Its May 1998 and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif congratulates wildly cheering
citizens as the Chagai mountain trembles and goes white from multiple
nuclear explosions. He declares that Pakistan is now safe and sound
forever. Bomb makers become national heroes. School children are handed
free badges with mushroom clouds. Bomb and missile replicas are planted in
cities up and down the land. Welcome to nuclear Pakistan.

Fast-forward the video ten years. Pakistan turns into a different country,
deeply insecure and afraid for its future. Grim-faced citizens see machine
gun bunkers, soldiers crouched behind sandbags, barbed wire, and
barricaded streets. In Baluchistan and FATA, helicopter gunships and
fighter jets swarm the skies.

Today we are at war on multiple fronts. But the Bomb provides no defense.
Rather, it has helped bring us to this grievously troubled situation and
offers no way out. On this awful anniversary, it is important that we
relate the present to the past.

Some say that India forced Pakistan to test. This could indeed be true.
India lied about its “peaceful” nuclear program, India tested first, India
then hurled threats at Pakistan, India jeered as Pakistan agonized over
its response. But once Pakistan followed suit, it forgot that it had done
so reluctantly and under provocation. The Bomb immediately generated its
own dynamics.

Post-Chagai, it was a different Pakistan. A euphoric nation felt the
expected pain of international sanctions but shrugged it off. In
retrospect, the high cost of the weapons program, as well as the flight of capital are almost irrelevant. A historical accident fixed this problem:
after Pakistan’s 911 U-turn, the West rushed to fill the state’s coffers
and avert its imminent collapse.

But the gravest damage was psychological and political, not material. It
could not be undone. The official celebration of violence, and the
encouragement of public joy at successful bomb-making, proved to be the most lasting and pernicious legacy of the May 1998 nuclear tests. They
changed the national psyche. Most significantly, they changed the way in
which military and political leaders thought, spoke, and behaved.

The Bomb turned into a fantastic talisman, able to ward off all evil.
For military men, Pakistani nukes were not just a counter to Indian nukes
but also the means for neutralizing India’s larger conventional land, air,
and sea forces. For diplomats and politicians, the bomb was a sure way to
guarantee that the world would make India negotiate. Flushed with success,
the Pakistani leadership hit on what, in their view, was a brilliant
strategy for confronting India - jihad by Islamic fighters protected by
Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.

Kargil followed. This secret invasion in early January 1999, was conceived
and implemented by General Pervez Musharraf. But to blame only Musharraf -
a fashionable thing to do in these times - is to sacrifice truth for
convenience. Blinded by nuclear euphoria, there was scarcely a voice in
Pakistan against an adventure that, six months later, left over a thousand
dead and dealt the country a humiliating defeat.

But Kargil was just one consequence. More significantly, the Bomb fed a
culture of violence that eventually grew into the hydra-headed militancy
now haunting Pakistan. Some mujahideen, who felt betrayed by Pakistan’s
army and politicians, would ultimately take revenge by turning their guns
against their sponsors and trainers. The body parts spattered across
Pakistani cities by suicide bombers, Taliban-bombed schools and colleges,
or the now-frequent lynching of thieves and bandits and roasting them to
death, flow from the social acceptance of violence and brutality in
conflict situations.

Terrorism and fanaticism, not India, shall be the real threats to Pakistan
in the forseeable future. The writ of the Pakistani state has already
ceased to hold in parts of the country. Terrorists have repeatedly
targeted Pakistani army officers and soldiers, and their wives and
children. Even their fortified residential compounds are not safe.
Officers are now understandably afraid to drive in official vehicles, to
wear uniforms in public, or even to stop at traffic lights.

It was a lie that the Bomb could protect Pakistan, its people, or its
armed forces. The Bomb cannot help us recover the territory seized by the
Baitullahs and Fazlullahs. Our nukes certainly give us the ability to
destroy India - and to be destroyed in return. But that’s about it. The
much-vaunted nuclear dividend turned out to be empty.

Some might ask, didn’t the Bomb stop India from swallowing up Pakistan?
Even if India wanted to, this would be impossible. Conventional weapons,
used by Pakistan in a defensive mode, would be sufficient defence. If
mighty America could not digest Iraq, there can never be a chance for a
middling power like India to occupy Pakistan, a country four times larger
than Iraq.

Others believe that nuclear weapons earned international respect for
Pakistan. Indeed, in the aftermath of the tests, Pakistan’s stock shot up
in some Muslim countries - before it crashed. Recently, a poll carried out
by the BBC in 17 countries showed that Pakistan belongs to the five most
disliked countries in the world: Iran (54%), Israel (52%), Pakistan (50%),
United States (48%), and North Korea (44%). Nukes for popularity or
respect don’t work well either.

The Bomb was also supposed to unite all Pakistan, build a nation out of
disparate peoples. The tumultuous, officially organized, 1999 celebration
of “youm-e-takbir” across the country was supposed to do exactly this.

But the Bomb failed as national glue. Today, it is true that many in
Punjab still want the Bomb. But angry Sindhis want water and jobs, and
they blame Punjab for taking these away. The Baluch resent the fact that
the nuclear test site - now radioactive and out of bounds - is located on
Baluchistan’s soil. Many have taken up arms and demand Punjab’s army get
off their backs. The Pathans, trapped in a war between the Taliban and the
US-Pakistani armies, principally want protection against suicide bombers
as well as American Predators and the Pakistan Air Force.

How can Pakistan be made a more normal, more secure country? What can
persuade our people, and the world, that the country has a future?

The threat to Pakistan is internal. Therefore churning out more nuclear
warheads, or test-launching more missiles, or buying yet more American
F-16’s or French submarines, will not help. Pakistan’s security problems
cannot be solved by better weapons. No ill-fed, ill-educated nation can be
secure. No viable nation can deliberately discriminate between its
citizens for reasons of ethnicity, religious faith, or economic status.
Force and violence cannot summon a sense of citizenship.

The way forward lies in building a sustainable and active democracy, an
economy for peace rather than war, a federation in which provincial
grievances can be effectively resolved, and a society that respects the
rule of law.