🇵🇰 Pakistan’s nuclear journey

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Pakistan’s nuclear journey

Dr. Rizwan Zeb

June 28, 2020


Twenty-two years ago, Muhammad Arshad chanted Allahu Akbar and pushed the button. It took a nerve-racking 30 seconds before the mountain turned white. Pakistan’s nuclear tests were successful. This was the culmination of a long arduous Pakistani quest for a nuclear weapon.

Scott Sagan in his magnum opus ‘Why Do States Build Nuclear Weapons? Three Models in Search of a Bomb’ has identified different factors that lead a state to build nuclear weapons: national security concern is one of these reasons: Pakistan is a classic case for this model. Pakistan’s nuclear history can be divided into two phases: 1947-1972 when Pakistan had a peaceful nuclear programme, whereas in the post 1972 due to national security concerns in the wake of the east Pakistan debacle, Pakistan started exploring options for building a bomb that got intensified after India’s nuclear test in 1974.

In the first phase, four personalities played the most significant role and established the programme on firm footing: Dr Rafi Mohammad Chaudhry of Government College Lahore, (now Government College University – GCU), Pakistan’s only Nobel laureate Professor Abdus Salam and Dr Nazir Ahmed who was the first chairman of Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC). These three laid a solid foundation by training the manpower, and setting institutional priorities. Pakistan also benefited from the American Atom for Peace program. During this phase, the programme was focused on peaceful use of atomic energy.


The fourth was Dr Ishrat Hussain Usmani who was appointed Chairman of PAEC by President Ayub Khan on the recommendation of Dr Abdus Salam. According to Feroz Hasan Khan: “PAEC chairman Usmani laid down three objectives: to construct nuclear power plants and so alleviate the shortage of conventional energy sources; to apply nuclear knowledge (radioisotopes) to agriculture, medicine, and industry; and to conduct research and development on problems of national importance.” (Eating Grass, Stanford University Press, p50) Dr Usamani is credited to have laid down the foundation of the Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology (PINSTECH), a world renowned education and training centre.

During this phase, the focus was on the peaceful use of nuclear energy and even if there was a voice in favour of building one, it lacked any major support and was mostly muffled. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and Munir Ahmed Khan were among the bigger supporters of going for this option.

The second phase of Pakistan’s nuclear programme began with Bhutto taking over the helm of affairs in Islamabad. In 1972, Bhutto held a meeting with key officials in Multan and ordered them to build a nuclear bomb. He appointed his friend and fellow member of the so-called bomb lobby, Munir Ahmed Khan the new chairman of PAEC. This meeting set the future direction of Pakistan’s nuclear programme. After the Indian nuclear explosion in 1974, Pakistan’s own quest for nuclear weapons began in earnest. Despite this, Pakistan offered several arms control measures to India but India rejected all of them on the pretext that they have to take their security concerns about China into account as well.

PAEC under Munir Ahmed Khan’s leadership worked hard towards achieving their goal. This effort was further intensified when Dr. A. Q. Khan joined the effort. Despite the political change in the country, the nuclear quest continued and General Zia continued it despite tremendous pressure from the international community especially when he was fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan as a frontline state. According to media reports, in 1987, he signalled that Pakistan had achieved the capability to make a nuclear weapon. Despite achieving the capability, Pakistan neither expressed nor demonstrated its capability as Pakistan built the bomb only to ensure its national security. Had the situation remained ambiguous and India not conducted another series of tests, the likelihood of Pakistan conducting overt tests was extremely remote.

To fulfil its electoral promise, the BJP government tested its nuclear devices Shakti I, II and III on May 11, 1998 followed by two more on May 13. This rang alarm bells in Islamabad. Then Prime minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif cut short his state visit to Uzbekistan and rushed back to Islamabad. Immediately after his return, he summoned a meeting of the Defence Committee of the Cabinet (DCC). In this meeting, Dr Samar Mubarakmand assured the Prime Minister that PAEC needs only ten days to prepare and conduct the tests. Once again, the Indians caught the global power centres napping as neither of them were able to stop the Indian tests. Once again, the international community, instead of addressing the root cause, started pressuring Pakistan not to conduct its tests. Despite Islamabad’s declaring the Indian tests a “death blow to the global efforts at nuclear non-proliferation” the Americans were more focused on convincing Islamabad to abstain from responding. The Talbot mission delivered a sermon to the Pakistani leadership about what is best for Pakistan and the Pakistani people, but were not willing to pay any heed to Pakistan’s security concerns.

After intense and extensive debate, and also due to the inability of the international power centres especially USA to objectively engage and address Pakistan’s concerns and the statements emanating from India, the Defence Committee of the Cabinet decided to conduct the nuclear test. Once given the go ahead, the PAEC team, under the leadership of Dr Samar Mubarakmand, prepared the testing site and conducted the test. In total six successful tests were conducted by Pakistan on 28 and 30 May 1998.

 

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Amid a bitter rivalry with India, Pakistan became a nuclear power after testing its first bombs in 1998.


Early Years
Atoms for Peace symbol, 1955

Pakistan began its nuclear efforts during the 1950s as an energy program. It was prompted in large part by the United States’ “Atoms for Peace” program, which sought to spread nuclear energy technology across the globe. In 1956, the Pakistani government created the Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) to lead the new program. The United States gave Pakistan its first reactor—the five megawatt Pakistan Atomic Research Reactor (PARR-1)—in 1962.

During this early period, PAEC chairman Ishrat Usmani devoted government resources to training the next generation of Pakistani scientists. Usmani founded the Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Sciences and Technology (PINSTECH) in 1965 and sent hundreds of young Pakistani students to be trained abroad.

Although Pakistan claimed that its nuclear program was only pursuing peaceful applications of atomic energy, there were signs that its leadership had other intentions. This fact was particularly evident in wake of the 1965 Indo-Pakistani War, which ended in a nominal victory for India. “If India builds the bomb, we will eat grass or leaves, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own,” proclaimed then-Minister of Foreign Affairs Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

 

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Project-706

In December 1974, however, the course of the Pakistani bomb drastically changed with the return of German-trained metallurgist Abdul Qadeer Khan, more commonly known as A. Q. Khan. He had spent the previous four years working for URENCO, a nuclear fuel company, on uranium enrichment plants in the Netherlands and brought his vast knowledge of gas centrifuges to Pakistan. Over several decades, Khan would proliferate this technology to a whole host of would-be nuclear powers, including Iran, North Korea, and Libya.

Although he was never officially head of Pakistan’s nuclear program, Khan played a vital role in its success. In 1976, he was put in charge of the Engineering Research Laboratories in Kahuta, which was later named the Khan Research Laboratories (KRL). The site of a uranium enrichment plant, KRL offered Pakistan a second path to the bomb via highly enriched uranium (HEU) rather than plutonium. Khan’s laboratory was mostly autonomous from PAEC and the uranium bomb project even had a special codename: Project-706.

Although Project-706 began under Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, his influence over the project was short-lived. In 1977, General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq took power in a coup d’état and hanged Bhutto in 1979. The military took control of the nuclear program and it remains under military control today despite Pakistan later returning to a civilian government.

In 1979, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan had a significant impact for Pakistan. Under President Ronald Reagan, the United States gave military support to the Afghan mujahideen to fight the Soviet Union. Pakistan—a neighbor of Afghanistan with crucial supply routes—proved to be an essential ally in this effort. As a result, the United States largely turned a blind eye to the Pakistani nuclear program. In 1982, for example, Zia made an official visit to the United States. “He’s a good man,” wrote Reagan in his diary. “Gave me his word they were not building an atomic or nuclear bomb. He’s dedicated to helping the Afghans & stopping the Soviets” (Reed and Stillman 249).

The United States discovered Dutch-designed gas centrifuges in Libya which were provided by A. Q. Khan

In 1985, the U.S. Congress passed the Pressler Amendment, which established a protocol for sanctions against Pakistan if it crossed certain “red lines,” such as manufacturing highly enriched uranium and making a fissionable bomb core. The law was designed to allow the United States to maintain good relations with Pakistan, but it ultimately forced the American government to implement sanctions in the 1990s.

Beginning in the early 1980s, Pakistan conducted a series of “cold tests,” which involved a nuclear device without fissile materials. It conducted over 20 additional cold tests during the next decade. Pakistan also strengthened its alliance with China against India. Among other assistance to Pakistan’s nuclear program, the Chinese government invited Pakistani scientists to Beijing. On May 26, 1990, China tested a Pakistani bomb (Pak-1) on Pakistan’s behalf at the Lop Nur test site. The so-called “Event No. 35” was most likely a uranium implosion bomb, a derivative of the Chinese CHIC-4 design. Pakistan also reached an agreement with North Korea for Nodong ballistic missiles in exchange for Pakistani uranium enrichment technology.

 

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Tactical nuclear weapons,

Of all the countries in the world, just nine are believed to have developed nuclear weapons. One member of this exclusive club is Pakistan, a country that occupies a unique strategic position on the Indian subcontinent. An ally of the United States and China and archenemy of India, Pakistan has developed a nuclear arsenal to suit its own particular needs. Unusually among the smaller powers, Islamabad has developed an arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons designed to destroy enemy forces on the battlefield.

Pakistan began developing nuclear weapons in the 1950s, but the country’s nuclear program accelerated in the mid-1970s after the detonation of “Smiling Buddha”, India’s first nuclear weapons test. Enemies since the end of the British Raj in 1947, India and Pakistan fought again in 1965 and 1971. In Pakistan’s view as long as India was the sole owner of nukes it could engage in nuclear saber-rattling and had the ultimate advantage.

Experts believe that Pakistan has between 150 and 180 nuclear bombs. It’s not clear when the country first had an operational, deployable weapon, but by the mid-1990s it had weapons to spare. On May 28, 1998, in response to a series of Indian nuclear tests, Pakistan detonated five devices in a single day, with a sixth device two days later. Four of the devices detonated on the 28th were tactical nuclear weapons, with explosive yields in the subkiloton (less than 1,000 tons of TNT) to 2-3 kiloton range.

Tactical nuclear weapons, also called nonstrategic nuclear weapons, are low-yield (ten kilotons or less) nuclear weapons designed for use on the battlefield. Unlike larger, more powerful strategic nuclear weapons, tactical nuclear weapons are meant to destroy military targets on the battlefield. Tactical nuclear weapons are meant to be used against troop formations, headquarters units, supply dumps, and other high-value targets.

 

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Establishing a Nuclear Program:

1956 to 1974
Pakistan asserts the origin of its nuclear weapons program lies in its adversarial relationship with India; the two countries have engaged in several conflicts, centered mainly on the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan began working on a nuclear program in the late 1950s and the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) was established in 1956. President Z.A. Bhutto forcefully advocated the nuclear option and famously said in 1965 that "if India builds the bomb, we will eat grass or leaves, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own." After Pakistan’s defeat in the December 1971 conflict with India, Bhutto issued a directive instructing the country's nuclear establishment to build a nuclear device within three years. Although the PAEC had already created a taskforce to work on a nuclear weapon in March 1974, India’s first test of a nuclear bomb in May 1974 played a significant role in motivating Pakistan to build its own.


A.Q. Khan's Contribution:
1975 to 1998

The Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, headed by Munir Ahmad Khan, focused on the plutonium route to nuclear weapons development using material from the safeguarded Karachi Nuclear Power Plant (KANUPP), but its progress was inefficient due to the constraints of nuclear export controls applied in the wake of India's nuclear test. Around 1975, A.Q. Khan, a metallurgist working at a subsidiary of the URENCO enrichment corporation in the Netherlands, returned to Pakistan to help his country develop a uranium enrichment program. Having brought centrifuge designs and business contacts back with him to Pakistan, Khan used various tactics, such as buying individual components rather than complete units, to evade export controls and acquire the necessary equipment. By the early 1980s, Pakistan had a clandestine uranium enrichment facility, and A.Q. Khan would later assert that the country had acquired the capability to assemble a first-generation nuclear device as early as 1984.

Pakistan also received assistance from other states, especially China. Beginning in the late 1970s China provided Pakistan with various levels of nuclear and missile-related assistance, including centrifuge equipment, warhead designs, HEU, components of various missile systems, and technical expertise. Eventually, from the 1980s onwards, the Khan network diversified its activities and illicitly transferred nuclear technology and expertise to Iran, North Korea, and Libya. The Khan network was officially dismantled in 2004, although questions remain concerning the extent of the Pakistani political and military establishment's involvement in the network's activities.


Pakistan After Nuclear Tests:

1998 to 2007

On 11 and 13 May 1998, India conducted a total of five nuclear explosions, after which Pakistan felt pressured to respond to in kind. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif decided to test, and Pakistan detonated five explosions on 28 May and a sixth on 30 May 1998. With these tests Pakistan abandoned its nuclear ambiguity and stated that it would maintain a "credible minimum deterrent" against India. In 1998, Pakistan commissioned its first plutonium production reactor at Khushab, which was capable of producing approximately 11 kg of weapons-grade plutonium annually.

Pakistan does not have a formally declared nuclear doctrine, so it remains unclear under what conditions Pakistan might use nuclear weapons. In 2002, President Pervez Musharraf stated that, "nuclear weapons are aimed solely at India," and would only be used if "the very existence of Pakistan as a state" was at stake. Lieutenant General Khalid Kidwai, the Director General of Pakistan’s Strategic Plans Division that acts as a secretariat for the Nuclear Command Authority of Pakistan further elaborated that this could include Indian conquest of Pakistan's territory or military, "economic strangling," or "domestic destabilization."

Historically, the security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons has been of significant concern to the international community. Taliban-linked groups have successfully attacked tightly guarded government and military targets in the country. Militants carried out small-scale attacks outside the Minhas (Kamra) Air Force Base in 2007, 2008, and 2009 but Pakistani officials repeatedly deny that the base is used to store nuclear weapons.
Al-Qaeda’s Abu Yahya al-Libi had also called for attacks on Pakistani nuclear facilities. Such developments increased the likelihood of scenarios in which Pakistan's nuclear security could be put at risk. Nevertheless, Pakistan has consistently asserted that it had control over its nuclear weapons, and that it was impossible for groups such as the Taliban or proliferation networks to gain access to the country's nuclear facilities or weapons. Consequently, Pakistan took measures to strengthen the security of its nuclear weapons and installations and to improve its nuclear command and control system.

The National Command Authority (NCA), composed of key civilian and military leaders, is the main supervisory and policy-making body controlling Pakistan's nuclear weapons, and maintains ultimate authority on their use. In November 2009, then-Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari transferred his role as head of the National Command Authority to the Prime Minister, Yusuf Gilani.

 

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Pakistan and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Community:
2008 to Present

Pakistan was critical of the U.S.-India nuclear cooperation agreement that was signed in 2008, but has also periodically sought a similar arrangement for itself. In 2008, Pakistan pushed for a criteria-based exemption to the rules of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), which unlike the country-based exception benefiting only India could have made Pakistan eligible for nuclear cooperation with NSG members. Despite its reservations about the India special exception, Pakistan joined other members of the Board of Governors in approving India's safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in August 2008.

In response to the U.S.-India deal, Pakistan sought to increase its civilian nuclear cooperation with China. Under a previous cooperation framework, China supplied Pakistan with two pressurized water reactors (PWR), CHASNUPP-1 and CHASNUPP-2, that entered into commercial operations in 2000 and 2011 respectively. In 2009, China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) agreed to supply two additional 340-MW power reactors to Pakistan, CHASNUPP-3 and CHASNUPP-4. The United States voiced concerns regarding Chinese construction of these nuclear reactors at Chashma, arguing that China was violating its commitments as a Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) member by constructing these additional nuclear reactors. According to a report by Arms Control Association, China should have asked for an exemption from the NSG to build additional reactors because Pakistan is neither a member of the NPT nor under full-scope IAEA safeguards. [29] However, China has argued that it has no obligation to do so because the reactor transfer was based on a contract negotiated in 2003 and grandfathered in when China joined the NSG in 2004.

Pakistan has also strengthened its personnel reliability program (PRP) to prevent radicalized individuals from infiltrating the nuclear program, although various experts believe that potential gaps still exist. Satellite imagery also shows increased security features around Khushab-4. The United States has provided various levels of assistance to Pakistan to strengthen the security of its nuclear program.