Pakistan Tests the Bomb
Two weeks after India's nuclear tests, Pakistan detonates its own devices in the Chagai hills of Balochistan and becomes the first Muslim-majority nuclear power.
- Pakistan: A New History — Ian Talbot, Hurst (2012)
- The Idea of Pakistan — Stephen P. Cohen, Brookings Institution Press (2004)
- Pakistan — Encyclopaedia Britannica
Pakistan’s nuclear programme was launched in earnest by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1972, weeks after the 1971 defeat, and accelerated after India’s first test in 1974; Bhutto famously vowed that Pakistanis would make any sacrifice to match India. The metallurgist A. Q. Khan built a uranium-enrichment programme using designs he had taken from a European enrichment consortium where he had worked.
- Pakistan: A New History — Ian Talbot, Hurst (2012)
- The Idea of Pakistan — Stephen P. Cohen, Brookings Institution Press (2004)
Through the 1980s, while Pakistan was a vital US ally against the Soviets in Afghanistan, Washington largely looked away; once the Soviets left, the US cut off aid in 1990 under the Pressler Amendment, which many Pakistanis still remember as a betrayal.
- Pakistan: A New History — Ian Talbot, Hurst (2012)
- Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military — Husain Haqqani, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (2005)
When India tested five devices on 11 and 13 May 1998, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif came under intense pressure to respond, and on 28 and 30 May Pakistan carried out its own tests in Balochistan’s Chagai hills, setting off street celebrations. International sanctions followed. In 2004 Khan confessed on television to having sold nuclear secrets abroad; he was pardoned, kept under house arrest for years, and remained a hero to many until his death in 2021.
- Pakistan: A New History — Ian Talbot, Hurst (2012)
- The Idea of Pakistan — Stephen P. Cohen, Brookings Institution Press (2004)
- Pakistan — Encyclopaedia Britannica
A necessary deterrent against a much larger India that had tested first, and a source of national pride and scientific achievement; A. Q. Khan was long celebrated as a national hero.
- The Idea of Pakistan — Stephen P. Cohen, Brookings Institution Press (2004)
- Pakistan: A Hard Country — Anatol Lieven, Allen Lane (2011)
Physicists like Pervez Hoodbhoy and many abroad warn that nuclear weapons make South Asia more dangerous, have emboldened cross-border militancy, and that the A. Q. Khan network's sales of nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea showed weak control.
- Pakistan: A New History — Ian Talbot, Hurst (2012)
- The Idea of Pakistan — Stephen P. Cohen, Brookings Institution Press (2004)
Why it matters today
Many Pakistanis see the bomb as the guarantee that 1971 can never happen again, and 28 May is marked as Youm-e-Takbeer, "Day of Greatness". The nuclear stalemate with India also means every crisis, as in 2019 and 2025, carries global stakes, while critics at home ask what the arms race has cost in schools and hospitals.