Pokhran II Anniversary - no cause for celebration?

Very often, new governments refuse to accept or reverse policies instituted by the previous regime. But its probably an India-special that we turn everything 180 degrees. The UPA Government has had a special penchant for this... and where the policies worked, they commandeered them by doing the thing they do best- giving them a Gandhi name. Family first, Patriotism and national welfare comes later.

Now, as we approach a decade of one of the Nation's greatest achievements , the Pokhran-II Nuclear tests (May 11 and 13, 1998), the UPA policy seems to be disgustingly clear - reject it! The UPA government has decided not to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the tests. And to explain why, Minister of State for Defence, Pallam Raju had this to say in an interview with CNN-IBN's Rajdeep Sardesai:

CNN-IBN Report

'Pokhran brought sanctions, so why celebrate it'

The Atal Bihari Vajpayee government conducted five nuclear tests from May 11 to May 13, 1998, in Pokhran and in a few days it will be the 10th anniversary of the tests that announced India's entry into the nuclear weapons club. Many believe that those tests finally led to the Indo-US nuclear deal but the UPA government has decided not to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the tests.

Minister of State for Defence Pallam Raju defended the United Progressive Alliance government's decision of not celebrating the 10th anniversary of Pokhran II nuclear tests.

CNN-IBN: Why would you not do a public celebration or a commemoration of Pokhran II?

Pallam Raju: First of all thank you very much for having me on this programme. I think when we you are talking about India's nuclear programme we have every reason to be proud of what we have achieved. And I think being proud of the programme in itself is a reason for celebration. I don't see any further reason to celebrate a detonation.

CNN-IBN: Mr Raju, you may call it a detonation, but the truth is with the Shakti tests India declared itself a nuclear power. The day has great significance and there is much reason to be proud of Pokhran in India's strategic programme.

Pallam Raju: Let's look at what Pokhran has achieved for India. Of course it has demonstrated the capability India has had. But the detrimental effects - sanctions have affected most of our strategic program that were of importance to the nation. So I don't see any reason why it should be advertise loudly about.

CNN-IBN: Many would say you are speaking this way because of a clear nuclear deal shadow. Many of the clauses in the Indo-US nuclear deal are after all nothing but a result of Pokhran II. And that's why perhaps there is a slight discomfort celebrating it. What would the non-proliferation lobby would say?

Pallam Raju: Looking at policies that India has pursued in terms of being a non-first user, all that speaks about the deterrence policy we follow. And being a very responsible nuclear power and we have not proliferated and India's nuclear record peaks for it's responsible behaviour.

CNN-IBN: Final question, it's not just about Pokhran. It's about the 1971 victory that you celebrate and the Kargil victory, which you don't. The BJP today says they agree Indira Gandhi started it and the NDA took the next step with Pokhran II.

Pallam Raju: We had the bomb ready and the NDA blasted it in 1998. So what has happened after the blast you know the consequences the country had to face? You know the sanctions that were imposed. Every important programme of the country suffered as a consequence. Against this background, is this the reason for celebration? We know what we are, we are conscience of our capabilities, we know the strengths we posses. What is the need to advertise for it and make a celebration of it?

Unfortunately, Sardesai didn't ask the minister the question that he should have asked - Mr Minister, are you saying that the tests were a bad thing? That would have unravelled his dhoti and shown the government's treason.

It was nauseating to see the minister denigrate our scientists and spit on all the positives that the Shakti tests achieved, just so that the Congress wouldn't give away brownie points to the NDA. Why should we celebrate the 1974 tests then?? After all, those sanctions hit us much harder than those after Pokhran-II. Why should we celebrate the creation of Bangladesh - look at the problems we face from that runt nation today?

In fact, when we celebrate so many days for idiotic reasons only because some damn fool was born with the Gandhi surname, why can't we celebrate something of substance, instead of - Sadbhavana Divas (Rajiv Gandhi's Birthday), Children's Day (Nehru's Birthday), National Integration Day (Indira Gandhi's Birthday), National Oathtaking day (Indira Gandhi's Death Anniversary).

The UPA can close its eyes to the truth, but few sensible people will deny that Pokhran-II put us on the world map, brought us to the forefront of the foreign policies of the most powerful nations in the world. The sanctions had almost no effect on our economy, and if we're able to look the world's biggest technological powers in the eye and work with them as equals, it is all thanks to the gains we made by indigenizing our military technology during those years of denial. If the government's flagship Indo-US Nuke Deal is a reality, they have to thank Shakti for that; if India has become a major power today, it is singularly thanks to Pokhran-II ; and if we're talked about as a counter to China, and wooed by all nations as a superpower, it is because of the tests. Till then, we were strong, but no one really cared; but blast a bomb, and the whole world comes running for your good graces.

But I couldn't have expected anything more from a party whose first priority seems to be their Prince Regent's performance in next year's polls. After all, these were the same guys who criticized the tests and spoke for China's interests rather than ours when we conducted them anyway. Shameful!! disgusting!!

Just so Stories- How Pakistan got its bomb

Here's a Guardian Report about how the US turned a blind eye to Pakistan's Nuclear activities, and even helped it along:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/pakistan/Story/0%2C%2C2188777%2C00.html

The man who knew too much

He was the CIA's expert on Pakistan's nuclear secrets, but Rich Barlow was thrown out and disgraced when he blew the whistle on a US cover-up. Now he's to have his day in court. Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark report

Saturday October 13, 2007
The Guardian

Rich Barlow idles outside his silver trailer on a remote campsite in Montana - itinerant and unemployed, with only his hunting dogs and a borrowed computer for company. He dips into a pouch of American Spirit tobacco to roll another cigarette. It is hard to imagine that he was once a covert operative at the CIA, the recognised, much lauded expert in the trade in Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).

He prepared briefs for Dick Cheney, when Cheney was at the Pentagon, for the upper echelons of the CIA and even for the Oval Office. But when he uncovered a political scandal - a conspiracy to enable a rogue nation to get the nuclear bomb - he found himself a marked man.

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In the late 80s, in the course of tracking down smugglers of WMD components, Barlow uncovered reams of material that related to Pakistan. It was known the Islamic Republic had been covertly striving to acquire nuclear weapons since India's explosion of a device in 1974 and the prospect terrified the west - especially given the instability of a nation that had had three military coups in less than 30 years . Straddling deep ethnic, religious and political fault-lines, it was also a country regularly rocked by inter-communal violence. "Pakistan was the kind of place where technology could slip out of control," Barlow says.

He soon discovered, however, that senior officials in government were taking quite the opposite view: they were breaking US and international non-proliferation protocols to shelter Pakistan's ambitions and even sell it banned WMD technology. In the closing years of the cold war, Pakistan was considered to have great strategic importance. It provided Washington with a springboard into neighbouring Afghanistan - a route for passing US weapons and cash to the mujahideen, who were battling to oust the Soviet army that had invaded in 1979. Barlow says, "We had to buddy-up to regimes we didn't see eye-to-eye with, but I could not believe we would actually give Pakistan the bomb.

How could any US administration set such short-term gains against the long-term safety of the world?" Next he discovered that the Pentagon was preparing to sell Pakistan jet fighters that could be used to drop a nuclear bomb.

Barlow was relentless in exposing what he saw as US complicity, and in the end he was sacked and smeared as disloyal, mad, a drunk and a philanderer. If he had been listened to, many believe Pakistan might never have got its nuclear bomb; south Asia might not have been pitched into three near-nuclear conflagrations; and the nuclear weapons programmes of Iran, Libya and North Korea - which British and American intelligence now acknowledge were all secretly enabled by Pakistan - would never have got off the ground. "None of this need have happened," Robert Gallucci, special adviser on WMD to both Clinton and George W Bush, told us. "The vanquishing of Barlow and the erasing of his case kicked off a chain of events that led to all the nuclear-tinged stand-offs we face today. Pakistan is the number one threat to the world, and if it all goes off - a nuclear bomb in a US or European city- I'm sure we will find ourselves looking in Pakistan's direction."

US aid to Pakistan tapered off when the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan. Dejected and impoverished, in 1987 Pakistan's ruling military responded by selling its nuclear hardware and know-how for cash, something that would have been obvious to all if the intelligence had been properly analysed. "But the George HW Bush administration was not looking at Pakistan," Barlow says. "It had new crises to deal with in the Persian Gulf where Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait."

As the first Gulf war came to an end with no regime change in Iraq, a group of neoconservatives led by Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, Lewis "Scooter" Libby and Donald Rumsfeld were already lobbying to finish what that campaign had started and dislodge Saddam. Even as the CIA amassed evidence showing that Pakistan, a state that sponsored Islamist terrorism and made its money by selling proscribed WMD technology, was the number one threat, they earmarked Iraq as the chief target.

When these neocons came to power in 2001, under President George W Bush, Pakistan was indemnified again, this time in return for signing up to the "war on terror". Condoleezza Rice backed the line, as did Rumsfeld, too. Pakistan, although suspected by all of them to be at the epicentre of global instability, was hailed as a friend. All energies were devoted to building up the case against Iraq.

It is only now, amid the recriminations about the war in Iraq and reassessments of where the real danger lies, that Barlow - the despised bringer of bad news about Pakistan - is finally to get a hearing. More than 20 years after this saga began, his case, filed on Capitol Hill, is coming to court later this month. His lawyers are seeking millions of dollars in compensation for Barlow as well as the reinstatement of his $80,000 a year government pension. Evidence will highlight what happened when ideologues took control of intelligence in three separate US administrations - those of Reagan, and of the two Bushes - and how a CIA analyst who would not give up his pursuit for the truth became a fall guy.

At first Barlow thought he was helping safeguard the world. "I just loved it," he says. His focus from the start was Pakistan, at the time suspected of clandestinely seeking nuclear weapons in a programme initiated by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the father of Benazir. "Everywhere I looked I kept coming up against intelligence about Pakistan's WMD programme," Barlow says. "I thought I was telling them what they needed to hear, but the White House seemed oblivious." Immersed in the minutiae of his investigations, he didn't appreciate the bigger picture: that Pakistan had, within days of Reagan's inauguration in 1981, gone from being an outcast nation that had outraged the west by hanging Bhutto to a major US ally in the proxy war in Afghanistan.

Within months Barlow was out of a job. A small band of Republican hawks, including Paul Wolfowitz, had convinced the president that America needed a new strategy against potential nuclear threats, since long-term policies such as détente and containment were not working. Reagan was urged to remilitarise, launch his Star Wars programme and neutralise ACDA. When the agency's staff was cut by one third, Barlow found himself out of Washington and stacking shelves in a food store in Connecticut, where he married his girlfriend, Cindy. He was not on hand in 1984 when intelligence reached the ACDA and the CIA that Pakistan had joined the nuclear club (the declared nuclear powers were Britain, France, the US, China and Russia) after China detonated a device on Pakistan's behalf.

Soon after, Barlow was re-employed to work as an analyst, specialising in Pakistan, at the Office of Scientific and Weapons Research (OSWR). The CIA was pursuing the Pakistan programme vigorously even though Reagan was turning a blind eye - indeed, Reagan's secretary of state, George Schultz, claimed in 1985: "We have full faith in [Pakistan's] assurance that they will not make the bomb."

Back on a government salary, Barlow, aged 31, moved to Virginia with his wife Cindy, also a CIA agent. From day one, he was given access to the most highly classified material. He learned about the workings of the vast grey global market in dual-use components - the tools and equipment that could be put to use in a nuclear weapons programme but that could also be ascribed to other domestic purposes, making the trade in them hard to spot or regulate. "There was tonnes of it and most of it was ending up in Islamabad," he says. "Pakistan had a vast network of procurers, operating all over the world." A secret nuclear facility near Islamabad, known as the Khan Research Laboratories, was being fitted out with components imported from Europe and America "under the wire". But the CIA obtained photographs. Floor plans. Bomb designs. Sensors picked up evidence of high levels of enriched uranium in the air and in the dust clinging to the lorries plying the road to the laboratories. Barlow was in his element.

However, burrowing through cables and files, he began to realise that the State Department had intelligence it was not sharing - in particular the identities of key Pakistani procurement agents, who were active in the US. Without this information, the US Commerce Department (which approved export licences) and US Customs (which enforced them) were hamstrung.

Barlow came to the conclusion that a small group of senior officials was physically aiding the Pakistan programme. "They were issuing scores of approvals for the Pakistan embassy in Washington to export hi-tech equipment that was critical for their nuclear bomb programme and that the US Commerce Department had refused to license," he says. Dismayed, he approached his boss at the CIA, Richard Kerr, the deputy director for intelligence, who summoned senior State Department officials to a meeting at CIA headquarters in Langley. Barlow recalls: "Kerr tried to do it as nicely as he could. He said he understood the State Department had to keep Pakistan on side - the State Department guaranteed it would stop working against us."

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Indo-US Nuclear Deal- Full Text

Manoj Joshi, whose blog is both interesting and eloquent, has been kind enough to trawl through the MEA's website and find the full text document of the Indo-US 123 Deal (in pdf format).

If you're interested in reading and analyzing it, you can check out the download link at http://www.savefile.com/files/946023. The file will be up for a month (more, depending upon the number of downloads).

The full text can also be found on the US State Department Website at http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2007/aug/90050.htm

While you're at it, you can also download the July 18 2005 Agreement text (pdf document) from the MEA website (Bilateral Treaties and Documents section):

Implementation of the India-United States Joint Statement of July 18, 2005: India’s Separation Plan

Bangladesh's nuclear dreams: Will India oblige?

A recent report on Zee News has stated that Bangladesh has asked for India's help in setting up a 600MW nuclear reactor in its quest to generate 1500 MW of nuclear energy to meet the current shortfall.

(the report may be found at http://www.zeenews.com/znnew/articles.asp?aid=369904&sid=SAS)

Whether it is in India's interest to oblige remains to be seen. There's the Indo-US nuclear deal that is yet to finish the marathon. The fact remains that every step that India takes will be watched very very closely by the members of the NSG, all of whom must be convinced that it is in their interest to supply India with technology and material. There is also the fact that India is not a part of the Nuclear structure. A small step like this would be quickly seized upon by the Non-proliferation ayatollahs as a sign of Indian 'nuclear proliferation'.

Then, there is the general Western mistrust of nuclear power in the hands of a muslim country. The Euro-centric world-view is a carryover from the age of Empires, and will take some time to get over. The delay and debate in making Turkey an EU member is a prime example, as is the continuing crisis in East Asia.

Yet another reason to think carefully is the pitfall of over-enthusiasm on the part of the government. Although it would appear that helping out Bangladesh would cement our influence, that may not be the case, and may be counter-productive in the long run.

The previous NDA regime did greatly improve relations between India and the world, and in a sense, helped smoothly usher India into the nuclear age, as a confident, if sometimes gawky member of the Nuclear club. However, it neglected the surrounding smaller countries that are crucial for Indian influence in the South Asian and Indian Ocean region. Problems in Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Maldives were ignored.

The UPA government has quietly repaired the bridges that had rusted during the BJP days. It has improved relations with Burma, quietly eased problem in Nepal (remember Karan Singh's trip to Kathmandu), and reiterated the warm relations with Male and Bhutan. Relations with Pakistan have been solidified. Most of these have been built on the foundations the NDA laid in the early part of its second tenure, but forgot to build upon.

Still, to assume that Bangladesh is a friend and ally would be sheer folly. A country where the leaders use the canard of Indian Imperialism and anti-Hindu rhetoric to garner votes is to be handled cautiously and pragmatically. Nuclear cooperation indicates a close relationship, which we certainly do not have.

On the contrary.

We must remember that Bangladesh is a close ally of China, which is building a port and railways, supplying weapons and aid. Pakistan's ISI has started using Dhaka as a nice launching base for operations that it is unable to do from the west. This is not Hydel or Thermal energy we are talking about. It is nuclear power, technology that can easily be misused, and something that takes years to develop. why would India give up the technology that has been developed by it and risk our painstakingly built expertise in Reactor design to espionage from Pakistan and China (a very likely possibility).

Bangladeshi stability is another worrying factor. Islamists are gaining momentum, and a disturbing trend of terrorism has taken root in Bangladesh. Persecution of Hindus is regular, established and even condoned. Then there is the matter of Support to ULFA and other NE rebel groups, which has remained a thorn on the Indian state. Massive infiltration of refugees (for want of a more appropriate term) still continues, and firing by the BDR continues.

Dhaka's repeated stonewalling of the Oil pipeline from Myanmar has also irritated New Delhi. Under all these circumstances, is it wise to offer our technology to Bangladesh to satisfy its energy needs, especially when it continues to stymie ours? Probably not.

And yet, there may be many valid and excellent reasons to go ahead and help Dhaka. If we don't supply, then China will. This project would be a great way of creating influence in the country. it would also be a nice way to validate our local designs. It might also work well as a bargaining chip. As for the above issues, there will always be the argument that India must not ignore or antagonize Bangladesh but work with it and move it away from China and Pakistan's sphere of influence. Most of the other problems can be worked out. Personally, this seems to be an acceptable preposition, albeit a risky one, with doubtful long-term benefits for us.

Can we use this opportunity to bridge our discords with Dhaka and usher in better relations? Yes, we can. But it would require us to give up some of our prejudices and previous positions, and take a leap of faith, while requiring the same of Bangladesh. For that, we must be firm.

It might work if our Policy makers ignore Gandhi and Nehruvian idealism for some hard-nosed realpolitik, and invoke Sun-Tze. We must be benevolent towards our neighbour, but it must be aware that our patience is not granted, and if angered, we will act forcefully. Unfortunately, that has rarely happened in the land where we can lose thousands to terrorism and yet only come up with a condolence note.