Author: Shyam Bhatia
Publication: Rediff on Net
Date: January 6, 2004
URL: http://us.rediff.com/news/2004/jan/05spec.htm
The Pakistani nuclear scientist
who labelled me a "Hindu bastard" is the focus of renewed interest by US
and British intelligence services for his role in using Libyan slush money
to further his country's weapons programme.
Indeed, Western displeasure with
Khan's activities is so considerable now that the government- supplied
guards who used to patrol his bungalow in Islamabad's fashionable F block
have been withdrawn and the 67 year-old metallurgist is vulnerable to the
inquiries of journalists, diplomats, or investigators from all parts of
the world.
The questions they all want to direct
to the pudgy-faced Bhopal-born scientist is what information he passed
on to other governments about the wherewithal for making nuclear bombs
that could one day be used to blow the rest of us off the face of this
planet.
Last weekend, The Sunday Times in
London asserted, controversially, that Libya was far closer to nuclear-testing
status than had been previously suspected. If so, Khan's pivotal role is
an issue worth considering in detail.
More important than Libya, though,
is the information that Khan passed on to North Korea and Iran, offering
in vain to do the same for Iraq, and thereby transforming Pakistan into
the world's most terrifying nuclear proliferator since the dawn of the
nuclear age.
It was my misfortune to cross swords
with Khan in 1979 during the course of research for a book on nuclear proliferation.
An article on Khan, entitled, 'How Dr Khan stole the bomb for Islam', was
duly published in The Observer, London, the newspaper for which I then
worked, and immediately attracted Khan's fury.
Three months earlier, Dutch scientists
based in the small town of Almelo had briefed me on the activities of their
former Pakistani colleague who had worked with them to develop a highly
classified process of enriching uranium. Suspicious of Khan because of
the questions he asked and the copious notes he made, they were convinced
that he would pirate the Almelo technology and reproduce it in Pakistan.
How right they were! After India's
first nuclear test at Pokhran in 1974, Khan told Pakistan's then prime
minister, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, that he could match India's effort, and
even surpass it, provided he had the funds and the unqualified backing
of his government.
Bhutto gave him both. He even introduced
him to Libya's Colonel Muammar Qadhafy who sent suitcases stuffed with
dollars to Islamabad in exchange for Bhutto's promise, through Khan, that
the technology of the top-secret uranium enrichment plant being developed
close to Rawalpindi at Kahuta would one day be transferred to Tripoli.
So began the great nuclear adventure
of marrying pirated Dutch enrichment technology to the warhead designs
that would later be imported from China.
When details of this project leaked
out to The Observer in 1979, Khan's fury was unimagineable. Some of the
epithets he used to describe The Observer reporting team included words
like "agents" and "bastards". The other expressions he used are too sordid
to repeat even now, 25 years later.
Worse was to follow a few years
later when veteran Indian journalist Kuldip Nayar, later to be a member
of the Rajya Sabha, scored a worldwide scoop by securing an exclusive interview
with Khan at his Islamabad home. As Khan's wife Henny served tea, cake,
and biscuits to the two men, Khan confirmed the gist of my earlier investigation,
namely that Pakistan was engaged in a massive clandestine effort to become
the world's next nuclear power.
Nayar's interview was published
in The Observer in 1987, alongside my analysis of how Pakistan was now
a "threshold" nuclear power.
This time Khan's reaction went even
more out of control. In a letter of complaint to the British Press Council,
he described the Nayar interview as "false" and "concocted", but his special
venom was reserved for me, the "Hindu bastard" who had dared to single
him out for so much attention.
The complaint was duly rejected,
but news of Khan's letter had spread like wildfire and the "Hindu bastard"
on The Observer staff was the subject of many mocking jokes from his colleagues.
Later, the late President Zia-ul-Haq
asked me if I retained any hurt about Khan. When I replied in the negative,
General Zia smiled and said, "Actually, he's not such a bad fellow."
I have never had a chance to find
out what Khan really is like. For years the Pakistani government denied
he even existed. When he was later confirmed as a national hero, he became
as inaccessible to the foreign media as Mao Tse Tung.
But in the changed world of the
21st century, Khan's future is as uncertain as that of anyone else. He
may be dragged off to a 're-education' camp for rogue scientists, or if
he is lucky, he may be allowed to live out the rest of his life in respected
oblivion. If we should happen to meet, and nothing would make me happier,
I will know that even 'Hindu bastards' have a God who smiles upon them.
