TEN YEARS LATER*
by Pervez Hoodbhoy
[Dawn, 28 May, 2008]
Its May 1998 and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif congratulates wildly cheering citizens as the Chagai mountain trembles and goes white from multiple nuclear
explosions. He declares that Pakistan
is now safe and sound forever. Bomb makers become national heroes. School
children are handed free badges with mushroom clouds. Bomb and missile replicas
are planted in cities up and down the land. Welcome to nuclear Pakistan.
Fast-forward the video ten years. Pakistan turns into a different
country, deeply insecure and afraid for its future. Grim-faced citizens see
machine gun bunkers, soldiers crouched behind
sandbags, barbed wire, and barricaded streets. In Baluchistan and FATA, helicopter gunships and fighter jets swarm the skies.
Today we are at war on multiple fronts. But the Bomb provides no defense. Rather,
it has helped bring us to this grievously troubled situation and offers no way
out. On this awful anniversary, it is important that we relate the present to
the past.
Some say that India forced Pakistan
to test. This could indeed be true. India
lied about its "peaceful" nuclear program, India
tested first, India then
hurled threats at Pakistan, India jeered as Pakistan
agonized over its response. But once Pakistan followed suit, it forgot
that it had done so reluctantly and under provocation. The Bomb immediately
generated its own dynamics.
Post-Chagai, it was a different Pakistan. A euphoric nation felt
the expected pain of international sanctions but shrugged it off. In retrospect,
the high cost of the weapons program, as well as the flight of capital are
almost irrelevant. A historical accident fixed this problem: after Pakistan's 911 U-turn, the West
rushed to fill the state's coffers and avert its imminent collapse.
But the gravest damage was psychological and political, not material. It could
not be undone. The official celebration of violence, and the encouragement of
public joy at successful bomb-making, proved to be the most lasting and pernicious
legacy of the May 1998 nuclear tests. They changed the national psyche. Most
significantly, they changed the way in which military and political leaders
thought, spoke, and behaved.
The Bomb turned into a fantastic talisman, able to ward off all evil. For military men, Pakistani nukes were
not just a counter to Indian nukes but also the means for neutralizing India's larger
conventional land, air, and sea forces. For diplomats and politicians, the bomb
was a sure way to guarantee that the world would make India
negotiate. Flushed with success, the Pakistani leadership hit on what, in their
view, was a brilliant strategy for confronting India
- jihad by Islamic fighters protected by
Pakistan's
nuclear weapons.
Kargil followed. This secret invasion in early
January 1999, was conceived and implemented by General
Pervez Musharraf. But to blame only Musharraf -a fashionable thing to do in these times - is to
sacrifice truth for convenience. Blinded by nuclear euphoria, there was
scarcely a voice in Pakistan
against an adventure that, six months later, left over a thousand dead and
dealt the country a humiliating defeat.
But Kargil was just one consequence. More
significantly, the Bomb fed a culture of violence that eventually grew into the
hydra-headed militancy now haunting Pakistan. Some mujahideen,
who felt betrayed by Pakistan's
army and politicians, would ultimately take revenge by turning their guns against
their sponsors and trainers. The body parts spattered across Pakistani cities
by suicide bombers, Taliban-bombed schools and colleges, or the now-frequent
lynching of thieves and bandits and roasting them to death, flow from the
social acceptance of violence and brutality in conflict situations.
Terrorism and fanaticism, not India,
shall be the real threats to Pakistan
in the forseeable future. The writ of the Pakistani
state has already ceased to hold in parts of the country. Terrorists have
repeatedly targeted Pakistani army officers and soldiers, and their wives and children.
Even their fortified residential compounds are not safe.
Officers are now understandably afraid to drive in official vehicles, to wear
uniforms in public, or even to stop at traffic lights.
It was a lie that the Bomb could protect Pakistan, its people, or its armed
forces. The Bomb cannot help us recover the territory seized by the Baitullahs and Fazlullahs. Our
nukes certainly give us the ability to destroy India - and to be destroyed in
return. But that's about it. The much-vaunted nuclear dividend turned out
to be empty.
Some might ask, didn't the Bomb stop India
from swallowing up Pakistan?
Even if India
wanted to, this would be impossible. Conventional weapons, used by Pakistan in a
defensive mode, would be sufficient defence. If mighty
America could not digest Iraq, there can never be a chance for a middling
power like India to occupy Pakistan, a country four times larger than Iraq.
Others believe that nuclear weapons earned international respect for Pakistan.
Indeed, in the aftermath of the tests, Pakistan's stock shot up in some
Muslim countries - before it crashed. Recently, a poll carried out by the BBC
in 17 countries showed that Pakistan
belongs to the five most disliked countries in the world: Iran (54%), Israel
(52%), Pakistan (50%), United States (48%), and North Korea
(44%). Nukes for popularity or respect don't work well either.
The Bomb was also supposed to unite all Pakistan, build a nation out of disparate
peoples. The tumultuous, officially organized, 1999 celebration of "youm-e-takbir" across the country was supposed to do
exactly this.
But the Bomb failed as national glue. Today, it is true that many in Punjab still want the Bomb. But angry Sindhis
want water and jobs, and they blame Punjab for
taking these away. The Baluch resent the fact that the
nuclear test site - now radioactive and out of bounds - is located on Baluchistan's
soil. Many have taken up arms and demand Punjab's
army get off their backs. The Pathans, trapped in a
war between the Taliban and the US-Pakistani armies, principally want
protection against suicide bombers
as well as American Predators and the Pakistan Air Force.
How can Pakistan
be made a more normal, more secure country? What can persuade our people, and the
world, that the country has a future?
The threat to Pakistan
is internal. Therefore churning out more nuclear warheads, or test-launching
more missiles, or buying yet more American F-16's or French submarines, will
not help. Pakistan's
security problems cannot be solved by better weapons. No ill-fed, ill-educated nation
can be secure. No viable nation can deliberately discriminate between its citizens
for reasons of ethnicity, religious faith, or economic status. Force and
violence cannot summon a sense of citizenship.
The way forward lies in building a sustainable and active democracy, an economy
for peace rather than war, a federation in which provincial grievances can be
effectively resolved, and a society that respects the rule of law.
* * The author teaches at Quaid-e-Azam University,
Islamabad * *