Book Review by Dr. Maleeha Lodhi (Former Envoy to the US)

Brig (retd) Feroz Khan’s soon-to-be published book tells the riveting story of the country’s quest for a nuclear capability and the challenges it faced to acquire this. It offers a fascinating portrait of the interplay between geostrategic shifts, key political and scientific figures and evolution of strategic beliefs, which shaped Pakistan’s nuclear decisions.

This insider account, from one long associated with the programme, is more than an addition to the literature, which mostly casts the Pakistani bomb in a negative light. It is the most detailed depiction of an arduous journey that reached its destination in the 1980s and 1990s. As the author recently told me, he was motivated to narrate this because of the relentless disinformation campaign directed against Pakistan’s capability. The result is a compelling tale of how it took the country twenty-five years of gruelling effort to build a strategic capability and even longer to transform that into an operational deterrent with an effective delivery system.

Khan doesn’t avoid dealing with what he characterises as the “darkest chapter of the country’s nuclear history” when the A Q Khan proliferation network was uncovered. The chapter devoted to this explains how a man revered by his compatriots turned a procurement network used to advance Pakistan’s nuclear programme into an export enterprise that brought the country infamy from which it is still to recover. Although the chapter brings new facts to light, they are no more shocking than the network’s discovery in 2004. They mainly pertain to how A Q Khan used the prime minister’s office – even after he was removed from his organisation for engaging in suspicious activity by General Pervez Musharraf – to write to the ruler of another country in pursuit of proliferation activities. This agonising episode spurred Pakistan into improving its command and control system and establishing robust personnel reliability mechanisms.

The book’s central concern however is not proliferation. It is to explain how and why Pakistan surmounted numerous obstacles to master the nuclear fuel cycle, pursuing both the uranium enrichment and plutonium route, especially after 1974 when the international nonproliferation regime tried to stop – and punish – Pakistan for India’s nuclear explosion. The book’s core thesis is that the more the US-led international community pressured, sanctioned and denied Pakistan access to technology, the more this galvanised national resolve and accelerated the programme.

In demystifying this quest Khan explodes several myths popularised by outsiders especially about the nuclear programme being ‘stolen’ from the West or ‘enabled’ by China. This he says trivialises the indigenous contribution of Pakistan’s scientists. Technical help from China was only sought when there was an impasse. He credits the acquisition of nuclear capability not to one person but to the collective determination of hundreds of people in the civil-military establishment, but above all, the scientific community who believed in achieving nuclear self-sufficiency. This pursuit was backed by a rare national consensus. This survived changes of government and domestic turmoil that punctuated Pakistan’s political history. Khan also describes the epic rivalry between two key nuclear institutions: the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission and what later became Khan Research Laboratories. While endemic professional jealousy slowed the nuclear endeavour, it also spurred innovation that produced eventual success. Some leaders even encouraged the ‘clash of the Khans’- A Q and Munir Ahmed Khan, who headed the PAEC.

In tracking the early history, the author casts Ayub Khan as a cautious leader who kept the programme focused on peaceful pursuits and tried to curb the ambition of the nuclear lobby, led by Bhutto, Agha Shahi, and Aziz Ahmed. The split between these two camps “drove Pakistan’s policy choices”. The rise and fall of Ayub and Bhutto and two top scientists, Dr Abdus Salam and Dr Ishrat Usmani determined the country’s nuclear journey.

1971 and the ‘never again’ paradigm that emerged after defeat and dismemberment proved pivotal in the decision to build the bomb. “Pakistan’s humiliation would lay the foundation for a shift in the once peaceful nature of the nuclear programme”, writes Khan. The 1971 debacle and India’s 1974 nuclear test turned a minority viewpoint into consensus on the imperative of acquiring nuclear weapons. The more India’s nuclear activities were internationally tolerated the greater was Pakistan’s sense of discrimination.

What ultimately determined nuclear success was the cadre of scientists and engineers whose talent was tapped in the country’s early years and who were motivated by the resolve not to let India’s strategic advances go “unanswered”.

While Khan regards Pakistan’s nuclear journey unique in many respects – “no other nuclear power acquired a nuclear capability in the face of efforts to derail the programme” – he also points to similarities with the motivation and rationale of other nuclear powers. All sought the ‘ultimate weapon’ as a response to insecurity and ‘balancing’ against foreign military or political threats. He identifies three common themes among nuclear aspirants: national humiliation, international isolation, and national identity. They were recurrent themes in Pakistan’s case, providing the basis for its strategic perceptions.

READ MORE

Eating grass - Dr Maleeha Lodhi

Available on Amazon

I have got to read this, thanx for posting this!

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"Never stop fighting for What You Believe In!.... and never stop thinking about whether you're actually on the right side."

congrats to your dad sarem....

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SPARTANSSSS!!!!!! EAT HEARTY, FOR TONIGHT WE DINE IN HELLLLLLLL!!!!!
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thanks sir, 6 years of research finally paying off!

Hey man ur dad wrote this, good job, will try reading this.
1971 caused a fundamental shift in Pak thinking its sad ppl don't realize it/

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Interview with the author, here

"Eating Grass-The Making of the Pakistani Bomb"-- Riaz Haq Talks With Author Brig Feroz Khan on Vimeo

The author wasn't high up in 1971, but what is to realize except the incompetence of the martial law military high command? That India won't interfere while given a chance in Bangladesh when so much was in their favor on the ground less any Pakistani biases. India improved after 1965, while our lulu Kay pathay were still buying from the US?

btw, the interviewee doesn't look or speak like a Pathan. I could usually tell.

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ADMINS SUCK

1965 war was the fundamental shift, that convince bengali nationalist western pak dun care abt them, India already had a small sympathetic audience which it help foster and we were too bz with General Rani & co. Anyway main nay dhaka doobte dekh aka witness to surrender also good read.

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not sure what your point is regarding the author's ethnicity. coming back to the topic though, the author argues that every nuclear country except the US has suffered some form of national humiliation, which has triggered those to "never again" experience such suffering. For China, it was Japan's humiliation during WWII, followed by the US embarrassment in Korea. For Israel, the holocaust. For Pakistan, it was the dismemberment of the country which strengthened the country's resolve to acquire a deterrant, not so much the indo-pak conflict in 1965, the military was still against the idea of nuclear weapons at that time.

Ur Right Pak started program post 1971, that humiliating loss showed no one would come to help pak and Pak had to rely on herself. Though the nuclear research has started in 1956, compare to india which had started in 1948, I believe.

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Research in 1956 was not intended for the purpose of weapons though. It was conducted for energy development under Eisenhower's "atoms for peace" program and was backed by the IAEA in later years.

I know mate it was post 1971 when pak goes gotta have a bomb, by then India was further along by conducting 1st test in 1974 and they titled it in typically as smiling buddha, baghal main churi munh pay raam raam and indian program actually began in 1944

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I just made a point because you had mentioned that you were pashtun. As for nukes, PAEC had been established in Ayub's era, but I do think that Pakistan woke up to reality after 1971 and things accelerated after 1974.

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ADMINS SUCK

That was a very judgemental statment, specially when you have not even met the person.

I myself for example i am very fine and fluent speaker of urdu and my friends from karachi and lahore are shocked to find months afterward that i am a pathan. And they tell me ..but ..but .. you speak such a clear and good urdu - how can you be a pathan ?...you can't be !

The reason is majorthy of the pakistanis sterotype pathans with broken and crooked spoken urdu and english.

In some cases I have seen pathans to speak more posh urdu accent/style than the Islamabad or Lahore citizens themselves.

So in that case how would you tell that a person is pathan on the basis of spoken dialect?? Difficult isnt it ?


P.S Congratulations to your father, Sarem. Great work