13-05-2025
What's the India-Pakistan civil nuclear facilities ‘non-attack' pact that has endured armed hostilities
This confidence-building measure (CBM) has endured the ups and downs in bilateral ties and over three decades of cross-border terrorism targeting India.
Among key bilateral agreements between the two countries is the 1988 India-Pakistan nuclear installation agreement, formally called the Agreement on the Prohibition of Attack Against Nuclear Installations and Facilities, under which both countries exchange the list of civil nuclear installations on 1 January every year. This year saw the 34th such exchange.
New Delhi: With India-Pakistan relations hitting the nadir after the 22 April Pahalgam terror attack, both countries are now re-evaluating existing bilateral agreements in diplomatic tit for tat. While India has put the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) in abeyance, Pakistan, on its part, says it 'shall exercise the right to hold all bilateral agreements with India including but not limited to Simla Agreement in abeyance'.
In his first address to the nation since India launched Operation Sindoor in response to the Pahalgam attack, Prime Minister Modi said Monday, 'India will not tolerate any nuclear blackmail. We have only kept in abeyance our operations against Pakistan, future will depend on their behaviour. Operation Sindoor is now India's new policy against terrorism, a new line has been drawn.' His remarks brought the 1988 agreement into focus.
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1988 agreement
Every year on 1 January, even in times of war, diplomatic chill or border skirmishes, India and Pakistan have exchanged a peculiar kind of New Year greeting—a list of each other's civilian nuclear facilities.
India has 22 nuclear installations across the country, both civilian and military. These include installations at Tarapur, Madras, Narora, Kakrapar, Kaiga and Kudankulam.
Pakistan entered the ranks of declared nuclear powers on 28 May, 1998, with five simultaneous underground nuclear tests at Chagai Hills in Ras Koh region of Balochistan. This was seen as a direct response to nuclear tests by India in Pokhran earlier that month.
The 1 January exchange is part of the 1988 India-Pakistan Agreement on the Prohibition of Attack Against Nuclear Installations and Facilities, or simply the Non-Attack Agreement (NAA), which is a bilateral accord that, in effect, implements the intent of Articles 56 and 15 of the First and Second Protocols of the Geneva Conventions.
These provisions say that installations containing dangerous forces such as dams, dykes, and nuclear power plants must not be targeted, even if they are considered military objectives, if such an attack could release harmful forces and cause significant civilian casualties.
Signed in 1988 and brought into force in early 1991, NAA commits the two nuclear-armed neighbours to abstain from attacking each other's civilian nuclear facilities. It requires an annual exchange of the exact locations by latitude and longitude of power plants, enrichment labs, isotope separation units, and any site holding a significant quantity of radioactive material.
The goal is to avoid triggering a nuclear catastrophe. However, the agreement does not mandate detailed disclosures about the nature or activities of these facilities.
Under the agreement, 'nuclear installations or facilities' are defined as nuclear power and research reactors, fuel fabrication units, uranium enrichment and isotope separation plants, reprocessing facilities, and any other sites containing fresh or spent nuclear fuel or substantial quantities of radioactive materials.
While this exchange has occurred consistently every year, the criteria for what constitutes a 'nuclear facility' remain vaguely defined, and the agreement includes no formal mechanisms to verify compliance, according to a July 2024 report by the Iowa-based non-profit Stanley Centre for Peace and Security.
Despite its significance, the NAA has received little recognition in global nuclear policy discussions and is rarely cited as a model for broader nuclear risk reduction or safety frameworks, the report further states.
India has repeatedly proposed expanding the agreement to include a pledge not to target civilian and economic infrastructure, but Pakistan has consistently rejected such proposals.
Moreover, India's draft nuclear doctrine emphasises deterrence through the threat of inflicting 'unacceptable damage'. However, India has a No-First Use Policy.
The draft doctrine was formalised in 2003.
How the agreement came into effect
According to the 2024 report by Stanley Centre, in 1981, Israel shocked the world with a preemptive airstrike on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor. For Pakistan, the attack was a wake-up call post 1971. Rumors of an Indo-Israeli plan to target Pakistan's Kahuta nuclear facility in the 1980s only deepened Islamabad's paranoia, the 2024 report mentions.
India, on its part, too had reasons to worry, the report says. Its growing civilian nuclear infrastructure, which included power reactors and research labs, was vulnerable to preemptive strikes. With both countries inching toward nuclear capability, the risk of miscalculation or a deliberate strike on nuclear infrastructure became too dangerous to ignore.
Negotiations began. And despite their deeply antagonistic relationship shaped by wars, espionage, and endless disputes over Kashmir, India and Pakistan found common ground: the mutual recognition that some targets should be off-limits, even during wars.
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'A symbolic measure'
In practice, the agreement is largely symbolic. There's no provision for verifying whether the lists exchanged each year are comprehensive. And yet, both countries participate quietly and consistently. The lists arrive, the coordinates are updated, and the agreement, year after year, is silently reaffirmed.
The NAA came to focus in 2022 as Russian forces shelled the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, the first direct military strike on a working nuclear facility in history, and the world took notice, according to the report.
Suddenly, a 30-year-old South Asian agreement, long considered an artefact of localised tensions, began to look like a model.
While the NAA lacks verification mechanisms and offers limited transparency about the full scope of nuclear facilities, its resilience and consistent implementation highlight its symbolic and practical value. Proposals to expand the agreement's scope for example, to include critical infrastructure like dams or to address terrorist threats, risk undermining its simplicity and reliability. The NAA emerged from a context of regional and global concerns over nuclear security, particularly after Israel's 1981 attack on Iraq's Osirak reactor.
It aligns with broader international legal norms, including the Geneva Conventions and arms control treaties like the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union, and the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material.
(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)
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