An anniversary requiring introspection

Columnist MB NAQVI goes over the nuclear events of May 1998 and discusses the consequences.

It is two years to the day when India tested its five nuclear weapons on May 11 and 13 and Pakistan replied with its six test explosions on May 28 and 30 in Chaghi. It created amazing euphoria; Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said Pakistan has become world’s seventh nuclear power and most of his supporters and other rightwing parties and groups began treating Pakistan as a veritable major power. That made Pakistanis take decisions the price of which may now be unaffordable.

Let us enumerate briefly the effects of these nuclear tests. The first thing that the PM did was summarily to sack his Army Chief Gen. Jehangir Karamat. That caused resentment in the Army that now seems to have proved to have been fateful. Donor countries’ reaction was to impose sanctions and stoppage of aid to Pakistan; it was, and remains, cut off to a shilling ever since. Anticipating economic difficulties, Nawaz government clamped a financial emergency and proceeded to confiscate the foreign exchange deposited by resident and non-resident Pakistanis. That dealt a bodyblow to foreign as well as local investors’ confidence in Pakistan. The economy that year, 1998, was unable to service its external obligations, in particular the debt servicing that required $ 5 billion.

At length the IMF gave Pakistan a bailout that took the shape of a new loan of $ 11 billion at two percentage points above Libor. But it was only for two and a half years, with Pakistan being required from Jan 2001 onward to pay all the debt obligations as they fall due. Which, in concrete terms, means that Islamabad will have to seek another bailout on perhaps even harder conditions. Why? because nothing has happened in 1999 and the five months of 2000 that can enable Pakistan to pay all its instalments as they become due in 2001. The government’s finances remain a shambles and the economy’s performance is still lacklustre. Meanwhile, IMF and World Bank have stopped disbursing their loans to Pakistan as parts of the sanctions - an altogether bleak prospect, though Finance Minister thinks that BWIs (Bretton Woods Institutions) will, by June 30, come on board, fully supportive; an IMF mission’s arrival is seen as a confirmatory signal.

Although initially the BJP leaders after their tests had gone over the top, they quickly sobered down when they offered to negotiate peaceful coexistence with Pakistan on the basis of a nuclear detente. This was a logical reaction despite Kashmir dispute. Both India and Pakistan having competitively become nuclear powers, they needed groundrules for avoiding unintended mishaps. That was sought to be done in Lahore in Feb ’99. That was the main content of the Lahore Process, minus of course the effusive wordage. But Pakistan’s rightwing, taking inspiration from the Army, could not stomach the profusion of friendly words and sentiment in the Lahore Declaration and without quite realising the iron necessity of a detente over nuclear weapons and some modest moves toward nuclear disarmament, decided to torpedo the Nawaz government. It took the shape of Kargil Operations.

Nawaz Sharif could scarcely have avoided the denouement of July 4 Blair House agreement and Oct. 12 putsch. Kargil operations could have made sense only if it had enabled Pakistan to negotiate on Kashmir from a position of relative strength. It was after all only a tactic - for forcing India to talk more or less on Pakistan’s terms; it could not have been intended to win those outposts for keeps; that could not be. But the tactic did not succeed; it misfired because the schemers did not take into account the possible Indian reactions. As it turned out, contrary to Pakistani expectations, the Indians reacted with extra harshness, using air force and mounting frontal attacks with all they had and threatening in the process to cross the LoC - and by implication the Radcliff Line too. Pakistan had made a similar miscalculation in 1965. It had, therefore, no option but to accept the Indian terms for withdrawal though Mr. Sharif chose the subterfuge of involving the Americans in the process.

But the Indians chose to break off all negotiations with Pakistan after the Kargil war. Islamabad under Gen. Pervez Musharraf continues to ask India to start negotiations. New Delhi goes on stonewalling. That is the situation on this second anniversary of Pokhran and Chaghi tests. It is actually a ridiculous situation. Pakistan, in terms of its expectations from nuclear weapons, feels safe enough with a proactive Kashmir policy. The belief is that its minimal nuclear deterrent ensures that India would not dare to invade Pakistan because that may occasion a wholly unwinnable nuclear exchange. Which is seen as reason enough for Pakistan to do as it pleases in Kashmir while India can do little but squirm. But India is now growling: it says, let Pakistan do what it may we will mount a ‘limited war’, knowing full well that next war may not, maybe cannot, remain limited in any sense. What is new is that Indian threats seem real enough.

Pakistan’s preference is peace while Indian refusal to talk only means it has other ideas. Most Pakistanis are confused: since we are the seventh nuclear power how can India refuse to talk to us. Indeed even more importantly why is Islamabad so anxious to restart negotiations after its defences have become impregnable. Why should Islamabad not remain quiet and confident; after all, India will do no favour to Pakistan by talking; it is as much a compulsion for it as for Pakistan. Although the Kargil retreat, Musharraf takeover and the gharish drama of Indian airliner’s hijacking in December 1999 at Katmandu have put Pakistan on the defensive, the Indian government’s messianic zeal to get Pakistan declared a terrorist state has had some effect. That has weakened the Pakistani diplomacy, though not its purely military strength - the last recourse. The Americans seem to have bought much of Indian propaganda because the hard propaganda effort mounted by the PTV to show that hijacking as well as Chittisinghpura killings were Indian acts seems to have boomeranged and enfeebled Pakistan diplomacy further.

As a result, primarily of May 1998 tests and subsequent military takeover, the development in Indo-Pakistan relations have aggravated the distance between America and this country. American esteem for this country was manifested by the US President Bill Clinton’s South Asia visit. As a result of this visit, India and the US have entered into a new strategic partnership with a fairly large economic dimension of cooperation and American investments in India. Pakistan’s relations with America, in the words of Dr. Maliha Lodhi, are passing through a “critical phase”. Clinton’s performance during the five hours he spent in Islamabad, not excluding the manner of his arrival and departure, showed that he treated Pakistan as a pariah state to be touched with great circumspection.

Nearer home the Indo-Pakistan situation is shaped by steady intensification of both the insurgency in Kashmir and India’s repression of the Kashmiris. Amazingly the further worsening of Indo-Pakistan ties is as much a cause as it is a result of Indian charges of terrorism.

Most Pakistanis are aware of the debate over nuclear weapons’ place in national security. As it happens, the immediate background is that Indian Defence Minister and his Army Chief have together evolved a doctrine called ‘limited war’: They say it is possible in current conditions. The Indian assessment is that the nuclear weapons are deterring only the use of the other’s nuclear weapons. In other words, Pakistan’s nuclear weapons deter only the use of India’s nuclear weapons and vice versa. That does not foreclose the possibility of war, say limited in geographical extent or conceptually to only conventional armaments. It poses questions to Pakistan’s security wallahs.

In a manner of speaking, Pakistanis are back to square one. The main conclusion drawn from 1998 test explosions and subsequently was that the possession of nuclear weapons - an effective, credible, survivable Minimal Nuclear Deterrent - has made Pakistan more secure. It was claimed Pakistan was now a virtual superpower that can do almost anything behind its nuclear shield. Factually Pakistan has done what it thought could safely be done in Kashmir, largely in the belief that India will not dare to do what might otherwise be logical: engage in either hot pursuit or bomb the sanctuaries or undertake offensive military operations against insurgents outside the Indian controlled territories. Kargil operation and various other actions amounted to twisting the tail of Indian lion on the assumption that it can only squirm but do nothing militarily cognisable. But the Indian responses to all Pakistani actions since May 1998 can now be summed up by its threat of limited war. It is necessary to understand its implications.

To begin with, it means that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are not actually deterring India from conceptually doing what the Pakistanis thought India would not: perceiving Pakistan to be weak, it would attack and possibly dismember it. Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee’s various specific threats include dismemberment of Pakistan. It is not simply that we are back to square one: 1971 (to compensate which the nuclear capability was sought in the first place). Atomic weapons do not seem to have compensated the disadvantage in conventional armaments. Indeed, the Indians are daring Pakistan to use its nuclear weapons, implying the threat of a terrible riposte.

Thirdly, to reinforce the pressure on Pakistani decision-makers, the Indian PM thought it necessary to say in Jalandhar in February last that if the Pakistanis thought that India would wait for Pakistan to make the first nuclear strike and then reply in kind, the Pakistanis are living in a fool’s paradise. In other words, what the Indians were saying was that they are not bound by the promises they earlier made (that India will not be the first to use nuclear weapons). Indeed the new Indian position is that, if necessary, India will use nuclear weapons preemptively. If this is to be taken seriously - and there is no reason why it should not be - the whole deterrence theory comes under heavy question mark. There are other general considerations. To any honest security thinker the position now is that both countries would seek to be the first to use nuclear weapons should a war break out - an altogether too terrible a prospect of mutually assured unwinnability.

The economy of Pakistan actually hit the rock bottom and became a virtual defaulter in 1998. It was the leniency of the creditors that they did not wish to declare Pakistan a defaulter state. They give it a bailout. But that bailout amounts to keeping Pakistan on a very short financial leash; it just enables Pakistan to go on paying its way for a limited period of time. For the rest, it must go on begging them not to declare a default, as it may have to be done the very next year. No aid has been promised, not even by EU or Japan. They all demand Pakistan’s prior signatures on the CTBT in good faith and get the aid. The sanctions remain. The economic precariousness does not sit well with the status of the seventh nuclear power. What else have the nuclear weapons done?

In terms of politics the man who made Pakistan a recognised nuclear power, Nawaz Sharif, is languishing in jail and fighting for his liberty in the courts. The country is being governed by a military ruler. Constitutional democracy, such as it was, has been overthrown. Throughout the period since 1998 what nuclear weapons have done is to strengthen the rightwing religious parties and other ultras who have gone from strength to strength. In the same way Pakistan’s army has become far more active in the national affairs and is obviously playing a decisive and growing role in the public life of the country.

Pakistan continues to remain isolated from its traditional friends. Among the old staunch supporters only China can be said to have remained steadfast, even though it had to register quite a few protests against what the Taliban and other rightwing religious elements were doing in its Xingxiang province. There is the Shanghai Five, a grouping that is specifically anti-Pakistani in significance was hosted by China itself. Russia, Kazakhistan, Uzbekistan and the others in the Central Asia, especially Russia, are campaigning against Pakistan. Iran has been, more or less, alienated, though it still verbally says it is a friend. It is to be seen whether the strenuous efforts being made by Pakistan to conciliate Iran will succeed. Pakistan’s relations with the US are admittedly, passing through a “critical phase”. What price nuclear weapons?

Do the nuclear weapons confer a definite benefit on Pakistan - in politics, economy, diplomacy, culture or self-esteem of Pakistanis? Costs are, however, galore.