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{\bf\large
PAKISTAN: INSIDE THE NUCLEAR CLOSET\footnote{
3/3/2004, published in {\tt www.opendemocracy.net}
}}

\begin{flushright}
by Pervez Hoodbhoy
\end{flushright}

\bigskip\noindent
The president of Pakistan, General Pervez Musharraf, is in a
self-congratulatory mood these days, savouring the praise heaped upon him
by George Bush, Colin Powell , and the United States's under-secretary of
state for arms control, John Bolton. After surviving two recent
assassination attempts and overseeing a high-level summit meeting with
India, the great survivor of Pakistani politics acts as if the worst is
behind him. By way of celebration, he has announced new long-range missile
tests for March 2004.

The primary reason for Musharraf's current satisfaction is the way that
his treatment of Pakistan's  hugely popular nuclear hero, Abdul Qadeer
Khan --- forcing him to apologise on public television for his illicit
nuclear trafficking, yet also pardoning him for the offence --- allowed him
to please Washington without causing a massive uproar.

Many in the Pakistani press had warned that any attempt to punish Qadeer,
advertised for near two decades as the architect of Pakistan's and the
Islamic world's nuclear bomb, would provoke rampaging mobs to demand an
end to Musharraf's pro-US rule. As it turned out, Washington was thrilled
with the general's rebuke, while a disillusioned and disempowered
Pakistani public grumbled but did not take to the streets.

But neither Musharraf's satisfaction nor America's approbation is likely
to last long. For while Qadeer took sole responsibility for the
trafficking in his televised confession, the sheer scale of Pakistan's
secret exports raises at least two difficult questions that go far beyond
him and a handful of his colleagues.

First, Iranian and Libyan revelations since December have confirmed that
this was the most extensive nuclear smuggling in history. It involved the
illicit export of centrifuge designs and parts, used to enrich uranium
into fuel for nuclear reactors, or as fissile material for weapons (an
export reluctantly admitted by the Pakistani government itself); but it
also included complete centrifuges, together with a shipment to Libya of
1.5 tons of uranium hexafluoride gas. Could Qadeer and his cohorts have
moved such large pieces of equipment, and traveled extensively outside
Pakistan, without the knowledge of the military? The ultra-high level of
security in Pakistan's nuclear installations makes this unbelievable and
points to deeper level of complicity.

Second, documents handed over by Libya to the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) --- now being evaluated by US experts --- reveal that the
country had received old Chinese designs for a workable nuclear bomb that
had been passed to Pakistan in the late 1970s. Here lies a puzzle, and the
possibility of a huge embarrassment for the Pakistani establishment:
because, although Qadeer is widely advertised as the ``father of the
Pakistani bomb'', knowledgeable people are aware that he had nothing to do
with the design and manufacture of the bomb.

As a metallurgist, Abdul Qadeer Khan's expertise was exclusively in
producing weapons-grade uranium hexafluoride gas using the centrifuge
process. The rest of the work of creating a nuclear weapon --- including
metallisation, bomb design, manufacture, and testing --- was entirely the
responsibility of an unfriendly rival organisation, the Pakistan Atomic
Energy Commission.

How then did Qadeer happen to possess nuclear weapon design information
when, in fact, the real work of weapons design was being done elsewhere?


\bigskip
\noindent
{\bf Openly Selling Secrets}

\noindent
General Musharraf has claimed that Qadeer's export of centrifuge
technology was unknown to successive governments. Yet for over a decade,
Qadeer openly advertised his nuclear wares; each year --- including 2003,
when the proliferation controversy had already become intense --- colourful
banners festooned Islamabad advertising workshops on ``Vibrations In
Rapidly Rotating Machinery'' and ``Advanced Materials''. These workshops,
sponsored by the Dr. A.Q. Khan Research Laboratories (also known as the
Kahuta Research Laboratories), had obvious and immediate utility for
centrifuge technology, essential for producing bomb-grade uranium.

In earlier years, Qadeer and his collaborators had published a number of
papers detailing critical issues regarding the balancing of centrifuges
and magnetic bearings. These dealt with technical means for enabling
centrifuge rotors to spin close to the speed of sound without
disintegrating. The relevance of such work to the development of
weapons-grade uranium was already evident even to non-specialist
observers.

But to make the blatant absolutely certain in the minds of prospective
customers, Kahuta issued glossy sales brochures aimed at ``classified
organisations''. These advertised such nuclear products as complete
ultracentrifuge machines, high frequency inverters, equipment for handling
corrosive uranium hexafluoride gas, as well as hand-held ground-to-air
missiles.

In light of such persistent, egregious advertising of forbidden nuclear
wares, can successive governments of the sovereign nation really have been
--- as President Musharraf claims --- so ignorant?

\bigskip
\noindent
{\bf An Empire Of Patronage}

\noindent
For all who cared to see, and as even his admirers admit, Abdul Qadeer
Khan was corrupt. Despite a salary of less than \$3,000 a month, Qadeer had
bought vast amounts of the choicest real estate; owned restaurants and
colleges; purchased a hotel in Timbuktu which he named after his wife; and
claimed ownership of a psychiatric hospital. His belief that his historic
contribution elevated him above the country's laws and environmental
regulations even led him illegally to build a magnificent mansion along
the pristine Rawal Lake, the source of Rawalpindi's drinking water.

But Qadeer's insistence on his paternity of Pakistan's supreme status
symbol did not come free. He had to buy the loyalty of journalists,
military men, and scientists. His biographers and other sycophants were
amply rewarded; none of his relatives are poor anymore. Many of my
colleagues in the physics department of Islamabad's Quaid-e-Azam
University would receive cheques for substantial amounts merely by sending
him an obsequious note and asking for money.

He was not so generous with me. With a physics colleague, Abdul Nayyar, I
challenged in court Qadeer's bid to steal our university's land in 1996.
We eventually won, but he had me placed on the Exit Control List and I was
forbidden to leave Pakistan until I finally managed to clear myself of
various charges of being ``anti-national''. These included selling the
secrets of the Kanupp reactor to the United States and India --- a wildly
ridiculous charge given that Kanupp is under the full-scope safeguards of
the IAEA.

\bigskip
\noindent
{\bf The Wind Blows Danger}

\noindent
It is said that General Musharraf has a strong personal dislike of Qadeer,
and it is unlikely that he approved his shady dealings. Yet when he
removed Qadeer as head of the enrichment facility in late 2000, allegedly
under US pressure, Musharraf did not order a thorough investigation; nor,
more recently, did he show much gratitude to the two countries which had
exposed an international crime ring.

Indeed, in the marathon press conference where he announced his acceptance
of Qadeer's petition for mercy, Musharraf excoriated Iran and Libya for
surrendering to the IAEA and meekly handing over documents on their
nuclear programmes that implicated Pakistan (``Our Muslim brothers did not
ask us before giving our names''). When asked if the state would
appropriate Qadeer's illicitly acquired wealth, Musharraf replied that
this was not necessary --- this even though Musharraf has been
incarcerating political rivals for many years on charges of corruption
that may be true but are yet to be proved in court.

But Pervez Musharraf is not the only one with some explaining to do in
this murky affair. So does the United States government, both for its past
and present policies towards Pakistan and for its role in nuclear
proliferation generally.

American policy on nuclear proliferation towards both Pakistan and Israel
has historically been driven by expediency. As these two nations, for
different reasons, set about building nuclear weapons decades ago, the US
chose to look the other way. While Pakistan fought America's war-by-proxy
against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s, the president of the
United States certified year after year that Pakistan was not attempting
to build a nuclear weapon thus allowing Pakistan to keep building the
bomb. But after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, the US
imposed sanctions on Pakistan and accused it of making the bomb.

Such expediency --- to put it at its mildest --- continues to guide US
actions today. CIA director George J. Tenet claims that his agency had
penetrated deep into the nuclear technology smuggling ring in recent
years. This should not have been difficult, given Qadeer's shameless
advertising of his wares. But why then did the Americans not stop him?

If Tenet's claim is correct, then the US knew --- but did not attempt to
stop --- centrifuge and bomb designs from being further copied, and
centrifuge parts being manufactured and distributed to other interested
parties. In effect this has made the difficult job of containing the
spread of nuclear weapons still harder. Such a role is itself a form of
complicity in nuclear proliferation. It is not clear why the CIA chose to
move so slowly and with such apparent indecision.

The more recent United States indulgence of General Musharraf has a
clearer explanation. The Americans want Pakistan to help eliminate the
al-Qaida and Taliban threat. Colin Powell's statement that Pakistan has
done ``quite a bit to roll up the (nuclear) network'' must be read in the
light of this urgent priority. But can Pakistan deliver on either account?

The way that nuclear organisations, in Pakistan as elsewhere, are
necessarily clothed in layers of secrecy raises questions about Powell's
optimism. It is also an open question as to whether Pakistani government
assurances, even if they are sincere, can prevent all in the country's
nuclear establishment from following in Qadeer's footsteps. Only two years
ago, as is well-known, senior members of the Pakistan Atomic Energy
Commission were ready to play their role in the jihad against America. In
a fit of Islamic solidarity they went to Afghanistan and met with Osama
bin Laden and the Taliban. It is difficult to believe that they were the
only ones so inclined.
\end{document}