From one of the e-mails received from a reader, a young woman, responding to my column last Sunday ('What the bomb can do'): "For Hameed Gul I have only one comment to make, i.e., we are still paying for his and his boss's (US) jihad in Afghanistan in the form of religious intolerance, day-by-day deteriorating economic conditions, high level of corruption in the army, and smuggling, which are apart from the influx of drugs and the Kalashnikov culture. Why doesn't he and other leaders call for jihad for their inner selves? Why don't they start a jihad against religious intolerance, poverty, illiteracy, and corruption. I request you to convey my message to all the so-called jihadis".

Another e-mailer, again a woman, had this to say: "The jihadi noises made by that retired General Hameed Gul are his pastime. But he is not completely unbalanced and not totally dedicated to jihad. He runs a successful family business - Varan Transport. He borrows heavily from the army's Askari Bank. He is Hino Pak's largest customer and operates 105 buses and has ordered and paid for a further 45 vehicles. Why does the army help him?"

So much for the jihadis, and on to the weapons of mass destruction our zealots seek to use to overcome their enemies and, in the process, become martyrs to the cause and thus gain a direct route to heaven.

Between 1977 and 1984 there were over 20,000 false alarms of a missile attack on the US, of which 1,000 were considered sufficiently serious for the US to place their bombs and missiles on alert. Two out of these 1000 instances give a terrifying insight into how easily even the best and most highly technological early warning system can misfire. In November 1979, the US missile warning system showed that a massive attack had been launched. A nuclear alert was declared. But there were no missiles, no attack. Someone had forgotten to turn off the computer that had been used to test the behaviour of the warning system in the event of an attack. Then, in June 1980, the warning system indicated that two missiles had been launched towards the US, and signals were given that there were more to follow. So seriously was this warning taken that the president's special plane was readied for take-off. Again, there were no missiles, no attack. One computer chip had malfunctioned. Every institution - the air force, the joint chiefs of staff and the department of defence - assigned to make sure the system worked had failed in its task. The Soviet Union had many similar incidents of failure.

As has been said before, neither India nor Pakistan has an early warning system and even if they had them, geography and thus the time factor would render them useless.

The fertilizer fuel bomb which exploded outside the US consulate in Karachi on May 8 was said to weigh 250 kilos, which is equivalent to about 50 kilos of TNT. Eleven people were killed and over a score wounded. Cars in the immediate vicinity were burned. The force of the blast carried pieces of debris over the Frere Hall to Fatima Jinnah Road. Windows and doors of buildings within a radius of 500 metres were shattered and damaged. People within a radius of five kilometres heard the blast.

By comparison, the truck bomb that exploded in April 1995 in Oklahoma City was ten times larger, and contained about 2.5 tons of fertilizer and fuel oil. The blast killed 168 people and injured 853 others. The explosion created a crater eight feet deep and 20 feet in diameter. The force of the blast damaged 324 surrounding buildings, overturned automobiles and ignited their petrol tanks, and blew out windows and doors in a 50-block area. People living 30 miles away felt the shock. The Oklahoma authorities dealt with the disaster efficiently and in the shortest time possible.

The Karachi administration and emergency services proved themselves incapable of handling efficiently and swiftly the effects of a 250-kilo bomb. Let alone being able to cope with a bomb ten times that size, how on earth are they expected to react to a nuclear explosion?

The weapons used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki had an explosive power equivalent to 15 kilotons and 22 kilotons of TNT respectively. This is about the size claimed for the bombs India and Pakistan tested in May 1998, bombs which have 300 to 440 times the destructive power of the Karachi May bomb.

The blast from a 15-kiloton nuclear weapon would destroy or seriously damage buildings made of concrete and brick to a distance of just over one kilometre. Nuclear explosions produce large amounts of intense heat, and one-ten-thousandth of a second after a nuclear explosion, the temperature of the fire-ball reaches 300,000 degrees centigrade, brighter than 600 suns. From a 15-kiloton explosion, the heat is so great that everything will be set on fire within a radius of about 1.5 kilometres, and people will suffer second-degree burns at a distance of over two kilometres. A 15-kiloton nuclear explosion (at ground level) will produce radioactive fallout sufficient to produce high levels of radiation sickness and death among people as far away as 24 kilometres in the direction of the wind. The findings and figures have been provided by Zia Mian of Princeton University. Scary?

As reported in our press yesterday, Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has stated that there will be no war with Pakistan. At the same time, he has said that his troops will remain on the border, as they are, until October of this year. We suspect the reasons to be two. The first reason is the monsoon, which makes it logistically impossible for troops and supplies to be moved efficiently and swiftly around the country. The second, the coming elections in Kashmir, which Vajpayee hopes will be successfully rigged and manipulated. Though, when Lally Weymouth, who interviewed both him and Musharraf for the last edition of Newsweek, asked: "How do you view the fall elections in [Indian-held] Kashmir? Will they be free and fair?", he answered: "The elections will be held under the supervision of the Central Election Commission. We have made a commitment that the elections will be free and fair." She went on to remark: "Some say that India has rigged the elections in the past," to which he responded, "This time elections will be free and fair." Who believes him?

Our man, President General Pervez Musharraf, was interviewed the next day: "Do you believe that Pakistan's nuclear option prevented war recently?" His reply: "No. I think it was our conventional deterrence." He also informed his interviewer that Pakistan had no intention of initiating a war, "but if attacked, we will defend offensively." When asked, "Do you think that some kind of autonomy is a solution for Kashmir? Or accepting the Line of Control as a border?" he said, "That is just not possible. If the Line of Control is to be the border, what have we fought these two wars for, 1965 and 1971?" Does Musharraf wish to fight and lose a third war and then mint commemorative medals?

Sheikh Mohammad Yusuf, 'SM' as he was affectionately known, was a Kashmiri, an officer of the Indian Civil Service of the British Raj, who was chosen by Mohammad Ali Jinnah to be his principal secretary. Much later, after a series of other high-powered postings, he was appointed President Field Marshal Mohammad Ayub Khan's principal secretary, and yet later his foreign secretary. Well versed in statesmanship, SM would often say about the Kashmir 'issue' (as it is euphemistically known) that it must be treated with 'benign neglect' and continue to be treated in such manner until circumstances change for the better. But he was a man of considerable intelligence who had some feeling for the welfare of the people of Pakistan.

As said Confucius, many centuries ago : 'He who fears losing face has no face to lose.'