Doval doctrine creating instability in Pakistan: Pak nuke adviser

A senior Pakistan nuclear weapons adviser has accused India of fomenting terrorism by supporting terrorist organisations like the TTP and Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA).Lt General Mazhar Jamil (retired), adviser to Pakistan’s National Command Authority (NCA) accused India of ‘exporting terrorism as an instrument of policy and manifesting the publicly professed Doval doctrine to create instability in Pakistan’.Speaking at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), London, on October 13, Jamil cited India’s support of the Mukti Bahini in 1971, the LTTE in the 1980s and the running of six consulates on the Af-Pak border during the International Security Assistance in Afghanistan (2001-14), as purported evidence of its past support for terrorism.Jamil’s keynote address was part of a Track 1.5 workshop on ‘nuclear deterrence and strategic stability in South Asia’. In a speech riddled with innuendos, claims and half-truths, Jamil accused India of using ‘dual-capable’ BrahMos missiles during Operation Sindoor – meaning the missile could carry both nuclear and conventional warheads. This is a patently false claim – the BrahMos carries only conventional warheads and is not part of India’s Strategic Forces Command. Jamil, who was Director-General of the Strategic Plans Division (SPD) between 2015 and 2017, the Pakistan army unit that handles nuclear weapons, accused India of taking South Asia ‘to the brink of nuclear catastrophe’ during Operation Sindoor last year. He claimed the situation was saved ‘only by the strategic restraint of Pakistan’. The point of his keynote address appeared to be to paint the Indian subcontinent as a global nuclear flashpoint, to draw international intervention in the region and to remove the Non Proliferation Treaty waiver given to India (which allows New Delhi to buy nuclear fuel and reactors without signing the NPT).Jamil cited recent assessments by a Swedish think tank SIPRI to insinuate that India was moving towards ‘first-strike capability’ by fielding nuclear submarine launched missiles. Jamil said India has now mated some of its nuclear warheads with submarine-launched ballistic missiles and has conducted sea-based deterrence patrols and that these patrols increased the risk of ‘misperceptions and miscalculations’. India’s publicly released draft nuclear doctrine released in 1999, rules out a nuclear first strike, highlights ‘credible minimum nuclear deterrence’ and ‘retaliation only’, what is called No First Use (NFU).Jamil however said India’s NFU was a ‘diplomatic ruse, earning some brownie points from here and there’. He claimed India’s former National Security Adviser Shiv Shankar Menon, the architect of India’s nuclear policy, as stating on record ‘that Indian nuclear policy is flexible enough to accommodate first-strike options’. Menon, who incidentally did not draft India’s nuclear policy, discussed ‘first strike’ options in a 2017 book (‘First strike’ is distinct from ‘first use’ which India’s nuclear doctrine forbids). Menon explained the meaning of the Indian nuclear doctrine’s words ‘massive retaliation’ in the draft nuclear policy as a disarming ‘first strike’ on Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, after Pakistan launched tactical nuclear weapons.Jamil termed the accidental 2022 launch of a BrahMos missile by the IAF as an ‘intentional BrahMos attack on Pakistan’. The missile was accidentally launched during a drill on March 2022, crashed into Khanewal district in Pakistan’s Punjab province.Jamil ducked questions on whether Pakistan’s Makkah Joint Defence Pact partners Turkiye and Saudi Arabia would come to its assistance in case of a war with India. He termed the Makkah pact as ‘purely defensive in nature’.Interestingly, the NCA to which Jamil is adviser, is chaired by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. The NCA was the supreme authority overseeing Pakistan’s nuclear weapons until last November, when the creation of the National Strategic Command brought all nuclear weapons under the operational control of Field Marshal Asim Munir, making Pakistan the only nuclear weapons state with military-controlled strategic weapons.- Ends