Pakistan has the fastest growing nuclear arsenal and, within the next five to ten years, it is likely to double that of India, and exceed those of France, the United Kingdom, and China. Only the arsenals of the United States and Russia will be larger.
In recent years, Pakistan has boasted of developing “tactical nuclear weapons” to protect itself against potential offensive actions by India. In fact, Pakistan is the only country currently boasting of making increasingly tiny nuclear weapons (link in Urdu).
Pakistanis overwhelmingly support their army and its various misadventures. And the pursuit of tactical weapons is no exception. However, there is every reason why Pakistanis should be resisting—not welcoming—this development. The most readily identifiable reason is that, in the event of conflict between the two South Asian countries, this kind of weaponization will likely result in tens of thousands of dead Pakistanis, rather than Indians. And things will only go downhill from there
In late 1999, Pakistan’s general Pervez Musharraf (who took power of Pakistan through a military coup in Oct. 1999 and remained in power until 2008), along with a tight cabal of fellow military officials began a limited incursion into the Kargil-Dras area of Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir. While planning for this began in the fall of 1998, by the time Pakistani troops were discovered there in May of 1999 Pakistani forces had taken territory that was several miles into India-administered Kashmir.
Because the Pakistanis had the tactical advantage of occupying the ridge line, India took heavy losses in recovering the area from the invaders. The so-called Kargil War was the first conventional conflict between India and Pakistan since the two conducted nuclear tests in May 1998. International observers were wary that the conflict would escalate either in territory or aims, with the potential for nuclear exchange.
Fearing such escalation, then Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif sought support from China and the United States. Both were adamant that Pakistan respect the line of control, which separated the portions of Jammu-Kashmir administered by India and Pakistan.
Under international pressure and branded an irresponsible state, Pakistan withdrew its forces from Kashmir. It initially claimed that the intruders were mujahedeen—but this was later found to be pure fiction. While Pakistan was isolated internationally, the international community widely applauded India’s restraint. The Kargil War provided the United States with the opportunity to reorient its relations away from Pakistan towards India, while at the same time, demonstrated to India that the United States would not reflexively side with Pakistan.
In retrospect, the Kargil war catalyzed the deepening security cooperation between the United States and India. It also galvanized a serious rethink in India about its domestic security apparatus, intelligence agencies’ capabilities, and overall military doctrine.
Crucially, India learned from this conflict that limited war is indeed possible under the nuclear umbrella. In Oct. 2000, air commodore Jasjit Singh, who retired as the director of operations of India’s air force and headed India’s Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses until 2001, laid out the lineaments of an India’s limited war doctrine. However, no apparent effort was made to make this a viable military concept immediately and India persisted with its defensive posture. In late Dec. 2001, Pakistani terrorists from the Pakistan-backed military group Jaish-e-Mohammad attacked India’s parliament in New Delhi.
In response, India’s government began the largest military mobilization since the 1971 war, which resulted in the liberation of Bangladesh, then East Pakistan. Just as the crisis was subsiding, another group of Pakistani terrorists, Lashkar-e-Taiba, attacked the wives and children of Indian military personnel in Kaluchak, Kashmir. India again seemed poised to take military action but ultimately backed down. The crisis was officially defused after India held elections in Kashmir later that fall. Pakistan concluded that its nuclear arsenal had successfully deterred India from attacking.
As Walter Ladwig has written, analysts identified several problems with India’s posture during that crisis. First, the Indian army took a long time to mobilize which gave Pakistan time to internationalize the conflict and to bring international pressure to bare upon India. Second, the mobilization of India’s strike corps had no element of surprise. Even Pakistan’s modest surveillance capabilities could easily detect their movements, and given their “lumbering composition,” could quickly discern their destination. Third, according to Ladwig, India’s holding corps’ were forward deployed to the border but lacked offensive power and could only conduct limited offensive tasks.
In response to these collective inadequacies, and the prospects of enduring threats from Pakistan, the Indian defense community began formalizing what came to be known as “Cold Start.” Ladwig, who wrote the first comprehensive account, claims that the doctrine aimed to pivot India away from its traditional defensive posture, and towards a more offensive one. It involved developing eight division-sized “integrated battle groups” that combined infantry, artillery, and armor which would be prepared to launch into Pakistani territory on short notice along several axes of advance.
These groups would also be closely integrated with support from the navy and air force. With this force posture, India could quickly mobilize these battle groups and seize limited Pakistani territory before the international community could raise objections.
India could then use this seized territory to force Pakistan into accepting the status quo in Kashmir. While Indians insist that this doctrine never existed, other analysts discount Indian demurrals and note slow—but steady—progress in developing these offensive capabilities. Irrespective of India’s protestations, Pakistanis take “Cold Start” to be a matter of Quranic fact.
Worried that its primary tools of using terrorism fortified by the specter of nuclear war, and fearing that India would be able to force acquiescence, Pakistan concluded that it could vitiate “Cold Start” by developing tactical nuclear weapons. As Pakistan’s former ambassador the United States and current ambassador to the United Nations, Maleeha Lodhi, explained, the basis of Pakistan’s fascination with tactical nuclear weapons is “to counterbalance India’s move to bring conventional military offensives to a tactical level.’’
Pakistani military and civilians often boast of their fast growing arsenal of the world’s smallest nuclear weapons and routinely update the world on the progress of the short-range missile, the Nasr, that would deliver this ever-shrinking payload.
Why should ordinary Pakistanis care?
While Pakistanis overwhelmingly applaud their army’s continued efforts to harass India in pursuit of Kashmir—a territory that Pakistan was never entitled to but fought three wars to acquire by force—there are numerous reasons why Pakistanis should be more sanguine, or even alarmed by Pakistan’s development of tactical nuclear weapons.
The first reality that should discomfit ordinary Pakistanis is that there is really no such thing as a “tactical nuclear weapon.” Even the smallest so-called tactical nuclear weapon will have strategic consequences. (Simply calling them “battlefield nuclear weapons” does not obviate this serious problem.) If Pakistan should use such weapons on India, there is virtually no chance that India will be left responding alone. The international community will most certainly rally around India. The response to Pakistan breaking a nuclear taboo that formed after the Americans used atomic bombs on Japan will most certainly be swift and devastating.
Second, as Shashank Joshi, a war studies researcher at the University of Oxford, has argued, these weapons do not have the military benefits that Pakistan’s military boasts, yet they exacerbate the enormous command and control challenges, including the possibility that nefarious elements may pilfer them once they are forward deployed. For one thing, tactical nuclear weapons do not have significant battlefield effects on enemy targets. For another, it is not evident that these weapons are in fact capable of deterring an Indian incursion into Pakistan.
Third, while Naeem Salik, a former director for arms control at Pakistan’s Strategic Plans Directorate, has said that Pakistan has shifted away from merely doctrinal thinking towards “actual nuclear war fighting,” such thinking is hardly viable for the simple reason of faulty math.
Even if, for the sake of argument, one assumes that Pakistan deploys its one hundred odd weapons of 15 to 30 kilotons at India’s major cities, it is unlikely that Pakistan would be able to deploy all of these weapons to conduct a “splendid first strike,” by which Indian capabilities are completely destroyed.
Moreover, it takes considerably fewer weapons of similar magnitude to utterly destroy Pakistan. Pakistan has thoughtfully concentrated all but three corps in central the Punjab region, which is also its most populous province and the country’s industrial and agricultural center. In short, Pakistan will cease to be a viable political entity while India, though grievously hurt, will survive as a state. Even if Pakistan obtains a functioning triad and retains launch capabilities from submarines, they will be launched in defense of a state that, simply put, no longer exists.
There is a fourth problem that should disquiet Pakistanis perhaps even more than the triggering of the destruction of their country through the deliberate or inadvertent use of their micro-weapons—these tactical nuclear weapons are intended to be used first against Indian troops on Pakistani soil. According to a conference report by the Naval Post School, which hosted Pakistan’s military and diplomatic officials, one Pakistani luminary opined that the “Nasr creates a balancing dynamic that frustrates and makes futile the power-maximizing strategy of India.”
He envisages the Nasr’s shells being used to carry atomic explosives that would annihilate advancing Indian armored thrusts in the southern deserts and blunt Indian advances toward major Pakistani cities, such as Lahore. Retired military general S. F. S. Lodhi, in the April 1999 issue of the Pakistan Defence Journal, laid out four stages of escalation in Pakistan’s use of tactical nuclear weapons which aligns with this view as well.
The consequences of Pakistan nuking itself to keep the Indians out should disturb Pakistanis. According to calculations by Jaganath Sankaran, Pakistan would have to use a 30-kiloton weapon on its own soil, as this is the minimum required to render ineffective fifty percent of an armored unit.
Using Lahore as an example, a 30-kiloton weapon used on the outskirts of the city could kill over 52,000 persons. As Indian troops move closer to Lahore and as the population increases, such a weapon could kill nearly 380,000. Sankaran notes, as an aside, that this would “genuinely destroy a larger battalion or brigade.” Consequently, many more Pakistanis would be likely to die than these horrendous figures suggest.
All of sudden, Pakistan’s tactical nuclear weapons don’t look so fun for any Pakistani who thinks through the math.
Fifth, Pakistanis should be derisive of this new weapon in the national arsenal because it cannot do what the army promises: protect Pakistan from an Indian offensive. Would any Indian military planner take seriously Pakistan’s threat to use nuclear weapons on its own soil when the casualties are so high? Pakistan may have been willing to eat grass to get its nuclear weapons, but is it willing destroy its own center of gravity to maintain its ability to harass India with terrorism over territory to which it never had any legal claim? If the Indians do not take this threat seriously, how is it a deterrent against them? What additional deterrent capability do these weapons afford Pakistan that its strategic assets do not that compensates for the enormous risks they convey?
Finally, if India took Pakistan’s threats seriously, it does not have to invade Pakistan to coerce the country’s leaders to detonate one of these weapons on its own soil. Presumably simply looking adequately likely to cross the international border and threaten a major Punjabi city could provoke a “demonstration detonation.”
I am not encouraging a nuclear Armageddon upon Pakistan; rather expositing the limited utility that these weapons confer upon Pakistan.
Even if Pakistan fully inducts these weapons in its arsenal, it still has an army that can’t win a conventional war against India and nuclear weapons it cannot use. This leaves only an industrial farm of terrorists as the only efficacious tool at its disposal. And given the logic of the above scenario, India and the international community should consider seriously calling Pakistan’s bluff. The only logical Pakistani response to a limited offensive incursion is to accept the fait accompli and acquiesce. So far, the West has seen Pakistan’s nuclear weapons as a proliferation threat rather than a security threat. The implications of this has largely been appeasement. The United States, worried that Pakistan’s weapons may fall into the hands of non-state actors or that Pakistan will once again reopen its nuclear weapons bazaar to aspirant nuclear powers, perpetually argues for engaging Pakistan diplomatically, militarily, politically, and financially. In essence, Pakistan has effectively blackmailed the United States and the international community for an array of assistance exploiting the collective fears of what may happen should Pakistan collapse.
In recent months, some US White House officials have even argued for a potential nuclear deal to reward Pakistan for making concessions in fissile material production, limiting the development and deployment of its nuclear weapons among other activates to address Washington’s proliferation concerns. Unfortunately, Washington has yet to seriously formulate punishments rather than allurements to achieve these ends, even though Pakistan has shown no interest in making such concessions.
There are reasons why the United States and the international community should begin to see Pakistan’s nuclear weapons as a direct security threat. For one thing, these nuclear weapons have always been intended to allow Pakistan to harass India through the use of militant proxies. Consequently, Pakistan has become an epicenter of Islamist terrorism.
Had Pakistan not had these nuclear capabilities, India could have sorted out Pakistan some time ago. Moreover, the critical time period for Pakistan’s nuclear program was in the late 1970s, when Pakistan was on the threshold of obtaining a crude weapon. (We now know that Pakistan had a crude nuclear weapon by 1984 if not somewhat earlier.) The United States even sanctioned Pakistan in 1979 for advances in its program.
Saudi Arabia matched America’s contributions. While al-Qaeda is not truly the direct descendent of the Afghan mujahedeen, there can be little doubt that the structures built to wage this jihad gave birth to the group. Had the United States remained focused on nuclear weapons in Pakistan, and used a different strategy in Afghanistan, a wholly different future could have been realized.
As tensions between the United States and Pakistan deepen, and as Pakistan’s arsenal expands and permits it to target US assets in South, Central, and Southwest Asia, the United States should begin considering Pakistan’s proliferation of nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles as a direct threat to its security, rather than merely a proliferation problem to be managed
The armies of Pakistan and India are practicing for nuclear war on the battlefield: Pakistan is rehearsing the use of nuclear weapons, while India trains to fight on despite such use and subsequently escalate. What were once mere ideas and scenarios dreamed up by hawkish military planners and nuclear strategists have become starkly visible capabilities and commitments. When the time comes, policy makers and people on both sides will expect—and perhaps demand—that the Bomb be used. Pakistan has long been explicit about its plans to use nuclear weapons to counter Indian conventional forces. Pakistan has developed “a variety of short range, low yield nuclear weapons,” claimed retired General Khalid Kidwai in March 2015. Kidwai is the founder—and from 2000 until 2014 ran—Pakistan’s Strategic Plans Division, which is responsible for managing the country’s nuclear weapons production complex and arsenal. These weapons, Kidwai said, have closed the “space for conventional war.” Echoing this message, Pakistani Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhrydeclared in October 2015 that his country might use these tactical nuclear weapons in a conflict with India. There already have been four wars between the two countries—in 1947, 1965, 1971, and 1999—as well as many war scares. The United States, which at one time deployed over 7,000 tactical nuclear weapons in Europe aimed at Soviet conventional forces, has expressed alarm about Pakistan’s plans. Amplifying comments made by President Barack Obama, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest explained in April 2016 that “we’re concerned by the increased security challenges that accompany growing stockpiles, particularly tactical nuclear weapons that are designed for use on the battlefield. And these systems are a source of concern because they’re susceptible to theft due to their size and mode of employment. Essentially, by having these smaller weapons, the threshold for their use is lowered, and the[re is] risk that a conventional conflict between India and Pakistan could escalate to include the use of nuclear weapons.” Responding to US concerns, Kidwai has said that “Pakistan would not cap or curb its nuclear weapons programme or accept any restrictions.” The New York Timesreported last year that so far, “an unknown number of the tactical weapons were built, but not deployed” by Pakistan. India is making its own preparations for nuclear war. The Indian Army conducted a massive military exercise in April 2016 in the Rajasthan desert bordering Pakistan, involving tanks, artillery, armored personnel carriers, and 30,000 soldiers, to practice what to do if it is attacked with nuclear weapons on the battlefield. An Indian Army spokesman told the media, “our policy has been always that we will never use nuclear weapons first. But if we are attacked, we need to gather ourselves and fight through it. The simulation is about doing exactly that.” This is not the first such Indian exercise. As long ago as May 2001, the Indian military conducted an exercise based on the possibility that Pakistan would use nuclear weapons on Indian armed forces. Indian generals and planners have anticipated such battlefield nuclear use by Pakistan since at least the 1990s. Driving the current set of Indian strategies and capabilities is the army’s search for a way to use military force to retaliate against Pakistan for harboring terrorists who, from time to time, have launched devastating attacks inside India. In 2001, Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed claimed credit for an attack on India’s parliament. India massed troops on the border, but had to withdraw them after several months. International pressure, a public commitment by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to restrain militants from future strikes, and Pakistan’s threat to use nuclear weapons if it was attacked caused the crisis to wind down. Following the 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai by Pakistan-based militants, General Deepak Kapoor, then India’s army chief, argued that India must find a way to wage “limited war under a nuclear overhang.” Paths to destruction. It could come to pass that Pakistan’s army uses nuclear weapons on its own territory to repel invading Indian tanks and troops. Pakistan’s planners may intend this first use of nuclear weapons as a warning shot, hoping to cause the Indians to stop and withdraw rather than risk worse. But while withdrawal would be one possible outcome, there would also be others. It is more likely, for instance, that the use of one—or even a few—Pakistani battlefield nuclear weapons would fail to dent Indian forces. While even a small nuclear weapon would be devastating in an urban environment, many such weapons may be required to have a decisive military impact on columns of well-dispersed battle tanks and soldiers who have practiced warfighting under nuclear attack. India’s nuclear doctrine, meanwhile, is built on massive retaliation. In 2003, India’s cabinet declared nuclear weapons “will only be used in retaliation against a nuclear attack on Indian territory or on Indian forces anywhere … nuclear retaliation to a first strike will be massive and designed to inflict unacceptable damage.” According to Admiral Vijay Shankar, a former head of Indian strategic nuclear forces, such retaliation would involve nuclear attacks on Pakistan’s cities. Kidwai describessuch Indian threats as “bluster and blunder,” since they “are not taking into account the balance of nuclear weapons of Pakistan, which hopefully not, but has the potential to go back and give the same kind of dose to the other side.” For nuclear planners in both countries, threatening the slaughter of millions and mutual destruction seems to be the order of the day. There are also risks short of war, of course. Nuclear weapon units integrated with conventional forces and ready to be dispersed on a battlefield pose critical command-and-control issues. Kidwai believes that focusing on “lesser issues of command and control, and the possibility of their falling into wrong hands is unfortunate.” He claims “Our nuclear weapons are safe, secure and under complete institutional and professional control.” The implication is that communications between the nuclear headquarters and deployed units in the field will be perfectly reliable and secure even in wartime, and that commanders of individual units will not seek—or have the capability to launch—a nuclear strike unless authorized. It is difficult to believe these claims. Peering through the fog of war, dizzied by developments on a rapidly evolving battlefield, confronting possible defeat, and fuelled by generations of animosity towards India as well as a thirst for revenge from previous wars, it cannot be guaranteed that a Pakistani nuclear commander will follow the rules. Add to this the risks in what now passes for peacetime in Pakistan. The Strategic Plans Division may dismiss fears that its nuclear weapons will be hijacked. However, the military has rarely succeeded in anticipating and preventing major attacks by militant Islamist groups in Pakistan. Look no further than the May 2011 attack on Karachi’s Mehran naval base. The attackers, who may have numbered up to 20 and had insider help, “scaled the perimeter fence and continued to the main base by exploiting a blind spot in surveillance camera coverage, suggesting detailed knowledge of the base layout,” The Guardianreported. It took elite troops 18 hours to regain control of the base. It is also unclear how the officers who are in charge of Pakistan’s military bases and those who make security-clearance decisions are chosen, and whether their own commitment to fighting Islamic radicalism is genuine. In 2009, the former commander of Pakistan’s Shamsi Air Force Base was arrested for leaking “sensitive” information to a radical Islamist organization. In 2011, a one-star general serving in Pakistan’s General Headquarters was arrested for his contacts with a militant group. In a religion that stresses its own completeness, and in which righteousness is given higher value than obedience to temporal authority, there is room for serious conflict between piety and military discipline. Grasping at straws? A first step to reducing all these nuclear dangers is to prevent an escalation of tensions. This must start with Pakistan tackling the threat of Islamist militancy at home and preventing militant attacks across the India-Pakistan border. The outlook is mixed on both fronts. Pakistan’s army accelerated its war against radical Islamist groups after a 2014 attack on an army school in Peshawar that killed more than 140 students and staff. Despite military claims of success, though, responding with massive force and inflicting countless deaths will not resolve what is at its core a political and social problem. Ending the threat of radical Islam in Pakistan will require sweeping changes in public attitudes and major policy reversals in many areas. These are nowhere in sight. To its credit, Pakistan has recently been more forward-leaning in dealing with militants who attack India. Following the assault on India’s Pathankot airbase in January 2016, Sartaj Aziz, foreign affairs adviser to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, made the surprising revelation that a mobile phone number used by the attackers was linked to the militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed based in Bahawalpur, Pakistan. To collect evidence for possible legal action against Jaish-e-Mohammed leaders, Pakistan sent a fact-finding mission to Pathankot with the approval of the Indian government. This kind of cooperation by the two governments is unprecedented. Rather than limit cooperation to crisis management after an attack, Pakistan and India could agree on a South Asian version of the Open Skies Treaty to provide each with limited access to the other’s air space for surveillance purposes. India has an interest in monitoring possible militant camps within Pakistan and border areas where militants may cross. Pakistan seeks early warning in case India is preparing to mount a surprise attack. The 1992 Open Skies Treaty, covering the United States and fellow North Atlantic Treaty Organization members and Russia and its former Soviet and Eastern European partners, allows for controlled surveillance flights with agreed instruments such as photographic and video cameras, radar, and infrared scanners. The goal is to promote “greater openness and transparency in their military activities” and “to facilitate the monitoring of compliance with existing or future arms control agreements and to strengthen the capacity for conflict prevention and crisis management.” The United States and other parties to the Open Skies Treaty could share their technical tools and flight management experience with Pakistan and India, as well as what they’ve learned about the value of the agreement. The two countries should also prepare in case things go wrong. The 1999 Lahore Agreement committed Pakistan and India to “notify each other immediately in the event of any accidental, unauthorised or unexplained incident that could create the risk of a fallout with adverse consequences for both sides, or an outbreak of a nuclear war between the two countries, as well as to adopt measures aimed at diminishing the possibility of such actions, or such incidents being misinterpreted by the other.” The question is, who will each side call and how? One possibility is a direct line of communication—a hotline—from Pakistan’s Strategic Plans Division chief to the head of India’s Strategic Forces Command. There are other hotlines, and they are not always used or used wisely, but in a crisis this may be better than relying on television, Facebook, Twitter, or Washington. Progress towards even such limited measures will confront the fact that in both India and Pakistan, nationalist passions forged over seven decades are being reinforced by the institutional self-interests of emerging nuclear military-industrial complexes and their political patrons and ideological allies. The United States and Soviet Union saw such deepening militarization during the Cold War. The institutional forces and ideas—what the great English anti-nuclear activist, thinker, and historian E.P. Thompson called “the thrust of exterminism”—proved so strong that even when the Cold War ended, and the Soviet Union fell, the Bomb remained. With expansive and costly nuclear arsenal modernizations underway in the United States, Russia, and the other established nuclear weapon states, the Bomb now seems ready for a second life. Increasingly subject to the same exterminist forces, South Asia may be locked in its nuclear nightmare for a very long time.
SARGODHA KIRANA HILLS THE CENTRE OF GRAVITY OF PAK NUKES
[ TO THE SCALE AS OF GOOGLE EARTH ]
DEFENCE NOTES
When Mountains Move – The Story of Chagai
Columnist RAI MUHAMMAD SALEH AZAM gives a detailed account of events and personalities leading to Pakistan first nuclear explosion. (Courtesy of THE NATION)
Pakistan crossed the nuclear threshold to become a declared nuclear weapons state on 28 May 1998 after it detonated five nuclear devices in the Ras Koh Hills in Chagai, Balochistan.
Chagai’s nexus with Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme first became known to the Pakistani public and the world back in the early 1990s when a book, Critical Mass, written by William E. Burrows and Robert Windrem was published.
However, the story goes further than that.
Chagai:The Background
The story of Chagai began in Quetta, Balochistan in 1976 when Brig. Muhammad Sarfraz, Chief of Staff at 5 Corps Headquarters received a transmission from the Pakistan Army General Headquarters (GHQ), Rawalpindi. The message directed the Corps Commander to make available an army helicopter to a forthcoming team of scientists from the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) for operational reconnaissance of some areas in Balochistan.
The PAEC team comprising Dr. Ishfaq Ahmad, Member (Technical) and Dr. Ahsan Mubarak landed at Quetta and were provided the helicopter as per the GHQ instructions. Over a span of three days, the PAEC scientists made several reconnaissance tours of the area between Turbat, Awaran and Khusdar in the south and Naukundi-Kharan in the east.
Their objective was to find a suitable location for an underground nuclear test, preferably a mountain.
After a hectic and careful search they found a mountain which matched their specifications. This was a 185-metre high granite mountain in the Ras Koh Hills in the Chagai Division of Balochistan which at their highest point rise to a height of 3,009 metres. Ras Koh Hills are independent of and should not be confused with the Chagai Hills further north on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, in which, to date, no nuclear test activity has taken place.
The PAEC requirement was that the mountain should be “bone dry” and capable of withstanding a 20 kilotonne nuclear explosion from the inside. Tests were conducted to measure the water content of the mountains and the surrounding area and to measure the capability of the mountain’s rock to withstand a nuclear test. Once this was confirmed, Dr. Ishfaq Ahmed commenced work on a three-dimensional survey of the area.
This survey took one year to conduct and, in 1977, it was decided that the proposed tunnel to be bored in the mountain should have the overburden of a 700 metre high mountain over it, making sufficient to withstand 20 kilo-tonnes of nuclear force. In the same year, Brig. Muhammad Sarfraz, who, in the interim, had been posted to GHQ Rawalpindi, was summoned by President Zia-ul-Haq and was told that the PAEC wanted to lease him from the Army to carry out work related to the Pakistan nuclear programme. This resulted in the creation of the Special Development Works (SDW), a subsidiary of the PAEC but directly reporting to the Chief of the Army Staff which was entrusted with the task of preparing the nuclear test sites. Brig. Sarfraz, for all practical purposes, headed the SDW, a nuclear variant of the Pakistan Army’s famous Frontier Works Organization (FWO) which built the Karakorum Highway.
The primary task of the organization was to prepare underground test sites (both horizontal and vertical shafts) for 20-kilotonne nuclear devices, with all the allied infrastructure and facilities. The sites had to be designed in such a way that they could be utilized at short notice (in less than a week) and were to be completed by December 1979 at the latest.
After a series of meetings between SDW and PAEC officials and the President of Pakistan, it was decided that SDW should prepare 2-3 separate sites. Therefore, a second site for a horizontal shaft was located at Kharan, in a desert valley between the Ras Koh Hills to the north and Siahan Range to the south.
Subsequently, the Chagai-Ras Koh-Kharan areas became restricted entry zones and were closed to the public, prompting rumours that Pakistan had given airbases to the United States. The fact that US-AID had set up an office in Turbat, Balochistan only added fuel to such rumours.
A 3,325 feet long tunnel was bored in the Ras Koh Hills which was 8-9 feet in diameter and was shaped like a fishhook for it to be self-sealing. The test site at Kharan was 300 by 200 feet and was L-shaped. Both test sites had an array of extensive cables, sensors and monitoring stations. In addition to the main tunnels, SDW built 24 cold test sites, 46 short tunnels and 35 underground accommodations for troops and command, control and monitoring facilities. At Ras Koh, some of these were located inside the granite mountains.
Both the nuclear test sites at Ras Koh and Kharan took 2-3 years to prepare and were completed in 1980, before Pakistan acquired the capability to develop a nuclear weapon. This showed both confidence and resolve in Pakistan’s nuclear programme as well as faith in Almighty God.
The Wah Group:Designers and Manufacturers of Pakistan’s Nuclear Device
In March 1974, Hafeez Qureshi, who at the time was heading the Radiation and Isotope Applications Division (RIAD) at the Pakistan Institute of Science & Technology (PINSTECH) at Nilore and a mechanical engineer par excellence, was summoned by the then Chairman of the PAEC, Munir Ahmad Khan in a meeting that was attended, among others, by Dr. Abdus Salam, then Adviser for Science and Technology to the Government of Pakistan and Dr. Riaz-ud-Din, Member (Technical), PAEC. Qureshi was told that he join hands on a project of national importance with another expert, Dr. Zaman Sheikh, then working with DESTO. The word “bomb” was never used in the meeting but Qureshi knew exactly what he was being asked to do. Their task would be to build the mechanics of the bomb. The project would be located at Wah, appropriately next to the Pakistan Ordnance Factories (POF), in the North-West Frontier Province and conveniently close to the capital, Islamabad.
The work at Wah began under the code of Research and Qureshi, Zaman and their team of engineers and scientists came to be known as “The Wah Group”. Initial work was limited to research and development of the explosives to be used in the nuclear device. However, the terms of reference expanded to include chemical, mechanical and precision engineering and triggering mechanisms. It procured equipment where it could and developed its own technology where restrictions prevented the purchase of equipment.
Kirana Hills:The Cold Tests
Pakistan’s first cold test of its nuclear device was carried out on March 11, 1983 in the Kirana Hills near Sargodha, home of the Pakistan Air Force’s main airbase and the Central Ammunition Depot (CAD). Cold Test (CT) is a means of testing the working of a nuclear device without an explosion. This is achieved by triggering an actual bomb without the fissile material needed to detonate it. The test was overseen by Dr. Ishfaq Ahmed.
The tunnels at Kirana Hills, Sargodha are reported to have been bored after the Chagai nuclear test sites, i.e. sometime between 1979 and 1983. As in Chagai, the tunnels at Kirana Hills had been bored and then sealed and this task was also undertaken by SDW.
Prior to the cold tests, an advance team was sent to de-seal, open and clean the tunnels and to make sure the tunnels were clear of the wild boars that are found in abundance in the Sargodha region. The damage which these wild boars could do to men and equipment could not be understated when one such wild boar later cost the PAF an F-16 when it sheared off the aircraft’s front undercarriage as it came in to land at Sargodha Air Base. Luckily, the pilot ejected with minor injuries. The $ 20 million F-16 was, however, destroyed and had to be written off.
After clearing of the tunnels, a PAEC diagnostic team headed by Dr. Mubarakmand arrived on the scene with trailers fitted with computers and diagnostic equipment. This was followed by the arrival of the Wah Group with the nuclear device, in sub-assembly form. This was assembled and then placed inside the tunnel. A monitoring system was set up with around 20 cables linking various parts of the device with oscillators in diagnostic vans parked near the Kirana Hills. The Wah Group had indigenously developed the explosive HMX (His Majesty’s Explosive) which was used to trigger the device.
The device was tested using the push-button technique as opposed to the radio-link technique used at Chagai fourteen years later. The first test was to see whether the triggering mechanism created the necessary neutrons which would start a fission chain reaction in the real bomb. However, when the button was pushed, most of the wires connecting the device to the oscillators were severed due to errors committed in the preparation of the cables. At first, it was thought that the device had malfunctioned but closer scrutiny of two of the oscillators confirmed that the neutrons had indeed come out and a chain reaction had taken place. Pakistan’s first cold test of a nuclear device had been successful and 11 March 1983 became a red letter day in the history of the Pakistan nuclear programme. A second cold test was undertaken soon afterwards which was witnessed by Ghulam Ishaq Khan, Lt. Gen. K.M. Arif and Munir Ahmed Khan.
The need to improve and perfect the design of Pakistan’s first nuclear device required constant testing. As a result, between 1983 and 1990, the Wah Group conducted more than 24 cold tests of the nuclear device at Kirana Hills with the help of mobile diagnostic equipment. These tests were carried out in 24 tunnels measuring 100-150 feet in length which were bored inside the Kirana Hills. Later due to excessive US intelligence and satellite focus on the Kirana Hills site, it was abandoned and the CT facility was shifted to the Kala-Chitta Range.
By March 1984, Kahuta Research Laboratories (KRL) had independently carried out its own cold tests of its nuclear device near Kahuta.
During the same 1983-1990 period, the Wah Group went on to design and develop a bomb small enough to be carried on the wing of a small fighter such as the F-16. It worked alongside the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) to evolve and perfect delivery techniques of the nuclear bomb using combat aircraft including ‘conventional freefall’, ‘loft bombing’, ‘toss bombing and ‘low-level laydown’ attack techniques. Today, the PAF has perfected all four techniques of nuclear weapons delivery using F-16, Mirage-V and A-5 combat aircraft. PAK TACTICAL NUKE WEAPON SS-11 MISSILE DEPLOYMENT AGAINST INDIA AT GUJRANWALA
The Indian Challenge
On 11 and 13 May 1998, Indian conducted what it claimed were a total of 5 nuclear tests at Pokhran, Rajasthan near the Pakistan border and declared itself a “nuclear weapons state”. This act by India destabilized the balance of power in South Asia heavily in India’s favour. The dust at Pokhran had yet to settle when high-ranking Indian government officials and military personnel began issuing provocative statements against Pakistan. India declared that it would pursue a “pro-active” policy on Jammu & Kashmir. Pakistan was told to realise the “new geo-political realities in South Asia”.
The underlying message for Pakistan was this “give up your claim on Jammu & Kashmir and become forever subservient to Indian hegemony in South Asia”. India was now the nuclear weapons power and Pakistan wasn’t. Therefore, it is Pakistan which must capitulate on Jammu & Kashmir and only the dictate of India would be allowed in South Asia. In the event of another India-Pakistan War, India would be able to use nuclear weapons if its Armed Forces were defeated or put in a tight corner. Indian warplanners felt that the use of small battlefield nuclear devices against the Pakistan Army cantonments, armoured and infantry columns and PAF bases and nuclear and military industrial facilities would not meet with an adverse reaction from the world community so long as civilian casualties could be kept to a minimum. This way, India would defeat Pakistan, force its Armed Forces into a humiliating surrender and occupy and annex the Northern Areas of Pakistan and Azad Jammu & Kashmir. India would then carve up Pakistan into tiny states based on ethnic divisions and that would be the end of the “Pakistan problem” once and for all.
Such a plan could never be allowed to succeed. In the face of national survival, all other things become secondary. Therefore, it was decided that Pakistan had to go nuclear to guarantee its security and survival.
The Road to Chagai
A meeting of the Defence Committee of the Cabinet (DCC) was convened on the morning of 15 May 1998 at the Prime Minister’s Secretariat, Islamabad to discuss the situation arising out of the Indian nuclear tests. The meeting was chaired by the Prime Minister of Pakistan and attended by the Minister of Defence, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Gohar Ayub Khan, the Minister of Finance & Economic Affairs, Sartaj Aziz, the Foreign Secretary, Shamshad Ahmed Khan and the three Chiefs of Staffs of the Army, Air Force and Navy, namely General Jehangir Karamat, Air Chief Marshal Pervaiz Mehdi Qureshi and Admiral Fasih Bokhari respectively.
Since Dr. Ishfaq Ahmed, Chairman of the PAEC was on a visit to the United States and Canada the responsibility of giving a technical assessment of the Indian nuclear tests and Pakistan’s preparedness to give a matching response to India fell on the shoulders of Dr. Samar Mubarakmand, Member (Technical), PAEC. Dr. Mubarakmand was in charge of the PAEC’s Directorate of Technical Development (DTD), one of the most secretive organizations in the Pakistan nuclear programme the location of which is one of Pakistan’s best kept secrets and unknown to the world. Dr. Mubarakmand had supervised several cold tests since 1983 and was responsible for overseeing all of PAEC’s classified projects. Also, in attendance was Dr. A.Q. Khan, Director of the Khan Research Laboratories (KRL), Kahuta.
There were two points on the DCC’s agenda: Firstly, whether or not Pakistan should carry out nuclear tests in order to respond to Indian’s nuclear tests? Secondly, if Pakistan does go ahead with the tests then which of the two organizations, PAEC or KRL, should carry out the tests?
The discussions went on for a few hours and encompassed the financial, diplomatic, military, strategic and national security concerns. Finance Minister Sartaj Aziz was the only person who opposed the tests on financial grounds due to the economic recession, the low foreign exchange reserves of the country and the effect of inevitable economic sanctions which would be imposed on Pakistan if it carried out the tests. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif neither opposed nor proposed the tests. The remainder spoke in favour of conducting the tests.
While giving his technical assessment on behalf of the PAEC, Dr. Mubarakmand said that Pakistan had a modern state-of-the-art international standard seismic station near the capital, Islamabad, and also had seismic stations located all over Pakistan including at locations near the Pakistan-India border. He said that these seismic stations had recorded only one nuclear device on 11 May 1998 at Pokhran and not three as India was wrongfully claiming. He said that the remaining two, in all probability, had fizzled out, i.e. were failures. He also said that no thermonuclear or hydrogen test was carried out on either 11 or 13 May 1998 by the Indians as none of the yields were big enough for such a test. In all likelihood, the Indians may have attempted a thermonuclear test, but it too had failed. Dr. Mubarakmand added that if it is decided that Pakistan should go ahead with nuclear tests of its own, then the PAEC is fully prepared to carry out the nuclear tests within 10 days.
Dr. A.Q. Khan, speaking on behalf of KRL, also asserted that KRL was fully prepared and capable of carrying out nuclear tests within 10 days if the orders are given by the DCC. Dr. Khan reminded the DCC that it was KRL which first enriched uranium, converted it into metal, machined it into semi-spheres of metal and designed their own atomic bomb and carried out cold tests on their own. All this was achieved without any help from PAEC. He said that KRL was fully independent in the nuclear field. Dr. Khan went on to say that since it was KRL which first made inroads into the nuclear field for Pakistan, it should be given the honour of carrying out Pakistan’s first nuclear tests and it would feel let down if it wasn’t conferred the privilege of doing so.
Thus, both the PAEC and KRL were equal to the task. However, PAEC had two additional advantages which KRL didn’t. Firstly, it was PAEC which had constructed Pakistan’s nuclear test site at Chagai, Baluchistan. Secondly, PAEC had greater experience in conducting cold tests than KRL.
The DCC meeting concluded without any resolution of the two agenda points.
The Chairman of the PAEC, Dr. Ishfaq Ahmed, cut short his foreign trip and returned to Pakistan on 16 May 1998. On the morning of 17 May 1998, he received a call from the Pakistan Army GHQ, Rawalpindi informing him to remain on stand-by a meeting with the Prime Minister. He was thereafter summoned by the Prime Minister House, Islamabad where he went accompanied by Dr. Mubarakmand the Prime Minister asked the PAEC Chairman for his opinion on the two points which were discussed in the DCC meeting of 15 May 1998. Dr. Ahmed told the Prime Minister that the decision to test or not to test was that of the Government of Pakistan. As far as the PAEC preparedness and capability was concerned they were ready to their duty as and when required to do so. The Prime Minister said that eyes of the world were focused on Pakistan and failure to conduct the tests would put the credibility of the Pakistan nuclear programme in doubt. The PAEC Chairman reply was, “Mr. Prime Minister, take a decision and, Insha’Allah, I give you the guarantee of succes”. He was told to prepare for the tests but remain on stand-by for the final decision.
We know that the order to conduct the tests was given on 18 May 1998. Since the DCC meeting of 15 May 1998 proved inconclusive, it is believed that a more exclusive DCC meeting was held on 16 or 17 May 1998 attended only by the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister, the Finance Minister and the three Chiefs of Staff of the Army, Air Force and Navy. This meeting has never been officially acknowledged but it must have been held as neither the Prime Minister alone nor the Chief of the Army Staff alone could have made the decision to conduct the nuclear tests. The DCC was the only competent authority to decide on this matter, especially since the National Command Authority (NCA), Pakistan’s nuclear command and control authority for its strategic forces, did not exist at that time. In this meeting, the two agenda points of the DCC meeting of 15 May 1998 were decided. Firstly, Pakistan would give a matching and befitting response to India by conducting nuclear tests of its own. Secondly, the task would be assigned to the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC), who were the best equipped and most experienced to carry out the tests.
On 18 May 1998, the Chairman of the PAEC was again summoned to the Prime Minister House where he was relayed the decision of the DCC. “Dhamaka kar dein” (Conduct the explosion”) were the exact words used by the Prime Minister to inform him of the Government’s decision to conduct the nuclear tests. The PAEC Chairman went back to his office and gave orders to his staff to prepare for the tests. Simultaneously, GHQ and Air Headquarters issued orders to the relevant quarters in 12 Corps, Quetta, the National Logistics Cell (NLC), the Army Aviation Corps and No. 6 (Air Transport Support) Squadron respectively to extend the necessary support to the PAEC in this regard. The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) also directed the national airline, PIA, to make available a Boeing 737 passenger aircraft at short notice for the ferrying of PAEC officials, scientists, engineers and technicians to Baluchistan.
When news reached Dr. A.Q. Khan at KRL that the task had been assigned to PAEC, he lodged a strong protest with the Chief of Army Staff, General Jehangir Karamat. The Army Chief, in turn, called the Prime Minister. It was decided that KRL personnel would be involved in the final preparation of the nuclear test site alongside those of PAEC as well as present at the time of testing.
In the meantime, PAEC convened a meeting to decide the modus operandi of the tests and how many tests to carry out. This meeting was chaired by Dr. Ahmed and attended by Dr. Mubarakmand and other scientists and engineers of the PAEC. It was decided that since the Indian nuclear tests had given an opportunity to Pakistan to conduct nuclear tests after 14 years of conducting only cold tests, the maximum benefit should be derived from this opportunity. It was, therefore, decided, that multiple tests would be carried out of varying yields as well as the live testing of the triggering mechanisms. Since the tunnel at the Ras Koh Hills had the capability to conduct six tests, therefore, six different nuclear devices of varying designs, sizes and yields were selected, all of which had been previously cold tested.
Immediately afterwards, began the process of fitness and quality checks of the various components of the nuclear devices and the testing equipment. A large but smooth logistics operation also got underway with the help of the Pakistan Army and Air Force. This operation involved moving men and equipment as well as the nuclear devices to the Ras Koh test site from various parts of the country.
On 19 May 1998, two teams of 140 PAEC scientists, engineers and technicians left for Chagai, Balochistan on two separate PIA Boeing 737 flights. Also on board were teams from the Wah Group, the Theoretical Group, the Directorate of Technical Development (DTD) and the Diagnostics Group. Some of the men and equipment were transported via road using NLC trucks escorted by the members of the Special Services Group (SSG), the elite commando force of the Pakistan Army.
The nuclear devices were themselves flown in completely knocked down (CKD) sub-assembly form on a Pakistan Air Force C-130 Hercules tactical transport aircraft from Rawalpindi to Chagai, escorted even within Pakistani airspace by four PAF F-16s armed with air-to-air missiles. The security of the devices was so strict that the PAF F-16 escort pilots had been secretly given standing orders that in the unlikely event of the C-130 being hijacked or flown outside of Pakistani airspace, they were to shoot down the aircraft before it left Pakistan’s airspace. The F-16s were ordered to escort the C-130 at a designated airfield in Balochistan with their radio communications equipment turned off so that no orders, in the interim, could be conveyed to them to act otherwise. They were also ordered to ignore any orders to the contrary that got through to them during the duration of the flight even if such orders originated from Air Headquarters.
Once in Chagai, the parts of the nuclear devices were separately taken to the five ‘zero rooms’ in the kilometre long tunnels at Ras Koh Hills in Chagai. Dr. Samar Mubarakmand personally supervised the complete assembly of all five nuclear devices. Diagnostic cables were thereafter laid from the tunnel to the telemetry. The cables connected all five nuclear devices with a command observation post 10 km away. Afterwards, a complete simulated test was carried out by tele-command. This process of preparing the nuclear devices and laying of the cables and the establishment of the fully functional command and observation post took 5 days.
On 25 May 1998, soldiers of the Pakistan Army 5 Corps arrived to seal the tunnel. They were super vised by engineers and technicians from the Pakistan Army Engineering Corps, the Frontier Works Organisation (FWO) and the Special Development Works (SDW). Dr Samar Mubarakmand himself walked a total of 5 kilometres back and forth in the hot tunnels checking and re-checking the devices and the cables which would be forever buried under the concrete. Finally, the cables were plugged into nuclear devices. The process of sealing the tunnel thereafter began with the mixing of the cement and the sand. It took a total of 6,000 cement bags to seal the tunnel.
The tunnel was sealed by the afternoon May 26, 1998 and by the afternoon of 27 May 1998, the cement had completely dried out due to the excessive heat of the desert. After the engineers certified that the concrete had hardened and the site was fit for the tests it was communicated to the Prime Minister via the GHQ that the site was ready.
The date and time for Pakistan’s rendezvous with destiny was set for 3:00 p.m. on the afternoon of 28 May 1998.
NUKES M-11 MISSILES STORAGE & LAUNCH SITE DERA NAWABSHAH
Pakistan’s ‘Finest Hour’
May 28, 1998 dawned with an air alert over all military and strategic installations of Pakistan. The Pakistan Air Force had earlier been put on red alert to respond to the possibility of an Indian and Israeli pre-emptive strike against its nuclear installations. PAF F-16A and F-7MP air defence fighters were scrambled from air bases around the country to remain vigilant and prepared for any eventuality.
Before twilight, the automatic transmission data link from all of Pakistani seismic stations to the outside world was switched off.
At Chagai, it was a clear day. Bright and sunny without a cloud in sight. All personnel, civil and military were evacuated from ‘Ground Zero’ except for members of the Diagnostics Group and the firing team. They had been involved in digging out and removing some equipment lying there since 1978.
Ten members of the team reached the Observation Post (OP) located 10-kilometres away from Ground Zero. The firing equipment was checked at 1:30 p.m. and prayers were offered. An hour later, at 2:30 p.m., a Pakistan Army helicopter carrying the team of observers including PAEC Chairman, Dr. Ishfaq Ahmed, KRL Director, Dr. A.Q. Khan, and four other scientists from KRL including Dr. Fakhr Hashmi, Dr. Javed Ashraf Mirza, Dr. M. Nasim Khan and S. Mansoor Ahmed arrived at the site. Also accompanying them was a Pakistan Army team headed by General Zulfikar Ali, Chief of the Combat Division.
At 3:00 p.m. a truck carrying the last of the personnel and soldiers involved in the site preparations passed by the OP. Soon afterwards, the all-clear was given to conduct the test as the site had been fully evacuated.
Amongst the 20 men present, one young man, Muhammad Arshad, the Chief Scientific Officer, who had designed the triggering mechanism, was selected to push the button. He was asked to recite “All praise be to Allah” and push the button. At exactly 3:16 p.m. the button was pushed and Muhammad Arshad stepped from obscurity into history.
As soon as the button was pushed, the control system was taken over by computer. The signal was passed through the airlink initiating six steps in the firing sequence while at the same time bypassing, one after the other, each of the security systems put in place to prevent accidental detonation. Each step was confirmed by the computer, switching on power supplies for each stage. On the last leg of the sequence, the high voltage power supply responsible for detonating the nuclear devices was activated.
As the firing sequence passed through each level and shut down the safety switches and activating the power supply, each and every step was being recorded by the computer via the telemetry which is an apparatus for recording reading of an instrument and transmitting them via radio. A radiation-hardened television camera with special lenses recorded the outer surface of the mountain.
The voltage reached the triggers on all five devices simultaneously in all the explosive lenses with microsecond synchronization.
As the firing sequence continued through its stages, 20 pairs of eyes were glued on the mountain 10 kilometres away. There was deafening silence within and outside of the OP.
A short while after the button was pushed, the earth in and around the Ras Koh Hills trembled. The OP vibrated as smoke and dust burst out through the five points where the nuclear devices were located. The mountain shook and changed colour as the dust of thousands of years was dislodged from its surface. Its black granite rock turning white as de-oxidisation from the radioactive nuclear forces operating from within. A Huge cloud of beige dust then enveloped the mountain.
The time-frame, from the moment when the button was pushed to the moment the detonations inside the mountain took place, was thirty seconds. For those in the OP, watching in pin-drop silence with their eyes focused on the mountain, those thirty seconds were the longest in their lives. It was the culmination of a journey which started over 20 years ago. It was the moment of truth and triumph against heavy odds, trials and tribulations. At the end of those thirty seconds lay Pakistan’s date with destiny.
The Pakistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs would later describe it as “Pakistan’s finest hour”. Pakistan had become the world’s 7th nuclear power and the first nuclear weapons state in the Islamic World.
Two days later, Pakistan conducted its sixth nuclear test at Kharan, a flat desert valley 150 km to the south of the Ras Koh Hills. This was a miniaturized device giving a yield which was 60% of the first tests. A small hillock now rises in what used to be flat desert, marking the ground zero of the nuclear test there.
