In May 1998, first India and then Pakistan tested nuclear weapons. War erupted in the Kargil region of Kashmir a year later. This was the first war between two nuclear-armed states anywhere in the world, and raised the prospect that the next conflict would be a catastrophe beyond reckoning. Since Kargil, both states have continued to build nuclear weapons, to develop and test ballistic missiles with ranges up to several thousand kilometres, and to accelerate their build-up of conventional arms.
The tests, war, crises and the on-going arms race are only the latest expressions of a more than 60-year-long conflict between Pakistan and India, which has plagued efforts to build democratic and just societies in these countries and has hampered the progress of Southasia as a whole. A settlement of the Kashmir dispute would help ease tensions, but would not necessarily be enough for India and Pakistan either to give up their nuclear-weapons status or to end their mutual hostility. The experience of the Cold War and the nearly two decades since its end makes this abundantly clear. The US and Russia still have thousands of nuclear weapons each, despite the fact that the Soviet Union is no more. The logic of nuclear weapons has had an enduring effect in preventing the establishment of peace in any meaningful sense. This suggests that the Indian and Pakistani nuclear stockpiles ensure that the future of the region will remain in jeopardy until these weapons are eliminated.
Nuclear war between India and Pakistan would be a catastrophe not only for the two countries. Recent studies simulating the effects of such a conflict have suggested that the use of 50 weapons by each side could create enough smoke from burning cities to trigger a decade-long change in climate across much of Southasia – indeed, across large parts of the northern hemisphere. This would lead, in turn, to crop failures and widespread famine. The casualties would be beyond imagination.
Against the backdrop of the nuclear-weapons tests of 1998, peace groups sprang up spontaneously in towns and cities across India and Pakistan. Building on years of work by a handful of anti-nuclear activists in both countries, these groups articulated deep public concern about the grave dangers posed by nuclear weapons, sought ways to educate and mobilise local communities, and reached out to make common cause with other civil-society groups working on issues of sustainable development and social justice. The need for a Southasia-wide effort on public education and mobilisation for nuclear disarmament in India and Pakistan was recognised by activists in both countries. They hoped that a South Asian Nuclear-Weapons-Free Zone (SANWFZ) treaty, modelled on such agreements in Latin America, the South Pacific and Southeast Asia (with Africa and Central Asia on the block), could offer a way to build regional consensus against nuclear weapons. Such a treaty would forbid each signatory state from possessing or seeking to acquire nuclear weapons.