ASSEMBLY POLL '98
COMMENTARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ELECTIONS '98
ARCHIVES

Retired Pak army officials reject response to India's nuclear test

C K Arora

Retired senior military officers from Pakistan were not unanimous in supporting its government's tit-for-tat response to India's nuclear tests last May, according to a new report.

The document, prepared by Pakistani security analyst Nazir Kamal and sponsored by the United States' Co-operative Monitoring Centre, however, noted that there seemed to be more civilian hawks than military hawks among the opinion-makers in Pakistan.

Among civilians, the strongest pressure came from the Jamaat-i-Islami. The report quotes its chief Qazi Hussain as saying, "If the government fails to (conduct tests) under any American pressure, it will remain a surrender of our sovereignty and enslaving the country to the United States, and India's hegemonic designs will receive a boost in the region."

Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto also supported an early response, claiming India may risk a war with Pakistan over Kashmir, as failure to test would imply that Pakistan did not possess a credible nuclear deterrent.

Support for testing was not unanimous among the senior retired military officers though. For example, General (Retired) Mirza Aslam Beg advocated conducting nuclear tests at an appropriate time, as there was no need for haste because Pakistan already possessed a "credible nuclear deterrent".

Retired Lt General Javed Nasir, former chief of intelligence, lamented the jubilation shown by Indians and Pakistanis after their respective nuclear tests, as he considered nuclear rivalry to be dangerous for regional security.

Another opponent of testing was Air Marshal (retd) Rashid Shaikh, who argued that sanctions would hurt the country at a time when economic revival should have been a higher priority.

In the situation preceding the Pakistani tests, the report points out, the hard-liners far outweighed the pacifists but the situation also galvanised the latter to articulate their position more forcefully than at any other time in the past.

Thus, a coalition of regional political parties and some human rights organisations urged the government to unilaterally renounce nuclear weapons and resist pressure from ''across the political and religious spectrum in Pakistan (who) are clamouring for giving a fitting reply to India."

Judging from the columns and letters in newspapers, the doves are not only numerous but a majority of them also write on the question of Pakistan's options dispassionately and knowledgeably, the report said, quoting analyst Eqbal Ahmad, who writes for the daily, Dawn.

Those opposed to testing included some leading political analysts. One of them (Anwar Ahmad) said the government should have waited out the Indian government's euphoria and "let the fallout of its folly prove its undoing".

Although a big majority favoured immediate testing a bigger welcomed the tests. Most opinion-makers, both civilian and military, had similar views on the border issue of nuclearisation. Thus, a coalition of regional political parties and some human rights organisations urged the government to unilaterally renounce nuclear weapons and resist pressure from "across the political and religious spectrum in Pakistan [who] are clamouring for giving a fitting reply to India."

The report says the post-test euphoria died down quickly, aided by the country's grim economic situation, rendered more precarious by international sanctions. The grimness of the situation became evident when the government declared a national emergency and suspended the constitution immediately after the nuclear tests while it continued to face difficulty in tackling the economic crisis and other national problems.

While some public figures and opinion-makers urged the government to directly assist the militancy in Kashmir, even at the risk of igniting another war with India, there was little evidence of support for an active programme of nuclearisation in non-fundamentalist circles.

Air Marshal (retired) Rashid Shaikh, who had opposed a precipitous response to the Indian test, regarded nuclear deterrence as recipe for ''collective suicide'' and urged that Pakistan should instead rely almost wholly on conventional forces for its security against India.

Equally scathing were the comments of General Javed Nasir: "To say the least, Indians and Pakistanis do not have the foggiest idea as to what can happen to them and to their generations if a nuclear conflict is initiated even accidentally."

Two other former military officers, Air Marshal Asghar Khan and Lt General Talat Masood, subsequently joined in by urging an end to nuclear competition, saying that a nuclear build-up would increase defence spending, taking more scarce resources away from social and economic development. They also said that the use of nuclear weapons for deterrence would be suicidal.

Most leading civilian commentators also advocated a policy of restraint. One of them (Afzal Mahmood) described nuclear stabilisation to be a paramount regional need and urged measures to avert a conventional conflict, as that the most likely path to a nuclear escalation.

The only prominent advocate of nuclearisation, it seems, was a leading nuclear scientist, Dr Mobarik Mand, who said that Pakistan might need some 60 to 70 nuclear bombs for deterrence with India.

UNI

Tell us what you think of this report