Pakistan and Weapons of Mass Destruction - History of Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons Program - Development of Nuclear Weapons

Development of Nuclear Weapons

The Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 led to Pakistan losing roughly 56,000 square miles (150,000 km2) of territory as well as losing millions of its citizens to the newly created state of Bangladesh. It was a psychological setback for Pakistanis; Pakistan had lost its geo-political, strategic, and economic influence in South-Asia. Furthermore, Pakistan had failed to gather any moral support from its key allies, the United States and the People's Republic of China. Isolated internationally, Pakistan seemed to be in great mortal danger, and quite obviously could rely on no one but itself. At United Nations Security Council meeting, Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto drew comparisons with the Treaty of Versailles which Germany was forced to sign in 1919. There, Bhutto vowed never to allow a repeat. Prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was "obsessed" with India's nuclear program, that is why Bhutto immediately came up with the idea of obtaining nuclear weapons to prevent Pakistan from signing another 'Treaty of Versailles' as it did in 1971.

In 1969, after a long negotiation, the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) signed a formal agreement to supply Pakistan with a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant capable of extracting 360g of weapons-grade plutonium annually. The PAEC selected a team five senior scientists, including geophysicist dr. Ahsan Mubarak, were sent to Sellafield to receive technical training. Later, the team under Ahsan Mubarak advised the government to not to acquire the whole reprocessing plant, but key parts important to build the weapons, while the plant would be built indigenously.

At the Multan meeting on January 20, 1972, Bhutto stated, "What Raziuddin Siddiqui, a Pakistani, contributed for the United States during the Manhattan Project, could also be done by scientists in Pakistan, for their own people." Raziuddin Siddiqui was a Pakistani theoretical physicist who, in the early 1940s, worked on both the British nuclear program and the US nuclear program. Although a few Pakistanis worked on the Manhattan Project who were also willing to return and do the same for their native Pakistan, Prime Minister Bhutto still needed to recruit and bring in other Pakistani nuclear scientists and engineers who never worked in the United States. This is where Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, a German educated metallurgical engineer, came into the picture. Some of the initial funding came from oil-rich Arab states, particularly Saudi Arabia.

In later years, some funding for the continuation of the nuclear development programme came from the large British Pakistani population. In December 1972, Science Advisor to the President, Dr. Abdus Salam had called theoretical physicists from ICTP to report of Munir Ahmad Khan, Chairman of Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission. This marked the beginning of the "Theoretical Physics Group" (TPG). Later, Pakistani theoretical physicists at Institute of Physics of Quaid-e-Azam University also joined the TPG headed by Salam. The TPG, in PAEC, was assigned to do research in the development of nuclear weapon devices, and it had directly reported to Abdus Salam. Professor Salam also had done the groundbreaking work of the "Theoretical Physics Group", which was initially headed by Salam until in 1974 when he left the country in protest. On other side, Munir Ahmad Khan began to work on indigenous development of nuclear fuel cycle and the weapons programme. Munir Ahmad Khan, with his lifelong friend Abdus Salam, had done a groundbreaking work in the nuclear development, and after Salam's departure from Pakistan, scientists and engineers who were researching under Salam, began to report to directly to Munir Ahmad Khan. In 1974, Munir Ahmad Khan, days after Operation Smiling Buddha, launched the extensive plutonium reprocessing and uranium enrichment programme, and the research facilities were expanded throughout the country.

In 1965, amidst skirmishes that led up to the Indo-Pakistan War of 1965 Zulfikar Ali Bhutto announced:

In 1983, Khan was convicted in absentia by the Court of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, for stealing the blueprints, though the conviction was overturned on a legal technicality. A.Q. Khan then established a proliferation network through Dubai to smuggle URENCO nuclear technology to Khan Research Laboratories. He then established Pakistan's gas-centrifuge program based on the URENCO's Zippe-type centrifuge.

Through the late 1970s, Pakistan's program acquired sensitive uranium enrichment technology and expertise. The 1975 arrival of Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan considerably advanced these efforts. Dr. Khan is a German-trained metallurgist who brought with him knowledge of gas centrifuge technologies that he had through his position at the classified URENCO uranium enrichment plant in the Netherlands. He was put in charge of building, equipping and operating Pakistan's Kahuta facility, which was established in 1976. Under Khan's direction, Pakistan employed an extensive clandestine network in order to obtain the necessary materials and technology for its developing uranium enrichment capabilities.

A new directorate, known as Directorate of Technical Development (DTD) under Dr. Zaman Sheikh and Hafeez Qureshi, was established in March 1974 by Munir Ahmad Khan. The DTD was tasked to manufacture chemical explosive lenses, trigger mechanism, and tampers used in atomic weapon. The DTD was later charged with testing Pakistan's first implosion design in 1978, which was later improved and tested on 11 March 1983 when PAEC carried out Pakistan's first successful cold test of a nuclear device, codename Kirana-I. Between 1983 and 1990, PAEC carried out 24 more cold tests of various nuclear weapon designs. DTD had also manufactured a miniaturized weapon design by 1987 that could be delivered by all Pakistan Air Force fighter aircraft.

Also, Dr. Ishrat Hussain Usmani’s contribution to the nuclear energy programme, is also fundamental to the development of atomic energy for civilian purposes as he, with efforts led by Salam, established PINSTECH, that subsequently developed into Pakistan’s premier nuclear research institution. In addition to sending hundreds of young Pakistanis abroad for training, he laid the foundations of the Muslim world’s first nuclear power reactor KANUPP, which was inaugurated by Munir Ahmad Khan in 1972. Thus, Usmani laid solid groundwork for the civilian nuclear programme. Scientists and engineers under Munir Ahmad Khan developed the nuclear capability for Pakistan within early 1980s, and under his leadership the PAEC had carried a cold test of nuclear device at Kirana Hills, evidently made from non-weaponized plutonium. Former chairman of the PAEC, Munir Ahmad Khan was credited as one of the pioneers of Pakistan's atomic bomb by a recent study from the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), London's dossier on Pakistan's nuclear weapons program.