AQ Khan and the two generals

No matter how hard they try, successive governments are unable to keep disgraced nuclear scientist AQ Khan quiet.

No matter how hard they try, successive governments are unable to keep disgraced nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan quiet. In an interview he gave to German publication Der Spiegel last week, Khan claimed that he was made a scapegoat by Musharraf and the army. Soon after, a letter, obviously leaked by Khan himself, was published by The Washington Post which was purportedly from a North Korean scientist saying that former army chief Jehangir Karamat had been paid $3 million and another general, Zulfiqar Khan, would soon be paid in diamonds and rubies. Both the now-retired officers have vehemently denied that they received anything or were even involved. There is no way to authenticate the contents of the letter but, in the past, questions had been raised of how Dr Khan could be involved in the sale of nuclear material to other countries without some involvement/consent by the military establishment.

Musharraf may have dismissed Dr Khan’s clandestine network as a ‘one-man show’ but it would be unlikely for one individual to be so well-connected and independent to have been doing this on his own, especially given that the organisation he used to head is a part of the ministry of defence and the military has close control of the nuclear weapons programme. This may perhaps explain why, when the issue boiled over during General Musharraf’s rule, Dr Khan was practically forced to appear on television to confess, then pardoned the very next day, and then kept under wraps for the next few years.

This latest revelation should be investigated by the government because, as it is, the country does not have a very good reputation as far as nuclear proliferation is concerned. Of course, one can argue that it is hypocritical of America to put Pakistan under scrutiny when it has no qualms with either India or Israel possessing nuclear weapons. But that does not take away from the fact that we need to be a responsible state and if anyone in either our military or civilian hierarchy was involved, then all such individuals should be held accountable for their actions.



Published in The Express Tribune, July 9^th, 2011.