DISARMAMENT-SOUTH ASIA: Sub-Continent Requires ‘Nuclear Education’

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IPS Correspondents

LONDON, Aug 7 1998 (IPS) - In an editorial in this week’s British Medical Journal, Professor Zulfiqar Ahmed Bhutta from the Aga Khan University in Pakistan laments the growth of the nuclear arms race in the sub-continent.

“The enormous costs of nuclear weapons must be weighed against the abysmal state of human development and health in South Asia,” he says. Professor Bhutta, who is head of paediatrics and child health at the University, notes that the region is home to over half of all the malnourished children in the world.

In view of the high infant mortality and a lack of basic facilities for health and education, he finds the diversion of scarce economic resources to weapons of mass destruction incongruous, he writes in the current issue of the prestigious medical weekly, published Friday.

Professor Bhutta suggests that the only way to ensure that a nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan never occurs is to educate the population in its true horrors and the human costs that such a programme could entail.

He condemns the “widespread euphoria and jingoism witnessed in the streets of Delhi and Islamabad” in the days following the nuclear tests last May. However, he says that in recent weeks this has given way to “introspection and the beginnings of a real debate on the implications of a nuclear arms race in the subcontinent”.

While “the genie of nuclear capability in both countries has been well and truly let out,” he says, this must not be allowed to lead to a nuclear arms build up.

Bhutta gives “several compelling reasons why such a programme in the subcontinent may not serve as a deterrent to war but greatly enhance its risks and costs”.

Drawing any analogy with the US and USSR is “misguided”, he insists, as neither India nor Pakistan have the technology or resources to put in place safeguards and early warning systems.

“Even if such fail safe systems were available, contiguous borders and missile delivery times of under 10 minutes, coupled with fragile democracies and volatile political systems make the effectiveness of such systems highly questionable.”

He notes that the Cold War was “fraught with numerous instances of near miss accidents” and despite assurances there has bee “significant radiation leakage” from accidents involving nuclear weapons and production facilities in the West.

He says it is “debatable if the fragile economies of India and Pakistan could sustain better weapons control and monitoring systems”.

But more important than this is the cost of a weapons programme for countries with poor and inadequate health systems. Of every 1,0000 children born in these countries, at least 80 will not survive for one year while up to 33 per cent of all newborn infants are of low birth weight.

Under these circumstances the diversion of scarce resources into weapons production is unacceptable. “Since the nuclear explosions, India’s defence budget has already been increased by 10 per cent and Pakistan has imposed a 10 per cent tax surcharge to meet increasing defence needs,” he points out.

“These allocations have led to an unfortunate but predictable reduction in the existing meagre allocations to health and education.”

Bhutta notes that few of the people who celebrated in the streets following the explosions really understand the horrors of nuclear war. He recalls that according to calculations made over 35 years ago, the impact of a 20 megaton ground burst nuclear device on Boston in the US would kill 2.1 million people immediately, while a further 500,000 would be at risk of dying from their injuries.

“With large urban population living in highly inflammable and flimsy shanty towns, the casualty rates in comparable cities of India and Pakistan would inevitably be much higher.”

It is estimated that an exchange of even much smaller 20 kiloton bombs would cause the immediate death of 1.2 million people. “Neither side would be immune to the effects of even a limited nuclear exchange: a truly mutually assured destruction.”

The only way to ensure that this does not happen, says Bhutta, “is by educating the populace and opinion leaders to the true horrors of nuclear conflict and the human costs of embarking on an expensive and futile programme of weapons building”.

He points out that “in a subcontinent teetering on the brink of a nuclear abyss” rapprochement between India and Pakistan is possible only through “pragmatic confidence building measures” and “by publicising the views of the many proponents of peace on both sides of the border”.

He urges politicians in both countries “asserting their right to rub shoulders with global nuclear superpowers” to understand that “true nuclear capability only comes with the necessary nuclear responsibility a responsibility to their impoverished, destitute and sick populations”.

Nor are the superpowers blameless. They can hold no high moral ground “with their continued nuclear weapons programmes and pitifully slow disarmament process”. He says that “surely some of the blame for recent events in south Asia lies at their doorstep.”

In view of their failure to set a proper example, he insists, “it is imperative that international sanctions against India and Pakistan do not add to the misery of millions of children and poor people in the subcontinent, who will undoubtedly bear the brunt of such measures.”