South Asian Cultures of the Bomb: Atomic Publics and the State in India and Pakistan

5. Pride and Proliferation: Pakistan’s Nuclear Psyche after A. Q. Khan

5 Pride and Proliferation: Pakistan’s Nuclear Psyche after A. Q. Khan Ammara Durrani If nuclear weapons can come to acquire the same “profound value” as the sacred symbols that supposedly condense the meaning and purpose of a religion, and if the discourse surrounding them can seem as arcane and complex as the higher reaches of religious philosophizing can be for the ordinary believer or the uninitiated, then we have surely succeeded making the politics and ideology of the possession of nuclear weapons virtually incontestable. After all, to sacralize something is precisely to remove it from the domain of normal contestation except for the “qualified” few! Praful Bidwai and Achin Vanaik In February 2005 Pakistan’s former president Pervez Musharraf became accessible to the Pakistani people and the world at large on his very own personalized Web site, launched (and now managed) with much fanfare by the country’s Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Department of the Pakistan Army.1 The “Personal Life” page of this Web site features a list of questions and answers pertaining to the president’s life and 90 · Pride and Proliferation person. In answer to a question as to what was “the most embarrassing moment” of his life, General Musharraf answered: “Discovering the involvement of Dr A.Q. Khan in the nuclear proliferation scandal.”2 Musharraf ’s remark may be taken as reflective of the shock and humiliation experienced by the Pakistani government, media, intelligentsia, and the general public at the exposé of the A. Q. Khan nuclear proliferation affair hitting international news headlines. In February 2004 Pakistanis began tuning into sensational news reports on the country’s pioneering nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan. The “father” of the nation’s highly revered and much touted nuclear program came under government investigation; he was subsequently arrested for allegedly running an international nuclear proliferation network, selling sensitive information and knowledge to “rogue” states—North Korea, Iran, and Libya—for personal profit. A year down the line, the issue remains a top story both at home and abroad. Given ongoing national and international political developments, the issue carried grave implications for the future of Pakistan’s nuclear program. The Khan controversy opened a Pandora’s Box, and all pandemonium broke lose within and outside Pakistan. It created a political commotion enough to send jitters down the country’s power corridors. Not since the 1998 explosions had the country’s nuclear program captured so much national and international attention from the public , the media, and the international community. The two events in Pakistan’s nuclear history could, in fact, be compared for identification of commonalities and differences, which span their respective timeframes and circumstances. The strongest—and perhaps the only—commonality between the two events was their immediate and powerful reactions from governments and publics alike. The surprise may be attributed to the element of secrecy surrounding both events, taking most by surprise. Here, however, the similarity ends. The reactions caused by Pakistan’s 1998 nuclear tests and those ignited by the 2003–2004 revelations have been hugely different in both nature and proportion. The politico-strategic, economic, social, and cultural implications of the nuclear tests conducted by India and Pakistan in May 1998 have been analyzed from both ends of the nuclear spectrum by proponents of weaponization as well as advocates of disarmament . In essence, the 1998 tests pushed the debate out of the “nuclear ambiguity” paradigm and into the domain of overt weaponization, closest to the zero-sum status quo of nuclear deterrence reminiscent of the Cold War years. Compared to an abundance of traditional security discourse on the post-1998 nuclear scenario in South Asia, dissenting discourse from a nontraditional security perspective has been quantitatively less but argumentatively authoritative and no less convincing, espousing a strong case for the region’s de-nuclearization. Pathbreaking studies have identified the issues and problems, and also examined public opinion.3 There have also been a few, though acclaimed, initiatives to present the antinuclear perspective to larger audiences through the electronic media.4 The binding thread of Ammara Durrani · 91 all these works is their subscription to a politics of pacifism, philosophical and political positioning against nuclear weapons which they see as detrimental to the political, social, and economic well-being of the people of South Asia. Barring differences of country-specific factors, nearly all these studies—produced prior to the Khan affair—on the nuclear weapons of...