The Retreating State and Advancing Radicalism : Are Pakistan’s Strategic Nuclear Weapons A Big Danger To World Peace ?
Rajiv Upadhyay
On 26 th November 2008, ten Pakistani LeT terrorists , started from Karachi on a most unimaginable and daring suicide mission . They were extremely well trained and landed in Mumbai with automatic rifles and hand grenades . For the next four days Mumbai saw a mayhem of indiscriminate firing at Taj and Oberoi hotel , Victoria Terminus Railway Station , Leopold Cafe , Chabad and may other locations . One young terrorist Ajmal Kasab was caught alive and the rest were killed . Throughout they were being constantly guided on mobile and satellite phone from Pakistan .The mayhem left 174 people dead and 300 wounded . Pakistan has not yet punished the guilty LeT chief Hafiz Saeed who masterminded the attack and now a small time hero in Pakistan .
Another planner Zia ur rehman Lakhwi has been freed by court after some token imprisonment in which he even fathered a a child in jail. They are beyond the civilian government and really under the protection of Pakistan’s notorious intelligence agency ISI which is a State with in a State accountable to none ,often including even the army chief .
Similarly on 11 th September , four planes flew from various airports in USA flown by Islamic terrorist pilots . Two of them crashed on WTC twin towers in New York reducing them to rubble . This utterly unimaginable attack could have taken place only after years of assiduous planning, training and extremely well executed intelligence plot . Its alleged planner Osama Bin Laden was once a Saudi Royal . The resultant mayhem left 2577 dead and 25000 injured .
What if These terrorists were having small strategic nuclear bombs which Pakistan’s ministers like Sheikh Rasheed have been proudly calling ‘ half kilo and quarter kilo bombs ‘. These bombs in Pakistan are not under any civilian or IAEA control or inspection and can be launched by the local field
commanders during war . The Pakistan’s nuclear program is totally under the Pakistani army and the Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was not allowed inside the Kahuta plant and was even declared a security risk .
The liberal apologists and wise cracks will be quick to tell that assembling and igniting these bombs will require well trained and highly qualified staff along with technically complicated fuses etc . The suicide bombers are generally Madarsa trained youth who are used as guinea pigs by power brokers like Lakhawi and Hafiz Saeed . It might have been once true but now the Pakistani terrorists are the very well educated well placed young men .
Glasgow airport bomber in 2007 , Bilal Abdullah , was a Pakistan born doctor who had studied in UK and was living there for many years . The Time Square bomber in May 2010 , Faisal Shahzad , was an MBA and financial analyst whose father was a retired Air Marshal of Pakistan Air force . He had studied in USA and was working there . A young Pakistani student Mashal Khan was lynched to death inside the university campus by fellow students , for allegedly blasphemic posts . In Gujranwala , Doctor Sajjad Farooq was beaten , stoned and dragged to death from motorcycle, when from a loud speaker on a mosque it was falsely announced that a Christian had burnt a copy of Quran . No one asked because Dr Farooq was a Muslim not a Christian .So finding educated volunteers for a suicide nuclear attack on India or West will not be a problem in Pakistan today. Even Osama Bin Laden was a civil engineer and Afghan Taliban’s dreaded Ahmed Shah Masood was an engineering student in Kabul.
The second common argument in defence is that the nuclear assets in Pakistan are under the Pakistan army which is a very well educated , professional and fairly progressive institution . It will not use sub kilo nuclear bombs irresponsibly .This was true in General Ayub’s time but is no more valid today . General Ayub Khan was totally progressive and secular in outlook and in 1961, was able to bulldoze a ‘Muslim Family Law ordinance’, prescribing a minimum marriage age , registration of divorce , inheritance by grand son etc . No ruler after him can even dream of repeating this performance .
12/7/1982 President and Bill Clark meeting with President Mohammad Zia Ul Haq of Pakistan in the oval office
General Zia ul Haq ,as head of army and marshal law administrator , was totally an antonym of Ayub Khan . Just for acquiring legitimacy after executing the most popular PM , Z.A.Bhutto , he grotesquely misused Islam and destroyed forever the Sufi , liberal , modern , tolerant Pakistani society . His Hudood Laws of medieval punishments , Zina for women , public flogging , amputations ,
stoning to death etc . shocked the liberal Pakistan’s conscience but none dared to resist it . He changed the education system to teach hate for non muslims . Since USA and Saudi Arabia were using him for Afghan war against Russians , no one could stop him . General Hamid Gul , ex DG/ ISI , a very well educated and articulate officer , openly wanted more role for Allah in consitution .
Lt.General Shahid Aziz, who once supported coup by General Musharraf and later helped in American attack on Taliban in Afghanistan, was so disturbed by his deeds against Talibans that after retirement he reportedly joined ISIS and died fighting Americans to atone his sins . No subsequent rulers change his constitution nor challenged the Islamisation done except some cosmetic pro women changes made under General Musharraf .
So to say that the Pakistani Army will never again get a radical chief like Zia ul Haq , is displaying utter ignorance about Pakistan . If it happens , Pakistan will definitely try its luck again in like Khalistan/ Kargil / Mumbai movement, to remove and avenge the blemish of Bangladesh war . A more daring one may consider avenging the loot under the colonial rule , Saddam’s and Gaddafi’s death and destruction of Iraq , Libya and Afghanistan . It will be done in religious fervor only as it binds Pakistanis more than any other subject .
The next and the fast vanishing protection, is Pakistani civilian government headed by the Prime Minister . After Bhutto’s execution , Pakistan army has perfected the art of remote governance through a titular Prime Ministers . It destablises every elected Prime minister by using extremists and creating big law and order problems, which are solved by the army at a political price .None of the seventeen prime ministers could complete his term of five years and were pushed out ignobly by misusing the ISI and intelligence apparatus . A civilian prime minister has no control on strategic nuclear assets and can not help at all in preventing their misuse .
Also the civilian governments and liberal institutions have been constantly retreating in Pakistan for last two hundred years since Sir Syed Ahmed Khan . Muslims in the subcontinent were shocked by the execution of Bahadur Shah Zafar’s sons and his expulsion to Rangoon as prisoner , which ended seven hundred years of muslim rule in India. It promoted severe introspection . Sir Syed Ahmed Khan was devoted to economic up liftment of muslims and was openly pro British . He established and named his Aligarh college as ‘Muhammedan Anglo Oriental College in 1875 .
He wanted muslims to learn English for progress. In 1866 a seminary Dar ul Islam was 
established at Deoband in UP by Qasim Nanautavi which was purely a conservative islamic revivalist college . In 1883 Darul Musannefin Shibli Academy was established in Azamgarh by Shibli Nomany which promoted western education but islamic values .Ever since then the muslims in the subcontinent are divided in these three streams .
In Politics, Jinnah returned to India on Iqbal’s persuassion, in 1934 , to accept leadership of the Mulim League which was an off spring of Aligarh movement .
A new radical party Jamat Ulma e Hind was formed in 1919 by Mufti Kifaytulah and in 
1941 Jamat e Islami was formed by Allama Madauddi. In Pakistan these parties never got the big mass support but they were the holy cows which no politician wanted to disturb . So they kept paying lip sympathy . Even General Ayub and Z.A.Bhutto had to seek their support . Thus they kept growing in influence started making more and more outlandish demands . Anti Ahmedia movement started in 1953 but finally culminated in 1974 in Bhutto government declaring Ahmedias as non muslim and thus seizing their mosques and generally started their persecution . Pakistan had no official religion till 1956 .Iskandar Mirza as Presiident changed the name of country to just Pakistan but was restored as Islamic Republic Of Pakistan .It started in 1949 itself when Liaquat Ali Khan had to modify constitution to incorporate the Objective Resolution . Blasphemy law was used only 14 times till 1986 . Since then till 2014, 1300 people largely non muslims have been punished , 13 are on death row , and more than fifty murdered before trial . Religious riots took place in 1979 in which many people died on Zakat ordinance . In Zia regime number of madarsas increased from 893 to 2801 but informally it was believed to be 12000.
In a survey in 1969 , it was found that in Pakistan 60 % of people preferred Islam as identity while in Bangladesh ( then East Pakistan ) 60 % people preferred secular identity . In Pakistan 62% prefer death penalty for leaving Islam but in Bangladesh it is only 36%. In Pakistan 67 % of population prefers greater Islamisation . PEW survey found that 63 % of Pakistanis felt that laws should be in accordance with Islamic principles . In Pakistan 67 % prefer Islam as identity over nationalism but in Indonesia this figure is only 36 %. In last few years illiteracy has considerbly increased in Pakistan which will further increase
radicalism .
Therefore Pakistan’s army’s future officer cadre will become more and more radical . Some General may decide that his life purpose is Ghazwa- e -hind and use tactical nuclear weapons clandestinely via non state actors like Mumbai attack .It is not difficult to smuggle them to any country in a submarine which are available in Pakistan . Even drones or camels could be used .
Tehrik e Labbait chief Hussain Rizwi in a public meeting asked nuclear weapons to be used against France for Charlie Hebdo and recent allegedly blasphemous cartoons of prophet !His funeral was attended by more than a lakh people in Lahore .His son has brought Pakistan to halt by asking French ambassador to be expelled as per agreement by the government .Government has and can ban the organisation but it got six to seven percent votes in a bye election . The mindset cannot be banned .
Therefore tactical nuclear weapons with an unstable country like 
Pakistan are a threat to international peace and need to be destroyed .
