The Longest August

by Dilip Hiro

  6. Manish Chand, “40 Years Later, Shimla Accord Haunts India-Pakistan Ties,” South Asia Monitor, July 1, 2012.

  7. “Simla Agreement, July 2, 1972,” http://www.jammu-kashmir.com/documents/simla.html.

  8. Ab Qayoom Khan, “Sheikh Abdullah: A Political Sufferer-II,” Kashmir Observer, September 10, 2012.

  9. Dilip Hiro, Inside India Today (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976 / New York: Monthly Review Press, 1977), 254.

  10. Cited in Dorothy Norman, ed., The First Sixty Years: Presenting in His Own Words the Development of the Political Thought of Jawaharlal Nehru and the Background Against Which It Evolved (London: Bodley Head, 1965), 186.

  11. Both suppliers had stipulated that CIRUS was to be used only for peaceful purposes.

  12. See Chapter 9, p. 188.

  13. Levy and Scott-Clark, Deception, 30.

  14. “Nuclear Technology 1970–1974,” Bhutto.org, 2014, http://www.bhutto.org/article21.php.

  15. Ahmadis are the followers of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835–1908), born in the village of Qadian in Punjab. Their belief that Ahmad is the Messiah in succession to Lord Krishna, Jesus Christ, and the Prophet Muhammad contradicts mainstream Muslims’ tenet that Muhammad is the last and final prophet. They formed 2.3 percent of Pakistan’s population.

  16. Christina Lamb, Waiting for Allah: Pakistan’s Struggle for Democracy (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1991), 84.

  17. Levy and Scott-Clark, Deception, 62.

  18. Apparently, URENCO stands for uranium (UR) enrichment (EN) company (CO). In 2013, it was the globe’s second largest vendor of nuclear fuel, selling its products to fifty countries.

  19. Levy and Scott-Clark, Deception, 60, citing Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, If I Am Assassinated (Delhi: Vikas, 1979), 138.

  Chapter 12: Islamist Zia ul Haq, Builder of the A-Bomb

  1. When Muhammad Zia ul Haq visited his alma mater in Delhi in 1983, he was shown his application to the principal for leave. He had misspelled his name as “Zai ul-Haq.” “Glimpses of St. Stephen’s College,” St. Stephen’s College, http://www.ststephens.edu/archives/history2.htm.

  2. Cited in Shahid Javed Burki and Craig Baxter, eds., Pakistan Under The Military: Eleven Years of Zia Ul-Haq (Boulder: Westview, 1991), 5.

  3. Cited in Josy Joseph, “MEA Totally Misread General Zia-ul-Haq’s Intentions After Coup, Show Declassified Papers,” Times of India, November 7, 2011.

  4. Protesting against Britain’s recognition of Bangladesh, Pakistani president Zulfikar Ali Bhutto withdrew Pakistan from the Commonwealth. Pakistan’s later application for readmission to the Commonwealth was accepted in 1988. Among Commonwealth members, diplomatic mission heads are called high commissioners instead of ambassadors.

  5. Cited in Joseph, “MEA Totally Misread General Zia-ul-Haq’s Intentions.”

  6. Robert Hutchinson, Weapons of Mass Destruction: The No-Nonsense Guide to Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Weapons Today (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2003), 112.

  7. B. Raman, Kaoboys of R&AW: Down Memory Lane (New Delhi: Lancer, 2008), 113.

  8. Nuclear reprocessing technology was developed to separate and recover fissionable plutonium from irradiated nuclear fuel. Initially, reprocessing was used to extract plutonium for producing nuclear weapons. Later, reprocessed plutonium was alternatively recycled back into MOX nuclear fuel for thermal reactors.

  9. Dilip Hiro, Apocalyptic Realm: Jihadists in South Asia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 58.

  10. Ardeshir Cowasjee, “A Re-Cap of Soviet–Pakistan Relations,” Dawn (Karachi), December 3, 2011.

  11. Meeting President Nur Muhammad Taraki in the capital city of Kabul would have implied de facto recognition of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, which Zia ul Haq was unwilling to do.

  12. General Khalid Mahmud Arif, Working with Zia: Pakistan Power Politics 1977–1988 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 307.

  13. Dilip Hiro, War Without End: The Rise of Islamist Terrorism and Global Response (London: Routledge, 2002), 211.

  14. In practice, only the penalties involving lashing were implemented.

  15. In June 1980, BBC TV’s documentary Project 706: The Islamic Bomb provided the fullest account of Pakistan’s uranium enrichment program.

  16. A separate arrangement was made for Pakistan’s purchase of forty versatile F-16 fighter aircraft manufactured in the United States, much to Delhi’s alarm.

  17. Hiro, Apocalyptic Realm, 322n23; “Pakistan Nuclear Weapons,” Global Security, n.d., http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/pakistan/nuke.htm.

  18. V. D. Chopra, ed., Significance of Indo-Russian Relations in the 21st Century (New Delhi: Kalpaz, 2008), 85.

  19. William K. Stevens, “Pakistan’s Leader to Confer in India,” New York Times, October 31, 1982.

  20. Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark, Deception: Pakistan, the United States and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons (New York: Walker & Company, 2007), 104.

  21. “Pakistan Nuclear Weapons—A Chronology,” Federation of American Scientists, June 3, 1998, http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/pakistan/nuke/chron.htm.

  22. Levy and Scott-Clark, Deception, 104–105.

  23. Hiro, Apocalyptic Realm, 122.

  24. Levy and Scott-Clark, Deception, 105–106.

  25. Ibid., 106.

  26. Ibid., 105; see also “Adrian Levy Interview with Amy Goodman,” Democracy Now!, November 19, 2007.

  27. Stephen Zunes, “Pakistan’s Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (1981–1984),” Non­violent Conflict, 2009, http://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/index.php/movements-and-campaigns /movements-and-campaigns-summaries?sobi2Task=sobi2Details&sobi2Id=24.

  28. Suranjan Das, Kashmir and Sindh: Nation-Building, Ethnicity and Regional Politics in South Asia (New Delhi: Anthem, 2001), 144.

  29. Partha Sarathy Ghosh, Cooperation and Conflict in South Asia (Chennai: Technical Publications, 1989), 42.

  30. Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale was the leader of the Damdami Taksal, a fundamentalist sect within Sikhism.

  31. In one of his speeches Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi admitted to having lost more than 700 soldiers in Operation Blue Star. On October 31, 2009, CNN-IBN reported the army losing 365 commandos.

  32. Khushwant Singh, A History of the Sikhs, Volume II: 1839–2004, 2nd ed. (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012), 364.

  33. Marc Kaufman, “India Blames Pakistan in Sikh Conflict,” Philadelphia Inquirer, June 19, 1988.

  34. Indira Gandhi and P. V. Narasimha Rao, “Debate on the White Paper on the Punjab Agitation, Monsoon Session of Parliament, 1984: Interventions by Prime Minister and Home Minister,” Ministry of External Affairs, 1984.

  35. Singh, A History of the Sikhs, Volume II, 378.

  36. Reginald Massey, “Khushwant Singh Obituary,” Guardian (London), March 20, 2014.

  37. The elections in Punjab and Assam, then under emergency, were held almost a year later.

  38. According to Milton Beardon of the CIA, by the time the Soviets left Afghanistan in early 1989, the CIA had spent $6 billion and Saudi Arabia $4 billion. Cited by Stephen Kinzer, “How We Helped Create the Afghan Crisis,” Boston Globe, March 20, 2009.

  39. Stephen R. Wilson, “India and Pakistan Pledge Not to Destroy Each Other’s Nuclear Plants,” Associated Press, December 17, 1985.

  40. Ibid.

  41. Because of their black uniforms, the commandos of the National Security Guards were popularly called Black Cats.

  42. Hiro, War Without End, 220.

  43. Abdul Sattar, Pakistan’s Foreign Policy, 1947–2005: A Concise History (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2007), 194, 195.

  44. J. Bandhopadhyay, The Making of India’s Foreign Policy (New Delhi: Allied, 1991), 272.

  45. Levy and Scott-Clark, Deception, 151.

  46. Shafik H. Hashmi, “The Nuc
lear Danger in South Asia,” citing the Atlantic, November 2005, 82, http://www.cssforum.com.pk/css-compulsory-subjects/current-affairs/3803-nuclear-danger-south-asia .html.

  47. Cited in Levy and Scott-Clark, Deception, 151. The Observer paid Kuldip Nayar a miserly £350 ($500) for his sensational exclusive story.

  48. Levy and Scott-Clark, Deception, 152.

  49. Steven R. Weisman, “On India’s Border, a Huge Mock War,” New York Times, March 5, 1988.

  50. Terry Atlas, “Terror Attacks on U.S. Down Sharply in 1987,” Chicago Tribune, January 18, 1988.

  51. Ravi Shankar, “Spy Wars,” New Indian Express, May 16, 2012.

  52. In December 2006, a court in New York convicted Khalid Awan, a Pakistani national, of providing money and financial services to the Khalistan Commando Force chief Paramjit Singh Panjwar in Pakistan. “Pakistani Convicted for Financing Sikh Militant Group,” Rediff News (Mumbai), December 21, 2006.

  53. Marc Kaufman, “In the Punjab’s Golden Temple, Sikh Militants Rule Once More,” Philadelphia Inquirer, February 12, 1988.

  54. Anant Mathur, “Secrets of COIN Success: Lessons from the Punjab Campaign,” Faultlines 20 (January 2011).

  55. Kaufman, “Punjab’s Golden Temple.”

  56. Kaufman, “India Blames Pakistan.”

  57. Barbara Crossette, “Who Killed Zia?” World Policy Journal 22, no. 3 (Fall 2005).

  58. Cited in Edward Jay Epstein, “Who Killed Zia?,” Vanity Fair, September 1989.

  59. Epstein, “Who Killed Zia?”

  60. Crossette, “Who Killed Zia?”

  61. Epstein, “Who Killed Zia?”

  62. Fatima Bhutto, Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter’s Memoir (London: Jonathan Cape, 2010 / New York: Nation Books, 2010), 281.

  63. Cited in Epstein, “Who Killed Zia?”

  64. Crossette, “Who Killed Zia?”

  65. Bhutto, Songs of Blood and Sword, 282.

  66. Robert D. Kaplan, “How Zia’s Death Helped the US,” New York Times, August 23, 1989.

  67. Crossette, “Who Killed Zia?”

  68. Ibid.

  69. Atul Sethi, “20 Years On, Zia’s Death Still a Mystery,” Times of India, August 17, 2008, citing Edward Jay Epstein on the twentieth anniversary of Zia ul Haq’s assassination.

  70. A Case of Exploding Mangoes was long-listed for the prestigious Booker Prize in Britain in 2008.

  Chapter 13: Rajiv-Benazir Rapport—Cut Short

  1. Cited in “Benazir Bhutto: Oxford Party Girl Cursed by Blood-Soaked Family Dynasty,” Daily Mail (London), December 28, 2007.

  2. G. Parthasarathy, “Rumblings in Pakistan: Zardari Is Indeed on a Slippery Slope,” Tribune (Chandigarh, India), October 2, 2008.

  3. Unlike the bygone years, when Muhammad Yusuf Khan had to change his name to Dilip Kumar, a Hindu name, to win popular accolade, none of the latter-day Khans had felt the need to do so. This was a measure of how secularism was taking root in India, with most Indians regarding religion as a strictly personal matter with no professional or political implication.

  4. Meena Gopal, “Benazir Bhutto Riposte: ‘I Kept My Word, Rajiv Didn’t,’” Outlook India, December 31, 2007.

  5. Cited in Madhu Jain, “French Leave: Rajiv Gandhi Embarks on Giddy Five-Day Three-Nation Tour,” India Today, August 15, 1989.

  6. “Editorial: The Brothers Hinduja and the Bofors Scandal,” Frontline (Chennai), October 28–November 10, 2000.

  7. The Hindu was edited by Narasimha Ram, a graduate of Columbia University’s School of Journalism in New York.

  8. In 2012 the Supreme Court ruled that Ishaq Khan, General Aslam Beg, and Lieutenant General Asad Durrani, the ISI chief, had conspired to provide financial assistance to the IJI. See “Asghar Khan Short Order, Full Text,” Express Tribune (Karachi), October 19, 2012; and Husain Haqqani, Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2005), 248.

  9. Cited in Haqqani, Pakistan, 294.

  10. Haqqani, Pakistan, 296.

  11. Barbara Crossette, “Assassination in India: A Blast, and Then the Wailing Started,” New York Times, May 21, 1991.

  12. Most of her twenty-six coplotters were sentenced to death by the trial court seven years later. Upon appeal, in January 2014 the Supreme Court commuted the capital punishment sentences of fifteen of them to life imprisonment. The next month it did the same in the case of three others. “Rajiv Gandhi Murder: India Court Suspends Plotters’ Release,” BBC News, February 20, 2014.

  13. Shekhar Gupta, “India in the Dock: Babri Masjid Demolition 1992: How the World Reacted,” India Today, December 5, 2011.

  14. “Pakistanis Attack 30 Hindu Temples,” New York Times, December 8, 1992.

  15. Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark, Deception: Pakistan, the United States and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons (New York: Walker & Company, 2007), 240.

  16. Harinder Baweja, “Get America Out of the Way and We’ll Be OK,” Tehelka, February 2, 2008.

  17. “The RAW: Understanding India’s External Intelligence Agency,” Indian Defence Forum, September 29, 2009, http://defenceforumindia.com/forum/defence-strategic-issues/5670-raw-understanding-indias-external-intelligence-agency.html.

  18. Hamish Telford, “Counter-Insurgency in India: Observations from Punjab and Kashmir,” Journal of Conflict Studies 21, no. 1 (Spring 2001).

  19. Victoria Schofield, Kashmir in Conflict: India, Pakistan and the Unending War, rev. ed. (London: I. B. Tauris, 2003), 172.

  20. The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) was first passed in 1958 to cover the “disturbed” areas in northeast India. It still remains in force there.

  21. Jason Burke, “Indian Officers Named in Report on Kashmir Abuses,” Guardian (London), December 6, 2012.

  22. Basharat Peer, Curfewed Night (Noida: Random House India, 2009) / Curfewed Night: One Kashmiri Journalist’s Frontline Account of Life, Love, and War in His Homeland (New York: Scribner, 2010) / Curfewed Night: A Frontline Memoir of Life, Love and War in Kashmir (London: Harper, 2010), 143.

  23. Dilip Hiro, Apocalyptic Realm: Jihadists in South Asia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 103.

  24. Schofield, Kashmir in Conflict, 176, 177, 183.

  25. Hiro, Apocalyptic Realm, 104.

  26. Cited in Schofield, Kashmir in Conflict, 194.

  27. Levy and Scott-Clark, Deception, 255–256.

  28. “Pakistan Against Forces of Extremism: PM,” Dawn (Karachi), April 6, 1995.

  29. Cited by A. G. Noorani, “The Truth About the Lahore Summit,” Frontline (Chennai), February 16–March 1, 2002.

  30. Ibid.

  31. “Pakistan Nuclear Weapons—A Chronology,” Federation of American Scientists, June 3, 1998, https://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/pakistan/nuke/chron.htm.

  Chapter 14: Gate-Crashing the Nuclear Club

  1. Every year, at a grand ceremony, each recruit of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh made his donation to the leader of his branch.

  2. “‘The Sangh Is My Soul,’ Writes Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the First Swayamsevak Who Became Prime Minister,” Samvada, December 24, 2012, http://samvada.org/2012/news/the-sangh-is-my-soul -writes-atal-bihari-vajpayee-the-first-swayamsevak-who-became-pm.

  3. Carey Sublette, “India’s Nuclear Weapons Program: The Momentum Builds: 1989–1998,” Nuclear Weapon Archive, March 30, 2001, http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/India/IndiaMomentum.html.

  4. T. V. Paul, “The Systemic Bases of India’s Challenge to the Global Nuclear Order,” Nonproliferation Review (Fall 1998).

  5. Cited in ibid.

  6. Cited in Sublette, “India’s Nuclear Weapons Program.”

  7. See Chapter 11, p. 222.

  8. “Weapons of Peace: How the CIA Was Fooled,” India Today, May 17, 1999.

  9. “On This Day, 11 May
1998: India Explodes Nuclear Controversy,” BBC News, 2003.

  10. Tim Weiner, “Nuclear Anxiety: The Blunders: US Blundered on Intelligence, Officials Admit,” New York Times, May 13, 1998.

  11. Cited in Reem Siddiqi, “Nuclear Arms in India: A Weapon for Political Gain,” Monitor: Journal of International Studies 7, no. 1 (Fall 2000).

  12. Thomas Blom Hansen, The Saffron Wave: Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 3. A few opinion polls showed 92 percent favoring India going nuclear. “India Focus: Strategic Analysis and Forecast,” India Focus: Strategic Analysis and Forecasts, May 1998, http://www.indiastrategy.com/may98.htm.

  13. John F. Burns, “Nuclear Anxiety: The Overview: Pakistan, Answering India, Carries out Nuclear Test’; Clinton’s Appeal Rejected,” New York Times, May 29, 2013.

  14. Rai Muhammad Saleh Azam, “When Mountains Move—The Story of Chagai,” Defence Journal, June 2000.

  15. In a cold test, a nuclear bomb is triggered without the fissile material required to detonate it.

  16. Carey Sublette, “Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons Program: 1998: The Year of Testing,” Nuclear Weapon Archive, September 10, 2001, http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Pakistan/PakTests.html.

  17. “US Offered $5 Bn to Refrain from Nuclear Tests: Nawaz Sharif,” Times of India, May 28, 2010.

  18. Sublette, “Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons Program.”

  19. Raj Chengappa and Zahid Hussain, “Bang for Bang: Pokhran Tests Fallout,” India Today, June 8, 1998.

  20. Christopher Walker and Michael Evans, “Pakistan Feared Israeli Raid: Missiles Were Put on Alert to Counter Strike at Nuclear Sites,” Times (London), June 3, 1998.

  21. Cited in Sublette, “Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons Program.”

  22. Burns, “Nuclear Anxiety.”

  23. John Ward Anderson and Kamran Khan, “Pakistan Declares Intention to Use Arms in Self-Defense,” Washington Post, May 30, 1998.

  24. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (July 1998): 24.

  25. “Arms Control and Proliferation Profile: India,” Arms Control Association, July 2013, http://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/indiaprofile.

  26. Husain Haqqani, Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2005), 248, 247.