Frontline Pakistan : The Struggle With Militant Islam - Arz-e-Pak

1 Frontline Pakistan
that it would have caused further international embarrassment and
risked disclosure of nuclear secrets.
The US also wanted the Pakistani authorities to detain two other
nuclear experts for questioning on their possible connection with
Islamic militant groups. Suleiman Asad and Mohammed Ali Mukhtar
were believed to have been associated with Pakistan’s most secret
nuclear installations. But they were never detained. The detention and
interrogation of Bashiruddin Mahmood and Abdul Majeed, however,
sent a strong signal that Pakistan was determined to stop any illicit
exports that could advance others’ nuclear weapons programmes. 5
American concern over nuclear proliferation highlighted what
later became a growing source of tension between Washington and
Islamabad. Some two years later, Pakistan was at the centre of a serious
nuclear proliferation scandal when, in February 2004, the country’s
top scientist, Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, who was credited with fathering
the ‘first Islamic atom bomb’, confessed to selling nuclear weapons
technology to other countries.
For almost three decades, the country’s most revered scientist had
supervised a vast clandestine nuclear black-market network with
tentacles spread over three continents. With the help of middlemen
belonging to various countries, it supplied nuclear materials to Libya,
Iran and North Korea. He claimed it was all due to ideological reasons
and not for money, as he wanted to strengthen the defence capabilities
of Islamic countries.
Dr Khan was seen as Pakistan’s national hero. Ever since the
successful nuclear tests in May 1998 that established Pakistan as the
world’s seventh nuclear power, he has been an iconic figure. He
headed Pakistan’s main nuclear facility, Khan Research Laboratories
(KRL), named after him, for more than 26 years. Dr Khan had turned
the facility into an unaccountable state. With unlimited government
resources, which were free of auditing restrictions, he managed to
purchase restricted materials from European and American companies
that helped Pakistan develop nuclear capability. The network he built
up during that period was later passed on to other countries.
Having fallen from grace, Dr Khan went on to spend his days in the
solitude of his well-protected villa in Islamabad. The only visitors he
is allowed to meet are the intelligence officials who continue to quiz
him for more information about his network, which has still not been
completely broken, and secrets of his nuclear black market continue
to uncoil, revealing a vast global enterprise.