By Mrs. Ghinwa Bhutto, Chairperson Pakistan Peoples Party (Shaheed Bhutto) 

We have no water, we have no electricity, we have no schools, we have no adequate health service but we have the bomb. A slogan I read in the Newsweek magazine in the aftermath of the Indian Pakistani nuclear testing. The Slogan was written on a white board held by an Indian young lady in front of the camera. There were similar slogans coming from the Pakistani side of the border as well. They were not as loud even though they represented how half the population felt about the testing.

 That dissentient were called traitors and Kefirs by the other camp. In some cases they were even manhandled by those who claim to represent Islam. They thought it fit to intimate other fellow human beings when our religion says that only God Al-Mighty has the right to intimidate individuals. This attitude not only does negate the very basic of Islam, it also undermines the democratic values our governments claim to rule by.

We got carried away and we exploded the bomb. An act devoid of imagination, vision and initiative. However, it will do us no good today to dwell on what we could have achieved had we chosen not to explode. The accountability of those who committed this brutal act not only in the Subcontinent, but on the whole planet, during the last one hundred years of human civilization, will be conducted by the people and by history.

Now that le fait est. accompli, we must contemplate ways to rectify our position in the world and more specifically in South Asian region.

The newly developed nuclear crisis represents a "clear and present danger" on both our populations.

We must realize that we are facing these days a danger of a nuclear holocaust. None of us is safe at the moment with military nuclear devices available for both sides, without a well-defined chain of command as to who processes the "privilege" of initiating a mass nuclear destruction.

Unfortunately those who were campaigning for the necessity of the explosion only realized this deficiency afterwards. Too little too late.

 Let us imagine this very realistic scenario. 100 Hindus die in Kashmir, whether it was by Pakistani nationals or not, is irrelevant, the Indians are anyhow going to throw the responsibility of this act on Pakistan and in retaliation they are going to kill 100 Pakistanis living in Kashmir, an act which will tremendously offend the nuclear Pakistan, who out of insecurity or an ambiguous chain of command will decide to throw a nuclear bomb on an Indian city, in retaliation the Indian side will throw a bomb on a Pakistani city. Both sides might get carried away with nuclear euphoria and throw several bombs on each other, each bomb causing the death of 6 million people in addition to the after effects which will carry on for many generations to come in forms of breath defects, cancer and many other ugly human malformations.

Not a very pleasant picture!

How can we prevent such nuclear holocaust?

India and Pakistan must behave in a responsible manner, as nuclear powers, and unite on an agenda for peace, starting with reducing unilaterally the amount of offensive arms they both possess, nuclear and conventional, since they have reached the "strategic balance in the region", or in more dramatic terms " the balance of terror".

We must create a system through which the armies on both sides of the border could communicate in order to eliminate every possibility of a misunderstanding.

Reaching such agreement locally, would be a much safer and more honorable option than signing the infamous Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which in many ways does not guarantee a nuclear safe world.

Pakistan must start an international campaign for the amendment of the CTBT. This treaty does not guarantee the security of the world states against any nuclear attack. The signatories can at any given time withdraw from the treaty provided they feel that their national security is being threatened by any other state. It also imposes a ban on conducting more nuclear tests, which in other words establishes the superiority of those states which conducted a far bigger number of tests, over the states that have recently conducted nuclear tests such as India and Pakistan and over all other states which have not yet conducted any tests but are nuclear capable. In order to reach "the ultimate goal of eliminating" nuclear weapons, this treaty must provide concrete measures to achieve the "ultimate goal of eliminating" the danger of nuclear arms.

Pakistan would assume a leading role in the community of the nations, and the bed of the oldest civilizations of the world only be insuring the prosperity of the civilization of the human kind.

By preaching for peace, I am not being an idealistic, what I can imagine here is a peaceful atmosphere for Pakistan and all of South Asia, that will allow us to pay attention to our economy and uplift the standard of living of our people. This is the real criterion for the membership to the superpower club. How can we be considered a nuclear state, if 62% (percentage of illiteracy) of our population does not know what an atom is, plutonium, titanium or Uranium. Possessing advanced technological gadget does not make a society civilized it is the engraining of the process of creating these gadget in the minds of all the members of the society that makes it civil and advanced.

To engrain advanced technologies into our culture, there are many preliminary steps that must be taken.

The most essential step is to strengthen our economy.

In spite of my anger over the Pakistani testing, I could still see a blessing in disguise through the sanctions that would eventually be imposed on our Country. In a sense that it would encourage us to become self-reliant and I still believe we could have done that without the testing.

Unfortunately nothing as such transpires from the National agenda of the Muslim League does.

In order for civil aspects of life to progress, we need an atmosphere of freedom. Freedom of thoughts, of debate. A supposedly democratic government has seen fit to impose emergency rules after accomplishing a "heroic act" that has only inflated their egos. In a democratic order the rapport between the ruling and the rulers is utmost importance after world war 2, Churchill said that the people of England had the heart of the Lion I only had the luck to do the roar, if Nawaz Sharif has roared from the Ummah then why did he impose Emergency rules. If we are supposed to be more secure now than we should have more freedom. The Ummah certainly has the heart of a Lion. But the roar took place 26 years ago when Mr. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto established our nuclear plant. What transpires from the agenda of the Pakistan Muslim League is that the detonation was nothing but a gimmick to impose the building of the Kalabagh Damn. A threat to the integrity of the Federation of Pakistan when Pakistan needs more than any other time now to be united. The Islamic Bomb of Mr. Bhutto has been reduced with the Pakistan Muslim League to nothing but the Sharif Bomb. The decision over Kalabagh dam is not the right of the federal government, the decision belongs to council of common interests. Resolutions have been passed by three provinces against the Damn. Indus is the property of Pakistan and only the four provinces jointly can decide about the Damns built on it. If Punjab cannot convince the other provinces of their point of view than they cannot be trusted with Indus.

And Supposedly the consensus was reached, where is the money coming from, there is no mention of it in the budget.

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