Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan

Last changed 2 January 2002

By Carey Sublette

Long celebrated as the "Father of the Pakistani Bomb", A. Q. Khan deserves credit for providing Pakistan with the means for producing nuclear weapons, for without the uranium enrichment gas centrifuge plant built under Khan's leadership, using classified and proprietary plans and technology that he stole from his former employer URENCO, Pakistan would not now have the ability to build dozens of nuclear weapons. He has spent most of the last quarter century as the public face, indeed the very personification, of Pakistan's nuclear establishment. His frequent willingness to make colorful and inflammatory public statements ensured his notoriety and hold on the limelight, up until his surprise forced retirement in March 2001. But much of the credit he has been awarded - and has done nothing to discourage - for being virtually the sole force behind Pakistan's nuclear and missile programs is not deserved.

Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan in 1993

204x408, 12 K

The hero of Pakistan's nuclear weapons capability was born in present day India, in Bhopal State, in 1936 - the son of a teacher in a family of modest means. For five years, between the 1947 establishment of India as an independent state and 1952, Khan was a citizen of India. Then the Muslim Khan immigrated to Pakistan with his family as did millions of other Muslims before and after the 1947 partition of the two states. After graduating from school in Karachi he went to Europe in 1961 to continue his studies. First in Germany he attended the Technische Universität of West Berlin, then in Holland where he received a degree in metallurgical engineering at the Technical University of Delft in 1967. Eventually Khan received a Ph.D. in metallurgy from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium in 1972.

After graduation Khan went to work for the Physical Dynamics Research Laboratory (FDO), a subsidiary of Verenigde Machine-Fabrieken, in Amsterdam in May 1972. FDO was a subcontractor to Ultra-Centrifuge Nederland (UCN) - the Dutch partner of the tri-national European uranium enrichment centrifuge consortium URENCO, made up of Britain, Germany, and the Netherlands.

Since Khan had lived in Europe from 1961 on and was married to a Dutch national (as the Dutch security service BVD believed) the very personable Khan had little trouble getting a security clearance - a limited security clearance. Curiously Khan's wife Henny was not Dutch though, but a Dutch-speaking South African holding a British passport.

Elementary principals of security were not, it seems, observed by any part of the URENCO establishment. Routine procedures, such as wearing identification badges marked with the level of clearance appear to have been unknown. Once someone gained access to part of a facility with one level of clearance, there seem to have been few if any barriers to moving to higher level areas. The customary practice of checking the security clearance level of a person before signing out to classified documents to them appears to have been ignored.

Within a week of starting with FDO A. Q. Khan was sent to the UCN enrichment facility in Almelo, Netherlands. A visit to an external facility would normally require the transmittal of security paperwork to be granted access. This procedure was ignored by both FDO and UCN, because Khan was not cleared to visit the UCN facility, though he would do so repeatedly during his employment.

The multi-lingual engineer was tasked with translating highly classified technical documents describing the centrifuges in detail. In the course of this work, he often took the documents home, with FDO's consent, even though this was also a breach of normal procedure. In his first two years Khan worked with two early centrifuge designs, the CNOR and SNOR machines, then in late 1974 UCN asked Khan to translate highly classified design documents for two advanced German machines, the G-1 and G-2. These represented the most sophisticated industrial enrichment technology in the world at the time.

Khan spent 16 days over the course of a month in the highest security area of the Almelo facility while studying these machines. During this period he had unsupervised access, and was noted roaming around, writing notes in a foreign script, but with the lax security culture no attempts to stop him or investigate his activities [Weissman and Krosney 1981; pp. 175-179], [Burrows and Windrem 1994; pp. 362-364].

Shahid-ur-Rehman relates in his book The Long Road to Chagai that Khan wrote to the Prime Minister in September 1974 offering his services to Pakistan, which means that he had definitely begun his espionage activities by the time he went to work with the G-2 and G-2. Evidence of the effect of Khan's passing of information on centrifuge technology and design, and on the URENCO component suppliers, to Pakistan can be seen in the initiation of the Pakistani purchase of components for the uranium enrichment program beginning in August 1975.

In January 1976, on (according to Khan) the invitation of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, he suddenly left Europe with his family before his espionage was detected. The Khans's departure was deceptive, Henny wrote to neighbor's saying they were on vacation and Abdul had suddenly fallen ill. Khan later sent a letter of resignation, effective in March, to FDO from Pakistan.

A.Q. Khan initially worked under the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC), headed by Munir Ahmad Khan. A small centrifuge pilot facility was initially set up at Sihala, several kilometers southeast of Islamabad. Friction quickly developed and in July 1976 Bhutto gave Khan autonomous control of the uranium enrichment project, reporting directly to the Prime Minister's office, an arrangement that has continued since. A.Q. Khan founded the Engineering Research Laboratories (ERL) on 31 July 1976, a few kilometers from Sihala, outside Kahuta near Islamabad, with the exclusive task of indigenous development of Uranium Enrichment Plant. Construction on Pakistan's first centrifuges began that year. The PAEC under M. A. Khan went on to develop Pakistan's first generation of nuclear weapons in the 1980s [Perkovich 1999; pp. 308-309].

Due to Khan's efforts, the slow recognition of the program by western intelligence, and the weak export controls at the time, Pakistan made rapid progress in developing U-235 production capability. When export controls on nuclear usable materials were imposed on Pakistan in 1974, the focus was on technology applicable to plutonium production, not uranium enrichment, and the focus was on plants and complete systems, not components. By using Khan's detailed information of components and suppliers Pakistan was able to circumvent these controls.

According to Khan in a 1998 interview, the first enrichment was done at Kahuta on 4 April 1978. The plant was made operational in 1979 and by 1981 was producing substantial quantities of uranium.

In recognition of A. Q. Khan's contributions the ERL was renamed the A.Q. Khan Research Laboratories (KRL) by President Zia ul-Haq on 1 May 1981.

A later Dutch security enquiry revealed that Khan had probably appropriated much of the UCN facility's secrets. Starting in 1978, he was also named in numerous other Western inquiries and media reports about secret purchasing operations for components for Pakistan's uranium enrichment plant.

Khan acknowledges he did take advantage of his experience of many years of working on similar projects in Europe and his contacts there with various manufacturing firms, but denies engaging in nuclear espionage for which a court in Amsterdam sentenced him in absentia in 1983 to four years in prison. An appeals court two years later upheld his appeal against the conviction and quashed the sentence for failure to properly deliver a summons to him.

The prosecution had the option to renew the charges and issue a fresh summons for trial, but given the impossibility of serving him a summons behind the curtain of Pakistani security the Dutch government decided against pursuing the case any further - a fact that Khan claims as an admission that there was no substance to the case.

"The information I had asked for was ordinary technical information available in published literature for many decades," Khan said in a speech afterwards about his two letters to his contacts that became the basis for his prosecution.

"I had requested for it as we had no library of our own at that time."

Of course the classified documents he undoubtedly copied and sent to Pakistan, as well as his written notes were not in the possession of Dutch security and thus could not be used to build a case against him.

Khan insists that the Pakistani centrifuge program is indigenous and that the equipment used in it was developed and manufactured locally. In 1990 Khan declared "All the research work was the result of our innovation and struggle. We did not receive any technical know-how from abroad, but we can't reject the use of books, magazines and research papers in this connection." [Burrows and Windrem 1994; pp. 368]

It has been reported that a CIA analyses of Pakistan's huge purchasing program showed that they had succeeded in obtaining at least one of almost every component needed to build a centrifuge enrichment plant [Weissman and Krosney 1981; pp. 190].

The notion - expressed by Khan - that his personal access to detailed classified and proprietary ultracentrifuge designs was coincidental to his role in leading Pakistan's enrichment program, that he declined to employ the knowledge he had gained at FDO to assist Pakistan's program in constructing an enrichment plant in five years, and that the wholesale importation of the entire technology suite required to build a European-designed centrifuge plant does not constitute "technical know-how from abroad" cannot be taken seriously, to say the least.

The massive purchases of foreign equipment - continuing up through the purchase of ring magnets from China in the mid-90s, show heavy dependence on foreign technology and components. But even so, the plants themselves are Pakistani developments -- Pakistan had to design and build the facilities, assemble the systems from components, while manufacturing components themselves that they could not obtain in sufficient number. This is quite unlike reactors and plutonium separation plants that other proliferating countries have acquired ready-made and were trained to operate by their suppliers.

Khan, because of the secrecy enveloping Pakistan's nuclear program, has lived heavily guarded by security men. Over the years there have been a number of incidents involving encounters between foreigners and the heavy-handed security surrounding Khan and KRL. In late July 1979, unidentified men stopped and beat severely the French Ambassador and his First Secretary as they were driving by Khan's laboratories in Kahuta. A few weeks later in August a journalist for theFinancial Times named Chris Sherwell trying to locate Khan's house to conduct an interview in Islamabad was beaten up and then arrested and charged with fictitious crimes, forcing him to leave the country. Later a British diplomat's son was detained by police after losing his way in the Islamabad district that houses Khan[Weissman and Krosney 1981; pp. 193], [Henderson 1993].

Despite the secrecy and security, Khan has taken the public spotlight on numerous occasions, attracting some criticism for seeking publicity in contrast to his more discrete counterpart in India, Abdul Kalam.

It was on such an occasion - an interview in February 1984 - that he first made the claim that Pakistan had achieved nuclear weapons capability.

A. Q. Khan talking to journalists on 31 May 1998 after the second nuclear test.

A. Q. Khan displaying his gold medal awarded by Pakistani President Rafiq Tarrar in Lahore after the 1998 tests.

Read Khan's interview with The News given after the tests.

And when the 1986-87 Exercise Brasstacks crisis was at its height on 28 January 1987 - an outbreak of warfare between India and Pakistan seemed imminent due to a confrontation over military exercises near the border - A.Q. Khan made threatening remarks regarding Pakistani nuclear retaliation to Indian journalist Kuldip Nayar, apparently intending that they be conveyed to the Indian government. Nayar however shopped the story around for a few weeks, and it was not published until 1 March, after the matter had been resolved. Nonetheless it left a lingering sense of nuclear threat with India.

Khan's public pronouncements also helped generate the tense atmosphere in which India's 1998 nuclear tests were conducted. In an inauspiciously timed visit, Bill Richardson led a high level U.S. delegation that visited New Delhi and then Pakistan on 15 April. During the visit Khan, told the Urdu daily Ausaf "We are ready to carry out nuclear explosion anytime and the day this political decision will be made, we will show the world," during an informal chat with journalists. "We have achieved uranium enrichment capability way back in 1978 and after that several times we asked different governments to grant us permission to carry out a nuclear test. But we did not get the permission," the daily quoted him as saying. Asked when Pakistan would carry out a nuclear test, Dr. Khan was quoted as having said, "Get permission from the government." Khan was not a spokesman for the government at the time, but he remained extremely influential and was still closely connected with the corridors of power in Pakistan.

As a result, not everyone in Pakistan holds Khan in awe. Some who have worked with him remember him as a egomaniacal lightweight given to exaggerating his expertise. "Most of the scientists who work on weapons are serious. They are sobered by the weight of what they don't know," said Munir Ahmad Khan, the former head of the PAEC. "Khan is a showman."

Despite his extreme prominence (Khan is one of the most famous men in Pakistan) and undoubted importance in Pakistan's acquisition of nuclear weapons, A. Q. Khan was never in charge of the actual development of nuclear weapons themselves (despite common assumptions to the contrary, which Khan did nothing to discourage). Weapons development, and their eventual testing, was carried out by the PAEC.

During the 1990s Khan lived in a spacious single-story house, located in Islamabad near the Faisal mosque, with his wife Henny and two daughters. The road outside his house is a public thoroughfare, but there are safety bumps in the road surface to slow traffic and a permanent security post is opposite the house. On the road, his car is escorted by four-wheel drive security vehicles with sirens and lights blaring and flashing.

Khan keeps a small menagerie of pets. Each day at sunrise, he takes a sackful of peanuts when he walks into the wooded Margala Hills across from his home and feeds the monkeys. Declared Khan, the day after his country exploded another nuclear device, "I am the kindest man in Pakistan. I feed the ants in the morning. I feed the monkeys."

Abdul Qadeer Khan's official career came to an abrupt end in March 2001, when he and PAEC Chairman Ishfaq Ahmed were suddenly retired by order of General (and now President) Pervez Musharraf. What prompted this move can only be speculated, but the Pakistani weapons program - which has been sponsored, run, and controlled by the military from its outset - is now mature, and it may be that Musharraf, who was busy mending fences with the outside world, wished to tie down some loose cannons that were a source of irritation with India and the United States. Both men were offered the post of "adviser to the chief executive", which Khan eventually rejected after much vacillation. Khan is now described as "Special Adviser to the Chief Executive on Strategic and KRL Affairs" a wholly ceremonial title. ([Mushtaq 2001], [Guinnessy 2001]).

Reuters and Los Angeles Times news reports were used in preparing this article.

Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons Program

Present Capabilities

Last changed 6 August 2001

Weapons Stockpile

The uranium enrichment facility that produces most of Pakistan's weapons material )(highly enriched uranium or HEU) is the gas centrifuge plant at KRL (A.Q. Khan Research Laboratories) at Kahuta, 50 km Islamabad. This facility, which employs 7,000 people including 2,000 scientists and researchers, began operating in the early 1980s, but suffered serious start up problems. A.Q. Khan announced that Kahuta was producing low enriched uranium in 1984. US intelligence believes that uranium enrichment exceeded 5% in 1985, and that production of highly enriched uranium was achieved in 1986. Kahuta has run essentially non-stop at enriching uranium since that time (though with varying numbers of gas centrifuges). At start-up Pakistan had reportedly manufactured 14000 centrifuges, but had only 1000 operating. By 1991 about 3000 machines were operating according to US intelligence. This implies a production capacity of 45-100 kg U-235/year depending on the tails concentration and production efficiency, enough for 3-7 implosion weapons. Shahryar Khan has said that the cost of Kahuta was relatively modest, less than $150 million[Albright and Hibbs 1992].

U.S. and former Pakistani government officials have said on many occasions that Pakistan voluntarily halted production of HEU at Kahuta in 1991. But instead of shutting down the plant, Pakistan simply reconfigured their enrichment cascade to produce low enriched uranium (LEU), thus continuing to perform the same amount of separative work. Since the production of this "middle product" between natural and highly enriched uranium requires most of the separative work required to produce HEU, this in effect stockpiled separative work units (SWUs) that Pakistan could recoup with comparatively little additional effort at a later time to produce HEU without loss in cumulative production in the end. Pakistan is known to have resumed HEU production no later than 1998 after the nuclear tests conducted that year (and possibly well before), thus the production of HEU forgone between 1991 and 1998 has been made up by now (probably before the end of 1999), and the effect is as if HEU production never halted.

Pakistan has built a second enrichment plant at Golra, 6 miles from Islamabad. It is expected to be even larger than Kahuta, with more advanced centrifuges. It may not yet have begun production though due to difficulty in obtaining the necessary parts now. In March 1996 the New York Times reported that China had sold Pakistan 5000 ring magnets suitable for use in gas centrifuges.

It is estimated that Pakistan produced about 210 kg (range 160 - 260 kg) of HEU up to the moratorium in 1991 [Albright and O'Neill 1998]. The current production capacity of Pakistan is approximately 110 kg per year (range 80 - 140 kg/year), and the cumulative production of HEU (less the HEU expended in the 1998 tests) is estimated at about 800 kg at the end of 2000 (range 665 - 940 kg) [Albright 2000]. Since a uranium weapon requires about 15 kg this equates to a potential for 53 weapons (range 44 - 62), although somewhat more than 15 kg may be used to produce more powerful and efficient weapons.

In April 1998 the unsafeguarded Kushab reactor began operating. This reactor is a heavy water-natural uranium reactor built with Chinese assistance and has an operating power of 50-70 MW. This reactor should be able to produce around 10-15 kg of plutonium a year at a 60-80% load factor (the fraction of the time the reactor actually operates) [Albright 1998b]. Through the end of 2000 approximately 10-28 kg is estimated to have been separated from the fuel, a figure that is strongly affected by how quickly the fuel is processed after irradiation, and the effectiveness of the separation plant. Pakistan has a pilot plutonium reprocessing plant called "New Labs" at the Pakistan Institute of Scientific and Technical Research (Pinstech) complex near Rawalpindi. Reportedly the New Labs facility was expanded during the 90s to handle the full fuel load from Kushab. CBS News reported on 16 March 2000 that US intelligence had found evidence (such as krypton-86 emissions) that Pakistan is reprocessing irradiated fuel from the Khushab reactor and recovering separated plutonium [Albright 2000]. Fission weapons require 4-6 kg of plutonium, so 2-7 weapons could have been manufactured from this material.

In addition to Kushab, Pakistan is also manufacturing reactor-grade graphite and has its own heavy water plant both of which may be used to build additional plutonium production reactors fueled with natural uranium. It currently possesses two power reactors - the Karachi Nuclear Power Plant (KANUPP) with an output of 137 MW electrical, and the Chasma Nuclear Power Plant (CHASNUPP) with an output of 300 MWe. CHASNUPP is a pressurized water reactor constructed by the China National Nuclear Corporation was completed in late 1995. CHASNUPP began operations in November 1999 and was connected to the power grid (run by the Karachi Electric Supply Company) on 14 June 2000. These reactors have produced 600 kg of plutonium in their spent fuel but this plutonium remains unseparated and under IAEA safeguards.

The Kushab reactor could also be used to produce tritium for boosted weapons. The production capacity for tritium would be on the order of 100 g per year if enriched uranium is used as fuel, enough to boost perhaps 20 weapons. Pakistan is known to be interested in tritium, having acquired a tritium purification and production facility, and 0.8 grams of pure tritium gas from West Germany in 1987, as well as even larger quantities of tritium from China.

According to A. Q. Khan, as well as other Pakistani scientists, the devices tested in 1998 were most of all boosted weapon designs. Pakistan has not tested a true staged thermonuclear device. This implies that Pakistan can built pure fission or boosted fission devices with yields ranging from sub-kiloton up to perhaps 100 kt. Higher yields are possible, but suffer from the delivery weight limits of its existing missiles and probable limits to Pakistani miniaturization technology. China has provided a complete tested designs for a 25 kt pure fission weapon.

Delivery Systems

Pakistan has been active since the early 80s in acquiring ballistic missiles and missile technology. This has resulted in the acquisition and development of an imposing list of missile systems (see table below). These systems are all basically derivatives of Chinese and North Korean technology, and in many cases are simply missile systems imported from abroad (the M-9 and M-11) or assembled from foreign components (the Ghauri and Ghauri-2 missiles). The Ghauri designation refers to a Muslim ruler -- Shahabuddin Ghauri -- who repeatedly raided Hindu cities during the middle ages.

In October 2000 it was reported that the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission's (PAEC)National Defence Complex (NDC) had begun serial production of its 'indigenously-built' solid-fuelled Shaheen-1 ("Eagle" or Hatf-4) intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), according to local media reports quoting senior defense officials. The Shaheen-1, with a declared range of 750 km, has officially been flight tested only once, in April 1999. Pakistani Defence officials also said the test of the road-mobile missile was successful [Farooq 2000], [PTI 2000].

Currently the only missiles that are believed to be in service are the Hatf-1 and Hatf-2, the Chinese supplied M-9 and M-11, the Shaheen-1, and possibly the Ghauri/Ghauri-2 (basically North Korean supplied No-dong missiles). On 13 June 1996 the Washington Post quoted a leaked CIA draft document as saying Pakistan had "probably finished developing nuclear warheads" for Chinese-supplied M-11 missiles. If true, it may indicate Chinese assistance miniaturizing the warhead design.

Summary of Pakistan's Missiles
Name	Alternate Names	Range (km)	Payload (kg)	Test Firings	Developer	Status
Hatf-1		80	500	April 1989	KRL	In service since 1996
Hatf-1A		100	500	February 2000	KRL	In service?
Hatf-2		260-300	500	April 1989	KRL	In service?
Hatf-3		800		3 July 1997?	KRL?	Never deployed
Hatf-4	Shaheen-1	750	1000	15 April 1999	NDC	Deployed September 2000
Hatf-5	Ghauri-1	1100-1500	700	6 April 1998	KRL/DPRK
Hatf-6?	Ghauri-2	2000	500-700?	14 April 1999	KRL/DPRK
Hatf-7	Shaheen-2	2400-2500	1000	Declared ready for test Sept. 2000	NDC
	Ghauri-3? (Ghaznavi?)	3000		15 August 2000??	KRL/DPRK?
M-9	CSS-6/DF-15	600-650	500		China	Supplied?
M-11	CSS-7/DF-11	300	500-800		China	30-80 supplied
Notes
1. NDC: National Defence Complex 2. KRL: A.Q. Khan Research Laboratories 3. DPRK: Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) 4. Hatf-2 may be a Pakistani manufactured M-11 5. Shaheen-1 believed to be based on Chinese M-9 technology and design 6. Shaheen-2 believed to be based on Chinese M-18 or DF-21 technology and design 7. Ghauri and Ghauri-2 are believed to be DPRK (North Korea) No-dong missiles or No-dong based designs

Ghauri, April 1998

---

Ghauri-II, April 1999
Ghauri-II on parade.
Wednesday 14 April 1999 A Ghauri-II surface-to-surface missile stands on its launching vehicle at Jelhum, Pakistan south of the capital of Islamabad Wednesday, shortly before its test flight. Handout Photo.
Wednesday 14 April 1999 Ghauri-II, an advanced version of the previously tested Ghauri ballistic missile, being launched on 14 April 1999 in Dina, 37 miles east of Islamabad, Pakistan. Pakistan test fired its newest ballistic missile Wednesday that is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and hitting deep inside its neighbor and rival India. (Pakistan Army Information Bureau Photo)
Wednesday 14 April 1999 Ghauri-II surface-to-surface missile is launched from Dina, Pakistan. Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said on Wednesday Pakistan had successfully test-fired a 1,250-mile range ballistic missile to match one tested by India on Sunday, ignoring Western efforts to avoid a South Asian arms race. PTV Television photo.

---

Shaheen-1 ("Eagle")
Thursday 15 April 1999 Shaheen 1, the first in a new series of surface-to-surface missiles, rests on a launch pad 15 April 15 near Karachi, Pakistan. Pakistan tested a second nuclear-capable missile Thursday, upping the ante in the race with its uneasy neighbor India. (Defense Ministry)

Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons Program

Pakistan as a Nuclear Power

Last changed 6 August 2001

The post-test political situation in Pakistan was inaugurated by the suspension of civil liberties immediately after the first test. A week later the Sharif administration asked Parliament for an endorsement of the state of emergency - which passed by a vote of 166 to 49.

This Page is Under Construction

The Shaheen-1 terminally guided medium-range ballistic missile (also known as the Hatf-4), with a firing range of 750 km, had been developed to prototype stage in early 1998 ( after 27 months of development) but wasn't test-fired until 15 April 1999. The test flight was conducted from the coastal site of Somiani near Karachi and covered a range of 600 km. The Shaheen-I was displayed on Pakistan Day parade twice -- in 1999 and 2000. In September 2000 it was reported by media sources in Islamabad that the Shaheen-I had entered serial production and been formally inducted into the Pakistani army as an operational weapon [Farooq 2000].

The road-mobile two stage Shaheen-2 (Hatf-7) was unveiled at the annual Pakistan Day parade in April 2000. Like Pakistan's other solid-fuelled missiles, this medium range ballistic missile (MRBM) was developed by the PAEC NDC under the direction of Dr Samar Mubarrak Mund. The Shaheen-2 was estimated byJane's Defence Weekly to have a range of 2500 km with a 1000 kg payload, and increase of 2000 km from its original design [PTI 2000]. There are allegations from several countries that Pakistan's missile technology is only an extended version of Chinese and North Korean missile technologies.

Pakistan test fired the Ghauri-2 missile on 14 April 1999 with a claimed range of 2000 km. Like the original Ghauri test, this was also simply a North Korea produced No-dong, making this Pakistani launch the fourth test of this DPRK missile system [Bermudez 1998a].

Pakistan flight-tested its 100 km-range Hatf-1 in February 2000.

Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons Program

1998: The Year of Testing

We know that Israel and South Africa have full nuclear capability -- a Christian, Jewish and Hindu civilization have this capability ... the Islamic civilization is without it, but the situation (is) about to change. Deposed Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, from his jail cell, 1978

"Dhamaka kar dein." (Conduct the explosion.) Prime Minister Mohammad Nawaz Sharif, 18 May 1998

"Today, we have settled a score and have carried out five successful nuclear tests" Prime Minister Mohammad Nawaz Sharif, 28 May 1998

Last changed 10 September 2001

By Carey Sublette

Background

The re-election of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power in India in 1998 was a turning point in world affairs due to its decision to carry out India's first nuclear tests in 24 years. India had been poised on the brink of doing so for some years, with successive governments making active preparation to hold tests, going so far as to actually emplace nuclear devices in test shafts, and - under the first short-lived BJP government - to actually order that tests be conducted. Support for an open declaration of nuclear weapons status had become popular with the Indian public by 1995, and it was an official part of the BJP political platform. The successful execution of nuclear tests under the second BJP government was thus all but a foregone conclusion.

Like India, Pakistan had made many preparations for testing over the years, and could thus organize a test effort on short notice.

On 6 April 1998 Pakistan conducted its first test of the Ghauri. Pakistani media reports credited the missile with a 1100 km test flight and an apogee of 350 km, but information on the impact point shows that the flight distance was no more than 800 km. The system had a claimed range of 1500 km. While Pakistan has stated publicly that the missile was designed and produced indigenously it was, in fact, a North Korea produced No-dong. This was the second test of a No-dong, and it is believed that DPRK observers were present [Bermudez 1998a]. Although this test did not actually influence India's preparations for the tests held 5 weeks later, it did help create the atmosphere of tension in which the tests were conducted.

Ghauri, April 1998

In the afternoon of Monday, 11 May 1998 Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee stunned the world by announcing at a hurriedly convened press conference that earlier that day India had conducted three nuclear tests. International observers were, if anything, even more astonished by the announcement two days later that two additional tests had been conducted.

The Decision to Test

India's test created an untenable situation for Prime Minister Mohammad Nawaz Sharif. In the wake of India's tests, Pakistan felt an urgent need to demonstrate its own prowess in a similar manner for many reasons - to deny India unilateral technical advantage it might have gained from conducting tests; to restore a sense of a balance-of-power with India in the eyes of itself, India, and the world; et cetera. Pressure for test spanned the political spectrum from liberals like opposition leader Benazir Bhutto to the religious right. Bhutto reportedly went so far as to declare that "if there is military capability to eliminate India's nuclear capacity, it should be used." Conservatives within the Sharif administration, particularly Foreign Minister Gohar Ayub Khan pressed very hard for tests. And the Pakistani military, the true seat of power in Pakistan and the actual authority over its nuclear weapons, had been eager to conduct tests for years. Sharif thus faced unbearable pressure to authorize its own nuclear test series. It is very likely that had he refused to go along with tests, Sharif's government would have fallen to a military takeover then and there (rather than 17 months later).

Foreign Minister Gohar Ayub Khan on 30 May 1998

Despite the inevitability of the Pakistani response, it was a strategic disaster. Pakistan had suffered under the penalties of the Pressler Amendment for years. If Pakistan had abjured testing at this point, its status on the world stage would have climbed dramatically - as the "responsible" member of the India-Pakistan confrontation. The symbolic significance of turning the other cheek in the face of India's provocative testing would have made Pakistan the idol of proponents of non-proliferation, and likely would have led to the repeal of the Pressler Amendment sanctions. But by responding in kind, Pakistan not only lost all of these opportunities, it subjected itself to additional sanctions imposed in retaliation.

The day after the first tests Ayub Khan said the Asian subcontinent has been thrust into a nuclear arms race and indicated that Pakistan was ready to conduct a nuclear test of its own. "We are prepared to match India, we have the capability ... We in Pakistan will maintain a balance with India in all fields," he said n an interview. "We are in a headlong arms race on the subcontinent."

Prime Minister Sharif was much more subdued, refusing to say whether a test would be conducted in response: "We are watching the situation and we will take appropriate action with regard to our security," he said.

After returning to the country from a trip to Central Asia on 13 May Sharif met for several hours with senior military officials and senior members of his government to discuss India's action, which appeared to have taken Pakistan's security establishment by surprise. "We didn't have any advance information on these explosions," said a member of Sharif's cabinet.

Another cabinet member said, "Not surprisingly, many ministers thought it was the ideal moment for Pakistan to test its nuclear device," and Pakistan's army informed Sharif that it will be ready "within a week" to conduct an underground nuclear test on 24 hours' notice. But officials familiar the deliberations spoke of a division within the cabinet over an appropriate Pakistani response.

According to an aide, Sharif appeared to favor "a balanced and moderate response" and ordered a report on the cost the country would have to bear if a Pakistani nuclear test brought international sanctions.

The same day President Clinton telephone Sharif and urged him not to go ahead with a test, asking him "not to respond to an irresponsible act in kind."

[Azam 2000] provides an account of the initial cabinet meeting at which Pakistan's response to the Indian tests was considered:

A meeting of the Defence Committee of the Cabinet (DCC) was convened on the morning of 15 May 1998 at the Prime Minister’s Secretariat, Islamabad to discuss the situation arising out of the Indian nuclear tests. The meeting was chaired by the Prime Minister of Pakistan and attended by the Minister of Defence, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Gohar Ayub Khan, the Minister of Finance & Economic Affairs, Sartaj Aziz, the Foreign Secretary, Shamshad Ahmed Khan and the three Chiefs of Staffs of the Army, Air Force and Navy, namely General Jehangir Karamat, Air Chief Marshal Pervaiz Mehdi Qureshi and Admiral Fasih Bokhari respectively.

Since Dr. Ishfaq Ahmed, Chairman of the PAEC was on a visit to the United States and Canada the responsibility of giving a technical assessment of the Indian nuclear tests and Pakistan’s preparedness to give a matching response to India fell on the shoulders of Dr. Samar Mubarakmand, Member (Technical), PAEC. Dr. Mubarakmand was in charge of the PAEC’s Directorate of Technical Development (DTD), one of the most secretive organizations in the Pakistan nuclear programme the location of which is one of Pakistan’s best kept secrets and unknown to the world. Dr. Mubarakmand had supervised several cold tests since 1983 and was responsible for overseeing all of PAEC’s classified projects. Also, in attendance was Dr. A.Q. Khan, Director of the Khan Research Laboratories (KRL), Kahuta.

There were two points on the DCC’s agenda: Firstly, whether or not Pakistan should carry out nuclear tests in order to respond to Indian’s nuclear tests? Secondly, if Pakistan does go ahead with the tests then which of the two organizations, PAEC or KRL, should carry out the tests?

The discussions went on for a few hours and encompassed the financial, diplomatic, military, strategic and national security concerns. Finance Minister Sartaj Aziz was the only person who opposed the tests on financial grounds due to the economic recession, the low foreign exchange reserves of the country and the effect of inevitable economic sanctions which would be imposed on Pakistan if it carried out the tests. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif neither opposed nor proposed the tests. The remainder spoke in favour of conducting the tests.

Dr. Mubarakmand gave a technical assessment on behalf of the PAEC of India's tests. Unsurprisingly, given the outside skepticism about India's test claims and India and Pakistan's mutual habit of denigrating each other's ability, his assessment was that there had been only one successful test on 11 May, and if a thermonuclear device had been fired then it had been a failure. Mubarakmand added that if it is decided that Pakistan should go ahead with nuclear tests of its own, then the PAEC is fully prepared to carry out the nuclear tests within 10 days.

[Azam 2000] continues:

Dr. A.Q. Khan, speaking on behalf of KRL, also asserted that KRL was fully prepared and capable of carrying out nuclear tests within 10 days if the orders are given by the DCC. Dr. Khan reminded the DCC that it was KRL which first enriched uranium, converted it into metal, machined it into semi-spheres of metal and designed their own atomic bomb and carried out cold tests on their own. All this was achieved without any help from PAEC. He said that KRL was fully independent in the nuclear field. Dr. Khan went on to say that since it was KRL which first made inroads into the nuclear field for Pakistan, it should be given the honour of carrying out Pakistan’s first nuclear tests and it would feel let down if it wasn't conferred the privilege of doing so.

Thus, both the PAEC and KRL were equal to the task. However, PAEC had two additional advantages which KRL didn’t. Firstly, it was PAEC which had constructed Pakistan’s nuclear test site at Chagai, Baluchistan. Secondly, PAEC had greater experience in conducting cold tests than KRL.

The DCC meeting concluded without any resolution of the two agenda points.

By week's end American spy satellites had detected an influx of equipment at a previously prepared test site in the Chagai Hills in the desert of southwestern Baluchistan province, barely 50 km from the border with Iran, and the CIA was predicting that a test could occur as early as Sunday 17 May.

Over the weekend Sharif consulted with various parties and factions, and remained under enormous pressure to test. Meanwhile public reaction continued to favor an immediate response. Former PM Benazir Bhutto advocated not only an immediate nuclear test by Pakistan, but also asserted that India should be disarmed by a preemptive attack, and called on Sharif to resign.

The tension was ratcheted up on Saturday by Ayub Khan, known to be a hard-liner with close ties to the military, when he remarked to reporters that a nuclear test by Pakistan "is just a matter of timing and the government of Pakistan will choose as to when to conduct the test." "A nuclear test by Pakistan is certain," he added.

Ayub Khan repeated the remarks the next day, telling The Associated Press that Pakistan has decided to go ahead with a test of a nuclear device. "It's a matter of when, not if, Pakistan will test," he said. "The decision has already been taken by Cabinet," he said in a telephone interview from his rural home in northwestern Pakistan.

The frenzy of speculation reached a peak on Sunday, 17 May, when the nuclear device was believed to be in place for a test. There was even a brief flurry of excitement caused by a false alarm on Sunday when German President Helmut Kohl said he had "reliable information" saying Pakistan had exploded a bomb, a report that was quickly denied and discredited.

The Chairman of the PAEC, Dr. Ishfaq Ahmed, cut short a foreign trip and returned to Pakistan on 16 May 1998. On the morning of 17 May 1998, he received a call from the Pakistan Army GHQ, Rawalpindi informing him to remain on stand-by for a meeting with the Prime Minister. He was thereafter summoned and, accompanied by Dr. Mubarakmand, met with Sharif at his official residence. Sharif asked the PAEC Chairman for his opinion on the two points which were discussed in the DCC meeting the day before. Ahmed assured the Prime Minister that the PAEC was ready to test when ordered to do so, but declined to take a position on whether the order should be given. At conclusion of the meeting he was told to prepare for the tests but remain on stand-by for the final decision [Azam 2000].

According to [Azam 2000]:

Since the DCC meeting of 15 May 1998 proved inconclusive, it is believed that a more exclusive DCC meeting was held on 16 or 17 May 1998 attended only by the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister, the Finance Minister and the three Chiefs of Staff of the Army, Air Force and Navy. This meeting has never been officially acknowledged but it must have been held as neither the Prime Minister alone nor the Chief of the Army Staff alone could have made the decision to conduct the nuclear tests. The DCC was the only competent authority to decide on this matter, especially since the National Command Authority (NCA), Pakistan’s nuclear command and control authority for its strategic forces, did not exist at that time. In this meeting, the two agenda points of the DCC meeting of 15 May 1998 were decided. Firstly, Pakistan would give a matching and befitting response to India by conducting nuclear tests of its own. Secondly, the task would be assigned to the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC), who were the best equipped and most experienced to carry out the tests.

Meanwhile the US worked on putting together an incentive package to Pakistan to persuade it not to test. The repeal of the Pressler amendment that cut off military aid was offered, as was delivery of $600 million dollars worth of F-16 fighter-bombers that Pakistan had ordered and paid for but never received. Discussions also began on how much aid to offer Pakistan on top of these concessions. The automatic imposition of a nearly complete embargo like that imposed on India, but which much smaller Pakistan could hardly afford, provided the penalty side of the equation.

But PM Sharif did not confirm the comments by Ayub, and by the beginning of the next week, Pakistan appeared to have backed off any immediate decision to test, and was content to see how much in aid the US might offer in return.

But out of the public eye things were moving rapidly in a different direction.

On 18 May 1998, the Chairman of the PAEC was again summoned to the Prime Minister House where he was relayed the decision of the DCC. "Dhamaka kar dein" (Conduct the explosion) were the exact words used by the Prime Minister to inform him of the Government’s decision to conduct the nuclear tests. The PAEC Chairman went back to his office and gave orders to his staff to prepare for the tests. Simultaneously, GHQ and Air Headquarters issued orders to the relevant quarters in 12 Corps, Quetta, the National Logistics Cell (NLC), the Army Aviation Corps and No. 6 (Air Transport Support) Squadron respectively to extend the necessary support to the PAEC in this regard. The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) also directed the national airline, PIA, to make available a Boeing 737 passenger aircraft at short notice for the ferrying of PAEC officials, scientists, engineers and technicians to Baluchistan.

[Azam 2000]

Test Preparations

True to form, when news reached A.Q. Khan that the task of testing a nuclear device had been assigned to PAEC, not KRL, he lodged a strong protest with the Chief of Army Staff, General Jehangir Karamat. The Army Chief, in turn, called the Prime Minister. To mollify Khan, it was decided that KRL personnel would be involved in the final preparation of the nuclear test site alongside those of PAEC as well as being present at the time of the test [Azam 2000].

PAEC held a planning meeting chaired by Dr. Ahmed with Mubarakmand and other scientists and engineers of the PAEC in attendance. According to Azam, which devices to test were discussed, and:

It was decided that since the Indian nuclear tests had given an opportunity to Pakistan to conduct nuclear tests after 14 years of conducting only cold tests, the maximum benefit should be derived from this opportunity. It was, therefore, decided, that multiple tests would be carried out of varying yields as well as the live testing of the triggering mechanisms. Since the tunnel at the Ras Koh Hills had the capability to conduct six tests, therefore, six different nuclear devices of varying designs, sizes and yields were selected, all of which had been previously cold tested.

Immediately afterwards, began the process of fitness and quality checks of the various components of the nuclear devices and the testing equipment. A large but smooth logistics operation also got underway with the help of the Pakistan Army and Air Force. This operation involved moving men and equipment as well as the nuclear devices to the Ras Koh test site from various parts of the country.

There are some plausibility problems with this account. The first issue is that successfully collecting data from an actual nuclear test (an area in which Pakistan had no experience despite years of cold tests) is far from straightforward (see [Teller et al 1968; pp. 150, 167]), and increases in difficulty with multiple tests in a single shaft. Unexpected device behavior or problems anywhere along the tunnel could result in the loss of data on any or all shots. If internal telemetry failed, wholly or in part, it would be very difficult to recover useful results from external seismic measurements with so many devices simultaneously exploded so close together. Six devices constituted a large part of the then available highly enriched uranium, perhaps 90 kg consumed out of 210 kg on hand (although once it had spent a couple of years processing its stockpile of low enriched uranium, this would rise to 800 kg or so). A great deal of Pakistan's immediate nuclear resources would be consumed for quite a gamble on useful results.

Other problems include that according to post-test statements, all of these devices were of basically the same type - fusion boosted fission bombs. Furthermore four of the devices were all in the same low yield range (fractional kiloton to a few kilotons), far less than the tens of kilotons claimed for the other two. It is questionable that so many different systems of this type could be usefully tested. Due to the extensive cold testing, the non-nuclear behavior of these systems should have been well understood and thus variations purely in the implosion assembly design would not merit nuclear testing. By exploding them all once (and the last test only a few days later) there would be no opportunity to analyze the test results and conduct retests, or tests of redesigns.

It is also difficult to credit the implication that such an extraordinarily complex test operation was planned and conducted in 10 days. Admittedly, the preparations for tests dated back years (decades!) so that the test equipment would already be on hand, and the basic procedures would have already have been worked out. Nonetheless, there is a big difference in complexity between a one device test, and a five device test, and it is hard to believe that such an operation could be successfully assembled and executed in such a short time without any prior test experience.

Part of the explanation is no doubt that the numerous tunnel fired cold tests were, or at least could be made to be, pretty fair simulations of actual nuclear test exercises. (At least up to the point of data collection - no amount of cold testing can verify the proper behavior of instruments intended to collect data from an energy density and energy output regime a million times higher.) Also the mobilization of test activity immediately after the first Indian tests, detected by U.S. intelligence, indicates that Azam may be wrong - that the planning for the test exercise was conducted much earlier, even before the Indian test, and these previously laid plans were simply being put into operation. Even if not, test preparations clearly began immediately, and thus had an additional week to be successfully concluded. It is significant that the observed preparation activity began a week before Prime Minister Sharif authorized tests, and suggests that the testing activity may not have been entirely under his control.

The tunnel under Koh Kambaran was 1 kilometer long and is described as L-shaped (just as the Indian vertical shafts were L-shaped). The reason for this is that the shaft leading to the entrance is thus shielded from the device detonation, and energy cannot propagate straight up the shaft from the device to the entrance. The description of the tunnel has having separate assembly rooms indicates that in addition to the L-tunnel at the end, the main tunnel had a number of other side tunnels branching off it every couple of hundred meters.

On 19 May 1998, two teams of 140 PAEC scientists, engineers and technicians left for Chagai, Baluchistan on two separate PIA Boeing 737 flights. Also on board were teams from the Wah Group, the Theoretical Group, the Directorate of Technical Development (DTD) and the Diagnostics Group. Some of the men and equipment were transported via road using NLC trucks escorted by the members of the Special Services Group (SSG), the elite commando force of the Pakistan Army.

[Azam 2000]

According to the Azam the nuclear devices - in sub-assembly form - were flown from Rawalpindi to a designated airfield in Baluchistan (Quetta?) on a Pakistan Air Force (PAF) C-130 Hercules transport aircraft (it is curious that so many would all be entrusted to a single aircraft though). Four PAF F-16s armed with air-to-air missiles provided escort, with secret orders to shoot the C-130 down if it tried to fly out of Pakistani airspace. The F-16s were ordered to keep their radio communications equipment turned off so that no orders, in the interim, could be conveyed to them to act otherwise. They were also ordered to ignore any orders to the contrary that got through to them during the duration of the flight even if such orders originated from Air Headquarters.

Dr. Samir Mubarakmand at a post-test conference.

The nuclear devices were assembled separately at the test site in individual assembly rooms ("zero rooms") located along the one kilometer tunnel under the mountain Koh Kambaran in the Ras Koh range. Azam states that Samar Mubarakmand personally supervised the complete assembly of all five nuclear devices (implying a very lengthy assembly process since it would have to be sequential, probably lasting more than a day). Diagnostic cables were then laid through the tunnel, and out of the tunnel to the telemetry station which communicated with the command/observation post 10 km away. Afterwards, a complete simulated test was carried out by tele-command. This process of preparing the nuclear devices and laying of the cables and the establishment of the fully functional command and observation post took 5 days (i.e. until about 24 May).

On 25 May it was reported by the Associated Press and Reuters that U.S. intelligence officials had said that Pakistani preparations had accelerated in recent days at a site called Raskoh in the Chagai Hills (it later transpired that Ras Koh was indeed the test area, but Ras Koh is a separate mountainous area over 40 km from the Chagai Hills area). Tunneling activities and the setup of explosive monitoring equipment had been observed. "At this point, they could conduct a nuclear test at any time," said one official.

At the same time it had become increasingly likely that any U.S. aid package would fall short of Pakistani expectations. The major inducements suggested at this point - the delivery of 28 F-16s that Pakistan has already paid for and was promised by Pres. Clinton two years ago anyway, and the rescheduling of loans - was not very tempting. Pakistan seemed to be after explicit U.S. security guarantees, something that was unlikely to be offered.

The test tunnel was sealed by the Pakistan Army 5 Corp on 25 May with the assistance and supervision of the Pakistan Army Engineering Corps, the Frontier Works Organisation (FWO) and the Special Development Works (SDW) - a military unit created 20 years earlier specifically to carry out field engineering for nuclear tests. Mubarakmand is said to have walked a total of 5 kilometers along the stuffy tunnels checking and rechecking the devices and the cables before the cables were finally plugged into the nuclear devices. Sealing the tunnel consumed 6,000 bags of cement and was completed by the afternoon of 26 May 1998. 24 hours later the cement had set in the desert heat, and the engineers certified that the site was ready. The fact the tests were ready was relayed to the Prime Minister via General Headquarters.

Late in the day on 27 May the U.S. government reported that Pakistan had been observed pouring cement in a test shaft in the Chagai Hills. This indicated that nuclear test devices were being sealed in, which is the final necessary step before conducting nuclear tests. Officials then predicted that tests could occur within hours.

Pres. Bill Clinton made a last-minute plea to Sharif, Wednesday night. According to presidential spokesman Mike McCurry it was a "very intense" 25-minute call in which the president implored the prime minister not to conduct a test. It was the fourth presidential call to Sharif since India's first explosion on May 11. But the test time had been set - 3:00 p.m. in the afternoon of 28 May 1998.

The Test is Fired

In the pre-dawn hours of 28 May Pakistan cut the communication links for all Pakistani seismic stations to the outside world. All military and strategic installations in Pakistan were put on alert, and the Pakistan Air Force F-16A and F-7MP air defense fighters were placed on strip alert - ready to begin their take-off roll at any moment.

Azam provides a detailed account of the events that day:

At Chagai, it was a clear day. Bright and sunny without a cloud in sight. All personnel, civil and military were evacuated from ‘Ground Zero’ except for members of the Diagnostics Group and the firing team. They had been involved in digging out and removing some equipment lying there since 1978.

Ten members of the team reached the Observation Post (OP) located 10-kilometres away from Ground Zero. The firing equipment was checked at 1:30 p.m. and prayers were offered. An hour later, at 2:30 p.m., a Pakistan Army helicopter carrying the team of observers including PAEC Chairman, Dr. Ishfaq Ahmed, KRL Director, Dr. A.Q. Khan, and four other scientists from KRL including Dr. Fakhr Hashmi, Dr. Javed Ashraf Mirza, Dr. M. Nasim Khan and S. Mansoor Ahmed arrived at the site. Also accompanying them was a Pakistan Army team headed by General Zulfikar Ali, Chief of the Combat Division.

At 3:00 p.m. a truck carrying the last of the personnel and soldiers involved in the site preparations passed by the OP. Soon afterwards, the all-clear was given to conduct the test as the site had been fully evacuated.

Amongst the 20 men present, one young man, Muhammad Arshad, the Chief Scientific Officer, who had designed the triggering mechanism, was selected to push the button. He was asked to recite "All praise be to Allah" and push the button. At exactly 3:16 p.m. the button was pushed and Muhammad Arshad stepped from obscurity into history.

As soon as the button was pushed, the control system was taken over by computer. The signal was passed through the air link initiating six steps in the firing sequence while at the same time bypassing, one after the other, each of the security systems put in place to prevent accidental detonation. Each step was confirmed by the computer, switching on power supplies for each stage. On the last leg of the sequence, the high voltage power supply responsible for detonating the nuclear devices was activated.

As the firing sequence passed through each level and shut down the safety switches and activating the power supply, each and every step was being recorded by the computer via the telemetry which is an apparatus for recording reading of an instrument and transmitting them via radio. A radiation-hardened television camera with special lenses recorded the outer surface of the mountain.

The voltage reached the triggers on all five devices simultaneously in all the explosive lenses with microsecond synchronization.

As the firing sequence continued through its stages, 20 pairs of eyes were glued on the mountain 10 kilometers away. There was deafening silence within and outside of the OP.

A short while after the button was pushed, the earth in and around the Ras Koh Hills trembled. The OP vibrated as smoke and dust burst out through the five points where the nuclear devices were located. The mountain shook and changed colour as the dust of thousands of years was dislodged from its surface. Its black granite rock turning white as de-oxidisation from the radioactive nuclear forces operating from within. A Huge cloud of beige dust then enveloped the mountain.

The time-frame, from the moment when the button was pushed to the moment the detonations inside the mountain took place, was thirty seconds. For those in the OP, watching in pin-drop silence with their eyes focused on the mountain, those thirty seconds were the longest in their lives. It was the culmination of a journey which started over 20 years ago. It was the moment of truth and triumph against heavy odds, trials and tribulations. At the end of those thirty seconds lay Pakistan’s date with destiny.

The Pakistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs would later describe it as "Pakistan’s finest hour". Pakistan had become the world’s 7th nuclear power and the first nuclear weapons state in the Islamic World.

The Announcement

Click for larger image

Prime Minister Mohammad Nawaz Sharif announcing that Pakistan had conducted five nuclear tests.

On 28 May at 15:00 UCT Prime Minister Sharif began his televised address (pre-announced four hours before) with the statement:

"Today, we have settled a score and have carried out five successful nuclear tests."

In a later address to Pakistani and foreign reporters, Sharif said:

"Pakistan today successfully conducted five nuclear tests. The results were as expected. There was no release of radioactivity. I congratulate all Pakistani scientists, engineers and technicians for their dedicated team work and expertise in mastering complex and advanced technologies. The entire nation takes justifiable pride in the accomplishments of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, Dr. A.Q. Khan Research Laboratories and all affiliated Organizations... Our security, and the peace and stability of the entire region, was gravely threatened. As any self-respecting nation, we had no choice left for us. Our hand was forced by the present Indian leadership's reckless actions. We could not ignore the magnitude of the threat... Under no circumstances would the Pakistani nation compromise on matters pertaining to its life and existence. Our decision to exercise the nuclear option has been taken in the interest of national self-defence. These weapons are to deter aggression, whether nuclear or conventional."

See the complete text of the address.

Seismic readings indicate a detonation time of 10:16:17.6 UCT (+/- 0.31 sec). See the preliminary seismic data, andthe official announcement from the Pakistan government web site.

One interesting and significant aspect of this address is the order chosen for Sharif's congratulation of the organizations responsible. The organization chiefly responsible for the development of the nuclear devices, and the tests, was the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) not the better known Khan Research Laboratories (KRL).

Another interest, and possible significant, fact is the that the initial reports issuing from Pakistan between the time of the tests and Sharif's official announcement indicated that Pakistan had conducted two tests, not five. As discussed below, two is a much more plausible number of devices to have been conducted in a single shaft simultaneous test, especially for a nation with no prior test experience and limited amounts of weapon material.

The extreme tension pervading Pakistan at the time of the tests is illustrated by the fact that five hours after Sharif's announcement (as reported by Agence France Presse), Pakistan summoned the Indian high commissioner to the foreign office and informed him that "credible information" had been received that an attack was to be mounted before dawn on Pakistan's nuclear installations by India, and that "swift and massive retaliation" would result. The ambassador, Satish Chandar, was asked to convey to New Delhi that Islamabad "expected the Indian government to desist from any irresponsible act."

Shortly afterward President Rafiq Tarar issued a terse announcement declaring a state of emergency and suspension of fundamental rights in Pakistan citing threats of unspecified "external aggression."

---

The Tests

The location of the first Pakistani test was measured seismically by the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) Prototype International Data Center (PIDC) as occurring at 10:16:17.6 UCT (+/- 0.31 sec) in an elliptical region centered at 28.9032N 64.8933E with major and minor axes of 10.4 km and 8.4 km, with an azimuth of 178 deg. This places the test site in the Chagai District of Baluchistan Province in western Pakistan. The US Geological Survey National Earthquake Information Center (USGS NEIC, usually cited as either "USGS" or "NEIC") data (28.950N 64.720E) had a center offset to the northeast by 20 km, and a time of occurrence of 10:16:15.8 UCT. The preliminary seismic body wave magnitude (mb) for the shot was 4.8 from the PIDC and 4.9 for the USGS (4.8 is cited in[Walter et al 1998]).

The precise location of the Pakistani tests were initially a matter of some uncertainty. The seismic data published by the PIDC and the US Geological Survey (USGS) defined regions that did not contain terrain of the high relief shown by Pakistan Television coverage of the shot. News coverage initially placed the location in the Chagai Hills area, some 40 km from the general area indicated by the seismic data and also lacking high relief terrain. This problem was solved by Certified Mapping Scientist Frank Pabian by correlating publicly available data. Video footage of the test shot being fired, and analysis of the sun shadows, provided the correct azimuthal orientation of the geologic features and the test shaft entrance relative to them. By searching satellite imagery for features that matched those seen in the videos, Pabian located the likely test area and confirmed it by obtaining post-shot satellite images which revealed the test equipment, and the surface displacements caused by the rock slides set off the shot.

The location of the shot turned out to be located in the Ras Koh Hills about 14 km east-southeast of the location centers given by the PIDC and USGS seismic data (and about 9 km outside of the calculated PIDC uncertainty ellipse). The immediate area of the shot was a mountainous region called the Koh Kambaran massif. It had been conducted in a horizontal tunnel bored into the south eastern flank of the principal mountain in the area that rises to 2700 m. The precise geographic location was shown to be location 28 deg 47 min 31 sec N, 64 deg 56 min 51 sec E (+/- 10 sec) or 28.7919N 64.9475E (+/- 0.003) in decimal degrees; the uncertainty corresponds to a distance of 300 m. According to Pakistani reports (confirmed by imagery analysis), the principal explosion was conducted 1 km from the tunnel portal under the mountain [Pabian 1999].

Images of the Chagai Region

The PIDC originally assigned the event the ID number EVENT 1440477, but changed it to "EVENT 1440562" when subjected to manual analysis. The seismic data from the 1998 tests can be accessed from the IDC web site, the tests are summarized with a map here. Also see the BGR Hannover Seismic Data Analysis Center for a nice summary of the seismic data with a map. The preliminary seismic data form the International Data Centre, which was generated automatically is in this file, while the expert evaluated data prepared five days later is here.

The second test was fired two days later, on 30 May 1998. The PIDC has assigned it an event ID of 1442998. Official Pakistani sources give the time of the shot as 06:55:00.0 UCT, estimated times are 06:54:57.1 UCT (PIDC) and 06:54:56.1 (USGS). The estimated locations are 28.494N 63.781E (PIDC) and 28.720N 64.020E (USGS). Both the PIDC and USGS location determinations are known to be imprecise because they are computed directly from the seismic signals using a globally averaged seismic velocity model (the PIDC uses the IASPEI-91 model) which does not include small regional velocity variations. A more accurate estimate can be obtained using historical seismic data as reference, and calculating an offset (called a Joint Epicentral Determination or JED). A JED calculation for the 30 May event gives a location of 28.433N 63.860E and reduces the error ellipse from 336 km² to 80 (in addition to correcting for systematic biases) [Barker et al 1998]. Wallace performed a similar Joint Hypocenter Determination (JHD) and obtained a shot time 06:54:57.1 UCT and a location of 28.499N 63.741E ([Wallace 1998] or go to his on-line reprint). See also the BGR Hannover Seismic Data Analysis Center map. Seismic magnitude reported by the USGS for the 30 May event was mb 4.6 [Walter et al 1998]. The JED and JHD locations put the event in a region of low relief topography, especially compared to the May 28 event. This is consistent with remarks by Pakistan's Foreign Minister Gohar Khan about the May 30 test: "The previous ones were in hard rock, but these were conducted in a shaft like a well."

According to Wallace [Wallace 1998] an appropriate formula for the magnitude-to-yield relation in the Chagai district of Pakistan is:

Eq. 1 mb = 4.10 + 0.75 log YThis formula gives yield estimates of 8-12 kt for the 28 May shot and 4-6 kt for the 30 May shot. Barker et al [Barker et al 1998; p. 1968] also assigned yields of 9 kt (95% c.i. 6-13 kt) for the 28 May and 4 kt (95% c.i. 2-8 kt) for the 30 May shots. Walter suggests a tentative estimate range of 5-20 kt for 28 May, and 3-11 kt for the 30 May shot [Walter et al 1998].

Test:	Chagai-I
Time:	10:16:15.8 28 May 1998 (UCT) USGS; 10:16:17.6 UCT (PIDC)
Location:	Ras Koh mountains, Chagai District, Baluchistan Province, Pakistan 28.7919 deg N, 64.9475 deg E
Test Height and Type:	Multiple device (5?, 2?) in underground horizontal tunnel, 1000 m long
Yield:	approx. 9 kt (5-20 kt possible range; claimed yields range from 18 kt to 40 kt)

According to the well connected but unreliable A.Q. Khan this test group consisted of one large device with a yield of about 30-35 kt and four smaller devices.

Dust raised on Koh Kambaran in the Ras Koh mountains by the Pakistan-I test, 28 May 1998

On 31 May, the day after the second test, the test team flew into the capital of Islamabad from Baluchistan Province in a special C-130 aircraft of the Pakistan Air Force (PAF). Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) Chairman Ishfaq Ahmed Khan, PAF officials and staff from NDC and KRL received the team. Dr. Samar Mubarakmand (aka Mubarak, Mubarik, Mobarak, Mubarik Mand, Mobarak Mand, Mubarik Mund, Mobarakmand, Mubarrakmand, etc., etc.) Director General of the PAEC National Development Complex (NDC) who led the test team was the chief recipient of the congratulations. Along with Mubarakmand, senior scientists Dr. Tariq Salija and Dr. Irfan Burney were the key members of the team - responsible for both developing and testing the devices.

"I congratulate the entire nation - We owe our success to their prayers and support," said a heavily garlanded Mubarakmand said in his brief talk to the enthusiastic crowd.

"It is the outcome of team work, who worked dedicatedly day and night to come up to the expectations of the nation."

The achievement, he said, "reflects the professional competence of the Pakistani engineers who in a short time accomplished the task."

Later talking to the newsmen, Mubarakmand said, "we accomplished the given task in a matter of about eight days only."

He was appreciative of his team of scientists, engineers and technicians who made the mission a success. He said, a team of around 150 scientists worked at Chagai.

According to the Associated Press of Pakistan, a senior scientist, who arrived with Mubarakmand said "we got the expected results." He said, "the team stayed at the test site for 8-10 days and worked in excruciating temperatures, ranging up to 53 degrees Celsius.

Another scientist requesting anonymity said that Pakistan had undertaken cold tests, but now it had access to more data to serve as a reference in going ahead with computer simulations for newer designs and types of nuclear devices. He attributed the success to the "stringent quality control" and said it was one of the basic reasons that no test failed.

Describing the differences between the test of a nuclear device and its weaponized version, the head of another section said, "the weaponized versions are more rugged and can withstand, high velocity, extreme temperatures and vibration, whereas the nuclear devices comprise the same material, but which remains in a static state."

The Pakistani scientists posing with a nice view of Koh Kambaran in the background. The 28 May shot was fired in a tunnel bored underneath this mountain. The principal scientists responsible for developing the devices and conducting the tests were the team leader Dr. Samar Mubarakmand (right of the man in the blue beret) and Dr. Tariq Salija and Dr. Irfan Burney, all of the PAEC. The better known A.Q. Khan of KRL is left of the man in the beret (who may be General Zulfikar Ali, the ranking military officer present). It is interesting to note that [Azam 2000] cites an incorrect height for Koh Kambaran of 185 m. Comparing the prominent white band on the mountain, which satellite photography shows is 520 m long, to this photograph shows that is over 500 m high.

Pakistani scientists. A.Q. Khan is present, but not Samar Mubarakmand. Perhaps this is the representation from KRL.

A. Q. Khan posing in the test tunnel. The test director, Dr. Samar Mubarakmand, was probably too busy to pose.

Initial reports coming out of Pakistan during the four hour and forty five minute gap between the test and Sharif's official announcement indicated that two test devices had been fired in this shot. Sharif however claimed that five had been fired. There are several reasons to find this claim improbable. Every fission device requires a certain minimum amount of material, no matter how small the yield. Testing five devices at once expended quite a lot of the fissile material available at the time. Furthermore testing multiple devices in a single shaft, and successfully collecting test data, is a technical challenge, a challenge that increases with the number of devices. Even after years of testing experience, and enormous resources, the US has not infrequently experienced failures in test data collection. Placing so many devices in one shaft would run a serious risk that the data from all of the tests would be lost, and thus the fissile material expended with negligible result. India in contrast tested all five of the devices they fired in 1998 in separate shafts. Given the relatively low total yield, most of the devices must have had quite a low yield. It is questionable that Pakistan would have a need to test so many different devices all in the same low yield range.

It can be conjectured that the initial statements of two devices were correct and made by parties knowledgeable about the tests, but not about official policy perhaps even then being formulated by Sharif and his advisers. In this scenario the reason that Pakistan officially claimed five devices in this first shot was for status and image reasons, to establish equality in testing with India.

Test:	Chagai-II
Time:	06:55:00.0 30 May 1998 UCT (Pakistani Government); 06:54:57.1 UCT (calculated JHD estimate)
Location:	Chagai District, Baluchistan Province, Pakistan 28.433 deg N 63.860 deg E (Barker), 28.499 deg N 63.741 deg E (Wallace)
Test Height and Type:	Underground vertical shaft, 1 device (2?)
Yield:	4-6 kt est. (3-11 kt max range; 18 kt claimed)

According to Azam: "Pakistan conducted its sixth nuclear test at Kharan, a flat desert valley 150 km to the south of the Ras Koh Hills. This was a miniaturized device giving a yield which was 60% of the first tests. A small hillock now rises in what used to be flat desert, marking the ground zero of the nuclear test there."

Read Khan's interview
with The News given after
the tests.

This test also was plagued by questions of how many devices had actually been fired. Official Pakistani sources broke the news of two tests, and the official Associated Press of Pakistan news agency also carried the news, quoting "authentic" sources. "Yes by the grace of God," Foreign Minister Gohar Ayub Khan told Reuters when asked if reports of two more nuclear tests on Saturday were correct. But the official government announcement by Foreign Secretary Shamshad Ahmed announced one test during a press conference, triggering a barrage of queries from surprised journalists. Intrigued by Ahmed's announcement, they asked him whether they should believe him or other officials.

"All I can say is that I am answering here for the government of Pakistan," the foreign secretary told a questioner who said Foreign Minister Gohar Ayub Khan had confirmed two explosions. Special editions of local newspapers, quoting defense officials, also carried news of two blasts.

In an interview on 30 May 1998 A. Q. Khan told the prominent Islamabad daily The News that the five tests were "all boosted fission devices using uranium 235" but said that although "none of these explosions were thermonuclear, we are doing research and can do a fusion test if asked. But it depends on the circumstances, political situation and the decision of the government." Khan said that of Pakistan's five tests, the first was a "big bomb" which had a yield of about 30-35 kilotons. "The other four were small tactical weapons of low yield. Tipped on small missiles, they can be used in the battlefield against concentrations of troops," he told the newspaper. "This has been a successful nuclear explosion by all definitions. It was exactly as we had planned and the results were as good as we were hoping," he said.

The Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) released a statement saying the five blasts measured 5.0 degrees on the Richter Scale, and produced a yield of up to 40 kilotons of TNT. "These boosted devices are like a half way stage towards a thermonuclear bomb. They use elements of the thermonuclear process, and are effectively stronger Atom bombs," Munir Ahmad Khan, former PAEC director, told Agence France-Presse. Khan said Pakistan has had a nuclear capability since 1984 and all the Pakistani devices were made with enriched uranium.

This was prepared using materials provided by the Indian, Pakistani, and United States governments, by the Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse, The Times of India News Service, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, the Associated Press of Pakistan, the Press Trust of India, Science News, the Federation of American Scientists, and the Nuclear Weapons Archive.

Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons Program

Development

Last changed 2 January 2002

By Carey Sublette

The Eighties: Developing Capabilities

In March 1979 US intelligence announced that the Kahuta uranium enrichment plant in Pakistan had been commissioned. On 4 April the hard-line nature of Zia ul-Haq's regime was emphasized when former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was hanged. Finally on 25 December the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, ensuring that despite its nuclear weapons program Pakistan would be the beneficiary of a massive infusion of US weaponry, as well as US economic and diplomatic support. The possibility that the US would impose meaningful sanctions of any kind on Pakistan due its nuclear program became slim, then nil when the aggressively anti-Soviet Reagan administration came to power a year or so later.

The importance of the twin developments of the Soviet intervention, and Ronald Reagan's election, to supporting ul-Haq's rule, and furthering Pakistani nuclear ambitions can hardly be exaggerated. It converted Pakistan into an inestimable strategic asset, nullified the prospect of any sort of pressure on Pakistan to restrain its weapons program, and opened floodgates of military and other aid from the US. At the same time Pakistan was an essential ally for China, who was just as concerned by the Afghanistan invasion (with which China shares a border) as the U.S., and in addition wanted a counterweight to India on China's southern border (and with which China had fought a war only 17 years before).

During the late 70s and early 80s, a number of Pakistani agents were arrested trying to violate export control laws in the west. In November 1980 Albert Goldberg was arrested at a US airport while attempting to ship two tons of zirconium (useful for reactor construction) to Pakistan. A.Q. Khan attempted to order 6000 maraging steel rotor tubes in 1983. In 1984 three Pakistani nationals (including one Nazir Vaid) were indicted in the US for attempting to smuggle out 50 krytrons (high speed switches suitable for implosion detonation systems), and in 1987 the purchase of US maraging steel was attempted. Large quantities of materials were successfully purchased without being detected, including a German uranium hexafluoride manufacturing plant.

China became involved with supporting Pakistan's program at an early stage. Pakistan's location is of extreme strategic value to China bordering as it does Afghanistan, Russia, India, and China itself. Pakistan had begun cultivating a relationship with China to counterbalance India in 1962, when China and India were at war and the US was offering measured support to India. In February 1963 Foreign Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had signed treaty with China formally demarcating their border. Chinese technicians and scientists were present at Kahuta in the early 80s, a relationship that no doubt provided direct benefits to both nuclear programs. Pakistan received many benefits from Chinese technical resources, and China obtained details of the URENCO centrifuge technology.

By 1980 a number of centrifuges were reported to be operating in Pakistan. In the late 1980s Pakistan began publishing technical articles about centrifuge design, flaunting their capability and placing design details, previously secret, in the public domain. Among these was an 1987 article co-authored by A. Q. Khan on balancing sophisticated ultracentrifuge rotors.

The test shafts were completed in 1980 [Azam 2000], and in April 1981 US Senator Alan Cranston revealed Pakistan's test site construction activity in Baluchistan[Perkovich 1999; p. 228-229]. According to a statement made before the Kargil Committee, the Indian military agency RAW (Research and Analysis Wing) had assessed that by 1981-82, Pakistan had enough weapons grade enriched uranium to make one or two uranium weapon cores [Kargil 2000]. This assessment seems much too early in the view of other observers, and the assessment may be connected with intelligence about the shaft construction.

The Wah Group had a weapon design - an implosion system using the powerful but sensitive HMX as the principal explosive - ready for testing in 1983. The first "cold test" of a weapon (i.e. a test of the implosion using inert natural uranium instead of highly enriched uranium) took place on 11 March 1983 under the leadership of Dr. Ishfaq Ahmed of the PAEC. This test was conducted in tunnels bored in the Kirana Hills near Sargodha, home of the Pakistan Air Force’s main air base and the Central Ammunition Depot (CAD).

The Kirana Hills test tunnels were reportedly bored by the SDW after the Chagai nuclear test sites, i.e. sometime between 1979 and 1983. As in Chagai, the tunnels had been sealed after construction to await tests. As Prior to the cold tests, an advance team opened and cleaned the tunnels. As [Azam 2000] relates:

After clearing the tunnels, a PAEC diagnostic team headed by Dr. Mubarakmand arrived on the scene with trailers fitted with computers and diagnostic equipment. This was followed by the arrival of the Wah Group with the nuclear device, in sub-assembly form. This was assembled and then placed inside the tunnel. A monitoring system was set up with around 20 cables linking various parts of the device with oscillators in diagnostic vans parked near the Kirana Hills.

One of the principal objectives of the test was to determine whether the neutron initiator (probably a polonium beryllium design similar to those used in the first US, USSR, UK, and Indian bombs) to reliably start a fission chain reaction in the real bomb. However, when the button was pushed, most of the wires connecting the device to the oscilloscopes were severed due to errors committed in the preparation of the cables. At first, it was thought that the device had malfunctioned but closer scrutiny of two of the oscilloscopes confirmed that the neutrons had indeed been produced. A second cold test was undertaken soon afterwards which was witnessed by Ghulam Ishaq Khan, Lt. Gen. K.M. Arif and Munir Ahmed Khan.

By March 1984, Kahuta Research Laboratories (KRL) had independently carried out its own cold tests of its own nuclear device design near Kahuta. This seems to have been at best a secondary weapon design program, not a co-equal relationship like has long existed between Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore. Azam relates that by 1998, KRL had conducted many fewer weapon cold tests than the PAEC, and when it came time to put the test operation into practice it was the PAEC that controlled the operation, and it was PAEC devices that were tested. The KRL program may have been either a backup effort or even a rogue or vanity program on the behalf of A.Q. Khan.

The mid-eighties saw indications of the growing nuclear capability of Pakistan pile up. In 1984 Pakistan announced that it now had the capability of producing low enriched uranium [Albright 1997; p. 273]. At this time approximately 1,000 centrifuges were operating at the facility, and this apparently marked Kahuta's move to full operational status. But Kahuta is reported to have had serious start-up problems though which delayed the achievement of full production.

Periodic revelations confirming the successful advance of the Pakistani program were turning up with some regularity. Drawn to the limelight, the leader of Pakistan's uranium enrichment program Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan held periodic interviews boasting about Pakistan's nuclear prowess. It was in such an interview in February 1984 that he first made the claim that Pakistan had achieved nuclear weapons capability. In July 1984 the New York Times reported that US intelligence had learned that the previous year that China had supplied Pakistan with the design of an actual tested nuclear device - the design of China's fourth nuclear weapon tested in 1966 with a yield of 25 kt. This is said to be a low weight (200 kg class) solid-core bomb design. Reports have also surfaced that China also provided sufficient HEU to construct one or two weapons in 1983. In 1998 A. Q. Khan stated that Pakistan had acquired the capability to explode a nuclear device at the end of 1984.

In March 1985 a West German court convicted a German businessman of smuggling a complete uranium hexafluoride manufacturing plant to Pakistan. Also in March the US concluded that Pakistan had made such progress in uranium enrichment capability that the Reagan administration sought an assurance from President Zia that Pakistan would refrain from enriching uranium above the level of 5%. In July 1985 it was reported by ABC that Pakistan had successfully conducted a "cold" implosion test - firing a complete krytron-triggered implosion system with an inert natural uranium core (Khan late reported that cold tests had been conducted in 1983 and 1984). Taken together these indicators pointed to Pakistan acquiring the ability of conducting a nuclear test if it chose to do so within the next year. By mid-1986 US intelligence had concluded that Pakistan had produced weapon grade uranium [Albright 1997; p. 273]. Cold implosion shots were conducted in the Chagai Hills area of Baluchistan in September 1986. In 1987 Pakistan acquired a tritium purification and production facility from West Germany, as well as 0.8 grams of pure tritium gas illegally (the German parties who were convicted of illegally exporting tritium in 1990).

Between 1983 and 1990, the Wah Group developed an air deliverable bomb and conducted more than 24 cold tests of nuclear devices with the help of mobile diagnostic equipment. These tests were carried out in 24 tunnels measuring 100-150 feet (30-50 m) in length which were bored inside the Kirana Hills. Later due to excessive US intelligence and satellite attention on the Kirana Hills site, it was abandoned and the cold test facility was shifted to the Kala-Chitta Range. The bomb was small enough to be carried under the wing of a fighter/bomber such as the F-16 which Pakistan had obtained from the US. The Wah Group worked alongside the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) to evolve and perfect delivery techniques of the nuclear bomb using combat aircraft including "conventional freefall", "loft bombing", "toss bombing" and "low-level laydown" attack techniques, the latter requiring a sophisticated high speed parachute system. Today, the PAF has perfected all four techniques of nuclear weapons delivery using F-16, Mirage-V and A-5 combat aircraft [Azam 2000].

The KRL initiated development efforts on liquid fueled missiles during the early-mid 80s (the Hatf-1 and Hatf-2 programs) but despite considerable assistance from the China made little progress initially.

Pakistan's missile developments got another major boost during the mid-80s with the resumption of cooperation between North Korea and Pakistan, which has lapsed temporarily after Zia's rise to power. Both countries were active in supporting Iran during the Iran-Iraq War, a relationship through which Pakistan learned of the DPRK's growing missile capabilities. North Korea had provided Iran with 160 Scud-Bs, known as Hwasong-5s in North Korea, and was assisting with the development of 500 km and 1300 km range systems. The exchange with the DPRK was extended to include nuclear technology as well, with Pakistan advising North Korea on its own nuclear developments [Bermudez 1998b].

There some significant ups and downs in the Indo-Pakistani relationship from late 1985 through early 1987. The rapidly developing Pakistani nuclear capability provided motivation to establish a modus vivendi between the two nations. In December 1985 Zia and Gandhi met in New Delhi and agreed to a pact not to engage in attacks on each others nuclear facilities (a situation that would left India rather the worse off due to the proximity of its production reactors to urbanized areas). It would not be signed until 31 December 1988, or fully implemented (through an exchange of data about their facilities) until 1993. In the year following this promising development, an ambitious but poorly managed military exercise by India lead to an unexpected crisis.

This crisis was precipitated by Exercise Brasstacks, the largest military exercise in Indian history conducted to test and demonstrate India's ability to deal with a major war with Pakistan. This exercise was planned by Gen. K. Sundarji, now Army Chief of Staff and began in July 1986. It reached its crisis stage in December when India had a total of nine divisions deployed in Rajasthan adjacent to the Pakistani province of Sindh. India had not undertaken any measures to alleviate Pakistan's concerns about having such a massive armed force so close to its border, such as inviting observers, or sending advance notice of maneuvers. Pakistan accordingly mobilized its own forces - sending Army Reserve North and Army Reserve South to locations close to India's border where they could strike at Punjab or Kashmir. Pakistan's concern was not unwarranted, military maneuvers have been used to mask planned attacks before - notably Operation Badr, the stunningly successful Egyptian and Syrian surprise attack that opened the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Poor intelligence and communications, and a disengaged and volatile Rajiv Gandhi made a bad situation worse in January, leading to an atmosphere of real crisis on 18 January 1987. Gandhi's decision to begin airlifting troops to Punjab on 20 January threatened to escalate the crisis out of control.

The Kargil Committee heard testimony that at about this point Pakistan conveyed a nuclear threat to India. This was officially communicated by Pakistan's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Zain Noorani to the Indian Ambassador in Islamabad, SK Singh, something not known publicly until 2000. It was also communicated by A.Q. Khan to Indian journalist Kuldip Nayar on 28 January, near the height of the crisis. Nayar however shopped the story around for a few weeks, and it was not published until 1 March, after the matter had been resolved. Nonetheless it left a lingering sense of nuclear threat associated with the Brasstacks affair. The potential for even non-hostile actions to create dangerous situations has unfortunately not been a lesson well learned, judging from further crises that have followed in 1990, 1998 and 1999.

Pakistan's slow progress in manufacturing ballistic missiles led, following India's February 1988 test of its Prithvi ballistic missile, to China increasing its assistance. In particular China agreed to provide complete missile systems - both the 600 km M-9 (CSS-6/DF-15) and 280 km M-11 (CSS-7/DF-11) missiles. The first of these systems began arriving during late 1988 [Bermudez 1998b].

The New York Times Magazine reported in March 1988 that US officials had by then concluded that Pakistan had enough weapon-grade uranium for 4 to 6 nuclear weapons. Pakistan had begun construction of a second enrichment facility at Golra, 10 km west of Islamabad [Albright 1997; p. 273].

Two dramatic changes altered the strategic environment for Southwest Asia in 1988. The first was the Soviet decision in February 1988 to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan, a move that removed the geopolitical rationale for the US support for the Pakistani military regime, and the reluctance to pressure Pakistan on account of its nuclear weapons program. The second change was on 17 August 1988, when President Zia ul-Haq, the architect of the militarization of the nuclear program, was killed along with thirty other people, when the aircraft in which he was travelling crashed in what is suspected to be an assassination.

In the aftermath of Zia's death, the military stepped aside and permitted the return of Pakistan to democracy three months later. In November 1988 Benazir Bhutto, the daughter of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who had been overthrown and executed by Zia, became Prime Minister herself. The nuclear weapons complex remained in the hands of the military, who formed an independent center of power not under the control of the civilian government. PM Bhutto was in fact unaware of the status of the nuclear program, and when Pakistan passed the milestone of manufacturing fissile cores for weapons she first learned of it from the US Ambassador to Pakistan.

1989 marked a turning point in the strategic situation in South Asia because it was in this year that Pakistan, and in response India, began creating real nuclear arsenals by stockpiling complete, ready-to-assemble weapons.

Throughout the 80s, due to its strategic importance the US had been loathe to pressure Pakistan on its nuclear weapons program. To avoid invoking sanctions against Pakistan the Republicans in Congress had passed the Pressler Amendment which stated that as long as the administration could certify that Pakistan had not acquired nuclear weapons no sanctions would be invoked. To avoid triggering the Pressler amendment a series of "red lines" had been drawn for various milestones, such as producing weapon grade uranium, converting it to metal, and fabricating a core. But as Pakistan passed them one by one the Pressler Amendment, passed to avoid sanctions, became an inevitable trigger for them instead. The last certification was made in 1989, with great difficulty. Bhutto thus faced having to deal with the imposition of sanctions for a program she had done nothing to advance and did not control. Bhutto's knowledge of the Pakistani program was in fact wholly dependent on briefings given her by US officials in February and June 1989 [Burrows and Windrem 1994; pp. 79-81]. Benazir Bhutto did succeed in halting production of highly enriched uranium in June 1989 prior to a trip the US. Production was resumed in early 1990 (coinciding with the Kashmiri crisis, see below) and continued until sometime in 1991.

During early 1989 Pakistan announced that it had tested two 500 kg payload missiles, the Hatf-1 with a range of 80 km and the Hatf-2 with a range of 300 km. This significantly increased tensions with the US and led to a distinct chilling of PRC-US relations since Chinese assistance had led to the development of these systems[Bermudez 1998b].

The Nineties: Assembling Weapons

In 1990 a second nuclear crisis developed in which Pakistan attempted to pressure India with its presumed nuclear arsenal. This new crisis arose early in 1990 over Muslim-majority Kashmir. The seeds of this crisis had been sown in April 1987 when Rajiv Gandhi's Congress (I) Party had contrived with the aid of the local Kashmir National Conference to steal the state election. Intimidation, harassment, and ballot tampering were widespread (and widely reported) but the Congress-National Conference Alliance emerged with slightly less than 50% of the vote, yet obtained 80% of the seats. Widespread protest followed over the next few years, much of it violent, which was met with harsh repression. An armed insurgency developed, and after Gandhi's defeat in November 1989 it escalated further.

In January 1990 the new Indian government sent 150,000 troops to restore order and established military rule. At this even the government's Kashmiri allies defected to the opposition. Pakistan had established training bases for Kashmiri insurgents months before, but now the Pakistani support for the insurrection went into high gear, and Pakistan's government began high profile protests of the situation. The Kargil Commission Report states that "In January 1990, Pakistan's Foreign Minister, Sahibzada Yakub Khan, visited Delhi and spoke to the Indian Foreign Minister, I.K. Gujral and the Prime Minister V.P. Singh in terms which they regarded as verging on an ultimatum." The report then adds that the Pakistan Air Force was then placed on alert, and the Indian Air Force followed suit. The rhetoric on both sides escalate rapidly during March and April. On 13 March PM Bhutto traveled to Pakistani controlled Kashmir and promised a "thousand year war"; Indian PM Singh responded on 10 April calling on India to be "psychologically prepared for war with Pakistan".

Both civilian governments appeared to be too weak to be able to back out of the confrontation, and on the Pakistani side events were actually being controlled by the military. The Kashmiri training camps were run by the Pakistani secret intelligence organization, the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate), and General Aslam Beg and his close ally Pres. Ghulam Ishaq Khan gave Bhutto little room to maneuver.

In the midst of the crisis the Pakistani military apparently decided to activate their nuclear capability. It is believed that weapon grade uranium production was resumed in May, and - more troubling - that 125 kg of highly enriched uranium hexafluoride that had been stored in casks until then was converted into metal form, and fashioned into 7 bomb cores [Burrows and Windrem 1994; pp. 60-61].

Then in late spring US intelligence intercepted messages indicating that the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC), the developer and custodian of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, had assembled at least one nuclear weapon [Perkovich 1999, p. 308]. There was additional evidence of suspicious activity detected, indicating a possible nuclear alert, such as convoys traveling from nuclear storage sites, and F-16 aircraft on runway alert suggesting they were already armed [Burrows and Windrem 1994; pp. 83-85]. This prompted the George Bush administration to send a high-level team, headed by Deputy National Security Adviser Robert Gates, to meet with leaders of both governments. In Pakistan the team met with Gen. Beg and President Ghulam Ishaq Khan on 20 May (PM Bhutto was out of the country at the time); and with PM Singh, Foreign Minister Gujral, and Principal Secretary Deshmukh in India on 21 May. The American team found the two sides concerned about the prospects of war breaking out, but neither seemed much concerned about the prospects of a nuclear war. The American team revealed to the Pakistanis that they were aware of Pakistan's nuclear preparations, preparations that apparently came as a surprise to Pres. Khan, and was the subject of sharp exchanges. The Indians on the other hand knew nothing of Pakistan's preparations, and were not told about it by the Americans. The KRC Report's [Kargil 2000] version of this is as follows:

"American accounts describe Robert Gates' visit to Islamabad in May 1990, and his warning to President Khan and General Aslam Beg against any rash action against India. The Pakistanis describe this as one more instance when their nuclear deterrent prevented Indian aggression. During this crisis, the Kahuta establishment was evacuated, a fact that the Indian mission in Islamabad communicated to Delhi."

In the end a list of confidence building measures proposed by the Americans served as the basis for a negotiated withdrawal from the crisis over the next six weeks. The KRC Report concludes "On the 1990 events referred to above, there are varying perceptions among Indian officials. The majority view is that there was an implied threat." [Kargil 2000]

As the crisis was winding down in June, Peter Galbraith, South Asia specialist for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, met with Benazir Bhutto to brief her about her own nation's nuclear activities during the crisis. She was completely surprised by the revelations. The US had by this time discovered the manufacture of the weapon cores [Burrows and Windrem 1994; pp. 60-61]. In a follow-up meeting In July US Ambassador Robert Oakley informed her that the US was not going to be able to certify Pakistan again under the Pressler Amendment. This prompted Bhutto to try and obtain a briefing on the program from her own government. Three times over the next month she contacted Pres. Khan and requested that he convene the committee that ran the nuclear weapons program, but each time he demurred. Then on 6 August 1990, Pres. Ghulam Ishaq Khan announced Benazir Bhutto had been removed from office, a move Bhutto later described as a "nuclear coup" or "judicial coup" triggered by her efforts to obtain nuclear accountability.

According to the KRC Report in August 1990, information was received from a sensitive intelligence source that in any future confrontation, Pakistan might use nuclear weapons as a first resort. V.P. Singh and I.K. Gujral have a vivid recollection of this report [Kargil 2000].

Although much has been made of the 1990 crisis as the first example of nuclear deterrence in South Asian affairs, Perkovich argues persuasively that nuclear weapons played little or no role in the decisions made by the leadership of the two nations in generating, then resolving the crisis. The only real influence Pakistan's nuclear preparations had was to prompt the US to get involved as mediator, a role that proved to be quite valuable in defusing the situation. The incident serves to underscore the independence that Pakistan's military exercised in controlling the nations nuclear capabilities, even in a period of supposed democratic rule. In October 1990, Pres. Bush informed Congress that he could no longer certify that Pakistan did not have the bomb, thereby triggering the Pressler Amendment. The decertification of Pakistan as a non-possessor of nuclear weapons was scarcely a revelation to India, indeed many there felt that it was long overdue. Nonetheless the formal change in US position created new leverage for supporters of an openly nuclear armed India.

As a result of US pressure, in 1991 Pakistan again allegedly stopped enriching uranium to weapon grade levels. SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute) estimated that at that time Pakistan had acquired 120-220 kg of highly enriched uranium (8-15 weapons worth). Pakistan did not stop or even slow its uranium enrichment program though, it merely began stockpiling uranium hexafluoride enriched to no more than the 20% level. This level of enrichment represents the bulk of the "separative work" required to enrich natural uranium to weapon grade levels. By running low to moderately enriched uranium through an appropriately configured centrifuge cascade it can be quickly enriched to weapon grade levels, and in the end Pakistan would have lost none of its weapon-grade uranium production. This appears to be exactly what happened after the May 1998 Indian/Pakistani test series, catching up to its full HEU production potential before the end of 1999. A.Q. Khan claimed after the test that Pakistan had never stopped making bomb-grade HEU during the 1980s and 1990s."

On 7 February 1992 Pakistani Foreign Minister Shahryar Khan stated in an interview with the Washington Post that Pakistan had the components to assemble one or more nuclear weapons. This went farther than statements from any other "non-weapon state" at the time in admitting to the existence of a nuclear arsenal [Albright and Hibbs 1992]. In July 1993 General (retired) Mirza Aslam Beg, now former army chief of staff, claimed that Pakistan had tested a nuclear device. Since no information about an actual nuclear explosion by that time has come to light, and Pakistan's own comments after its 1998 test series confirm that those test were its first, Beg's comments presumably refer to the hydronuclear (zero-yield) test of a weapon design which had been reported several years earlier.

The Chasma nuclear power plant project, initiated and then canceled by France in the 70s, was resumed in the early 1990s, this time under IAEA safeguards, and with the China Nuclear Energy Industry Corporation (CNEIC) as the foreign supplier. The reactor was redesigned and its capacity expanded to 300 MW(e). The reactor is based on China’s first indigenous reactor, Qinshan-1. The first concrete was poured on 1 August 1993, and primary construction of CHASNUPP was completed in late 1995. CHASNUPP began operations in November 1999 and was connected to the power grid (run by the Karachi Electric Supply Company) on 14 June 2000.

Relations with South Asia during the first two years of the Clinton administration (1993-1994) were marked by an effort to overcome the impasse that existed between India and Pakistan, and achieve some sort of agreement to restrain the nuclear competition between the two states. Efforts at avoiding nuclear weapon deployment had clearly failed, so the emphasis shifted to arms limitation in some form such as a cutoff in fissile material production, and a commitment to forgo nuclear tests. The re-election of Benazir Bhutto as Prime Minister of Pakistan in October seemingly provided a boost to this effort by restoring democratic government. Unfortunately the relations between India and Pakistan proved to be a zero-sum game -- a gain for one nation was perceived as a loss by the other, and what each nation desired to gain proved to be greater than what the others were prepared, or were politically able, to offer. In particular the more favorable position taken by the US toward Pakistan after Bhutto's election was unacceptable to India and caused the Indians to dig in their heels; and Bhutto was too weak domestically to commit to the types of restrictions and inspections that were necessary in light of Pakistan's sense of inferiority with India. So in the end nothing came of considerable diplomatic effort.

Benazir Bhutto, although out of the loop on Pakistan's nuclear programs, had strongly supported the missile programs, and Pakistan's collaboration with China and North Korea on missile and nuclear issues, from the time of her first election as Prime Minister. In 1992 a Pakistani delegation visited the 125 Factory in Pyongyang (and possibly the Sanum-dong military research-and-development facility) to examine the No-dong. DPRK Deputy Premier-Foreign Minister Kim Yong-nam traveled to Pakistan on 4-7 August 1992 to discuss a number of issues, including missile cooperation and North Korean sales of Hwasong-6 and possibly No-dong missiles. Pakistani experts are believed to have been present for the DPRK’s 29-30 May 1993 tests of the No-dong at the Musudan-ri Launch Facility [Bermudez 1998a].

1993 saw the establishment of the National Development Complex (NDC) built by the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission's (PAEC) under the direction of Dr. Samar Mubarakmand. The NDC was set up as a center for solid fuel missile development using Chinese technology. The Shaheen ballistic missile program was initiated in 1995 and assigned to the NDC. This program was intended to develop missiles with ranges in the MRBM class. The 750 km range Shaheen-I began development at the beginning of 1996, and the prototype was ready for test flight two years and three months later, but was not test fired in 1999 [PTI 2000].

In December 1993, two months after her re-election Benazir Bhutto, traveled to China and North Korea. Although she publicly denied it, subsequent events indicate that she was seeking, among other items, increased cooperation in ballistic missile development and, in particular, a system capable of striking strategic Indian targets. Shortly afterwards, Pakistan established a ballistic missile program at the Khan Research Laboratories (KRL) at Kahuta with similar objectives that competed with the NDC Shaheen project. This program was based on North Korean liquid fuel missile technology and amounted to a Pakistani effort to manufacture the No-dong missile under the name Ghauri (Hatf-5) [Bermudez 1998a].

Official contacts and technical cooperation between Pakistan and North Korea increased after the establishment of the Ghauri project. DPRK Foreign Ministry and State Commission of Science and Technology delegations visited in 1994, then in late November 1995, a DPRK military delegation led by Marshal Choe Kwang (vice-chairman of the National Defense Commission and minister of the People’s Armed Forces) traveled to Pakistan. This visit was of special importance since Choe is believed to have finalized an agreement to provide Pakistan with key components from either the No-dong or Taep’o-dong programs, about 12 to 25 No-dong missiles, and at least one transporter-erector-launcher (TEL). Choe met with Pakistani President Sardar Leghari, Defense Minister Aftab Shaban Mirani, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Chief of Naval Operations, Commander of the Air Force, and various other military officials. Choe is also believed to have visited the missile-related production facilities in the Faisalabad Lahore area and possibly even Jhelum (the area from which Ghauri was subsequently launched).

Most of the missiles and supporting equipment were delivered to KRL in the spring of 1996 by the Changgwang Sinyong Corporation (a.k.a., North Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation/Bureau) which had earlier supplied missiles and components to Iran during the mid-1990s. On 24 April 1998 the US State Department imposed sanctions against both the Khan Research Laboratories and Changgwang Sinyong Corporation (the second time for both) [Bermudez 1998a].

The years 1995-1996 proved to be watershed in the history of South Asia, and in nuclear proliferation efforts world-wide. The Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) came up for review and extension in 1995. Since its original drafting in 1968 the NPT had steadily gained adherents until by the mid-90s the vast majority of states in the world had signed it (by 2000 only 4 states out of 191 had not signed it - with India and Pakistan being half of the four). Pakistan indicated that it was willing to sign - if India did. India had endorsed the NPT in principle, but had refrained from signing because it objected to the establishment of "legitimate" nuclear weapon states limited to the 5 nuclear armed nations then in existence. The NPT committed these nuclear states to good faith efforts at eliminating their arsenals but in the nearly 30 years since no effort in that direction could be discerned. India insisted that the nuclear states commit themselves to a specific timetable to accomplish the disarmament which they themselves had agreed to undertake when joining the NPT. The nuclear weapon states unanimously refused to consider this approach.

When the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was introduced directly into the UN General Assembly on 9 September 1996, it was adopted by a vote of 158 to 3, only India, Bhutan and Libya voted against it. Pakistan, which had said that it would sign the CTBT only if India did, abstained from voting. As one of the 44 nations possessing nuclear reactors, the CTBT cannot go into effect without India's and Pakistan's signatures however.

In March 1996 the New York Times reported that KRL had received 5000 high-strength rare earth ring magnets, which can be used as magnetic bearings in gas centrifuges, from the state-owned China National Nuclear Corporation. The US intelligence community believed the magnets were intended for the suspension bearings found at the top of enrichment centrifuge rotors and violated Chinese commitments to restricting sales of "dual use" materials. The shipment was made between late 1994 and mid-1995 and was reportedly worth US$70,000. The ring magnets would allow Pakistan to double the number of installed centrifuges and thus double its total enrichment capacity.

Since the 1980s Pakistan had been working on a heavy water "research" reactor at Khushab. This reactor is alleged to be "indigenous", but was developed with technical assistance from China which also supplied the heavy water. The Khushab reactor is not subject to IAEA inspections. Khushab has a capacity variously reported at between 40 MWT to 50 MWT (but as high as 70 MWT). It was "commissioned" in March 1996, but began operating only in April 1998 [Albright 1998b].

During 1996 and 1997 Pakistan's ties to India improved under the civilian rule of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Partly this was due to the natural moderating effect of pluralistic civilian government, but partly it was due to Pakistan's both relative and absolute decline. Since the end of the Cold War, and the Afghanistan War, Pakistan had lost its strategic importance to both the US and China and with it some or all of their financial and technical support. While India's economy had been growing robustly since 1992 and had a positive trade balance, Pakistan's economy had deteriorated seriously and was running massive deficits both in trade and in government spending. Pakistan had also failed to establish a stable social order - the military existed outside of civilian control (when civilian control even existed), the bulk of the Pakistani economy was under the control of a small number of wealthy families that exercised near feudal control over large areas of Pakistan, and radical Islamic fundamentalist organizations formed yet another independent state-within-the-state. This last independent power arose as a result of the Afghanistan War, when the increasing Islamisized Pakistani military granted considerable autonomy and funding to Mujaheedin training camps in Pakistan. After the end of the war, these Islamic factions turned their attention to radicalizing Muslim ethnic groups inside China, quickly alienating Pakistan's erst-while patrons. China's disenchantment with Pakistan accordingly raised its interest in a rapprochement with India, further undercutting Pakistan's position.