[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 126 (Monday, September 12, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: September 12, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                 PAKISTAN'S ASSERTIVE REGIONAL STRATEGY

                                 ______


                           HON. BILL McCOLLUM

                               of florida

                    in the house of representatives

                       Monday, September 12, 1994

  Mr. McCOLLUM. Mr. Speaker, when former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharief 
recently acknowledged that Pakistan had nuclear weapons, he was stating 
the obvious. The extent of the Pakistani nuclear weapons program has 
long been known, but the current developments of the Pakistani nuclear 
weapons program are cause for great alarm.
  As discussed in the report of the House Republican Task Force on 
Terrorism and Uncoventional Warfare which follows, the primary reason 
for such an alarm is the evolution of the Pakistani nuclear strategy. 
Originally, during much of the 1980's, Pakistan was seeking nuclear 
weapons as a doomsday trip wire to deter a possible Soviet encroachment 
from Afghanistan. However, during the 1990's, nuclear weapons have 
become a major instrument of Pakistan's assertive regional strategy 
with Islamabad's new strategy built on the perceived role of nuclear 
weapons in the crisis in Kashmir, where, Islamabad, along with Tehran, 
are sponsoring an escalation of Islamist terrorism.
  The overall Pakistani strategic confidence has already been expressed 
in statements coming out of Islamabad since the fall of 1993. For 
example, in a recent statement, Pakistani Senator Qazi Hussain Ahmad, 
recently urged the Bhutto government ``to declare jihad on India to 
save Kashmir Moslems from total annihilation. There is no other way to 
resolve the crisis.'' ``Let us wage jihad for Kashmir,'' he said. ``A 
nuclear-armed Pakistan would deter India from a wider conflict,'' he 
stressed. The nuclear card is presented as the key to Pakistan's new 
regional strategy.
  Pakistan, in an effort to upgrade its nuclear arsenal, has embarked 
an energetic effort to modernize its nuclear technology. This has been 
reflected in the repeated efforts to illegally acquire advanced 
technology and machinery from the West.
  Furthermore, Islamabad considers the development of long-range 
ballistic missiles a top priority. These missiles will give Pakistan 
strategic capabilities that go well beyond the need to block an 
invading enemy or hit key strategic installations. Moreover, these 
developments are but a part of an overall massive military 
modernization and buildup, pursued with close cooperation from the 
People's Republic of China and Iran.
  Pakistan also continues to tighten its special relationship with 
Iran, as demonstrated in the current visit of Pakistan's President 
Fraooq Leghari to Tehran. While visitng Ayatollah Khomeini's tomb, 
Leghari stated that working closely together Iran and Pakistan ``can 
serve Islam.'' In his meetings with Iranian President Hashemi-
Rafsanjani, Leghari stated that ``all-out cooperation between Iran and 
Pakistan * * * could help resolve the Moslem world's regional 
problems.'' Among the subjects raised with Iranian leaders in this 
context were the conflicts in Bosnia, Azerbaijan, Kashmir, Afghanistan, 
and the recent events in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean.
  While Pakistan in the past has proven itself to be valuable ally in 
an unstable part of the world, today their actions may be contributing 
to the instability of the Middle East and south Asia. Therefore, it is 
my hope that by submitting this information to my colleagues I will 
have encouraged them to study the recent actions and new direction 
taken by Islamabad.
  The text of the task forces report of August 24, 1994 follows:

  [From the Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, House 
 Republican Research Committee, House of Representatives, Washington, 
                           DC, Aug. 24, 1994]

                    Pakistan's Nuclear Brinkmanship

       On 23 August 1994, during a visit to Kashmir, Nawaz 
     Sharief, the former Prime Minister of Pakistan, declared that 
     Pakistan was a nuclear power. ``I confirm Pakistan possesses 
     the atomic bomb,'' he said. Sharief then warned India that an 
     attack on Pakistan could trigger a nuclear war and declared 
     that an escalation of the crisis over Kashmir because of New 
     Delhi's refusal to surrender Kashmir to Islamabad was 
     inevitable.
       Though he was not the first, Nawaz Sharief is perhaps the 
     most authoritative Pakistani to confirm his country's nuclear 
     status. The significance of this confirmation is that it 
     compels Ms. Bhutto's Islamabad to be more forthcoming about 
     Pakistan's evolving nuclear build-up and national strategy, 
     including the recent evolution of the Pakistani nuclear 
     strategy.
       The current world view of Ms. Benazir Bhutto's Islamabad is 
     a direct outgrowth of the philosophy of her father--Zulfiqar 
     Ali Bhutto. The political vision of Mr. Bhutto was 
     crystalized as a historical legacy of the 1971 separation of 
     Bangladesh from Pakistan. In the wake of that defeat, Mr. 
     Bhutto came to believe that Pakistan must base its policy on 
     Islam and must look westward--to the so-called ``Hub of 
     Islam''--for his country's national strategy.
       Bhutto considered Central Asia an extension of the non-Arab 
     Muslim world and believed that Pakistan would bring that 
     region into the Hub in order to expand Islam's non-Arab 
     component. In this view, the active support for the armed 
     liberation struggle in Kashmir was defined by Mr. Bhutto as a 
     way of demonstrating Pakistan's commitment to Islamic 
     solidarity. In this connection, a close relationship with the 
     People's Republic of China (PRC), including Beijing's 
     strategic guarantees and assistance in the development of 
     Pakistan's nuclear weapons, was considered by Bhutto as the 
     foundation of Islamabad's ability to avoid a clash with the 
     US and a possible war with India.
       Significantly, Mr. Bhutto stressed that the US was 
     inherently hostile to Islam because it refused to accept the 
     drastic changes in the world order advocated by radical 
     Islam. Indeed, Mr. Bhutto's military nuclear effort was 
     motivated as much by the determination to deliver the so-
     called ``Islamic Bomb'' that would make Pakistan a leader 
     in the Muslim world, as by the need to counter-balance 
     India's military nuclear program. For her part, Ms. Bhutto 
     confirmed her belief in these principles during the Fall 
     of 1993.
       Pakistan has been looking into the acquisition of nuclear 
     weapons since the early-1960s. After Pakistan's defeat in the 
     1965 Indo-Pakistani war, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto vowed to retain 
     a strategic balance with India, including the development of 
     nuclear weapons, at any cost. ``If India builds the bomb, we 
     will eat grass or leaves, even go hungry, but we will get one 
     of our own. We have no alternative,'' he said in 1965.
       However, it took the humiliating defeat of 1971, when 
     Indian forces occupied Eastern Pakistan and transformed it 
     into an independent Bangladesh, to truly commit Pakistan to 
     the acquisition of nuclear weapons. In the wake of that war, 
     Mr. Bhutto assembled Pakistan's leading scientists in a tent 
     in Multan in January 1972 where he delivered a passionate 
     speech about the shame of defeat and how imperative is was 
     for Pakistan to have nuclear weapons. Bringing up what seemed 
     a note of caution, Mr. Bhutto pointed to a higher objective 
     when he explained that ``this is a very serious political 
     decision, which Pakistan must take, and perhaps all third 
     World countries must take one day * * *.'' Pakistan was thus 
     committed to a national crash program to have an ``Islamic 
     Bomb.''
       Subsequently, the Pakistani nuclear weapons program really 
     took shape in 1974 when Dr. Abdul Qaeer Khan returned to 
     Pakistan from Europe and convinced Mr. Bhutto that he could 
     build a bomb within 6-7 years. Later, in 1976, Mr. Bhutto 
     secured the PRC's agreement to support the Pakistani military 
     nuclear program with expertise, ranging from scientific and 
     technological assistance all the way to actual weapons-design 
     know-how. Thus, using Chinese weapons technology, Dr. Khan 
     laid the foundations of the Pakistani nuclear weapons 
     arsenal.
       However, it was during the 11-year tenure of General 
     Mohammad Zia ul-Haq that Pakistan became a nuclear power and 
     defined a coherent nuclear strategy. The military that seized 
     power in 1977 under General Zia was opposed to the nuclear 
     weapons program, fearing its impact on the military budget. 
     However, there was a widespread recognition that nuclear 
     weapons were Pakistan's only viable deterrence against an 
     Indian conventional onslaught. Indeed, some strategists even 
     urged the recapture of Kashmir under a nuclear umbrella. 
     Consequently, Zia became committed to the nuclear option as a 
     last resort instrument to ``save Pakistan.''
       Moreover, like Mr. Bhutto, Zia gradually came to see in the 
     acquisition of nuclear weapons a key instrument for breaking 
     Pakistan's isolation and for transforming it into the leader 
     of a rejuvenated Muslim world. As he outlined it in a July, 
     1978 speech, ``China, India, the USSR, and Israel in the 
     Middle East posses the atomic arm. No Muslim country has any. 
     If Pakistan had such a weapon, it would reinforce the power 
     of the Muslim world.''
       However, it was unfolding events, especially the Soviet 
     invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, which gave 
     Pakistan's fledgling nuclear doctrine its practical 
     character. In early-1980, President Zia ul-Haq learned from 
     the Carter Administration's National Security Adviser, Dr. 
     Brzezinski, that the US had no intention of committing forces 
     to defend Pakistan in the event of a Soviet invasion. As 
     Pakistan's involvement in the war in Afghanistan was growing, 
     Islamabad's doubts about the worth of its alliance with the 
     US also began to mount.
       Nevertheless, at first, Pakistan stuck with Zia's doctrine 
     of relying on nuclear weapons as instruments of last resort. 
     However, as time passed, Zia ul-Haq became increasingly prone 
     to a pan-Islamic world view which he expressed by his 
     willingness to facilitate the development of other Islamic, 
     (primarily Iran's), nuclear weapons programs, though not at 
     the expense of Pakistan's own strategic weapons programs. 
     Indeed, it was through its close cooperation with Iran that 
     Pakistan also assisted other radical states, including Libya 
     and North Korea.
       Later, in the early-1990s, after coming to power, Ms. 
     Bhutto redirected the Pakistani national strategy still 
     further in order to integrate it into the Trans-Asia Axis 
     dominated by Beijing and the Islamist Bloc dominated by 
     Tehran. This decision was made during the Pakistani 
     negotiations with India on the mutual reduction of tension 
     between the two states. Held between January 1989 and January 
     1990, the India-Pakistan negotiations were conducted against 
     the backdrop of an assessment by the Pakistani military and 
     intelligence elite that a major clash with India was 
     inevitable and imminent.
       With this in view, in February 1990, General Mirza Aslam 
     Beg, then the Pakistani Chief of the Army Staff, went to 
     Tehran to discuss Iran's become Pakistan's primary regional 
     ally, even at the expense of relations with the US, including 
     perhaps an outright confrontation with Washington. Gen. Beg 
     returned from Tehran ``greatly reassured.'' ``With the 
     support from Iran promised me, we will win in case of war 
     over Kashmir,'' he declared.
       Soon afterward, Pakistan began a game of brinkmanship with 
     India through the escalation of border clashes in the Siachen 
     Glacier area and in Kashmir itself. The subsequent appearance 
     of a major Indian military exercise not far from the 
     Pakistani border startled the Pakistani High Command, 
     reminding Islamabad of the possibility of a massive Indian 
     reaction to Pakistan's provocations. At the same time, the 
     border clashes and the insertion of terrorists into Indian 
     Kashmir continued to escalate.
       Islamabad then decided to prevent an Indian retaliation by 
     invoking the nuclear card. As tension grew and war seemed 
     inevitable, Pakistan hastily assembled at least one nuclear 
     weapon during its ``nose-to-nose'' confrontation with India 
     in 1990. This led to a hasty intervention by the US and other 
     Western powers, pressuring both New Delhi and Islamabad not 
     to escalate their confrontation. Thus, the new Pakistani 
     nuclear strategy was proved successful.
       This was a turning point for Pakistan's national strategy. 
     From this point on, nuclear weapons were no longer considered 
     merely a trip-wire of last resort in the event of a major 
     invasion of Pakistan. Instead, nuclear weapons now became a 
     key to Islamabad's assertive strategy in Kashmir under a 
     nuclear umbrella.
       As 1991 dawned, Islamabad increasingly considered the ``New 
     World Order'' advocated by the US, and especially in the call 
     for non-proliferation, a strategic threat to its 
     independence. ``The New World Order does not allow any 
     country in the Third World except the American surrogates to 
     possess nuclear weapons.'' Fully aware that no single country 
     could confront the US on its own, Islamabad stressed the 
     growing significance of nuclear and military cooperation with 
     other radical states as of crucial importance.
       Islamabad acknowledged that ``the People's Republic of 
     China and North Korea have been * * * supplying Iran, 
     Pakistan, and other Muslim countries with medium-range 
     missiles and nuclear technology for peaceful purpose.'' This 
     cooperation now served as a source of support for Islamabad's 
     defiance of the United States, as it was recognized that any 
     alternative would be detrimental to the future of Islam:
       ``If Pakistan surrenders before the Americans now with 
     respect to the nuclear programme, there will be no limit for 
     such a surrender; because the Americans endeavour to demolish 
     Pakistan's military power and make her a banana republic so 
     that the Muslim World should be enslaved by the US-imposed 
     world order.''
       It was in the context of this strategic perception that the 
     Pakistani military nuclear capabilities were finally 
     officially revealed. On 21 October 1991, Pakistan, for long a 
     known yet not acknowledged nuclear power, crossed the line 
     and created a precedent. In a Karachi meeting, Dr. Abdul 
     Qadeer Khan, the father of the Pakistani bomb, officially 
     acknowledged that Pakistan was a nuclear power. ``It is a 
     fact that Pakistan has become a nuclear power and is at 
     present concentrating on manufacturing sophisticated arms 
     to fulfill its requirements,'' Dr. Khan stated. 
     Subsequently, the nuclear factor has become a clear and 
     critical factor in the Pakistani national strategy, 
     especially via-a-vis India and the US.
       Against this backdrop, Islamabad is convinced that a major 
     showdown with India, ostensibly over Kashmir, constitutes the 
     key to Pakistan's new position as the linchpin of the PRC-
     dominated Trans-Asian Axis and the Tehran-led Islamic Bloc. 
     Pakistan and its allies are convinced that any set back for 
     India, no matter how symbolic, will result in New Delhi 
     becoming isolationist. This, in turn, would expedite the 
     consolidation of the Trans-Asian Axis. It has therefore been 
     decided in Islamabad that the decisive crisis aimed at 
     isolating India will be instigated in the form of an 
     escalation of the Islamist terrorist struggle in Kashmir. Ms. 
     Bhutto is confident that Pakistan's growing nuclear 
     capabilities will shield these assertive policies.
       Ms. Bhutto is fully aware of her country's nuclear 
     potential because she serves as the chairperson of the 
     National Nuclear Command Authority [NNCA]. The NNCA 
     ``determines the state of readiness'' of the Pakistani 
     nuclear weapons, and, with Ms. Bhutto's ``hand on the 
     button,'' authorizes their launch through the Army's Joint 
     Operations Center. Gen. Beg disclosed in April 1994 that 
     Pakistan already has ``the F-16s, Mirages and the M-11s 
     [ballistic missiles] which we are now getting from China that 
     can carry [nuclear weapons].'' Moreover, Pakistan's own 
     ``missile programme'' is developing ``a delivery system with 
     a very effective, accurate guidance system provided on the 
     missiles.''
       Called the Anza-11, this ballistic missile is a Pakistani 
     derivative of the Chinese M-11. In mid July 1994, Pakistani 
     officials confirmed that the development of the Anza-11 was 
     being accelerated ``with Chinese assistance.'' Visiting 
     Pakistan's nuclear enrichment facility in Multan, Ms. Bhutto 
     warned of an accelerating ``missile race'' in the region, and 
     was assured that the PRC would provide Pakistan with all the 
     necessary technology and know-how to cope with the new 
     strategic challenge. Meanwhile, Pakistan continues to deploy 
     and install M-11 SSMs in the vicinity of its border with 
     India.
       Furthermore, several loyalists of Ms. Bhutto--from the 
     ranks of the military and intelligence services--have 
     intensified their demands for a more assertive stance on 
     nuclear issues. For example, in June 1994, Gen. Hamid Gul, 
     the former Chief of ISI, publicly urged Islamabad to conduct 
     a nuclear test in order to clearly demonstrate the quality 
     and might of the Pakistani nuclear weapons. He argued that 
     such a test would galvanize the Pakistanis to support 
     Islamabad in its pursuit of several national goals and 
     challenges, the liberation of Kashmir being foremost, and 
     would restrain the US from interfering in that endeavor. 
     Gul pointed out that it is imperative for Pakistan to make 
     a clear choice between its continued association with the 
     US and the pursuit of its vital interests along with Iran 
     and the PRC, whom he identified as ``the closest friends 
     of Pakistan.''
       Gul also stressed that the establishment of a declared 
     nuclear posture will determine this transformation. ``By 
     exploding the bomb, we will not only destroy the impression 
     of our being submissive to the United States, but will be 
     able to pull back our friends.'' Islamabad's failure to take 
     a sterner public stand on the pursuit of its joint strategy 
     with Iran and the PRC, Gul believed, already threatens the 
     security of Pakistan by leaving the false impression of a 
     Pakistan restrained by the US. ``Our military feels that its 
     defense needs are in danger because of the failure of our 
     foreign policy.'' Only the establishment of an unambiguous 
     nuclear deterrent can reverse this trend, Gul concluded.
       Thus, in early August, N.D. Khan, the Parliamentary 
     Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and other Pakistani senior 
     officials, stressed repeatedly that Pakistan would not 
     curtail its nuclear program irrespective of mounting US 
     pressure. Instead, the High Command announced that Pakistan 
     had embarked on a major build-up of sophisticated weapons, 
     including missiles, in order ``to deal with any emergency in 
     the context of India's aggressive designs.'' Ms. Bhutto was 
     briefed on this emergency program and ``agreed in principle 
     to meet the requirements of the Pakistani Army on an urgent 
     basis.'' Indeed, Pakistani officials later confirmed that 
     Islamabad has resolved ``to manufacture [ballistic] missiles 
     and strengthen its defense.''
       In a similar vein, in mid August, the President of 
     Pakistan, Farooq Ahmad Khan Leghari, visited the Pakistani 
     Air Force [PAF] base in Sargodha, home of its F-16s, to 
     inspect the major exercise called Saffron Bandit--94. In a 
     speech to the PAF officers, the Pakistani President tied 
     together the current military build-up and the crisis in 
     Kashmir. Leghari assured his audience that ``the government 
     is fully aware of the defense needs of the country and will 
     equip its Armed Forces with sophisticated weapons for the 
     defense of the motherland.'' Leghari reiterated Islamabad's 
     ``full support to the Kashmiri people despite Indian 
     threats'' and stressed his ``confidence that Pakistan can 
     meet any threat'' resulting from this strategy.
       Thus, Benazir Bhutto, for reasons geopolitical and 
     domestic, is personally leading Pakistan into becoming a key 
     and active component in a major global axis aimed at 
     confronting the US and reducing its influence. It is under 
     Ms. Bhutto that Pakistan has increased its participation in 
     the strategic alliance with the PRC and Iran, as well as 
     raised the profile of its confrontation with the US and 
     India. Additionally, nuclear deterrence is considered 
     Islamabad's primary shield against an Indian reaction to, let 
     alone retaliation for, an escalation in Kashmir. Therefore, 
     it seems grimly likely that Ms. Bhutto will only continue to 
     accelerate and expand the Pakistani military nuclear program.

                          ____________________