Youm-e-Takbir: How Pakistan became a nuclear power

May 28, 1998, Pakistan conducted six underground nuclear tests in Chagai, Balochistan, that altered the strategic dynamics of South Asia forever. Pakistan became the seventh nuclear power in the world and the first Muslim nation to hold Nuclear Power. Pakistan commemorates May 28 as "Youm-e-Takbir", which translates to “Day of God’s Greatness” or "The Day of Greatness". The journey, however, was a mixture of resilience, scientific brilliance, fear, insecurity and existential threat.

Where it all started

“If India builds the bomb, we will eat grass, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own,” said Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1965, not in Parliament or closed doors, but to international media.

This statement is emblematic of the logic of Pakistan's nuclearisation.

There was domestic turmoil in India over nuclearisation. The wounds from the war with China in 1962 were fresh. In 1964, China detonated its first nuclear bomb at Lop Nor. India started contemplating its own nuclear program. Amid great internal resistance and pressure from the international community over non-nuclear proliferation in 1974, India detonated its first Nuclear Bomb, code-named ‘Smiling Buddha’, deep in the deserts of Pokhran. Across the border, Pakistan’s then-Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto saw it not just as a threat, but as a warning. The scars of the independence of Bangladesh, then East Pakistan, were deep.

The spy who built the bomb

While the whole world was busy with the noise of the Cold War and the Soviet-Afghanistan conflict, Pakistan was silently developing its nuclear program with assistance from China. Abdul Qadeer Khan, born in India, a nuclear physicist, metallurgical engineer, was the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program. It is opined that he borrowed classified nuclear centrifuge designs from the Dutch company URENCO, where he was working.

He was later convicted by a Dutch court of nuclear espionage, selling nuclear secrets to North Korea, Iran, and Libya, making nuclear proliferation a global phenomenon. But many believed he was just the face of the program sponsored by the Pakistani state.

Former CIA director George Tenet called Khan ‘at least as dangerous as Osama-bin-laden’.

Either way, by 1980, he was working in a lab in Kahuta on the uranium enrichment of Pakistan. The town became synonymous with nuclear secrecy. It was deep, secretive, and hidden under layers of deception; scientists maintained code names, shipments were disguised, and carried around in a ghostly manner.

The tensions, sanctions, and sabotage

“India has acquired nuclear weapons at very great cost, very great risk and at very great sacrifice to intimidate and blackmail Pakistan. . . To extract political concessions, to establish domination over the sub-continent, to exercise hegemony over the neighbouring states,” said Bhutto, reacting to the 1974 tests of India.

Deterrence was the sole motto, according to Bhutto, for some time in Pakistan's nuclear programme. The second was self-reliance. The limitations of the Mutual Defence Alliance of 1953 and its membership of SEATO and CENTO were already exposed. Pakistan argued that it had been facing an arms embargo from the United States; India was supposed to face the same, but since India was not using US weaponry, that embargo only worked with Pakistan. Post 1965 Soviet Union started pouring India with weapons. This made Pakistan extremely uncomfortable and changed the dynamic of the military balance.

In the 1980s, the CIA started monitoring Pakistan through its satellites. The Pressler Amendment of 1990 threatened to impose various sanctions on Pakistan if it ever crossed the nuclear threshold.

“We had Mossad plans to hit Kahuta. The risk of a nuclear Pakistan was too high,” said a retired Israeli Air Force officer, as quoted in Haaretz.

Pakistan continued to deny it and built its nuclear capacity in silence. By the early 1990s, everyone knew it had it, but never tested it.

By May 11 and 13 of 1998, India conducted five nuclear detonations. Immediately, Pakistan faced numerous pressures to exercise restraint. Bill Clinton personally connected with the Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and advised, “Don’t test. If you do, you’ll trigger a dangerous arms race”

However, Pakistan was boiling internally; they wanted to test their mettle. People in Islamabad and Karachi urged not to let go of this chance.

After the test of May 13 in India, the rhetoric was such that the nuclear weapon was being corroborated with religion, and the question was about parity between Hindu and Muslim. Indian nuclear tests were considered as the ‘Hindu Bomb’; Pakistan's tests were needed for a ‘Muslim Bomb’.

Youm-e-Takbir

May 28, 1998, Pakistan detonated its first nuclear weapon in Chagai, Balochistan. Sanctions followed immediately, but Pakistan had shown its dedication and perseverance.

"Today, we have restored the balance of power in South Asia,” said Nawaz Sharif in a statement. The West was outraged, but Pakistan was jubilant. It had achieved what it had set out to do: parity with India.

More than a decade later, how has it fared?

The most inseparable or unsaid part of Pakistan's nuclear doctrine was its foreign policy ambition to attain its objectives in the Kashmir valley. The nuclear capability has deterred India on numerous occasions from pursuing military actions against Pakistan. Since 1998, Pakistan have been propagating Kashmir as a nuclear flash point.

Muslim religious leader Qazi Hussain Ahmed, in September 1994, urged the Bhutto government: “Let us wage jihad for Kashmir. A nuclear armed Pakistan would deter India from a wider conflict”.

However, the recent developments have shown that Pakistan can not continue supporting terrorism in Kashmir, flexing its nuclear muscle. It has to manage deterrence, and at the same time, avoid a conventional conflict.