Someone else’s weapons

In May 1998, first India and then Pakistan tested nuclear weapons. War erupted in the Kargil region of Kashmir a year later. This was the first war between two nuclear-armed states anywhere in the world, and raised the prospect that the next conflict would be a catastrophe beyond reckoning. Since Kargil, both states have continued to build nuclear weapons, to develop and test ballistic missiles with ranges up to several thousand kilometres, and to accelerate their build-up of conventional arms.

The tests, war, crises and the on-going arms race are only the latest expressions of a more than 60-year-long conflict between Pakistan and India, which has plagued efforts to build democratic and just societies in these countries and has hampered the progress of Southasia as a whole. A settlement of the Kashmir dispute would help ease tensions, but would not necessarily be enough for India and Pakistan either to give up their nuclear-weapons status or to end their mutual hostility. The experience of the Cold War and the nearly two decades since its end makes this abundantly clear. The US and Russia still have thousands of nuclear weapons each, despite the fact that the Soviet Union is no more. The logic of nuclear weapons has had an enduring effect in preventing the establishment of peace in any meaningful sense. This suggests that the Indian and Pakistani nuclear stockpiles ensure that the future of the region will remain in jeopardy until these weapons are eliminated.

Nuclear war between India and Pakistan would be a catastrophe not only for the two countries. Recent studies simulating the effects of such a conflict have suggested that the use of 50 weapons by each side could create enough smoke from burning cities to trigger a decade-long change in climate across much of Southasia – indeed, across large parts of the northern hemisphere. This would lead, in turn, to crop failures and widespread famine. The casualties would be beyond imagination.

Against the backdrop of the nuclear-weapons tests of 1998, peace groups sprang up spontaneously in towns and cities across India and Pakistan. Building on years of work by a handful of anti-nuclear activists in both countries, these groups articulated deep public concern about the grave dangers posed by nuclear weapons, sought ways to educate and mobilise local communities, and reached out to make common cause with other civil-society groups working on issues of sustainable development and social justice. The need for a Southasia-wide effort on public education and mobilisation for nuclear disarmament in India and Pakistan was recognised by activists in both countries. They hoped that a South Asian Nuclear-Weapons-Free Zone (SANWFZ) treaty, modelled on such agreements in Latin America, the South Pacific and Southeast Asia (with Africa and Central Asia on the block), could offer a way to build regional consensus against nuclear weapons. Such a treaty would forbid each signatory state from possessing or seeking to acquire nuclear weapons.

At its heart, this activism reflects a politics based on imagining and bringing about, from the ground up, a Southasian community of countries sharing a particular set of values. It envisages the countries of the region as not only committed to peaceful co-existence, but also as rejecting the possession and threat of use of nuclear weapons. The political path is one where the civil society in the non-nuclear weapons states in Southasia (ie, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Afghanistan, the Maldives and Bhutan) campaign for respective governments and others in the region to negotiate a SANWFZ treaty. This combination of popular and official pressure would strengthen nuclear-disarmament movements in India and Pakistan.

Peace zone
It was back in January and February 2001 that Admiral (retired) Laxminarayan Ramdas and Sandeep Pandey from India, and A H Nayyar from Pakistan, as well as this writer, were asked by groups in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal to travel to each country, to begin a regional civil-society dialogue on a Southasian Nuclear-Weapons-Free Zone. This effort was by some measures very successful. It showed the feasibility and utility of systematic interactions between peace activists from India and Pakistan with a large number of civil-society organisations, activists, scholars and government officials in the other Southasian countries. The interest generated by the visits, evident from the large meetings and extensive media coverage that ensued, indicated a widespread concern in the region about the implications and challenges created by the nuclearisation of India and Pakistan.

In some places, people did seem to find the nuclear dangers facing the region somewhat remote. The clearest expression of this was in Sri Lanka, where many seemed to be hearing about the devastating effects of nuclear weapons for the first time. This could be due simply to geography; Sri Lanka is, after all, far removed from any plausible conflict between Pakistan and India. But there can also be no doubt that there are more pressing concerns for Sri Lankan civil society and policymakers, with the long civil war there showing few signs of ending. Nonetheless, even in Colombo, there was enthusiasm for a Southasia-wide civil-society initiative for peace and disarmament, recognition that nuclear weapons posed a risk to the whole region and support for a SANWFZ treaty.

While there were no discussions with government officials in Sri Lanka, we learnt that Sri Lanka had sought to encourage talks between India and Pakistan on the matter of nuclear weapons. This is a positive sign, and suggests that a more formal dialogue with government officials on the possibilities of the treaty could be worth pursuing. There was strong support from the Bangladeshi civil society for the idea of a SANWFZ treaty, and the need for the smaller, non-nuclear countries in the region to lead the way. The contacts with government officials suggested that Bangladesh could be encouraged to consider working towards such a treaty. This willingness reflects the historical role that Bangladesh played in launching the idea of SAARC as a regional organisation during the late 1970s, and in hosting the organisation's first summit in 1985. Meanwhile, in Kathmandu, there was concern about the impact of a possible nuclear war on the northern parts of the Subcontinent, which would rope in Nepal. The possibility of being affected by radioactive fallout was taken very seriously. An important issue raised most directly in Nepal, but also elsewhere, was that of overcoming the constraints imposed by the larger and more powerful neighbours on political initiatives by smaller Southasian countries.

While immediate domestic problems took priority in each country, there was a widespread sense of urgency regarding possible nuclear-armed confrontation between India and Pakistan. There was likewise significant understanding that, without peace between Pakistan and India, the Southasian region would remain unstable, and fail to develop the structures of economic and political cooperation it needs to meet the people's needs. From nuclear weapons to energy, food security and climate change, there is a growing array of problems that need to be seen as regional in scope, and which require collective regional solutions. These problems and their solutions will necessitate and generate the practice of a Southasian politics – and with it, a Southasian identity.

~ Zia Mian directs the Project on Peace and Security in South Asia at Princeton University´s Program on Science and Global Security.