India, Pakistan and the Bomb; December 2001; Scientific American Magazine; by M.V. Ramana and A.H. Nayyar, sidebar by David Albright; 12 Page(s)

As the U.S. mobilized its armed forces in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, the world's attention focused on Pakistan, so crucial to military operations in Afghanistan. When Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf pledged total support for a U.S.-led multinational force on September 14, many people's first thought was: What about Pakistan's nuclear weapons? Could they fall into the hands of extremists? In an address to his nation, Musharraf proclaimed that the "safety of nuclear missiles" was one of his priorities. The Bush administration began to consider providing Pakistan with perimeter security and other assistance to guard its nuclear facilities.

The renewed concern about nuclear weapons in South Asia comes a little more than three years after the events of May 1998: the five nuclear tests conducted by India at Pokharan in the northwestern desert state of Rajasthan, followed three weeks later by six nuclear explosions conducted by Pakistan in its southwestern region of Chaghai. These tit-fortat responses mirrored the nuclear buildup by the U.S. and the former Soviet Union, with a crucial difference: the two cold war superpowers were separated by an ocean and never fought each other openly. Neighboring India and Pakistan have gone to war three times since British India was partitioned in 1947 into Muslim-majority and Hindu-majority states. Even now artillery guns regularly fire over the border (officially, a cease-fire line) in the disputed region of Kashmir.