SOUTH ASIA: India-Pakistan Nuclear Hell in the Making – Experts

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Jan 29 2005 (IPS) - Not only are the year-old peace talks between India and Pakistan floundering but the South Asian neighbours are also steadily increasing their nuclear arsenals, warn leading physicists on both sides of the common border.

”Those who say that the chances of a nuclear war between India and Pakistan are small might like to consider that a little over a month ago the probability of a tsunami killing over 200,000 people around the Indian Ocean was also considered small,” R. Rajaraman, Professor Emeritus of Physics at the Jawaharalal Nehru University told IPS in an interview on Friday.

Rajaraman is in agreement with visiting peace activist and physicist from the Qaid-e- Azam University in Islamabad, Pervez Hoodbhoy. Both say India and Pakistan had been beefing up their nuclear arsenals and delivery mechanisms even while they were engaged in a ”composite dialogue” aimed at building peace that started in January 2004.

Hoodbhoy, who is currently on a lecture circuit in India on an invitation from the Ministry of Science and Technology, believes that India has a bigger nuclear weapons programme than Pakistan.

India, he says, has around 100 warheads while Pakistan possesses half that number.

Both South Asian countries declared themselves as nuclear powers in 1998 and within a year came close to testing their weapons on each other after skirmishes over a few hills at Kargil on the Line of Control (LoC) that runs through disputed the disputed territory of Kashmir.

Kargil saw the use fighter aircraft and the Pakistani and Indian navies in battle maneuvers.

In 2001, an attempt by a suicide squad to blow India’s Parliament using a car bomb, led to India mobilising 700,000 troops along the border.

The Indian troops were prepared to attack Islamic militant camps in Pakistani-controlled areas within Kashmir amidst threats and counter-threats that nuclear weapons would be resorted to.

Alarmed governments around the world advised their nationals in India and Pakistan to evacuate. They also scaled down the presence of diplomatic staff in their respective missions, fearing a nuclear exchange between both countries.

Deft diplomacy, however, by the United States helped defuse what easily might have been a nuclear holocaust.

According to Hoodbhoy, the only reason Washington did not get any more involved in the Kashmir problem beyond Kargil was because ”there is no oil there.”

Hoodbhoy, who won the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s (UNESCO’s) prestigious Kalinga Award for Peace in 2003 said the current series of bilateral talks and confidence-building measures were meaningless as long as ”both sides kept on testing missiles and sabre-rattling each other.”

”What should be done is to reduce the testing of missile and fissile material,” stressed Hoodbhoy.

Instead of spending money on glaringly neglected social sectors like education and health, both countries have – over the last year – been busy acquiring sophisticated weapons systems or building them.

In what seems like a new edition of the Cold War, India has in collaboration with Russia built supersonic guided missiles and acquired frontline Sukhoi fighters while Pakistan is awaiting delivery of F-16 fighters cleared by Washington for its ‘closest ally outside NATO.’

Neither Hoodbhoy nor Rajaraman were prepared to accept the idea of nuclear weapons acting as a deterrence and say that there is every possibility of nuclear war breaking out between India and Pakistan because of an irrational decision or even by accident.

”Anyway as long as you are talking about nuclear weapons acting as deterrence, the fact is that both countries already have more than enough weapons to serve that requirement,” Rajaraman said.

Confidence in the progress of peace talks between India and Pakistan were shattered by a dispute that arose earlier this month over the sharing of the waters of the Indus river and its tributaries that were supposed to have been settled decades ago by the 1960 Indus Water Treaty.

After joint inspections, a Pakistani team said that a 450-watt hydroelectric dam being built at Baglihar on the Indian side of the LoC in Kashmir violated the 1960 treaty and Islamabad announced that it would seek the arbitration of the World Bank, which mediated the treaty but is not its guarantor.

But the Bank doesn’t seem to want to get involved in the dispute.

”The treaty does not envisage a role for the World Bank in the determination of any issues which might be brought before a neutral expert. The Bank will not participate in any discussion or exchange beyond its role in the process of appointing a neutral expert,” it said in a Jan. 28 statement.

The dispute between the two countries over Kashmir goes back to 1947 when the two countries were partitioned on the basis of religion into Muslim Pakistan and Hindu- majority India following decolonisation and the end of British rule on the sub-continent.

After the formal grant of independence in August 1947, Kashmir continued to remain as an independent princely state but within two months, the first of a series of wars over the territory had broken out between India and Pakistan.

With more than half-a-century of war and diplomacy failing to resolve the dispute over Kashmir, leading analysts have been calling for fresh approaches to the long-festering problem.

Hoodbhoy believes that the Kashmir issue is best kept aside for now. ”People-to-people contact, including student exchange programmes, demilitarisation in the area and the softening of borders should be encouraged first,” he said.

The future of the peace talks now hinge on meetings between Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Shaukat Aziz on the sidelines of the summit of the seven-nation, South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) scheduled to be held from Feb 6-7 in the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka.