As for the facts, there is abundant material that is out if you want to do some serious research. Secondly, what AQ Khan did amounts to high treason. He clearly violated the "Official Secrets Act" that every individual, at every level is bound to uphold and follow who is working in the nuclear program. Please see Dr. Samar Mubarakmand's interview with Geo TV for his comments on this.
So if there is no law that prohibits the sale of F-16s by private individuals in the PAF, should they do the same? or nuclear warheads in other organizations? During General Zia's era, AQ Khan had the habit of carrying Chinese warhead designs in his brief case whenever he used to travel abroad. The CIA stole these papers from his briefcase and then produced the same in front of General Zia. How responsible was AQ showing himself to be by doing such a thing? or was he looking for potential customers on his trips abroad?
Who gave AQ the authority to be reckless black marketeer? What national interest did he serve by doing so?
The centrifuges that AQ Khan sold to Iran are only meant for uranium enrichment. Uranium enrichment for power generation or weapons is more or less the same in the sense that once a country masters the technology to enrich uranium to 3-5 percent, it can go to 90 percent and above very quickly. It is just a matter of adjusting the centrifuge cascades and re-feeding the Low Enriched Uranium back into the cascades instead of natural UF6. Iran does not have any power plants for which it needs enriched uranium. It's aim is only to build a stockpile of HEU as fissile material for weapons. The reactor that Iran is building at Arak is a heavy water reactor that does not need enriched uranium.
The Ghauri deal was a strictly cash for missiles deal that was sanctioned by the Army to AQ Khan to get them from North Korea. He was NOT authorized to sell centrifuges to North Korea. AQ Khan made more than 13 trips to North Korea in one year alone. North Korea nuclear scientists began visiting KRL in the cover of being missile engineers. President Musharraf has written about this at length in his book. Other sources verfiy the same.
Regarding reliable delivery systems, Ghauri is a liquid fuelled missile. It takes hours to prepare it for launch since the fuel cannot be stored inside the missile. PAEC/NDC were already working on their own solid fuelled missiles from 1990 onwards. Because they were developing indigenous technology, which has formed the basis of all other solid fuelled missile systems in Pakistan's inventory, AQ wanted to beat them with his own missile. It was all for his personal glory.
So he got a ready to fire, ready made missile for North Korea and claimed it to be his own. Secondly, Shaheen-I was tested soon after the Ghauri test. It is Shaheen that has provided Pakistan with a reliable delivery platform that gives us assured survivable and second strike capability. The Ghauri program has been effectively sidelined in comparison to all other solid fuelled systems.
A missile is essentially a delivery platform. Without a warhead, it is just a guided rocket. And warheads for missiles are PAEC/NDC/NESCOM's responsibility, be it Shaheen or Ghauri or Babar. AQ did not have the capability to build warheads for missiles.
Libya gave us funds only in Bhutto's days. Libya has been very pro-India ever since the demise of Bhutto and has never supported Pakistan over Kashmir. We were under no obligation to give Libya any technology. AQ Khan pocketed 100 million US dollars from the Libya deal alone.
Iran is Pakistan's strategic competitor. There are clash of interests between Pakistan and Iran in Afghanistan and Central Asia. Pakistan's traditional allies have been the Arab states who will never want a nuclear Iran. An Iran with nuclear weapons will be a major headache for Pakistan also. Iran has close strategic and trade links with India. What strategic benefit will Pakistan derive from a nuclear Iran?
AQ Khan made his first act of illegal proliferation when he established contact with an Arab country in 1980 who had offered him lots of money in exchange for information about uranium enrichment and nuclear weapons. AQ alone could not do anything on the technical side, so he gathered the scientists under him and told them of the offer. One of them said that doing any such thing was bound to be known by the government, sooner or later, and that they would instantly be branded as traitors.So they refused to go and meet the Arab country's contact, but AQ Khan nevertheless did go and meet the contact. When this happened, one of the scientists working on the centrifuges went to General Zia and told him about this. When General Zia summoned AQ Khan over this for an explanation, he promptly swore on the Holy Quran that he had never said or done any such thing. He denied any wrongdoing in front of General Musharraf also when he was confronted with evidence regarding the North Koreans and he denied any wrong doing again regarding Iran and Libya, but when confronted with irrefutable evidence, he broke down and confessed everything.
Even before 1980, in 1978 all supplies of high frequency inverters were stopped from Europe to Pakistan and alarm bells raised throughout the world when AQ Khan tried to quash a deal between SA Butt, PAEC's chief procurement agent in Europe and a German supplier who had arranged inverters from a British company Emerson Electric. When the German whose name was Ernst Piffl found out that others were trying to cut his deal short, he leaked the information to a British MP Frank Allaun who raised hell in the British Parliament. AQ and one his friends based in the UK, an Indian by the name of Abdul Salam and a British engineer Peter Griffin had established their own company by the name of Weargate. They wanted to deal directly with the frequency suppliers to pocket the commissions themselves. In 2004, Peter Griffin emerged as one of the key players of the AQ Khan Network.
India too managed to use the elements of the AQ Khan network for spare parts and design information based in Dubai. Long before the AQ Khan network was unearthed, Munir Ahmad Khan, former PAEC chairman had written in one his articles on India's nuclear program in 1999 that Indian centrifuges were so similar in design to Pakistani one's that it was a very strange co-incidence. This has been proven by one of AQ Khan network's agents who was arrested in South Africa and who testified in court and has been pointed by President Musharraf in his book as well.
Pakistan's real heroes are those who silently upheld their loyalty to the country and burnt midnight oil without working for fame, power, popularity or money and enabled Pakistan to become a nuclear power against all the odds. They too could have easily found a short cut to fame and popularity by using official funds for personal glorification. They too could have sold sensitive nuclear weapons technologies to would be customers for personal profit and gotten away with it through the immunity acquired through propaganda campaigns financed by official money. But they chose the honorable way and sacrificed their personal glory for Pakistan's glory.
Munir,
AQ was never the head of Pakistan's nuclear program. He was only heading one project while over 20 projects the size of KRL were being run by PAEC, all working on the nuclear program.
AQ Khan was not the only source of enrichment knowhow for Pakistan. His drawings, combined with Italian designs, cascade design information and open scientific literature helped Pakistani scientists and engineers to develop and build their own centrifuge through indigenous efforts. According to Dr. GD Alam, who was once KRL' Chief Scientific Officer, AQ's drawings were incomplete and it took a lot of indigenous R & D by PAEC scientists working in KRL that led to success. Before AQ came to Pakistan, PAEC had set up pilot centrifuge facilities in Chaklala where the real breakthroughs eventually took place. PAEC had imported everything from flow forming machines to maraging steel and frequency inverters in 1975, which were needed to kick start the project. By the spring of 76, they were spinning the first experimental centrifuges in Chaklala. Site selection of Kahuta itself had been completed by Jan. 1976 and all the technical manpower needed for the project was put in place.
What AQ had was access to supplier lists in Europe, many of whom later became very important members of his black market. But again, he was not the only source of suppliers as PAEC had its own supplier network for all the other 20 projects. The main guy who enabled Pakistan to establish the import network was SA Butt who also imported important equipment and machinery for the enrichment project. He was working for PAEC. After AQ took over, the placed his own men in charge of procurement for KRL and the import network then turned into an export smuggling network. PAEC however continued its own procurements without trouble.
AQ Khan never had the know how and the mandate to build a nuclear device for Pakistan. That was PAEC's job, as was nuclear fuel cycle, and uranium mining, milling, conversion, fuel fabrication, reprocessing and other R & D work, including turning the HEU into metal, developing the atomic bomb's trigger mechanism, its design, high speed electronics, explosive lenses, diagnostics, testing facilities and much more. Uranium enrichment does not begin at KRL. It begins in Dera Ghazi Khan where PAEC coverts the yellow cake into high purity UF6 which is the chemical form in which uranium is enriched and feeded into the centrifuges in Kahuta. It takes much more than a centrifuge to build a bomb and much more than just one project to master the nuclear technology to develop nuclear weapons, which is an entirely different ball game.
AQ is blamed for proliferation while others are not because his is the only case of private proliferation. All other transfers have been regulated by the governments or their respective entities through agreements and regulations. In AQ's case, no such responsibility/authorization was there.
Regards.
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