Afghan Journal

India, Pakistan and their growing nuclear arsenal

India and Pakistan exchanged a list of each other’s nuclear installations on Saturday like they have done at the start of each year under a 1988 pact in which the two sides agreed not to attack these facilities. That is the main confidence building measure in the area of nuclear security between the two countries, even though their nuclear weapons  programmes  have expanded significantly since then.   Indeed for some years now there is a  growing body of international opinion that holds that Pakistan has stepped up production of fissile material, and may just possibly hold more nuclear weapons than its much larger rival, India.  

Which is remarkable given that the Indian nuclear programme is driven by the need for deterrence against much bigger armed-China, the third element in the South Asian nuclear tangle. The Indians who conducted a nuclear test as early as 1974, thus,may be behind not just the Chinese, but also Pakistan in terms of the number of warheads, fissile material and delivery systems.

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists in a global report in August 2010 estimated that India had assembled 60 to 80 warheads and produced enough fissile material for 60-105 nuclear warheads. Pakistan is estimated to have assembled 70–90 warheads and produced missile material for as many as 90 warheads. China’s arsenal was estimated at 240 nuclear warheads.  Here’s a PDF of the report prepared by   Robert S.Norris and Hans M.Kristensen.  

The majority of India’s and Pakistan’s warheads are not yet operationally deployed, the researchers said.  Both countries are believed to be increasing their stockpiles although the competition is nowhere near the intensity of the race between the United States and Russia during the Cold War. Indeed even today the combined total of Indian and Pakistan warheads will only be slightly more than the number carried by a single U.S. Trident submarine.

Nevertheless the race to expand nuclear weapons programme as also missile development adds another layer of instability in South Asia, with Afghanistan and Pakistan at the centre of the turmoil and home to al Qaedaand allied militant groups. The question is why now ? Why is Pakistan seeking to expand its arsenal ? Is this a numbers game ?  Are the rivals getting sucked into a nuclear arms race without  intending to ?

Mark Hibbs, a nuclear affairs expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,  told me in a conversation last month there was a “budding arms race” on between India and Pakistan, although nowhere near the scale of the Cold War duel between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Denuclearising Pakistan

At about the time WikiLeaks released tens of thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables, including one related to a secret attempt to remove enriched uranium from a Pakistani research reactor, a top Pakistani military official held a briefing for journalists that focused on U.S.-Pakistan ties.

Dawn’s Cyril Almeida has written a piece based on the officer’s comments made on the condition of anonymity, and they offer the closest glimpse you can possibly get of the troubled ties between the allies.

First off, as the officer says, Pakistan has gone from being the “most sanctioned ally” to the “most bullied ally” of the United States. Presumably the sanctions that the officer is referring to relate to those imposed  on Pakistan following its nuclear tests in 1998. And as for the most bullied ally the other comments offer a clue: 

These include and I quote from Almeida’s piece:

“The U.S. still has a transactional relationship with Pakistan; the U.S. is interested in perpetuating a state of controlled chaos; and perhaps most explosively given the WikiLeaks revelations, the “real aim of U.S. strategy is to de-nuclearise Pakistan.”

U.S. and Pakistani security interests aren’t the same including over Afghanistan and India, the military officer says. And while Islamabad understood America’s growing focus on North Waziristan, it had to first settle South Waziristan and also factor in the blowback any operation in the area would stoke. The officer intriguingly also talks about indications that parties in the conflict in Afghanistan can renounce al Qaeda and even ask it to leave Afghanistan. In other words he is suggesting  that the Taliban are  ready to break ties with al Qaeda  and if so that removes a big obstacle to peace talks.

Pakistan’s Zardari in China; nuclear deal in grasp

Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari is in China this week, making good his promise to visit the “all weather ally” every three months. During his previous trips, his hosts have sent him off to the provinces to see for himself the booming growth there, but this trip may turn out be a lot more productive.

Zardari  may well return with a firm plan by China to build two reactors at Pakistan’s Chashma nuclear plant, as my colleague in Beijing  reports in this article, overriding concern in Washington, New Delhi and other capitals that this undermined global non-proliferation objectives.

It’s a bit of a nuclear poker going on in the region and Afghanistan as the new battleground between the regional players cannot remain untouched.

The proposed Chinese nuclear transfer to Pakistan follows a groundbreaking deal that the United States and India sealed two years ago which allows New Delhi to access U.S. nuclear technology and fuel while retaining the right to pursue a military programme.  It was a deal that raised eyebrows all around, overturning decades of U.S-led efforts to wear down India’s resistance to nuclear disarmament pacts through a combination of tough technology  sanctions and offers of a a strategic relationship designed to appeal to New Delhi’s global aspirations.

In the event, Washington which invaded Iraq on the grounds that it was developing nuclear weapons, and has tightened the squeeze on Iran for its nuclear activities,  virtually gave New Delhi pretty much what it has coveted all along. The right to pursue a weapons programme as well as complete access to international nuclear technology to boost civilian  nuclear power for an energy-starved nation. It was as if the Pope had thrown the Bible away when it came to India, as an Indian diplomat long used to haranguing by U.S. officials over the country’s nuclear programmes told me back then.

But when Pakistan, which arguably has been the spearhead of America’s fight against Islamist militants, asked to be given a similar nuclear status it  was turned down. Washington couldn’t be going around rewarding Pakistan, seen as a  ”serial proliferator”  following revelations that disgraced top scientist A.Q.Khan had run a smuggling network that may have helped North Korea, Iran and Libya.

And so Pakistan turned to China, which may well have its own reason to check the rise of India as a power beyond south Asia.  In pushing ahead with the plan to build reactors at Pakistan’s Chashma plant, the Chinese, several analysts say, are operating on the logic that if the United States can change the rules to accommodate its friend – India – then China too could help out its ally – Pakistan.

When India-Pakistan wargames become real

Pakistan is conducting its biggest military exercises in 21 years and at the weekend thousands of troops backed by fighter jets took part in a mock battle to repel a simulated Indian military advance and inflict heavy casualties. The manoeuvres were designed to test a riposte to India’s Cold Start doctrine of a rapid and deep thrust into Pakistan in a simulated environment, but you are never far from real action on the heavily militarised border between the two countries.

On Sunday, as the mock battle unfolded in the deserts of eastern Pakistan, the two armies were engaged in a real exchange of fire a few hundred miles away, along the border in Punjab. Both sides reported the firing in the Shakargarh sector and as is the norm blamed the other for starting it. It didn’t last long and by the standards of Indo-Pak artillery duels it was a blip. But what is interesting is it took place along a settled section of the border as distinct from cross-border firing along the Line of Control separating the two armies in disputed Kashmir.  Shooting across the international border has been rare, although there have been incidents in January this year and in July and September in 2009.

NightWatch intelligence, which closely tracks developments across South Asia, says the Shakargarh sector carries  the weight of history and perhaps there is  a message behind the shooting. This is the site of a decisive battle during the 1971 India-Pakistan War in which Indian rocket launcher units destroyed Pakistani army armoured brigades ending hostilities in that sector. Firing in the location is always a reminder of December 1971. So the question is were the Indians trying to remind the Pakistanis about that battle nearly four decades ago even as Pakistan carried out the wargames named Azm-e-Nau 3 or New Resolve 3?

India, Pakistan wargames have in the past caused jitters especially when thousands of troops are massed near the border along with heavy armour and you are not sure whether they are only meant for exercises or is it a preparation for a real war. Back in 1987, India conducted Brass Tacks, the largest military exercise of its kind across South Asia in the deserts of Rajasthan a few hundred miles from the Pakistan border.

The exercises included the bulk of Indian Army and its mechanised and armoured formations; in short all the paraphernalia for a real war, concentrated on Pakistan’s sensitive border areas. For a Pakistani, it would seem the ideal location from which to launch a cross-border operation into the Pakistani state of Sindh that could cut Pakistan in half.

Others saw Brass Tacks as a threatening exhibition of an overwhelming conventional force. Pakistan responded with manoeuvres of its own that were located close to Punjab. As tensions rose, the hotline between the two countries was activated and officials from both  sides tried to ease fears.  Eventually Pakistani President General Ziaul-Haq travelled to India, ostensibly to watch a cricket match, but also hold talks to defuse the crisis.  Later on both sides agreed to a phased withdrawal of troops to peacetime locations.

Since then India and Pakistan have agreed a set of confidence building measures designed to reduce chances of misreading each other’s intentions. Each country is committed to informing the other about plans to exercises if they are above a certain level.

Standing by your friends:India, U.S. push ahead with nuclear deal

For all the hand-wringing in India over getting sidelined by the United States in its regional strategy,  the two countries have gone ahead and just completed an important deal on the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel from reactors to be built in India.

The agreement is a key step in the implementation of the India-U.S.  civil nuclear pact which grants India access to nuclear fuel and technology, even though it has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty.  Under the agreement India can reprocess U.S.-originated nuclear material under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards which in itself is a symbolic concession, according to the Washington Post. It said that the Indians were a bit concerned about the idea of American officials running around their  nuclear reactors , a sort of  “a symbolic, sovereignty issue” as  a source in the U.S. nuclear industry said. They would rather submit to oversight by the IAEA, which thus far is a model the United States has only followed for nuclear collaboration with  Europe and Japan.

Considering that America has gone to war in Iraq on the grounds that it was building weapons of mass destruction and is at this time pushing for tougher sanctions against Iran for its nuclear programme, it is indeed a big deal. It can  also potentially reshape the strategic landscape in South Asia with the world virtually granting legitimacy to India as a nuclear weapons state while denying that to Pakistan.

Pushing the accord through in the U.S. has  been a “wrenching affair” as the Indian Express put it,  riding against the current of proliferation concerns worldwide. Why should the world be making an exception for India just as it is breathing down hard on Iran and North Korea to roll back their nuclear programmes ? Where, after all, is the iron-clad guarantee that India won’t divert some of the  plutonium extracted from the imported spent fuel to its strategic weapons programme, the experts ask.  Blatant double standards, the Union of Concerned Scientists said.

No wonder Pakistan asked for a similar deal at high-level talks in Washington last week aimed at putting their tempestuous ties on a more even keel.

And so in that sense, the India-US nuclear deal, really the crown jewel of a strategic partnership, will be the elephant in the room as Washington, Islamabad, and New Delhi tackle a complicated three-way relationship in one of the world’s most unstable regions.

Pakistan still the greatest worry, says Biden

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden told CNN this week that his biggest worry was not Afghanistan, not Iraq and not even Iran which is hurtling into a fresh confrontation with the West over its nuclear programme.  The big concern was Pakistan with  its nuclear weapons and  a radicalised section of society.

“It’s a big country. it has nuclear weapons that are able to be deployed.  It has a real significant minority of radicalised population. It is not a completely functional democracy in the sense we think about it.  And so….. that’s my greatest concern.”

Biden’s remarks are unlikely to go down well in Pakistan, which bristles at being  lumped with dangerous countries .  Indeed the vice-president has spoken just when reports were emerging that the United States and Pakistan were starting to feel more comfortable with each other after a rocky couple of years.  Pakistan has won praise from U.S. military leaders for its successful operation in the difficult terrain of  South Waziristan. It has  also sought a key role in a resolution of the Afghan war, offering to mediate with Taliban factions operating from its soil.

Indeed, a top expert has suggested that this is perhaps the time to offer Pakistan a civilian nuclear  deal on the lines of the one agreed to with India, to win its complete cooperation in the war on terrorism.  C. Christian Fair, a professor at Georgetown University, says  nuclear cooperation could deliver results where billions of dollars of American aid have failed. “More so than conventional weapons or large sums of cash, a conditions-based civilian nuclear deal may be able to diminish Pakistani fears of U.S. intentions while allowing Washington to leverage these gains for greater Pakistani cooperation on nuclear proliferation and terrorism,”  she wrote in an article in The Wall Street Journal

The two criteria that Pakistan would have to meet is, first,  provide access and cooperation on nuclear suppliers’ networks such as the one that was run by A.Q. Khan  and dismantle them.  Second, it  would have to demonstrate sustained and verifiable commitment in combating all terrorist groups on its soil, including those groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba that Pakistan often calls “freedom fighters” acting on behalf of Kashmir and India’s Muslims.

It will be a long haul, given that the thing that terrifies America the most about Pakistan is the ” nexus of nuclear proliferation and Islamist militancy”  as Fair says. Indeed, even the Indian deal has taken five years to go through and its a long way off before there is movement on the ground.  

America and Pakistan have long had a complicated relationship but what does one make of these contradictory signals ?