Summer of 2004

It is the summer of 2004 – along and typically sweltering summer in the Subcontinent. A summer made even more unbearable by the inability of Asia's newest nuclear powers – India and Pakistan – to provide uninterrupted water and electricity supply to their major urban centres.

The euphoria over becoming nuclear-weapon states has long since evaporated, and tempers are running high on either side of the border. Battered by sanctions, the economies of both countries are barely limping along. And there is internal disarray as disenchanted citizens take to the streets day after day to protest the power and water shortages, and the lack of economic progress.

Politics reflects the civic disarray. The 2003 general election in India has thrown up yet another hung parliament, with the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies managing to retain power by a whisker. In Pakistan, a fresh constitutional crisis has once again paralysed the government.
Gathering storm
Far removed from the tumult of the cities, along the India-Pakistan border in Indian Punjab, 12-year-old Kewal Singh, a shepherd, is beating the mid-day heat with a nap under a banyan tree. As he wakes up toward evening, he realises that some of his small herd of cattle have strayed across into Pakistan.

Kewal Singh is not worried – this has happened before, and he has always managed to sneak across and bring them back. This time, however, his luck runs out. As he crosses the border, he comes across a Pakistani Army patrol.

It is then that Kewal Singh makes a fatal mistake. He panics, and makes a run for it. The Pakistan patrol shouts after him, asking him to stop, and then lets off a volley of bullets that mows Kewal Singh down. The return of the young shepherd's body to his wailing relatives makes for a poignant sight on TV screens across the country. And politicians, to divert attention from the very real problems plaguing the cities, make capital of it. Almost in unison, they launch an anti-Pakistan tirade.

Rhetoric soon evolves into action. India announces that it will rigorously patrol the border, both to protect Indians and to deal harshly with any Pakistan national who happens to wander into India. Troops are sent to the border to reinforce the Border Security Force (BSF). The Pakistanis respond with a troop build-up of their own. Tensions run high all along the border.

About the same time, a long-scheduled Pakistani military exercise gets underway. Provocatively named "Peshwa Ko Roko" (or, stop the Peshwa, a reference to the Maratha warrior king Shivaji, a figure revered by the votaries of Hindutva), the exercise takes the Indians by surprise.

New Delhi, unaware it is a planned exercise, considers it an act intended to escalate tensions. In response, it launches a hurriedly improved military exercise – Panipat IV.

"Panipat ki chauthi yudh Bharat nahi harega" (India will not lose the fourth battle of Panipat), declares the BJP-led coalition's defence minister. The home minister also gets into the act: "If Pakistan doesn't come to its senses, we will act proactively and destroy its puny nuclear weapons even before they can get them into the air."

Tensions build up
In a pretty little village near the border, nine-year-old Yusuf Khan decides he must visit his cousin, who lives a bare kilometre across the line of control (LOC). Like Kewal Singh, Khan also knows ways of slipping across the border and returning safely that neither the Indian nor Pakistani authorities are aware of.

But his luck, too, runs out as he encounters an Indian patrol and, like the hapless Kewal Singh did just a month ago, decides to run for it. "Terrorist Hai! Maro!" (He's a terrorist. Shoot), shouts the soldier leading the patrol, and another victim is added to the mutual paranoia of India and Pakistan.

Witnessing the incident is a Pakistani patrol which opens fire on the Indians. Both sides suffer casualties in the ensuing exchange of fire.

Over the next week, as tensions and clashes increase, both the Indian and Pakistani governments find that they do not have any mechanism or communication links to defuse the crisis. Communication has, in recent years, been limited to public posturing and threats. Each side decides it has no option but to assume the worst and acts accordingly. More troops are mobilised. Both military exercises are extended indefinitely.

The nuclear options
Since Indian and Pakistani nuclear weapons – mainly on long- and intermediate-range missiles – are not protected against a nuclear attack, both countries have adopted "Launch on Warning" postures.

This is designed to launch nuclear weapons even before an attack is confirmed so as to insure the weapons are not destroyed on the ground. The nuclear weapons, on a hair-trigger, are now in the highest state of alert.

Pakistan intelligence analysts are convinced that India's actions conclusively show it intends to launch a pre-emptive attack on Pakistan's nuclear weapons, possibly with low-yield tactical nuclear missiles. After all, they argue, India has the capability and the move would give it a permanent advantage over Pakistan.

However, the Pakistani analysts are also worried. Summer is not the best time to attack India with nuclear weapons. During the period of the southwest monsoon (June to September), the wind direction is towards Pakistan, bringing with it the fallout of the nuclear blasts.

Indian intelligence is also convinced that the Pakistanis are about to launch a pre-emptive strike against Indian nuclear weapons. After all, given strategic reality, Pakistan would tend to use its fewer weapons pre-emptively.

What's more, the analysts say, with the winds blowing away from India, this is the best time to strike. If we wait till after September, they say, when the northeast monsoon (December to March) is underway, the winds will be blowing towards India, bringing the fallout back into the country. And with targets such as Lahore just across the border, this would be unacceptable.

Pressing the N-button
Gen Musa is fed up. The officer in charge of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, and the man – thanks to Pakistan's unsophisticated command and control system – with the finger on the nuclear button, is sick of Pakistan's quibbling intelligence analysts and the lack of vision of its political leadership.

Why do they fail to see reality, Gen Musa wonders. He is convinced the Indians are preparing to attack Pakistan's nuclear-weapon sites. Pakistan will be destroyed as an independent nation, and he, as the commander of Pakistan's missile forces, will have to answer to his Maker for his failure to protect his country.

As he sits frustrated and fuming at his command headquarters, he gets word that some forward radar units have picked up what appears to be hostile Indian missiles or aircraft. The officer reporting to him is, however, not certain: It may well be a flock of birds, we are not sure, he says.

But Gen Musa is. He orders the launch of 10 missiles with one megaton yield nuclear warheads – each targeting an Indian city. It is called a "Scenario D" attack. The Indian radar and satellites pick up the Pakistan missiles as they are launched, and even before they reach their targets, the nuclear button is pressed by the Indians as well. The missiles, also with one megaton yield warheads, take off, heading for eight Pakistan cities.

Armageddon
Under "Scenario D" – which involves the targeting of large urban centres for maximum damage – the Pakistani missiles explode in Delhi, Bombay, Madras, Calcutta, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Surat, Indore, Baroda and Meerut.

These centres have been chosen either for their military, political or economic importance or for the psychological impact their destruction would have on India. Punjab's cities near the border are spared.

The Indian missiles target the Pakistan cities of Karachi, Lahore, Lyallpur, Rawalpindi, Hyderabad, Multan, Gujranwala and Peshawar. Again the purpose is to decimate Pakistan's population and industrial centres.

The devastation is unprecedented. Given the high population density of South Asian cities, the immediate casualties amount to millions (see chart). Many more of the initial survivors of the attacks as well as millions of others in India and Pakistan die as a result of the fallout from the blasts as well as from the chaos and famine which follow in both countries. Lahore, for instance, is completely wiped out as the whole city falls within the "lethal zone" of a nuclear attack. And for 140 square miles downwind – assuming a windspeed of 15 miles per hour – the fallout would be high enough to kill the entire population over the next few weeks.

The way out
This is, of course, a worst-case scenario. One could assume that no sane political leadership, either in India or Pakistan, would deliberately trigger off a nuclear war. Yet, it could be set off accidentally, and both New Delhi and Islamabad need to develop a mechanism to pre-empt it. They have to adopt deterrence postures and put in place effective confidence-building measures.

A deterrence posture includes stating clearly when and under what circumstances the nuclear option would be resorted to and, more importantly, conveying to the opposite side the will to use it if the need arose.

Alongside, confidence-boosting measures are imperative. This implies an immediate end to dishing out rash and wild threats against each other, followed up with regular formal and informal meetings between the political and military decision-makers. Both need to make no-first-use a cornerstone of their nuclear posture. The sooner the two set out to achieve these goals, the safer will the people of the two countries be.

The introduction of nuclear weapons into the India-Pakistan equation has not made – at least in the short run – the Subcontinent a safer place. It has only made it more dangerous.