June 15, 1998

Pakistani disclaimers apart, the N-tests have fuelled fears that it may hawk the know-how to the Ummah.

By Manoj Joshi

A ripple of fear went across the world on May 28 when Pakistan became the first Islamic nation to conduct a nuclear test. Through the '70s and '80s, oil-rich Islamic nations had toyed with the idea of making nuclear weapons but couldn't get far. Now, a poor country with little or no industrial capacity had done them proud. "All over the world," declared Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi, the first major leader to visit Islamabad, "Muslims are happy that Pakistan had made the nuclear bomb." Congratulations also came from the radicals -- Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the Hamas leader in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and the Islamic opposition in Jordan -- who declared that the "Islamic explosion" would end "oppression and tyranny".

But where Pakistan saw its achievement as countering the "Hindu" bomb, almost all those who felicitated Islamabad did so in the context of their quarrel with Jewish Israel. Pakistan played up to the fears. On the night before its tests, under instructions from Islamabad, Pakistani diplomats conducted a bizarre campaign of disinformation. They contacted officials in capitals the world over and charged that they were about to become victims of a joint Indo-Israeli military strike.

But with the tests over, Pakistan has gone out of its way to deny that its capability was for sale. "Bombs," Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif told India Today, "do not have any religion, caste or creed." Pakistani officials, who fanned out around the world to contain the diplomatic damage, emphasised the "Indo-centric" nature of their concerns.

Surprisingly, Israeli analysts like Ephraim Kam, deputy director of the Jaffee Center of Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, accepts that what was tested on May 28 was "not an Islamic bomb but a Pakistani bomb". But experts like Kam and Barry Rubin at the Besa Institute of Strategic Studies at Israel's Bar-Ilan University who study such programmes closely, remain concerned that the example of the Indian and Pakistani tests may enthuse "radical" Iran, which they perceive as their main long-term threat. "The world could not detect the Indian test, how will they stop Iran and Iraq?" is Rubin's poser.

The idea of N-weapons providing collective defence for the entire ummah has been an attractive one. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was the first to play on the idea and, as he wrote from death row at his jail in Rawalpindi, "Christian, Jewish, and Hindu civilisations have this capability. The communist powers also possess it. Only the Islamic civilisation was without it ..." Within days of a crucial meeting in Multan in January 1972, when Pakistan decided to make N-weapons, Bhutto toured the Arab world pushing the idea as an Islamic quest. Not many bought his plan, but Steve Weismann and Herbert Krosney, who made a BBC documentary and wrote a book, The Islamic Bomb, say that in the '70s hundreds of millions of dollars poured into Pakistan from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Emirates. The quixotic Colonel Gaddhafi sent more than $100 million in cash using special courier flights. But most of this activity came to an end when Pakistani-Libyan relations soured following Bhutto's overthrow and execution.

In West Asia -- with the Egyptians, Libyans and Syrians no longer in the race and the Iraqis knocked out -- Tel Aviv and Teheran have become the poles of tension. Israel, which has fought the Arabs to a standstill and is believed to have a secret arsenal of nuclear weapons, says it will never be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the region. Iran, a Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) signatory, denies making nuclear weapons but if it is, it is probably driven by the nearly five lakh casualties it suffered during the eight years it fought Iraq in the '80s, a conflict in which Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was aided by western powers.

Saudi Arabia remains the joker in the pack. In the '80s, it shocked the world by purchasing medium-range ballistic missiles from China. In 1994, Mohammed Khilwei, a Saudi nuclear expert, defected to the US and spilled the beans on a super-secret Saudi project to obtain n-weapons. The cash-rich Saudis initially bankrolled the Pakistanis, but have, it is believed, switched their efforts to buy an off-the-shelf product.

Saudi activities remain somewhat remote for Delhi and neither is it too worried about an Iran-Pakistan axis. "It is no secret," says a Ministry of External Affairs official, "that Iran and Pakistan do not have much in common." They are rivals in Afghanistan and are also competing on rival schemes for constructing gas pipelines out of central Asia. More significant are the sectarian divisions between Iranian Shias and the Sunni majority of Pakistan, which persecutes its Shias.

The Indo-Pakistani tests have affected all the players in the Middle-East and may have the potential to change the balance of power in favour of Pakistan. The wily Iranians are already taking note. Kharrazi may have welcomed the Pakistan bomb in Islamabad, but Iran may now be veering towards calling on India and Pakistan to sign the NPT and to promote a nuclear-free zone. Israel, too, is re-thinking its option, concerned that the US does not have the ability to detect clandestine programmes, leave alone halt them. Israel, says Mark Heller of the Jaffee Center, is worried not so much about the export of technology, which is easy to detect, but about transfer of know-how through scientists who have worked on the Pakistani programme.

Perhaps taken aback by its "achievement" or the need to curry favour with the west to belabour India, the government in Islamabad is not keen to capitalise on its nuclear status in the Muslim world. But, Pakistan remains for its leaders an Islamic state where religion ought to tinge every aspect of life. Its identity too remains locked in its historical quarrel with "Hindu" India which also feeds the paranoia of its conspiracies with Jewish Israel. In expecting the bomb to be a panacea for its troubles, Pakistan may well discover that it is a pandora's box that has just been opened.

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