Review Of Eating Grass: The Making Of The Pakistani Bomb By Feroz Khan

Critical Review of Eating Grass: The Making of the Pakistani Bomb

Feroz Khan’s Eating Grass: The Making of the Pakistani Bomb tells the story of Pakistan’s nuclear program and its army’s intelligence. Feroz Hassan Khan writes this story with the experience and background as a 30-year Pakistani Army member who played an important role in Pakistan’s security policy on nuclear weapons. This book tells us the story of the Pakistani government, using scientists and the military power to acquire nuclear weapons. The story goes into great detail explaining how the nuclear weapons were obtained and how their nuclear program was organized. This book is a must read for anyone wanting to know more information about the Pakistani nuclear program.
It examines the steps that were taken by Pakistani leaders and scientists to develop a strong nuclear development program. The development of the fuel and a system of uranium enrichment technology was a long and slow process for the Pakistani’s requiring black market trade of restricted materials. Khan begins to describe the grey areas of nuclear trade that “ran like a nuclear Wal-Mart” (Khan 162). Khan tells of dedicated people that were determined to go through political and technical hurdles in the underworld of nuclear trade to get the proper materials. He also explains three significant factors that handicapped Pakistan which created the necessity for the secretive trade networks. First, “no other country with similar nuclear ambitions faced such stringent nonproliferation barriers” (Khan 162). Meaning that the Pakistani nuclear program had the longest road to travel to achieve success in terms of nuclear weapons. Second, because of economic burdens and political unrest, Pakistan was left vulnerable and had little to no leverage of its own and depended heavily on international institutions and aid. Combined with the aid needed from foreign institutions the third factor that handicapped Pakistan was the “deterioration of regional security” (Khan 163). Pakistan faced potential threats on two fronts and did not posses the economic or military strength to support themselves in the face
The PAEC wanted to explode 6 different types of nuclear bomb but could not afford to so only two were chosen to for tests while the other four would be detonated by trigger. The Pakistani military took every precaution to make sure that surveillance flights and satellites could not track anything that was going on concerning the testing of the nuclear weapons. This included making tunnels and structures out of adobe to look like normal buildings. There were also crews of people that would clean and cover up tracks from vehicles driving to the tunnels and bunkers. If Pakistan knew they would be punished for the test of nuclear weapons by the US why would they through such a great deal to hide them? The fact that Pakistan went through such great hurdles to test these weapons shows the heavy dependence on foreign aid and support that they required to survive. (The support and aid Pakistan was given from foreigners will come up again at the end of the review). At “exactly 3:16 p.m. Pakistan Standard Time, Arshad prayed “All Praise be to Allah” and he pushed the button” (Khan 281). This triggered the detonation of all the bombs and that night Pakistan announced that the total yield of all the tests were forty kiloton (Khan 281). The test was a success and Pakistan became the 7th nuclear-capable state in