuclear weapons. China had carried out its first nuclear test in 1964, two years after India's defeat in the Sino-Indian war. India's decision to go nuclear also stemmed from the US relationship with Pakistan. During the 1971 war, the United States sent an aircraft carrier believed to be armed with nuclear weapons into the Bay of Bengal -- an act some in India interpreted as signaling support for Pakistan. This gunboat diplomacy may have been the final straw prompting India to develop nuclear weapons. Following several years' preparation, India conducted its first and only nuclear test explosion in 1974.
Pakistani policymakers, humiliated by the outcome of the 1971 war, feeling betrayed by US failure to come to Pakistan's rescue despite years of loyal support, and now confronted with the prospect of a nuclear-armed India, initiated a nuclear weapons program.
Pakistan's Atomic Energy commission was founded some 15 years after the Indian program. In 1965 President Ayub Khan took some initial steps in response to the emerging Indian nuclear threat. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was the founder of Pakistan's Nuclear Program, initially as Minister for Fuel, Power and Natural Resources, and later as President and Prime Minister. Pakistan's nuclear program was launched in earnest shortly after the loss of East Pakistan in the 1971 war with India, when Bhutto initiated a program to develop nuclear weapons with a meeting of physicists and engineers at Multan in January 1972. In 1974 India successfully tested a nuclear "device." Bhutto reacted strongly to this test and said Pakistan must develop its own "Islamic bomb."
Pakistan lacks an extensive civil nuclear power infrastructure, and its weapons program is not as broad as India's. Almost all of its nuclear program is focused on weapons applications.
Initially, Pakistan focused on the plutonium path for building a nuclear weapon. Plutonium can be obtained from fuel that has been reprocessed from nuclear power plants, and in October 1974 Pakistan signed a contract with France for the design of a reprocessing facility for the fuel from its power plant at Karachi and other planned facilities. However, over the next two years Pakistan's international nuclear collaborators withdrew as Pakistan's nuclear ambitions became more apparent. The French were among the last to withdraw at the end of 1976, following sustained pressure from the United States.
A major advance jump to Pakistan's nuclear program was the arrival of Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan in 1975, who brought with him the plans for uranium enrichment centrifuges, and lists of sources of the necessary technology. On this basis, Pakistan initially focused its development efforts on highly enriched uranium (HEU), and exploited an extensive clandestine procurement network to support these efforts. A.Q. Khan evidently persuaded Pakistan to work with Uranium (as compared to Plutonium) because Plutonium involves more arduous and hazardous procedures and cumbersome and expensive processes.
Pakistan's activities were initially centered in a few facilities. A.Q. Khan founded the Engineering Research Laboratories at Kahuta in 1976, which later became Dr. A. Q. Khan Research Laboratories (KRL).
A number of United States laws, amendments to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, applied to Pakistan and its program of nuclear weapons development. The 1976 Symington Amendment stipulated that economic assistance be terminated to any country that imported uranium enrichment technology. The Glenn Amendment of 1977 similarly called for an end to aid to countries that imported reprocessing technology--Pakistan had from France. United States economic assistance, except for food aid, was terminated under the Symington Amendment in April 1979. In 1985 the Solarz Amendment was added to prohibit aid to countries that attempt to import nuclear commodities from the United States. In the same year, the Pressler Amendment was passed; referring specifically to Pakistan, it said that if that nation possessed a nuclear device, aid would be suspended. Many of these amendments could be waived if the president declared that it was in the national interests of the United States to continue assistance.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan made Pakistan a country of paramount geostrategic importance. In a matter of days, the United States declared Pakistan a "frontline state" against Soviet aggression and offered to reopen aid and military assistance deliveries. When the Reagan administration took office in January 1981, the level of assistance increased substantially. The initial package from the United States was for US$3.2 billion over six years, equally divided between economic and military assistance. A separate arrangement was made for the purchase of forty F-16 fighter aircraft.
Aside from Afghanistan, the most problematic element in Pakistan's security policy was the nuclear question. President Zia had inherited a pledge that for domestic reasons he could not discard and he continued the nuclear development program. Zia inherited an ambitious program from Bhutto and continued to develop it, out of the realization that, despite Pakistan's newly acquired weaponry, it could never match India's conventional power and that India either had, or shortly could develop, its own nuclear weapons.
Even after the invasion of Afghanistan, Pakistan almost exhausted United States tolerance, including bungled attempts to illegally acquire United States nuclear- relevant technology and a virtual public admission in 1987 by the head of Pakistan's nuclear program that the country had developed a weapon. As long as Pakistan remained vital to United States interests in Afghanistan, however, no action was taken to cut off United States support. For the remainder of Zia's tenure, the United States generally ignored Pakistan's developing nuclear program. But the issue that after Zia's death led to another cutoff of aid was Pakistan's persistent drive toward nuclear development.
Initial Pakistani attempts to handle the bilateral nuclear relationship with India led nowhere, but a significant step was a nonformalized 1985 agreement that neither India nor Pakistan would attack the other's nuclear facilities. Zia asked India to agree to several steps to end the potential nuclear arms race on the subcontinent. One of these measures was the simultaneous signing of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The second step was a joint agreement for inspection of all nuclear sites by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Pakistan also proposed a pact between the two countries to allow for mutual inspection of sites. And, finally, Pakistan proposed a South Asian nuclear-free zone. It appeared that Zia was looking for a way to terminate the costly Pakistani program. But in order to sell this idea in Pakistan, he required some concessions from India. Termination would also get him out of difficulties the program was causing with the United States, including the curtailment of aid in 1979.
These proposals were still on the table in the early 1990s, and were supplemented by then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's call for a roundtable discussion among Pakistan, India, the United States, Russia, and China on nuclear weapons in South Asia.
Pakistan's dependence on China grew as Western export controls and enforcement mechanisms have grown more stringent. China's nuclear assistance predates the 1986 Sino-Pakistani atomic cooperation agreement, with some of the most critical transfers occurring from 1980 through 1985. China is reported to have provided Pakistan with the design of one of its warheads, as well as sufficient HEU for a few weapons. The 25-kiloton design was the one used in China's fourth nuclear test, which was an atmospheric test using a ballistic missile launch. This configuration is said to be a fairly sophisticated design, with each warhead weighing considerably less than the unwieldy, first-generation US and Soviet weapons which weighed several thousand kilograms. Pakistan Foreign Minister Yakub Khan was present at the Chinese Lop Nor test site to witness the test of a small nuclear device in May 1983, giving rise to speculation that a Pakistani-assembled device was detonated in this test.
Evidently, however, the jump-start provided by A.Q. Khan's trove of documents was an insufficient basis for a dependable Uranium program. Chinese assistance in the development of gas centrifuges at Kahuta was indicated by the presence of Chinese technicians at the facility in the early 1980s. The uranium enrichment facility began operating in the early 1980s, but suffered serious start up problems. In early 1996 it was reported that the A.Q. Khan Research Laboratory had received 5,000 ring magnets, which can be used in gas centrifuges, from a subsidiary of the China National Nuclear Corporation.
Perhaps in response to the persistent problems with the Uranium program, around the time of the signing of the 1986 Sino-Pakistani atomic cooperation agreement, Pakistan evidently embarked on a parallel Plutonium program. Built with Chinese assistance, the heavy water reactor at Khushab is the central element of Pakistan's program for production of plutonium and tritium for advanced compact warheads. The Khushab facility, like that at Kahuta, is not subject to IAEA inspections. Khushab, with a capacity variously reported at between 40 and 70 MWT, was completed in the mid-1990s, with the start of construction dating to the mid-1980s.
As of the mid-1990s it was widely reported that Pakistan's stockpile consisted of as many as 10 nuclear warheads based on a Chinese design.
Why has this happened? What can be done to bring India and Pakistan into the arms control process? The answers lie in the story of how nuclear weapons came to South Asia.
The story begins with US use of nuclear weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Jawaharlal Nehru, soon to be independent India's first prime minister, feared the start of a new age of nuclear-armed imperialism. At the same time, he believed that his country had a great destiny and, to realize it, would have to "defend herself by every means at her disposal."
Nehru's concerns became only too real when the United States began looking in South Asia for allies against the Soviet Union and China. India was the obvious choice, but Nehru was committed to nonalignment. That left no option but Pakistan, which US military planners saw as a base for air operations against the central USSR and as a staging area for ensuring access to Middle East oil areas.
Pakistan welcomed this relationship with the United States. It soon joined two US-led military alliances -- the Central Treaty Organization and the South East Asia Treaty Organization -- and began receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid. Why was Pakistan so eager to become a US ally? It was a weak state, born out of insecurity. Pakistan was intended to be a home for the Muslims of British India who worried about their future in a free India, where Hindus would constitute a large majority. But partition fed, rather than alleviated, this insecurity, since Pakistan inherited virtually no industry, infrastructure, or armed forces.
In the decades after independence, Pakistan's insecurity increased, partly as a result of the two wars it fought with India over Kashmir. In addition, the 1971 civil war in Pakistan, which led to the creation of Bangladesh from East Pakistan, ended with Indian intervention and humiliating defeat for Pakistan.
Shortly thereafter, Indian policy-makers bowed to an increasingly assertive domestic lobby and decided to develop a nuclear weapons capability. They believed that this would confirm India's new-found power and would also respond to China's acquisition of nuclear weapons. China had carried out its first nuclear test in 1964, two years after India's defeat in the Sino-Indian war. India's decision to go nuclear also stemmed from the US relationship with Pakistan. During the 1971 war, the United States sent an aircraft carrier believed to be armed with nuclear weapons into the Bay of Bengal -- an act some in India interpreted as signaling support for Pakistan. This gunboat diplomacy may have been the final straw prompting India to develop nuclear weapons. Following several years' preparation, India conducted its first and only nuclear test explosion in 1974.
Pakistani policymakers, humiliated by the outcome of the 1971 war, feeling betrayed by US failure to come to Pakistan's rescue despite years of loyal support, and now confronted with the prospect of a nuclear-armed India, initiated a nuclear weapons program.
Pakistan's Atomic Energy commission was founded some 15 years after the Indian program. In 1965 President Ayub Khan took some initial steps in response to the emerging Indian nuclear threat. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was the founder of Pakistan's Nuclear Program, initially as Minister for Fuel, Power and Natural Resources, and later as President and Prime Minister. Pakistan's nuclear program was launched in earnest shortly after the loss of East Pakistan in the 1971 war with India, when Bhutto initiated a program to develop nuclear weapons with a meeting of physicists and engineers at Multan in January 1972. In 1974 India successfully tested a nuclear "device." Bhutto reacted strongly to this test and said Pakistan must develop its own "Islamic bomb."
Pakistan lacks an extensive civil nuclear power infrastructure, and its weapons program is not as broad as India's. Almost all of its nuclear program is focused on weapons applications.
Initially, Pakistan focused on the plutonium path for building a nuclear weapon. Plutonium can be obtained from fuel that has been reprocessed from nuclear power plants, and in October 1974 Pakistan signed a contract with France for the design of a reprocessing facility for the fuel from its power plant at Karachi and other planned facilities. However, over the next two years Pakistan's international nuclear collaborators withdrew as Pakistan's nuclear ambitions became more apparent. The French were among the last to withdraw at the end of 1976, following sustained pressure from the United States.
A major advance jump to Pakistan's nuclear program was the arrival of Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan in 1975, who brought with him the plans for uranium enrichment centrifuges, and lists of sources of the necessary technology. On this basis, Pakistan initially focused its development efforts on highly enriched uranium (HEU), and exploited an extensive clandestine procurement network to support these efforts. A.Q. Khan evidently persuaded Pakistan to work with Uranium (as compared to Plutonium) because Plutonium involves more arduous and hazardous procedures and cumbersome and expensive processes.
Pakistan's activities were initially centered in a few facilities. A.Q. Khan founded the Engineering Research Laboratories at Kahuta in 1976, which later became Dr. A. Q. Khan Research Laboratories (KRL).
A number of United States laws, amendments to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, applied to Pakistan and its program of nuclear weapons development. The 1976 Symington Amendment stipulated that economic assistance be terminated to any country that imported uranium enrichment technology. The Glenn Amendment of 1977 similarly called for an end to aid to countries that imported reprocessing technology--Pakistan had from France. United States economic assistance, except for food aid, was terminated under the Symington Amendment in April 1979. In 1985 the Solarz Amendment was added to prohibit aid to countries that attempt to import nuclear commodities from the United States. In the same year, the Pressler Amendment was passed; referring specifically to Pakistan, it said that if that nation possessed a nuclear device, aid would be suspended. Many of these amendments could be waived if the president declared that it was in the national interests of the United States to continue assistance.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan made Pakistan a country of paramount geostrategic importance. In a matter of days, the United States declared Pakistan a "frontline state" against Soviet aggression and offered to reopen aid and military assistance deliveries. When the Reagan administration took office in January 1981, the level of assistance increased substantially. The initial package from the United States was for US$3.2 billion over six years, equally divided between economic and military assistance. A separate arrangement was made for the purchase of forty F-16 fighter aircraft.
Aside from Afghanistan, the most problematic element in Pakistan's security policy was the nuclear question. President Zia had inherited a pledge that for domestic reasons he could not discard and he continued the nuclear development program. Zia inherited an ambitious program from Bhutto and continued to develop it, out of the realization that, despite Pakistan's newly acquired weaponry, it could never match India's conventional power and that India either had, or shortly could develop, its own nuclear weapons.
Even after the invasion of Afghanistan, Pakistan almost exhausted United States tolerance, including bungled attempts to illegally acquire United States nuclear- relevant technology and a virtual public admission in 1987 by the head of Pakistan's nuclear program that the country had developed a weapon. As long as Pakistan remained vital to United States interests in Afghanistan, however, no action was taken to cut off United States support. For the remainder of Zia's tenure, the United States generally ignored Pakistan's developing nuclear program. But the issue that after Zia's death led to another cutoff of aid was Pakistan's persistent drive toward nuclear development.
Initial Pakistani attempts to handle the bilateral nuclear relationship with India led nowhere, but a significant step was a nonformalized 1985 agreement that neither India nor Pakistan would attack the other's nuclear facilities. Zia asked India to agree to several steps to end the potential nuclear arms race on the subcontinent. One of these measures was the simultaneous signing of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The second step was a joint agreement for inspection of all nuclear sites by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Pakistan also proposed a pact between the two countries to allow for mutual inspection of sites. And, finally, Pakistan proposed a South Asian nuclear-free zone. It appeared that Zia was looking for a way to terminate the costly Pakistani program. But in order to sell this idea in Pakistan, he required some concessions from India. Termination would also get him out of difficulties the program was causing with the United States, including the curtailment of aid in 1979.
These proposals were still on the table in the early 1990s, and were supplemented by then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's call for a roundtable discussion among Pakistan, India, the United States, Russia, and China on nuclear weapons in South Asia.
Evidently, however, the jump-start provided by A.Q. Khan's trove of documents was an insufficient basis for a dependable Uranium program. Chinese assistance in the development of gas centrifuges at Kahuta was indicated by the presence of Chinese technicians at the facility in the early 1980s. The uranium enrichment facility began operating in the early 1980s, but suffered serious start up problems. In early 1996 it was reported that the A.Q. Khan Research Laboratory had received 5,000 ring magnets, which can be used in gas centrifuges, from a subsidiary of the China National Nuclear Corporation.
Perhaps in response to the persistent problems with the Uranium program, around the time of the signing of the 1986 Sino-Pakistani atomic cooperation agreement, Pakistan evidently embarked on a parallel Plutonium program. Built with Chinese assistance, the heavy water reactor at Khushab is the central element of Pakistan's program for production of plutonium and tritium for advanced compact warheads. The Khushab facility, like that at Kahuta, is not subject to IAEA inspections. Khushab, with a capacity variously reported at between 40 and 70 MWT, was completed in the mid-1990s, with the start of construction dating to the mid-1980s.
As of the mid-1990s it was widely reported that Pakistan's stockpile consisted of as many as 10 nuclear warheads based on a Chinese design.