Nuclear Nightmare: The Stakes in an India-Pakistan Exchange

[Guest guest]

WASHINGTON — If longtime adversaries India and Pakistan were to

launch a nuclear war, as many as 12 million people would die

instantly.

 

Those frightening estimates are contained in a U.S. study that will

be handed to the leaders of both countries when Deputy Secretary of

State Richard Armitage and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld travel

to India and Pakistan this week.

 

And as horrific as that death count might seem, Armitage and Rumsfeld

will stress that the number is low, because it doesn't include tens

of millions of Indians and Pakistanis who could die later from

radiation exposure, U.S. State Department officials say.

 

Beyond such mind-numbing casualties, the first nuclear exchange in

history would decimate the economies of both nations and probably

trigger a collapse of world financial markets that could spur a

worldwide depression, experts predict. Destruction and famine would

send millions of refugees to neighboring countries. The U.S. war on

terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan would end. The world would face

a humanitarian crisis far greater than anything it has seen before.

 

On Monday, both sides played down talk of nuclear war. India said it

does not believe in the use of nuclear weapons. At an Asian summit in

Kazakhstan, Russia and China tried to broker a meeting between Indian

Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pakistani President Pervez

Musharraf.

 

Around the world, however, governments still feared the worst.

Experts say no computer model can prepare the world for the nightmare

it has feared since the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima 57

years ago.

 

"It's really a great unknown," says Tom Zamora Collina, an analyst

for the Union of Concerned Scientists. The average person "doesn't

have a clue what this would mean," he says.

 

To head off a nuclear war that might result from the conflict over

the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, the Bush administration

wants to show Musharraf and Vajpayee how bad things could get.

 

"The problem is once the iron starts to be exchanged between the two

sides, then reason and logic seem to go out the window," Armitage

said Monday on CNN.

 

The U.S. government fears that citizens of both countries, which

first tested nuclear weapons in 1998, don't grasp the repercussions

of a decision to go nuclear. In the West, schoolchildren learn about

the devastating effects of the U.S. atomic bombs dropped on Japan in

1945.

 

"But that's not the case in South Asia," says Zia Mian, a nuclear

expert at Princeton University. "There's never been a major movie

about what would happen in a nuclear war. Even educated people often

think about this in the abstract."

 

In Islamabad, retired Pakistani army lieutenant general Naseer Akhtar

says both sides "don't understand the power of the bomb."

 

U.S. military and intelligence officials, along with private

analysts, have run detailed studies and war-game scenarios in recent

years to simulate a nuclear exchange in South Asia.

 

The degree of devastation depends on the number of weapons used,

their explosive power, where they are set off and climate conditions.

But U.S. officials say they hope the data they are bringing to India

and Pakistan will make the idea of nuclear war so chillingly real

that both sides will do anything to avoid it.

 

HOW IT STARTS

 

U.S. officials say a war likely would begin in Muzaffarabad, a city

on the Pakistani side of the "Line of Control" that divides Kashmir.

Indian ground forces would attack Muzaffarabad, which is believed to

be the hub for Pakistan-backed Islamic guerrillas seeking

independence from Indian control in the region.

 

India, a largely Hindu nation, controls two-thirds of Kashmir, which

is predominantly Muslim, as is Pakistan. More than 30,000 people have

died in Kashmir since 1989, when Muslim guerrillas began seeking

independence.

 

Pakistan's likely response would be to use mechanized units to

counterattack and try to keep Indian forces from overrunning Kashmir

and invading Pakistani territory, says Sam Gardiner, a retired U.S.

Air Force colonel who has run more than 20 India-Pakistan war-game

scenarios.

 

India would try to repel Pakistan's counterattack, Gardiner says,

which would bring the conflict to the point U.S. officials fear most.

 

India's military force of 1.3 million troops dwarfs Pakistan's

612,000 soldiers. At some point, Pakistan would retreat in the face

of an unstoppable Indian invasion. Musharraf might decide he could

save his nation only by striking the enemy with a nuclear bomb.

 

If Indian troops approached the Pakistani city of Lahore, near the

Kashmiri border, "then they have divided Pakistan," Gardiner

says. "Pakistan then might use a nuclear weapon in Pakistan against

Indian forces. Then India responds against Pakistani nuclear delivery

forces. Then things get very bad very quickly."

 

Making matters worse: Nuclear missiles launched by either country

would take only three to four minutes to hit major cities. Either

side would have seconds to react — and South Asia has nothing close

to the fail-safe mechanisms Washington and Moscow developed at the

height of the Cold War.

 

Pakistan and India have set up a hotline between Islamabad and New

Delhi, similar to the one developed by the United States and Russia.

But Maleeha Lodhi, Pakistan's ambassador to the United States, said

on Fox News S unday that the hotline isn't working.

 

CATASTROPHIC DAMAGE

 

Both countries have small nuclear arsenals: Pakistan has about 50

nuclear weapons, and India has about 100, Pentagon officials say.

Most have the approximate destructive power of the bomb dropped on

Hiroshima, where 100,000 people died instantly.

 

But Pakistan and India, which have cities packed with tens of

millions of people, would suffer far more casualties than Japan did

in 1945.

 

The Pentagon study Rumsfeld and Armitage will be bearing predicts a

range of 9 million to 12 million deaths and 2 million to 7 million

injuries in the immediate aftermath of an attack.

 

Matthew McKinzie, a staff scientist at the Natural Resources Defense

Council, has helped run two India-Pakistan nuclear war studies. In

one, five major Pakistani cities and five in India were targeted.

Nearly 3 million deaths and 1.5 million injuries were predicted.

 

A second scenario targeted 12 Indian and 12 Pakistani cities.

McKinzie concluded that such an exchange would kill 30 million people.

 

McKinzie's studies factor in the three main ways a nuclear bomb

kills: shock waves from the explosion, the resulting fireball and

fallout affecting an area as far as 125 miles from the blast.

McKinzie's data also track immediate deaths. Experts lack reliable

models for predicting longer-term radiation-caused cancers and

sickness that would plague South Asia for decades.

 

India and Pakistan are entering the monsoon season, which analysts

say would make nuclear fallout worse because a heavy cloud cover

would trap radiation and return it to earth through a process called

rainout. "You're looking at a very devastating impact on both

countries," McKinzie says.

 

Many experts say radiation fallout from any nuclear exchange probably

would not pose an immediate danger beyond South Asia.

 

Two days after a nuclear explosion, the initial radiation from the

blast would be 1% of its original strength and take weeks or months

to settle elsewhere around the globe, analysts say.

 

Other nuclear experts are less certain about long-term international

fallout effects. Scientists are still studying the impact of the

nuclear accident at Chernobyl in 1986. That accident, in the former

Soviet Union, spewed fallout over much of Europe. Among the lingering

effects: a much higher rate of thyroid cancer in children in the

affected area. Thyroid cancer throughout Ukraine, for example,

increased tenfold.

 

Computer models have predicted that neighboring Bangladesh,

Afghanistan and Nepal would see long-term agricultural and health

effects from fallout, as might nearby countries China and Iran.

 

HUMANITARIAN CRISES, GEOPOLITICAL FALLOUT

 

The larger crises affecting the world would be humanitarian,

agricultural and economic, experts say. Refugees would overwhelm the

region. "Once people get afraid of what they can't see, will they

burn the food because they can't eat it? Then a famine will result,"

says Mian, the Princeton researcher.

 

The world would soon witness the worst humanitarian crisis

ever. "You've got highly dense populations in just a few places, and

if they choose the obvious places to hit, then it's really bad,"

Collina says. "I would think the health response, disaster relief

effort would have to involve the entire world."

 

"It would make any humanitarian disaster in the history of the world

pale in comparison," says Roy Farrell, president of Physicians for

Social Responsibility. "There is no effective medical response to a

nuclear explosion."

 

The destruction of Pakistan's and India's agricultural systems —

which experts say would last a generation — also could trigger an

economic swoon across Asia.

 

An India-Pakistan war game conducted by the U.S. Naval War College in

1998 found that a nuclear exchange would cause world markets "to go

into a tailspin, driving capital out of emerging markets to seek safe

haven in the United States. Leading governments and international

financial institutions would be pressed to resolve the resulting

financial crisis."

 

A paper on the game by former assistant deputy secretary of State

Paul Taylor predicted "severe shortages of food and potable water

could exceed the capacity of relief organizations to respond and

might even stress international markets."

 

A conference of international donors would be required to mobilize

the billions of dollars needed for relief. The prices of certain

commodities, especially foods, could skyrocket and could trigger a

global recession."

 

Rumsfeld and Armitage will stress that India and Pakistan would

become international pariahs for using nuclear weapons. State

Department officials have told both sides that the billions in

economic aid they've received in recent years would halt. Both

countries would likely be shunned by international political and

financial organizations. Tourism and business travel would end.

 

Another immediate effect: an end to the U.S. war on terrorism in

Afghanistan and Pakistan. Radiation likely would make the region

uninhabitable for U.S. troops.

 

Worse, U.S. officials worry that the resulting chaos of a nuclear war

would turn South Asia into the kind of lawless societies in which

terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda thrive. In addition, a nuclear war

would almost certainly result in a breakdown in security for India's

and Pakistan's remaining nuclear stockpiles and make them prime

targets for terrorist raids.

 

WILL THE COUNTRIES LISTEN?

 

To avoid that crisis, the Bush administration is praying that Indian

and Pakistani leaders will hear their grim predictions this week for

what they are — an outline for their countries' virtual demise.

 

But South Asia experts worry that the passionate dispute over

Kashmir, which has prompted two India-Pakistan wars in 55 years,

could lead to irrational acts.

 

There is a sense in both nations that they can survive a nuclear

exchange: Life would go on. Many ordinary citizens seem relaxed and

unafraid. In India, there are few preparations for nuclear

war. "There's no concept of nuclear shelters," says Vikram Misri,

political officer in the Indian Embassy in Islamabad.

 

In Pakistan, the nation's newfound nuclear capability is a source of

pride. Camouflage-painted dummy missiles are planted at some major

intersections around the country. At least one bus in Islamabad has a

large missile painted on its side with the Urdu-language message, "I

love Pakistan."

 

U.S. officials hope they can change that attitude but fear that it is

too ingrained. Gardiner said he recently got an e-mail from an Indian

acquaintance that read, "If we want to have a nuclear war — let us."

 

By Bill Nichols (USA Today); Mannika Chopra (in India); Chris

Woodyard (in Pakistan)

 

SOURCE (and further information):

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002/06/04/nuclear-war-usat.htm