How did
the Pakistanis react to the nuclear tests at
Chagai? Zafrullah Khan sheds light on those
critical days of May 1998 and after.
The quest for peace is not new to Pakistani
society that has been plagued with numerous
ethnic, sectarian and political conflicts
internally and has been living with a
sustained external conflict with
neighbouring India over Kashmir for the last
55 years. Nevertheless a full-fledged peace
movement by citizens pleading for mechanisms
for conflict resolution has been missing.
Pakistani civil society has been very weak,
because authoritarian regimes muffled
disarrayed political parties, curbed
academic freedoms and controlled the media.
The whiff of change came in the mid 1980s
when issue-based advocacy groups in the form
of non-governmental organizations appeared
on the scene. Its positive impact
notwithstanding, this development was not
free from its own pitfalls as many of its
endeavours were dubbed as donor-driven thus
limiting its scope and scale.
In May 1998 when India and Pakistan
gatecrashed into the elite nuclear club,
their tests sparked the realization of the
need for a peace movement. A number of civil
society organizations, trade unions, human
rights and women rights groups, journalists
and academics cobbled together their
responses to initiate a formal peace
movement in Pakistan reminding the nation of
the cost of the conflicts. It also projected
the possible dividend of peace that can be
yielded provided sanity prevails.
In retrospect, that peace movement seems
like a short-lived euphoria which lost its
force in the wake of the Kargil episode.
When a civilian political government
couldn't survive after differing on Kargil
with the mighty establishment, what could a
fledgling peace movement achieve? Similarly
the South Asian Association for Regional
Cooperation (SAARC) could not take-off due
to continued mistrust between India and
Pakistan.
Another setback to the peace movement came
in the wake of 9/11 in the United States'
and Pakistan's decision to join the global
war against terrorism by rolling back their
Afghan policy of the last two decades. This
180 degree turn in policy was welcomed by a
few whereas others chose to criticize the US
for bombing Afghanistan. The focus of the
peace movement also shifted from efforts to
advocate peace with India to the situation
in Afghanistan.The attacks on the
Indian-held Kashmir Assembly and the
December 13, 2001 attack on the Indian
Parliament, allegedly by the Lashkar-i-Taiba,
also affected the situation, with the result
that Pakistan-India relations today stand at
the lowest ebb...
Nevertheless, the roots of this short-lived
peace movement could be located in the
sustained campaign against nukes in Pakistan
by the peace lobby. In the 1950s, a group
comprising hundreds of concerned citizens
had signed a resolution against the atom
bomb. Apart from this less-known
development, nuclear issues rarely generated
a full-fledged public debate in the country.
The left-wing political parties and their
associated student organizations and a few
trade unions pursued the ideals of
disarmament from time to time, but the
scope, scale and size of their appeal and
work remained limited owing to a weak
tradition of social movements in Pakistan.
In 1974, after India conducted its first
nuclear test in Pokharan, the then Pakistani
leadership had sworn to build a bomb, even
if they had to eat grass. The majority of
the population appeared to be happy with
this notion at the time, and such rhetorical
views continue to be heard besides other
similar gestures to reinforce the
pro-establishment security discourse in the
public sphere.
However, in the post 1974 period a few
dedicated individuals from the academia and
the media strove to create awareness against
nuclear weapons. The observance of
'Hiroshima Day' became an annual ritual at
least in Islamabad. Occasionally, it sparked
controversies as right-wing activists tried
to sabotage the event.
The developments pertaining to the country's
nuclear programme in 1990 resulted in a
relatively open debate mainly in the English
language press. The ouster of Benazir Bhutto
in August 1990 also sparked a controversy
about who was really in control of the
button of Pakistan's nuclear programme.
During the 1993 general elections, the
right-wing Pakistan Islamic Front (PIF)
dominated by Jama'at-i-Islami contested the
election with a manifesto to end the
ambiguity surrounding the country's nuclear
programme. A cart carrying a dummy bomb used
to accompany the election rallies of the PIF,
but the Front lost the election. In 1994 for
the first time the National Assembly of
Pakistan debated the country's nuclear
policy. The scope of that debate remained
limited as it was based on accusations of
selling out or rolling back the programme,
instead of exploring mature policy options
on the basis of information and experience.
However, the civil society started taking an
interest in the debate and in the early
1990s a Campaign for Nuclear Sanity was
launched in Islamabad that unfortunately
died prematurely. Later on a number of
initiatives were taken, within the scope of
what is popularly known as Track-II
diplomacy (people-to-people dialogue). The
nuclear question figured prominently in
these Track-II events. A University of
London project focusing on Security,
Technology and Arms Control (STAC) created a
modest STAC community in Pakistan and India.
Through the workshops held by the project,
the STAC participants got acquainted with
the critical aspects of the nuclear debate.
The issue also reverberated at seminars
organized by the Pakistan-India Peoples
Forum for Peace and Democracy.
The defining moment for the peace movement
in Pakistan came on May 11 and 13, 1998.
Immediately after the Indian tests,
concerned citizens marched on the roads of
Islamabad to condemn the development and
exhorted the Pakistan government not to
reciprocate madness with madness. However
the preponderance of the citizenry clamoured
for going nuclear. On May 28, 1998, Pakistan
detonated its nuclear devices, proving its
long suspected nuclear prowess. A mindless
euphoria and wild jubilation followed the
occasion.
Immediately after the nuclear tests,
Advocacy & Development Network (AND) a
voluntary association of nine of the leading
nongovernmental organizationspublished an
informative brochure titled, The Nuclear
Threat. It was brought out for educating
people about the threats that nuclear
weapons pose to human and all other forms of
life. In order to reach the larger audience
the brochure was translated into Urdu. This
modest activity had a tremendous outreach.
Later, emerging peace groups in the country
used this brochure as a tool to educate the
masses about the nuclear question.
Within a month of the detonation, concerned
sections of society articulated their
response to the nuclear tests... These
organizations came up with a clear mission
to condemn nuclearization of South Asia.
Hundreds of people joined them to publicly
express their opposition to nuclear weapons
in all forms, reject nuclear deterrence as a
viable mechanism to achieve national
security, and, therefore demand global
nuclear disarmament. They also demanded that
state expenditure on defence and weapons be
decreased because it diverts important
resources which would be better spent on the
economic and human development needs of the
people.
* * * * *
In order to achieve their goals these
organizations tried to enrol a large number
of people - who had the motivation and the
time to plan and coordinate peace activities
- from diverse backgrounds into the peace
movement. The formation of these bodies was
a spontaneous response by concerned citizens
in major cities.
* * * * *
The Lahore-based Joint Action Committee for
People's Rights was awarded the 1998 UNESCO-Madanjeet
Singh Prize for the Promotion of Tolerance
and Non-Violence. That served as a great
morale booster for all human rights and
peace groups in Pakistan. Peace activists
from Pakistan also attended the peace
conference held in Japan on Hiroshima Day,
which helped them to generate more resources
and ideas like peace gifts, videos, banners,
paper cranes, books, photographs, brochures,
etc.
These items have been shared with peace
groups in other cities. Out of these
activities, the Paper Crane video and a
Japanese girl, Sadako's story has been very
inspirational for many people. In Karachi,
Prof Zakia Sarwar, a teacher of English
language involved in teacher training
programmes, incorporated the video on a
Paper Crane into a teaching workshop of an
hour and 50 minutes. This interactive
workshop was titled "Teaching peace concepts
through language". The idea was to give
teachers an opportunity to see how peace
concepts can be instilled while teaching
language skills.
* * * * *
Within a few months of their formation, the
peace groups joined hands in a collective
struggle to mobilize public opinion against
nuclear weapons. The Pakistan Peace
Coalition (PPC) was formed against this
backdrop. The PPC hosted a National Peace
Conference on February 27 and 28, 1999 in
Karachi. Apart from the citizens'
activities, a number of retired army
officers joined the emerging peace movement.
On October 3, 1998, a joint statement
against nuclear weapons by over 60 retired
armed forces officers from Pakistan, India,
and Bangladesh was released to the press.
The Citizens' Peace Committee in Islamabad
organized an anti-nuke public seminar on
November 2, 1998, which was addressed by
retired senior armed forces officers. The
Citizens' Peace Committee, Mashal Books, and
the Sustainable Development Policy Institute
arranged a Parliamentarians-Citizens Nuclear
Dialogue on January 28, 1999 to initiate a
debate on nuclear issues. A month later, a
similar dialogue was facilitated between the
politicians and the citizens.
While these activities were gaining
momentum, the Indian prime minister, Mr
Vajpayee, visited Lahore and there were
literally only two members of this emerging
peace movement who stood up on a road
carrying a placard in support of the visit.
The rest relied on press statements. Within
months the Kargil episode came as another
setback and the peace movement lost its
force.
Now one can find isolated activists pleading
peace but the spirit of the movement has
perhaps died down. The mainstream print and
state controlled electronic media initially
undermined the activities and approach of
the peace movement and later failed to
dissect the causes of this short-lived
euphoria. However, Internet and electronic
mail generated serious debate on various
dimensions of the nuclear issue both within
and outside the country and the peace
movement is also confined to cyber space.
Zafrullah Khan is
Project Coordinator, Friedrich Naumann
Stiftung in Islamabad. He was awarded a
scholarship by Wiscomp to conduct research
for this study.
This monograph examines the projection of
official narratives and the responses from
the peace movement in urban Pakistan in the
wake of the nuclear tests in 1998. |
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