‘Pakistan desires stability, peace in region’

Islamabad:Stability and peace in South Asia remains Pakistan’s core strategic interest, the Executive Director of the Centre for International Strategic Studies (CISS), Ali Sarwar Naqvi, emphasised at a discussion hosted organised by the think tank to commemorate the 24th anniversary of Pakistan’s nuclear tests.

Naqvi, who had closely witnessed the decision-making on nuclear tests in 1998, said they were undertaken as a strategic response to India’s nuclear tests of Operation Shakti held on May 11 and 13 the same year, which transformed the strategic outlook of South Asia. “The Indian nuclear tests left no option for Pakistan other than to restore its national security interests and gain its own nuclear capability,” he emphasized.

The Executive Director of CISS-Muzaffarabad Dr. Asma Shakir Khawaja argued that the attainment of strategic capability settled the gap of conventional disparity between Pakistan and India and established deterrence dynamics along with the balance of power. She noted that despite troubled bilateral relations dynamics between Pakistan and India, nuclear capability has maintained deterrence stability. However, she warned that crisis stability has been constantly under stress.

Touching upon the March 9 missile incident, Dr. Khawaja said, it reflected a profound level of incompetence in handling sensitive weapons among Indian forces. This incapacity to handle advanced weapons systems, along with multiple cases of nuclear thefts in India, manifest its irresponsible behavior that is endangering regional as well as global security.

She further questioned India’s commitment to existing confidence-building measures with Pakistan, as it chose not to timely share the details of the accidental launch that could lead to the escalation of the crisis to the nuclear level.

Dr Zafar Khan, Executive Director of the Balochistan Think Tank Network, stated that during the last two decades, the imbalance in conventional military capabilities between India and Pakistan is creating an offense-defense imbalance where the state with offensive capability will have a great incentive to undertake preemption.