\documentclass[12pt,a4]{article}
\renewcommand{\baselinestretch}{1.2}
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\begin{document}
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\noindent
{\bf\large
THE NUCLEAR NOOSE AROUND PAKISTAN'S NECK\footnote{
Washington Post, 1 Feb. 2004
}}

\begin{flushright}
by Pervez Hoodbhoy\footnote{
Author's e-mail: {\tt hoodbhoy\makeatletter @\makeatother isb.pol.com.pk}.
Pervez Hoodbhoy is professor of nuclear physics at Quaid-e-Azam University
in Islamabad, Pakistan.
}
\end{flushright}

\bigskip\noindent
Thirty years ago, fearful of India's newly acquired nuclear weapons,
Pakistan set out on its own quest to become a nuclear weapons state.
Lacking a strong technological base, it secretly searched the world's
industrialized countries for what was needed. Few could have imagined then
that the move from buyer to seller of the world's deadliest technology
would be so swift.

But spectacular revelations beginning late last year by Iran, and later
Libya, have forced Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, to launch
an investigation of Pakistani involvement in secret transfers of vital
nuclear weapons information and equipment to Iran, North Korea and Libya.
Musharraf has conceded the existence of ``an underworld of people'' in
Pakistan who, out of ``personal greed,'' could have sold nuclear secrets.

The figure at the center of the crisis is Dr. A.Q. Khan, Pakistan's most
celebrated bomb maker and a national hero, who was fired on Saturday from
his job as science adviser to Pakistan's prime minister. In his heyday,
Khan was accustomed to adulation and worship. His procurement, by whatever
means, of secret centrifuge designs from a Dutch consortium in the
mid-1970s was critical to Pakistan's successful nuclearization.  With
unlimited government resources at his disposal, and free of auditing
restrictions, Khan, a metallurgist who is often wrongly referred to as a
nuclear scientist, managed to purchase restricted items, which companies
in Europe and the United States were willing to sell for the right price,
no questions asked. In the process, Khan became a wealthy man.

Today, he and several close associates find that the laws of powerful
nations cannot be spurned as easily as those of the state they have
claimed to defend. Forced by the international community (read: the United
States), Pakistan has put Khan and his cohorts on notice. Inspections of
Iran's nuclear facilities by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
revealed centrifuges and traces of highly enriched uranium, and Iran
pinpointed Pakistan as the source. A British expert who recently
accompanied agency inspectors into Iran identified Iranian centrifuges as
being identical to the Dutch design that Khan secretly obtained.

And yet it is unlikely that Khan will be convicted in a Pakistani court,
because that would involve a head-on collision with the country's
religious parties and with a public that has been led to believe that
Khan's development of the bomb guaranteed Pakistan's security.

While the IAEA and U.S. intelligence may claim credit for having
discovered the fountain of nuclear proliferation, Khan widely and openly
advertised his wares over the past decade. Every year --- including 2003,
when the proliferation controversy was already hot --- Islamabad was
festooned with colorful banners advertising international workshops on
``Vibrations In Rapidly Rotating Machinery'' and ``Advanced Materials,''
sponsored by the Dr. A.Q. Khan Research Laboratories (also known as the
Kahuta Laboratories), Pakistan's key uranium enrichment facility.

Over the years, Khan and his collaborators also published a number of
papers on issues regarding the technical means for enabling centrifuge
rotors to spin at supersonic speeds without disintegrating, which is
essential for making bomb-grade uranium. They could scarcely have been
more blatant. But to make absolutely certain, Kahuta issued glossy
brochures that were aimed at classified organizations but were easily
obtained on the Kahuta Web site.

But Khan's nuclear bravado was of little concern to any of Pakistan's
governments, civil or military. Indeed, since May 1998, when the country
conducted several underground nuclear tests, Pakistan has flaunted its
nuclear status in a manner wholly different from the world's other
nuclear-armed countries. Nuclear nationalism was the order of the day as
governments vigorously promoted the bomb as the symbol of Pakistan's high
scientific achievement, national determination and self-respect, and as
the harbinger of a new Muslim era. Publicly funded nuclear shrines still
litter the country. One, a fiberglass model of the nuclear-blasted Chaghai
mountain, stands at the entrance to Islamabad, bathed at night in a
garish, orange light. Pakistan's political parties, secular and Islamic,
rushed to claim ownership after the nuclear tests; elites and the masses
all saw in the bomb a sign that Pakistan could succeed at something. With
great pomp and ceremony, the bomb makers were turned into national heroes.

With international outrage over its proliferation growing, the bomb
threatens to become a noose around Pakistan's neck. For Musharraf's
government, Khan's mega-ton ego and his escapades over the past decade and
a half are now a nightmare. Even as the Iranian revelation catapulted
Pakistan to the forefront of the world's attention, Khan threw down the
gauntlet last month by declaring in a television interview: ``Who made the
atom bomb? I made it. Who made the missiles? I made them for you.''
Responding to calls by the Islamic parties to defend the bomb makers,
thousands have taken to the streets of Pakistani cities in the past week
to protest investigations into the activities of Khan and others. Qazi
Hussain Ahmad, leader of Jamaat-e-Islami, has called for Khan's
exoneration even if he ``has made millions of dollars, because he has saved
Pakistan.''

The investigation is likely to raise more issues than it settles. While
Musharraf has said that ``There is no such evidence that any government
personality or military personality was involved,'' this attempt to ascribe
all wrongdoing to a few greedy individual scientists will find few takers.
Nor should it.

Since its inception, Pakistan's nuclear program has been squarely under
army supervision. A multi-tiered security system was headed by a
lieutenant general (now, two) with all nuclear installations and personnel
kept under the tightest possible surveillance. Diplomatic immunity was
insufficient to prevent a physical roughing up of the French ambassador to
Pakistan some years ago when he journeyed to a point several miles from
the enrichment facility. Kahuta was considered sensitive to the point that
Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister, claims that even while in
office she could not receive clearance to visit the labs. In such an
extreme security environment, it would be amazing to miss the travel
abroad of senior scientists, engineers and administrators, their meetings
with foreign nationals, and the transport and transfer of classified
technical documents and components, if not whole centrifuges.

While individual gain may have been part of the motivation, the
substantial cause lies elsewhere. From the inception of the bomb program,
Pakistan's establishment has sought to turn its nuclear ambitions and
success into larger gains. For one, it wanted (and gained) the support of
hundreds of millions of Muslims the world over by claiming to provide a
Muslim success story. (That this involved replicating a 60-year-old
technology for mass destruction is a sad commentary on the state of the
Muslim world.) For another, it enabled Pakistan to enjoy considerable
financial and political benefits from oil-rich Arab countries. Among
others, Libya reportedly bankrolled Pakistan and may even have supplied
raw uranium. After Pakistan's nuclear tests six years ago, the Saudi
government gave an unannounced gift of \$4 billion worth of oil spread over
five years to tide Pakistan over during its difficulties caused by
international sanctions.

The transfers to North Korea are more prosaic. Having developed the
bomb, Pakistan needed missiles to deliver them. North Korea was willing to
supply them, for a price. Like the Dutch centrifuges, all Kahuta had to do
was put them together and stick a star and crescent on them.

These deals and transfers of technology apparently took place from about
1987 until 1995. Musharraf is reported to have given Secretary of State
Colin L. Powell his ``four hundred percent assurance'' that no such
interchange is taking place now. This may be enough for now, given
Musharraf's solid support for U.S. moves against al Qaeda.

Whether moved by money or faith, Pakistan's bomb makers, like the bomb
itself, have seriously compromised the country's international standing
and security. Two years ago, it was scientists from the Pakistan Atomic
Energy Commission who, in a fit of Islamic solidarity, went to Afghanistan
and met with Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. It is hard to believe they
were the only ones so inclined.

Pakistan will have to put its nuclear house in order. Anything less than
strict and complete accountability, regardless of rank or reputation, will
leave the door open for those who may wish to try their luck, or in whom
the fire of faith burns brighter. My country's loose nukes underscore a
global danger that may already be out of control.

Nuclear secrets will keep leaking as long as the bomb has value as a
currency of power and prestige. Humanity's best chance of survival lies in
creating taboos against nuclear weapons, much as those that already exist
for chemical and biological weapons, and to work rapidly toward their
global elimination. To do away with the bomb, bomb technology and the
menace of their proliferation will require the United States, as the
world's only superpower, to take the lead by reducing its own nuclear
arsenal, as well as dealing with all proliferators, including its ally
Israel, at the same level.
\end{document}