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Time of India
30-05-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
US intel report reveals Chinese support for Pakistan's nuclear ambitions
The United States Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) has claimed in its worldwide threat assessment report for 2025that Pakistan is actively developing battlefield nuclear weapons and modernizing its nuclear arsenal, viewing India as its primary adversary. This revelation is significant considering Pakistan faced a humiliating military defeat in the recent conflict with India. Facing a punitive military response from India, Pakistan requested the US to intervene and called for a ceasefire. Since India called Pakistan's nuclear bluff in this conflict, analysts are worried that Islamabad will desperately push to develop short-range tactical nuclear weapons to deter India's conventional response. It is a perilous development, which may lower Pakistan's conventional threshold with India, and it may lead to the escalation to tactical nuclear options in the next military conflict. India's nuclear policy doctrine is well explained, stating that the use of any nuclear weapon by Pakistan will lead to massive retaliation. What is clear from DIA's assessment is that the humiliated Pakistan military would jeopardize the lives of millions of people by opting for the nuclear option against India. However, it would not act against the anti-India terrorist outfits freely operating on Pakistani soil, such as Lashkar-i-Tayyaba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), among others, to avoid future conflict. The DIA report mentions the Pahalgam terrorist attack, which killed 26 unarmed tourists, and subsequently led to India's military 'Operation Sindoor' on May 7, targeting 'terrorist infrastructure' in Pakistan and Pakistan Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (PoJK). Washington understands that the Pakistan military establishment continues to use its proxy outfits to conduct cross-border terrorist attacks in India and jeopardize the peace and stability in the region. It is ironic that on the one hand, Pakistan's intelligence agencies are openly supporting terror activities in neighboring countries like India, Afghanistan, and Iran, while on the other hand, it is failing to handle local armed insurgencies in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The DIA report claims that Pakistan's military focuses on 'cross-border skirmishes' with regional neighbors (notably India), counterterrorism operations, and addressing rising attacks by groups like Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Baloch nationalist militants. Despite these efforts, over 2,500 people were killed in militant attacks in Pakistan in 2024. Furthermore, the Pakistan army is conducting regular drone strikes on its citizens in the tribal areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. These strikes have resulted in several civilian casualties, mostly women and children. The violent marginalization and killings of ethnic minorities like Pashtuns and Baloch have only led to more internal instability in Pakistan. Under Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir's 'hard state' policy, incidents of extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, and illegal imprisonment of local activists, journalists, and non-Punjabi political representatives have increased substantially. There is not a single day when these oppressed ethnic minorities do not see violence and state forced suppression of their basic human right of peaceful existence. The DIA brings out this hypocrisy or 'double game' of the Pakistani military establishment in their recent assessment. More importantly, it also highlights China's substantialeconomic and military support to Pakistan, including foreign materials and technology for Pakistan's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs. While the report claims that regular terrorist attacks on Chinese citizens, especially those working on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), have strained relations between the two countries, Beijing's continued strategic and operational support for Islamabad remains intact. For example, the recent Indo-Pak conflict highlighted Pakistan's use of Chinese-origin combat jets (JF-17, J-10C) and PL-15 missiles. Although those weapons proved mostly inconsequential and caused significant international embarrassment for China, there are no indications that Sino-Pakistani military relations will be affected long-term. Reports indicate that Pakistan is begging for emergency procurement of Chinese weapons, including the fifth-generation J-35A stealth fighter jet and air defense systems, to avoid future military defeat against India. This, even though Pakistan's economy is in doldrums, and it nearly lost USD 11 billion in the recent conflict with India. The DIA report says that the economic fragility in Pakistan persists, with a USD 350 billion economy under strain, though a USD 7 billion IMF loan program in 2024 offers some relief. As Pakistan desperately tries to import the so-called 'state-of-the-art' defense equipment from multiple countries, how it will afford them remains a big question. It has already missed the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) projections for the year 2025 by one per cent; there are no positive indications for the country's future economic growth. Additionally, Pakistan is witnessing several internal protests against the price rise of essential food and energy items, water scarcity, inter-provincial tensions, and suppression of political rights. The country is now under complete military control after Munir's unprecedented promotion to the Field Marshal rank following embarrassing setbacks during Operation Bunyanum Marsoos. A significant portion of this year's budget will likely be allocated to defense purchases, thereby jeopardizing civilian needs and the financial rights of the provinces. Moreover, as the DIA report claims, Pakistan is actively developing battlefield nuclear weapons, which will require the urgent procurement of fissile materials, costing immensely to the country's dwindling economy. U.S. intelligence documents, including DIA assessments, have long expressed unease about Pakistan's nuclear program. A 2013 report highlighted uncertainties in tracking nuclear materials, with the DIA establishing a Pakistan WMD Analysis Cell to monitor movements. The focus was on gaps in understanding Pakistan's nuclear security and procurement of WMD-applicable goods, often from China. This aligns with the 2025 report's emphasis on Pakistan's nuclear modernization and reliance on foreign suppliers. It will further increase Islamabad's dependence on Beijing, making it more vulnerable to Chinese strategic demands in the Indo-Pacific region, thereby hurting American interests. The report shows continuity in DIA's concerns about Pakistan's dangerous nuclear ambitions, its unabated 'good' versus 'bad' terrorist strategy, and strategic alignment with China, all while viewing India as an 'existential' threat. All these issues will formulate Pakistan's military policy, which may lead to more instability and armed conflicts in the Indian subcontinent.
Business Recorder
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Business Recorder
Back from the brink
Pakistan and India have managed to break out of the escalatory cycle that began on the night of May 6-7, 2025 after India retaliated with cross-border attacks on Pakistan in response to the Pahalgam, Indian-Held Kashmir, incident in which 26 Indian tourists were killed by gunmen. India accused Pakistan of being behind the attack, claimed by a hitherto unknown breakaway group of the Lashkar-i-Tayyaba calling itself Kashmir Liberation. The Pakistani response to the Indian attacks on May6-7 surprised India and the world by their effectiveness. The crowning prize was Pakistan's downing of five Indian fighters, including three state-of-the-art Rafale jets. Tit-for-tat exchanges from the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir across the length and breadth of both countries seem to have ended in Pakistani successes. Air, missile and drone components were used by both sides. It was this writer's view when hostilities broke out that the danger of retaliatory attacks by both countries risked escalating into an all-out war with the looming overhang of an unthinkable nuclear exchange, which has the potential not only of wiping out millions in both countries, but whose effects would be felt in the region and even the entire globe, such is the megaton capability of both countries' nuclear arsenals. During the Cold War, the average flying time of a missile between the Soviet Union and the US was 30 minutes. Despite sophisticated fail-safe systems in place on both sides, they came within a hair's breadth of a nuclear holocaust innumerable times because of technical failures or human error. The average flying time of a missile between Pakistan and India is three minutes. The degree of preventive fail-safe systems is nowhere near what the superpowers possessed. That implies that any technical or human error could unleash a nuclear Armageddon because of the paucity of reaction time. Given this danger, it was my view that the world powers would not allow things to go beyond an unacceptable limit. Lo and behold, in deft secret diplomacy, the Trump administration managed to persuade both Pakistan and India to cease and desist in favour of a ceasefire. Despite some violations, this precarious ceasefire appears to be holding. Washington also revealed that President Trump would get involved in efforts to resolve the long festering Kashmir issue. Also, that Pakistan and India would soon open a long suspended dialogue on neutral soil. Meantime, at the time of writing these lines, the expected talks between the DGMOs of both sides were still to start, having been delayed more than once from their noon schedule. The interesting question remains why has this sequence of events transpired now? A suggested explanation could be that after the reversal of Indian-Held Kashmir's autonomy under Article 370 in 2019, the Indian army's unremitting repression had pushed back the Kashmir liberation struggle. Modi's government trumpeted the return of 'normalcy' in Indian-Held Kashmir, encouraging tourism, the mainstay of Indian-Held Kashmir's economy. Kashmir Liberation's strike at tourism in Pahalgam then makes sense as an attempt to disrupt and roll back tourism and expose the Modi government's claims of restored normalcy. Since 2019, starting with the Indian aerial incursion into Azad Jammu & Kashmir, Modi's government seems bent on enhanced retaliation against Pakistan for any action by Kashmir liberation fighters. The dangers in this approach have been outlined above. There will be time of course to examine and reassess the changed nature of even limited modern warfare. Technology has enabled fighting from a distance, with the possibility that the protagonists may not even catch sight of each other, except perhaps as digital signatures. While military targets will always be first choice, the chances of collateral civilian casualties have been enhanced by the reach and lethality of today's 'fire and forget' weapons. While Pakistan's has been a well-coordinated three services (land, air and sea) effort, the world and its military experts will no doubt be burning the midnight oil for some time to understand and explicate the implications of this sharp, mercifully short exchange between two nuclear weapons armed neighbours. Let us also hope that Pakistan and India, having drawn back from the brink, thanks to US intervention (again), will now act wisely, conduct a meaningful dialogue and recognise that war is neither the answer nor can yield wresting of each countries' Kashmir area of control from the other. As even the saboteur of the 1999 Vajpayee-Nawaz rapprochement and architect of the Kargil war General Musharraf realized when in power, there is no alternative to a compromise over Kashmir that will not change borders but will allow divided Kashmiri families on both sides to meet, trade to flourish across the LoC, and pave the way for gradual, incremental demilitarisation of the area. Much as the principle of the right of self-determination for the Kashmiri people still rests cherished in our hearts, realism must now overcome emotionalism and a peaceful resolution of this bleeding wound be sought for and if achieved, adhered to. Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
