New Delhi, February 7
An important thing that is being lost in the din of l’affaire Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan is that it will be wrong to blame Dr Khan as a “rogue scientist”. Actually, it is the system in Pakistan that is flawed.
The whole drama of Dr Khan rushing to see Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf with a mercy petition and Gen Musharraf’s eventual pardoning him is shrewdly choreographed.
Dr Khan ran illegal clandestine network for decades to make Pakistan a nuclear-capable nation and pursued the policy of beg, borrow or steal to achieve the objective.
It was not as if Dr Khan and his scientist cronies alone were behind Pakistan’s nuclear programme and proliferation. It is the entire state of Pakistan that has been running the proliferation racket.
The
reason behind Gen Musharraf’s pardon is obvious: he has sacrificed the Father of Pakistan’s bomb to save the military.
External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha’s remarks yesterday that Pakistan’s nuclear controversy was “not an internal matter of Pakistan”, but “a matter for the international community”. The fact that Mr Sinha’s remark came in response to a question at a joint press conference with the visiting British Foreign Secretary, Mr Jack Straw, is significant.
The inquiry into the transfer of technology to some countries by Pakistani scientists should explain Islamabad’s resistance to signing the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
The results of this inquiry, MEA sources say, should
leave
nobody in doubt that the transfer took place under a policy decision by military and civilian leaders which they started pursuing possibly in connivance with the administration of President George Bush senior in mid-1980s. That was the time when the USA was willing to overlook crimes of Pakistani generals because it needed them for its fight against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. President Bush was issuing certificates saying Pakistan was not engaged in any clandestine effort to make a nuclear bomb.
These certificates were coming even though, as the world learnt later, Pakistan had already made nuclear bomb.
Jamaat-e-Islami developed close relations with the GHQ during General Zia-ul-Haq’s rule. The then chief of the Jamaat, Tufail Mohammad, was said to be a maternal uncle of Gen Zia. The doors of the GHQ were thrown open to the Jamaati teams. That gave it a chance to indoctrinate army officers so much so that some of them began sporting beards to publicise what school of Islamic thought they followed. For many Pakistan watchers, the Jamaat provides a window to the thinking of the army and the ISI.
Jamaat’s chief Qazi Hussain Ahmed’s two interviews with the BBC (Urdu) a few days back may be a reflection of what a section of the army thinks about the current investigations against nuclear scientists, including Dr Qadeer Khan.
He said these was found nothing wrong in transferring nuclear technology since Pakistan had not signed the NPT. Dr Khan had committed no crime, he said.
Qazi Ahmed said he had telephoned Dr Khan to inquire about his health. Dr Khan told him he had not made any confessional statement. Qazi recalled that when he met him a day before the SAARC summit, he said he was willing to attend any public meeting or a press conference called by the Jamaat to explain charges of his involvement in nuclear proliferation.
But now, said Qazi, Dr Khan could not come out of his house to join any public meeting. The Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) is to launch a series of public meetings and processions in protest against the US pressure in the investigations against nuclear scientists.
The Pakistan Government is not willing to say what action it proposes to take against the scientists found guilty of transferring nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea. Islamabad has repeatedly claimed the transfer of nuclear technology was made by certain scientists for personal gains and that was not the government’s policy.
Pakistan army spokesman Major- Gen Shaukat Sultan has hinted that the guilty scientists may be tried under the Official Secrets Act. But the overwhelming public opinion in Pakistan is that these scientists are being made scapegoats to protect the real culprits.
