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For 30 years, Pakistani leaders have believed their salvation lay in one single thing: the Bomb. Now, once the idea has been rendered into reality, it is plain the Bomb has failed Pakistan. It has been unable to cement the fissures in a crumbling state and society fast approaching ruin. Rather, it has hastened the collapse by removing all illusions.
The nuclear dream began with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Educated in America at the beginning of the Cold War, a student of politics, by the time he became foreign minister in the early 1960s he saw in the bomb a route to power as much for Pakistan as for himself.
Nuclear nationalism found its first champion in Bhutto who declared Pakistan would fight India for a thousand years, and that Pakistan would get the bomb even if it meant having to eat grass. In other words, he thought glory was worth the price of self-destruction.
Bhutto found his moment in the aftermath of the slaughter in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) he did so much to bring about. As president of West Pakistan, among his first acts was to set his more than willing scientists to work on reinventing the bomb's nearly 30-year-old technology. Newspapers of the day carried the headline, "Pride, Honour at all Costs to be Redeemed". But the bomb couldn't save him from the consequences of his failure to govern. Overthrown by Gen Zia's 1977 coup, Bhutto died claiming the Americans brought him down because he had tried to give Pakistan the bomb. Ever since, some have seen an American hand behind every move towards freeing Pakistan from the clutches of the bomb.
Under Gen Zia, the bomb went underground. The military and the scientists worked quietly, while the Americans turned a blind eye. Pakistan's bomb was of lesser concern than the new Cold War and the need for a proxy in the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Eventually, with a little help from friends in China, the scientists finished their work and pushed for a nuclear test. But American economic and military aid was flowing fast. For billions of little green reasons, Pakistan's generals left the bomb in the closet.
Through the Eighties and Nineties the bomb loomed; its shadow coming ever closer, becoming darker, more enveloping. Torn between the urge to flaunt the bomb and cast dread in their enemies, Pakistan's leaders lied to the world, their people, and perhaps even themselves: the bomb was only an option, a possibility, a threat, a hope. None would dare say that they meant the incineration of cities and the slaughter of innocents. But the repressed kept slipping out, a word here, a nuance there, a loose interview later denied.
Reason is easily lost in a darkness populated with fears and secrets. When India tested its nuclear weapons in May 1998, Pakistan lost it. There were "strident apocalyptic warnings" of the consequences of Pakistan not following India in testing nuclear weapons. Some wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to test, to restore what they called strategic balance, an ugly euphemism for a balanced capacity for murder. Others simply sought advantage, with Benazir Bhutto playing her father's role—she famously took off her bangles at a rally in Lahore and flung them at the crowd urging them to take the bangles to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif since he was not man enough to stand up to India and order nuclear tests. Still others recited the Quran, as if god would want the death of millions.
After Pakistan tested, Nawaz Sharif addressed the nation on television thus, "We have jumped into these flames without thinking through our minds and calculating, but going into a decision made by our heart, the decision of courage". But for all the talk of the nation having sought the tests, public celebrations, and a national consensus, the government also imposed a state of emergency and suspended all fundamental rights under the constitution. The new nuclear state was fearful of its own people.
Beset by a collapsing economy and international sanctions, the "decision of courage" soon gave way to the most cynical calculation. The government declared the first anniversary of the test to be "Yaum-e-Takbeer", the Day of Deliverance. In a determined and ugly effort to build support countrywide, the government announced there would be a national holiday with "a competition of ten best songs, seminars, fairs, festive public gatherings, candle processions, sports competitions, bicycle races, flag-hoisting ceremonies, etc." The government became a mullah calling the people to prayer, declaring that "people will offer namaz-e-shukrana (thanksgiving) as well."
To make sure that the new "national consensus" would miss no one, there were to be appropriate programmes "broadcast on the national network as well as locally by all 24 stations of the radio...." There was an eye to the future too: "Apart from this, special programmes for children would be arranged. Debates would be held among schoolchildren."
Cities and towns were decorated with banners and giant posters carrying pictures of Pakistan's nuclear weapons scientists and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif against a backdrop of mushroom clouds. The weapons became public monuments as giant replicas of the Ghauri and Shaheen nuclear missiles, a red light glowing from the rocket engine, were put up in central locations in major cities. Even the mountain in Chagai, Baluchistan, that served as the nuclear test site became a symbol, with enormous white fibre-glass models glowering by roadsides. It is the first public monument on the main road to Islamabad from the airport: nuclear icons to create a proper nuclear state of mind.
But the severity and growing sharpness of Pakistan's crises were enough to bring down the hero of Chagai, Sharif. On October 17, 1999, Gen Pervez Musharraf announced to the nation that the military had to take over to save the country. He said, "There is despondency and hopelessness surrounding us with no light visible anywhere around. ... We have reached a stage where our economy has crumbled, our credibility is lost, state institutions lie demolished". Nowhere to be seen now was the nuclear state, once resplendent in the glow of its greatest achievement.
The bomb was worse than useless in other ways. It started a war and then showed it could not guarantee victory or even a decent resolution. Having started the Kargil war, and threatening that Kashmir would become a nuclear flashpoint, Pakistan had to withdraw. For the Islamic warriors fighting the jehad in Kashmir, this was a betrayal. It took the lives of over a thousand young men to reveal what was well known from the experience of the British in Suez, the French in Algeria, the Americans in Vietnam, the Chinese in Vietnam, and the Russians in Afghanistan: the bomb is a blunt weapon.
What does the future hold for nuclear Pakistan? The rush to create and sustain nuclear nationalism have made it difficult for Pakistan to pursue nuclear disarmament. For many, the very thought is taboo. Others shall cite the public support for the nuclear weapons, both of which they had worked so hard to manufacture, and say: 'How can we? Our people won't permit it. They want nuclear weapons.'
For once, people will matter. They will be used to drag things out. But there may not be time to be patient. Pakistan is being remade by the radical Islamic forces now moving across the land as never before. Militant, sectarian, violent. For them the bomb is for jehad, in Kashmir, in Afghanistan, for Muslims everywhere. For them, the bomb may become more important than Pakistan.
(Dr Zia Mian, a research scientist
at Princeton University, US, is active with the Pakistan Peace Coalition.
He is co-editor with Smitu Kothari of Out of the Nuclear Shadow, Rainbow
Press, New Delhi, 2001.)
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