Pakistan’s proliferator-in-chief

AFTER years of bare-faced denials, the shocking truth, or at least as much of it as Pakistan’s government will admit to in public, has now come out. On Wednesday February 4th, after days of questioning, the country’s top nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, confessed to the president, General Pervez Musharraf, and then publicly, that he was guilty of trafficking nuclear materials to Iran, North Korea and Libya. He also submitted a plea for clemency, and the cabinet recommended a pardon, which duly came on Thursday. For in spite of the damage done to Pakistan’s reputation by the deliberate spreading of bomb-related technology, any attempt to hold Mr Khan accountable for what are claimed to be his private proliferation activities would be fraught with great risk for General Musharraf.

Mr Khan is still considered by many Pakistanis a national hero for fathering the “Islamic bomb”. He has also let it be known that he would have plenty of dirt to throw back at senior government and military figures if they tried to wash their hands of him completely and put him on trial. As it is, Mr Khan’s admissions so far are hair-raising enough.

It all started, he claims, in 1989 with Iran, before the two countries fell out over which side to back in the civil war in Afghanistan. Indeed, the trail of evidence that led Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency to Mr Khan’s door, and has had one of his close colleagues, Mohammed Farooq, in detention since November, begins with names of suppliers given under diplomatic duress to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog, by Iran last October.

Caught cheating itself last year, Iran blamed its suppliers for traces of bomb-usable highly enriched uranium found by IAEA inspectors on its secretly imported centrifuge machines. Names were handed on to Pakistan, which is still investigating financial links, some through the failed Bank of Credit and Commerce International, that could reveal more of what its nuclear freelancers (about a dozen scientists and military folk have been questioned so far) were up to.

Though suspicions had attached to Mr Khan for years, Pakistan’s government had always denied any wrongdoing. But the evidence from the IAEA is now unignorable. More of it came out after a shipment of centrifuge parts for uranium enrichment was intercepted on its way to Libya, hastening the surprise decision last December by that country’s leader, Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, to confess to a hidden nuclear programme of his own.

The IAEA’s chief, Mohamed ElBaradei, was taken aback at how much equipment and technology Libya had amassed; and all of it from what he has called a veritable Wal-Mart of black-market proliferation. Libya not only had names of contacts to find answers to after-sales scientific questions, but also the blueprint for a nuclear warhead. The most sensitive materials, parts and documents have now been flown to America for safekeeping. Some, including the bomb design, are thought to have come directly from Pakistan. The IAEA's inspectors would doubtless like to take a closer look at the country's nuclear programme, but on Thursday the government in Islamabad said it would not hand over any documents.

Though the network of middlemen and companies involved spans Europe, the Middle East, Asia and South Africa, Pakistan’s nuclear suspects are thought to have been at the centre of it. The nuclear programme was supposed to be under close military control. General Musharraf insists there was no official involvement, either now or in the past, in any of these transactions, which, he claims, were motivated by personal greed (official tales of Mr Khan’s national heroism have now given way to tales of his great personal wealth and many villas). The covert nature of Pakistan’s own bomb project, the general claims, left the scientists with too much autonomy, which they abused. But were they really just in it by themselves, for themselves?

Saudi Arabia and Libya were long thought to have financed Pakistan’s nuclear programme. Did that not qualify Libya for a bit of assistance in the other direction? Meanwhile North Korea appears to have got help with its enrichment efforts (which it now denies), and possibly also with warhead design, in return for supplying Pakistan with missile technology: working together on weaponisation would make sense, given that Pakistan’s Ghauri missile is a barely disguised version of North Korea’s Nodong rocket. All this smacks of official involvement at the highest levels.

For his part, Mr Khan may also not be telling the whole truth. He has reportedly contended in private that his proliferation activities had the support of two former army chiefs, General Aslam Beg and General Jehangir Karamat, though that has yet to appear in any official account. He also claims all such proliferation activities ended in the 1990s, conveniently before General Musharraf set up a National Command Authority over the nuclear programme in 2002 and promised that all proliferation concerns had now been addressed. Yet how then to account for centrifuge deliveries intercepted on their way to North Korea and Libya last year?

General Musharraf’s problems do not end there. Many Pakistanis do not want to see Mr Khan disgraced or else want to see the investigation extended to any senior military figures involved too. Mr Khan has said he acted to deflect western attention from Pakistan’s own nuclear programme (in 1990 America had cut off all military aid to Pakistan because of its then covert bomb-building) and, in the case of Libya and Iran, as a gesture of support for two fellow Muslim countries. The Islamist opposition in Pakistan has since called for a national strike to protest at Mr Khan’s humiliation. Many accuse the general of merely caving in to American pressure. Late last year General Musharraf survived two assassination attempts that were blamed on religious extremists, possibly in collusion with military or intelligence insiders. Punishing Mr Khan would not help with would-be assailants.

If Musharraf didn't pardon Khan, wouldn't their nuclear secrets have been exposed? Not to mention Musharraf does not like being targeted by the same militants that he has difficulty appeasing.

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