International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation

Pakistan's Nuclear Descent

Zia Mian

Pakistan's nuclear programme has always been seen by its leaders as part of a larger multi-dimensional strategic contest with India. What has changed has been the role and significance of the program in this contest. With the nuclear tests in May 1998, Pakistan `s leaders and nuclear weapon scientists have joined their peers in India and the other nuclear weapon states in preparing the means to devastate that which they claim to defend.

The government of Pakistan first announced that it was setting up an organisation for nuclear research and development in October 1954. Making the announcement, the Minister for Industries declared "the Government is conscious that with the enormous progress the world is making towards the utilisation of atomic energy for civil uses, adequate steps have to be taken without delay in Pakistan to work out a phased program of survey, research and ultimate developments in this field." The motivation for this step was not hard to find. On the day of the announcement the Pakistani Prime Minister was meeting with President Eisenhower in the White House, who less than a year earlier had launched the U.S. Atoms for Peace Program at the United Nations.

Pakistan's desire to join the Atoms for Peace Program was not without strategic significance. At that time Pakistan was attempting to build a relationship with the United States in almost every possible area of social, political, economic and military activity. In 1954, US economic advisors were invited into Pakistan's Planning Commission to write the Five Year Plans and shape the future of Pakistan's economy. In the same year, the US agreed to give military aid, military advisors began to re-shape Pakistan's armed forces, and Pakistan joined the first of several US led military alliances. Pakistan's diplomats meanwhile defended US policy at almost every occasion, in the UN and other international fora, even though there was significant popular opposition within the country.

The reasons for these policies were straightforward. The US badly needed allies in the Cold War, especially in Asia and the Middle East area. Pakistan's political and military leaders were prepared to provide such support, in the hope that the strategic relationship with the US and the military and economic aid that went with it would strengthen Pakistan in its contest with India. By supporting President Eisenhower's grand new Atoms for Peace Program and setting up its nuclear program Pakistan was simply taking another initiative to show itself to be a reliable partner and ally.

It took almost a decade before Pakistani policy makers started to think about what they could do with their nuclear program. The first of these was Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who had been educated in the US in the late 1940s - while the US was coming to terms with having used nuclear weapons to destroy Hiroshima (and thus it was claimed ending the war) and the start of the Cold War (with the first Russian nuclear test in 1949), and then at Oxford after 1950 - when Britain was setting up its own nuclear weapons programme, in part as response to the loss of empire.

It was as with Bhutto as a cabinet minister that in 1963 that the government of Pakistan first "discussed seriously" whether it should build nuclear weapons, or as he put it "embark on a coherent nuclear programme." At that time, he claimed "the government of the day chose not to embark on a coherent nuclear programme." It appears the matter was taken up again in 1965, since Bhutto claimed "I know of two officials, who in 1965, ... vehemently opposed a coherent nuclear programme and supported the then President in the decision not to have a coherent nuclear programme."

This latter discussion may have coincided with the 1965 India-Pakistan war, towards the end of which there was significant media speculation that India was only "10 months" away from a nuclear test, and public demands that Pakistan should pursue its own nuclear weapons programme. These demands also came from within the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission. An editorial in The Nucleus, the official quarterly journal of the Commission argued "The recent war, inflicted by India on us, has shown once again, that even the best intentions can lead one to the battlefield. Every community has the duty, in the interest of its own survival, to contribute its share to the defence efforts. We as scientists shoulder a rather special responsibility: we have accepted the challenge of atomic energy and we must now try to prove ourselves equal to the task, be it peace or war."

When Bhutto took office as president of Pakistan, in the wake of the 1971 war with India, he proceeded to do what he had wanted earlier governments had been reluctant to do. The decision to embark on a "coherent nuclear programme" was taken in Multan in January, 1972.

India's 1974 nuclear weapon test increased the urgency of Pakistan's fledgling nuclear weapons program. While its diplomats and leaders began to make one proposal after another on nuclear disarmament, as a way to restrain India's nuclear weapons development, Pakistan's nuclear scientists tried to gain access to the technology to make the material needed for nuclear weapons. The first effort was to try to acquire plutonium from spent nuclear fuel by using a reprocessing plant. Lacking such a plant, Pakistan tried to buy it. Despite all the evidence that it would be used to make nuclear weapons material, France initially agreed to the sale of such plant to Pakistan. However, US pressure on France eventually killed the deal.

Denied reprocessing technology, and thus plutonium, Pakistan turned to enriched uranium as the only other option. According to A.Q. Khan, the head of the enrichment programme, it was on July 31, 1976 that the Engineering Research Laboratories were set up at on the order of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto with the purpose of establishing a Uranium enrichment plant. Preliminary work began at a site in Rawalpindi, a pilot plant was established at Sihala and construction began of a main facility at Kahuta.

There are some problems with determining the progress of the enrichment programme. A.Q. Khan has claimed that "within three years we had put up working prototypes of centrifuges." This would suggest that engineering problems of setting up and running the centrifuges had been solved. He claims "the first enrichment was done on April 4th, 1978," and the plant (presumably Kahuta) was "made operational in 1979, and by 1981 was producing substantial quantities of uranium." He claims that in 1982 they had successfully enriched uranium by 90%.

At the same time as the fissile material was being produced, work was going on preparing a nuclear test site. Work seems to have started in 1977-1978, and completed in 1982, after five years of work by the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission and the Pakistan army. The work was by no means secret. Newspaper reports from that time noted that something was certainly going on, the New York Times reported in 1979 that US government officials claimed Pakistan was preparing an underground test site in a southern region of the country. The test site has been described as in the Raskoh range of mountains in the Chagai area in Southern Balochistan.

The design and development work on nuclear weapons, carried out by scientists from the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, started at around the same time as the fissile material production and the testing site. The process has been described as one where PAEC mines uranium and turns it into hexafluoride which is then sent to Kahuta for enrichment. This enriched uranium is sent back to PAEC where it is turned into metal, and the weapons assembled.

It was in 1983, A.Q. Khan has claimed, that "cold tests" of a nuclear device were carried out. This gave the weapons scientists sufficient confidence in being able to test a weapon that "in 1984 we told General Zia that whenever you order, it will not take more than a week or two to do it." More specifically, he said that the capability to explode a nuclear device was "attained at the end of 1984." These tests have been reported in the international media. the New York Times claimed that "since mid-1985, according to American officials, the Pakistanis have tested several of the carefully shaped, high-explosive implosion devices."

Having designed the weapons, and produced the fissile material, and having prepared a test site, not surprisingly the nuclear weapon scientists began calling for a nuclear test. A.Q. Khan has revealed that during General's Zia's government "some people asked him [Gen. Zia] to do so [test] but he said no." Others have conformed this, and claimed that "during 1993, A.Q Khan sought permission a number of times to carry out tests" but was prevented by the Foreign Office. Pakistan's Prime Minister has gone on record as saying "our scientists have been pressing the government to detonate the device so as to enable them to check the nuclear data-base".

Pakistan's nuclear weapon scientists have been working on fusion weapons also. A.Q. Khan has said that "we are doing research and can do a fusion blast. If asked." Similarly, Samar Mubarikmand has claimed that Pakistani scientists can produce thermonuclear devices: "Technically we can definitely make it but it will require a mandate and needs more funds for carrying out test firing of thermonuclear device."

The Tests of May 28 and 30, 1998

The nuclear tests are reported to have been carried out by a team of over 100, mostly drawn from the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, and a few from the Defence Science and Technological Organisation and Kahuta Research Laboratories. By one account there the tests were carried out in a "a one kilometre tunnel, 12 feet wide and 10 feet high." Another report describes the geometry as a 1km tunnel with an overburden of a 700m mountain. The tunnels were "sealed off with concrete to stop radiation leaking out."

There are varying reports of the character and yield of the tests. A.Q. Khan has claimed that there were five tests, "one was a big bomb... of about 30-35 kilotons.. the other four were small tactical weapons of low yield." A.Q. Khan has also claimed that all the weapons that were tested were boosted fission devices. However, one source, it seems from within PAEC, has categorically stated that "Pakistan tested no thermonuclear or tactical nuclear device." PAEC has claimed the main test had a yield of 40-45kt, while the other four were of sub-kiloton yield, while Samar Mubarikmand has claimed that the yield of the five tests was 40-45kt.

The second test, on May 30th, took place in a different site, the Kharan desert, about 100 km from the site at Chagai. According to Ishfaq Ahmed, the head of PAEC, it was carried out in an L-shaped underground shaft.

There was initially some confusion about the number of tests on May 30th. National television and radio at first announced that two tests had been carried out. The official news agency, Associated Press of Pakistan, announced that there had been two tests. The same report went on to say that Pakistan's Foreign Minister had confirmed that there had been two tests. Foreign Secretary, Shamshad Ahmed, in a press conference later that day said that there had only been one test.

There is a dispute over the number and yield of the tests as inferred from seismic data. Recent independent studies of the international seismological data suggest there only one explosion test on May 28 and on May 30, and that the yield of the May 28 explosion was only 9-12 kt, while the May 30 nuclear test had an estimated yield of only around 4-6 kt.1 These estimates are a factor of four smaller than what was claimed by Pakistani officials.

Despite the disputes over the actual number of tests and their yields, there is no dispute that nuclear weapons were tested. After two decades of hinting about Pakistan's "nuclear capability," while at the same time denying it, after innumerable leaks and interviews about having the option to make nuclear weapons but having chosen not to make them, the tests have been used to remove the lingering doubts about Pakistan's nuclear weapons. As such India's nuclear tests on May 11 and 13 created an opportunity that Pakistan's nuclear weaponeers had longed hoped for. The Foreign Secretary said after the May 30th test "Today we have proved our credibility. ... There are no doubts left any more." Foreign Minister Gohar Ayub claimed "What has been exploded, these are weapons."

Reference

1. See T. Wallace, http://www.geo.arizona.edu/geophysics/faculty/wallace/ind.pak/ and B. Barker et al., Science, 25 September 1998.

Zia Mian is researcher at the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies, Princeton University, Princeton NJ 08544 USA; tel +1-617-253-5468, fax -3661; email: zia@princeton.edu. He is editor of: Pakistan´s Atomic Bomb & the search of security, Gautam Publishers 1995