Pakistan and weapons of mass destruction
is one of nine states that possess nuclear weapons. Pakistan is not party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Pakistan's arsenal is estimated at 170 nuclear weapons. Pakistan carried out two nuclear tests, Chagai-I and Chagai-II, both in 1998 and underground.
Pakistan's nuclear weapons doctrine, full spectrum deterrence, rejects no first use, promising to use "any weapon in its arsenal" to protect its interests in the event of attack. Pakistan's primary strategic concern is potential conflict with India, which also possesses nuclear weapons.
Pakistan operates approximately 126 land-based missiles, primarily ballistic, of various short, medium, and intermediate ranges. Approximately 36 bombs and Ra'ad I/Ra'ad-II cruise missiles are assigned to Mirage III and Mirage 5 fighters. The Babur-III submarine-launched cruise missile is under development. Pakistan may possess smaller boosted fission weapons, but is not believed to have developed thermonuclear weapons.
Since 2001, US officials have prioritized safeguarding Pakistan's nuclear arsenal from potential nuclear terrorism, supplying equipment and training, and drafting military contingency plans.
Pakistan is not widely suspected of either producing biological weapons or having an offensive biological programme. Pakistan is a party to the Geneva Protocol, Chemical Weapons Convention, and Biological Weapons Convention.
History
After the Partition of India in 1947, India and Pakistan have been in conflict over several issues, including the disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir. Multiple wars and conflicts, especially the 1971 Indo-Pakistan War and the subsequent Indian nuclear tests motivated Pakistan to become a nuclear power as part of its defence and energy strategies.Initial non-weapon policy (Pre-1971)
In 1953, Foreign Minister Muhammad Zafarullah Khan publicly stated that "Pakistan does not have a policy towards the atom bombs". Following the announcement, on 11 August 1955, the United States and Pakistan reached an understanding concerning the peaceful and industrial use of nuclear energy which also included a pool-type reactor worth $350,000. Pakistan's nuclear energy programme was established and started in 1956, following the establishment of Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission. Pakistan became a participant in US President Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace program. Although proposals to develop nuclear weapons were made in the 1960s by several officials and senior scientists, Pakistan followed a strict non-nuclear weapon policy from 1956 until 1971, as PAEC under its chairman Ishrat Hussain Usmani made no efforts to acquire nuclear fuel cycle technology for the purposes of an active nuclear weapons programme.The first thing that was to be undertaken was the search for uranium, which continued from 1960 to 1963. Uranium deposits were discovered, and the first-ever national award was given to the PAEC. Mining of uranium began in the same year. Dr. Abdus Salam and Dr. Ishrat Hussain Usmani also sent a large number of scientists to pursue doctorate degrees in the field of nuclear technology and nuclear reactor technology. The next landmark under Abdus Salam was the establishment of PINSTECH – Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology, at Nilore near Islamabad. The principal facility there was a 5MW research reactor, commissioned in 1965 and consisting of the PARR-I, which was upgraded to 10 MWe by Nuclear Engineering Division under Munir Ahmad Khan in 1990. The PARR-I reactor was, under the agreement signed by PAEC and ANL, provided by the US Government in 1965, and scientists from PAEC and ANL had led the construction. The Ayub Khan Military Government made then-science advisor to the Government, Abdus Salam, head of the IAEA delegation. Abdus Salam began lobbying for commercial nuclear power plants, and tirelessly advocated for nuclear power in Pakistan. In 1965, Salam's efforts finally paid off, and a Canadian firm signed a deal to provide the 137MWe CANDU reactor in Paradise Point, Karachi.
In the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, which was the second of four openly declared Indo-Pakistani wars and conflicts, Pakistan solicited Central Treaty Organization assistance, but came under arms supply embargo in United Nations Security Council Resolution 211. Foreign minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto aggressively began the advocating the option of "nuclear weapons programmes" but such attempts were dismissed by Finance minister Muhammad Shoaib and chairman Ishrat Hussain Usmani. Pakistani scientists and engineers' working at IAEA became aware of advancing Indian nuclear program towards making the bombs. Therefore, In October 1965, Munir Khan, director at the Nuclear Power and Reactor Division of the International Atomic Energy Agency, met with Bhutto on an emergency basis in Vienna, revealing the facts about the Indian nuclear programme and Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Trombay. At this meeting Munir Khan concluded: "a India would further undermine and threaten Pakistan's security, and for her survival, Pakistan needed a nuclear deterrent...".
In 1969, after a long negotiation, the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority signed a formal agreement to supply Pakistan with a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant capable of extracting of weapons-grade plutonium annually. PAEC selected a team five senior scientists, including geophysicist Dr. Ahsan Mubarak, who were sent to Sellafield to receive technical training. Later Mubarak's team advised the government not to acquire the whole reprocessing plant, only key parts important to building the weapons, while the plant would be built indigenously. The PAEC in 1970 began work on a pilot-scale plant at Dera Ghazi Khan for the concentration of uranium ores. The plant had a capacity of 10,000 pounds a day.
Development of nuclear weapons (Post-1971)
The Bangladesh Liberation War was a defeat for Pakistan, which led to it losing roughly of territory as well as losing more than half its population to the newly independent state of Bangladesh. In addition to the psychological setback for Pakistan, it had failed to gather any significant material support or assistance from its key allies, the United States and the People's Republic of China. Pakistan seemed to be isolated internationally, and in great danger; it felt that it could rely on no one but itself. Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was "obsessed" with India's nuclear program, famously declaring that "We will eat grass, even go hungry, but we will have our own nuclear bomb." At a United Nations Security Council meeting, Bhutto drew comparisons between the Instrument of Surrender that ended the 1971 war, and the Treaty of Versailles, which Germany was forced to sign in 1919. There, Bhutto vowed never to allow a repeat.Pakistan began developing nuclear weapons in January 1972 under Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who delegated the program to the Chairman of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission Munir Ahmad Khan with a commitment to having the device ready by the end of 1976. At the Multan meeting on 20 January 1972, Bhutto stated, "What Raziuddin Siddiqui, a Pakistani, contributed for the United States during the Manhattan Project, could also be done by scientists in Pakistan, for their own people". Siddiqui was a Pakistani theoretical physicist who, in the early 1940s, worked on both the British nuclear program and the Manhattan Project.
In December 1972, Dr. Abdus Salam directed a secretly coded memo to Pakistani scientists working at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Italy to report to the Chairman of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, Munir Ahmad Khan, informing them about the program what was to be equivalent of the US "Manhattan Project." In an effort to instill a sense of pride, Salam noted that the heads of the Manhattan Engineer District were theoreticians, and informed the scientists at ICTP that a similar division was being established at PAEC; this marked the beginning of the "Theoretical Physics Group". Other theoreticians at Quaid-e-Azam University would also join the TPG, then led by Salam who had done ground-breaking work for TPG. Among them was Riazuddin, Fayyazuddin, Masud Ahmad, and Faheem Hussain who were the cornerstone of the TPG.
Tedious mathematical work on fast neutron calculations, relativity, complex hydrodynamics and quantum mechanics were conducted by the TPG led by Salam until 1974 when he left Pakistan in protest, though he kept close contact with TPG. No such endeavours of the kind had taken place in the country and computerized numerical control and basic computing facilities were non-existent at that time. For this purpose, the calculations on the high-performance computing and numerical analysis were performed by Dr. Tufail Naseem, a PhD graduate in mathematics from Cambridge University, assisted by other members of Mathematics Division– the division of pure mathematics at PAEC under Dr. Raziuddin Siddiqui and Asghar Qadir. About the lack of CNC facilities, Munir Ahmad Khan famously marked: "If the Americans could do it without CNC machines in the 1940s, why can't we do the same now.". With Abdus Salam departing, Munir Ahmad eventually led the TPG and assisted in the calculations. Two types of weapon design were analyzed: the Gun-type fission weapon and the implosion nuclear weapon. The program turned to the more technically difficult implosion-type weapon design, contrary to the relatively simple 'gun-type' weapon.
Since PAEC, which consisted of over twenty laboratories and projects under reactor physicist Munir Ahmad Khan, was falling behind schedule and having considerable difficulty producing fissile material, Abdul Qadeer Khan, a metallurgist working on centrifuge enrichment for Urenco, joined the program at the behest of the Bhutto administration by the end of 1974. Producing fissile material was pivotal to the Kahuta Project's success and thus to Pakistan obtaining the capability to detonate a nuclear weapon by the end of 1984. He pushed for the feasibility of highly enriched uranium fissile material and collaborated under Bashiruddin Mahmood at the PAEC, a move that irked A. Q. Khan. Preliminary studies on gaseous centrifuge were already studied by PAEC in 1967 but yielded few results. A. Q. Khan advanced uranium enrichment from the expertise he had from the Urenco Group in the Netherlands. Under A. Q. Khan's supervision, the Kahuta Research Laboratories was set-up and engaged in clandestine efforts to obtain the necessary materials technology and electronic components for its developing uranium enrichment capabilities.
The TPG succeeded in the earlier implosion-type weapon design in 1977–78, with the first cold test conducted in 1983 by Ishfaq Ahmad. The program evolved towards the boosted fission weapon designs that were eventually used in the Chagai-I tests in 1998. Enormous production was undertaken by the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission for feasibility of weapons grade plutonium but parallel efforts were mounted toward weapons-grade uranium after India's test, the Smiling Buddha, in 1974.
In 1983, Khan was convicted in absentia by the Court of Amsterdam for stealing centrifuge blueprints, though the conviction was overturned on a legal technicality. A nuclear proliferation ring was established by Khan through Dubai to smuggle URENCO nuclear technology to KRL after founding the Zippe method for the gas centrifuge
On 11 March 1983, PAEC, led by Munir Ahmad Khan, carried out its first subcritical testing of a working nuclear device. This is also called a cold test, and was codenamed Kirana-I. There were 24 more cold tests from 1983 to 1994.
Coordination between each site was overseen by the Directorate of Technical Development under Dr. Zaman Sheikh and Hafeez Qureshi, a mechanical engineer. The DTD was established by Munir Ahmad Khan in 1974 and was tasked with development of tampers, reflective and explosive lenses, optics, and triggering mechanisms that are crucial in atomic weapons. First implosion design was built by TPG in 1977 and the DTD eventually conducted the cold-test on 11 March 1983, codename Kirana-I. Between 1983 and 1990, PAEC carried out 24 more cold tests of various nuclear weapon designs and shifted its focus towards tactical designs in 1987 that could be delivered by all Pakistan Air Force fighter aircraft.
Dr. Ishrat Hussain Usmani's contribution to the nuclear energy programme is also fundamental to the development of atomic energy for civilian purposes as he, with efforts led by Salam, established PINSTECH, that subsequently developed into Pakistan's premier nuclear research institution. In addition to sending hundreds of young Pakistanis abroad for training, he laid the foundations of the Muslim world's first nuclear power reactor KANUPP, which was inaugurated by Munir Ahmad Khan in 1972. Scientists and engineers under Khan developed the nuclear capability for Pakistan within the late 1970s, and under his leadership PAEC had carried out a cold test of nuclear devices at Kirana Hills, evidently made from non-weaponized plutonium. The former chairman of PAEC, Munir Khan, was credited as one of the pioneers of Pakistan's atomic bomb by a study from the London International Institute for Strategic Studies, on Pakistan's atomic bomb program.
In his semi-official works of the Pakistani nuclear program history, Eating Grass: The Making of the Pakistani Bomb, Major General Feroz Hassan Khan wrote that Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz al Saud visits to Pakistan's atomic facility were not a proof of the agreement between the two countries. However, Feroz Hassan acknowledged in his own words, that "Saudi Arabia provided generous financial support to Pakistan that enabled the nuclear program to continue.".
Following India's surprise nuclear test, codenamed Smiling Buddha in 1974, the first confirmed nuclear test by a nation outside the permanent five members of the United Nations Security Council, the goal to develop nuclear weapons received considerable impetus. Finally, on 28 May 1998, a few weeks after India's second nuclear test, Pakistan detonated five nuclear devices in the Ras Koh Hills in the Chagai district, Balochistan. This operation was named Chagai-I by Pakistan, the underground iron-steel tunnel having been long-constructed by provincial martial law administrator General Rahimuddin Khan during the 1980s. The Pakistani Atomic Energy Commission reported that the five nuclear tests conducted on May 28 generated a seismic signal of 5.0 on the Richter scale, with a total yield of up to 40 KT. Dr. A.Q. Khan claimed that one device was a boosted fission device and that the other four were sub-kiloton nuclear devices. The last test of Pakistan was conducted at the sandy Kharan Desert under the codename Chagai-II, also in Balochistan, on 30 May 1998. Pakistan's fissile material production takes place at Nilore, Kahuta, and Khushab Nuclear Complex, where weapons-grade plutonium is refined. Pakistan thus became the seventh country in the world to successfully develop and test nuclear weapons, although according to a letter sent by A.Q. Khan to General Zia, the capability to detonate a nuclear bomb using highly enriched uranium as fissile material produced at KRL had already been achieved by KRL in 1984.