AQ Khan’s defense of the US parallels the Pakistani military’s policy of not punishing collusion with terror groups.
An important question is unlikely to be addressed despite the demise of AQ Khan, the world’s largest nuclear broadcaster, who developed COVID-19 complications. Why hasn’t the United States charged this Dutch-trained Pakistani metallurgist of stealing Western nuclear secrets and operating an illegal international nuclear-smuggling network for more than a quarter century? After all, the US has blamed lesser-known people as last year for plotting to smuggle nuclear material to Pakistan.
Beginning
Khan began his nuclear smuggling in the Netherlands in the mid-1970s while working as an engineer at a European consortium, Euronco, where he secretly accessed the blueprints of centrifuges to enrich uranium. With the help of stolen designs and nuclear components and materials purchased illegally from Europe and North America, Khan played a central role in the development of Pakistan’s nuclear-weapons, although China’s covert aid was crucial to its eventual success.
Until Pakistan’s 1998 nuclear tests, Khan focused on smuggling Western nuclear items into his country. Subsequently, Pakistan’s Nuclear Jar set up a nuclear supermarket, which sold starter kits and components to what the US considered rogue states – Iran, Libya and North Korea.
Still, the US never charged Khan. Why the world’s nuclear non-proliferation leader has not indicted the top global nuclear-smuggling kingpin is an issue that has not even been investigated.
Lubers Revelations
Former Dutch Prime Minister Ruud Lubers revealed in 2005 that the Netherlands sought to arrest Khan in 1975 and again in 1986, but on each occasion, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) advised his country to retreat. With Dutch officials withholding US intelligence, Khan was repeatedly allowed to return to the Netherlands, his last visit being in 1992.
In fact, after being tried in Khan’s absence and sentenced in 1983 to four years in prison for stealing secret blueprints, an Amsterdam court lost his legal files, leaving the chief justice suspecting the CIA’s hand in the disappearance. Was. In 1985, Khan’s sentence was overturned on a technicality – he had not been served a summons. Instead of prosecuting the most significant crime committed in the Netherlands since World War II, the authorities abandoned the trial.
As Lubers put it, “The last word is Washington. No doubt they knew everything, heard everything.” So, why did the US defend Khan? This is probably why Washington ignored mounting evidence of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons progress. the new York Times It was reported in 1998 that “without China’s help, Pakistan’s bomb would not exist”, but that the US “followed policies that proved almost as essential to the Pakistani bomb program as Chinese aid”.
In the 1980s, when Khan’s network was smuggling Western nuclear goods to Pakistan, the CIA was smuggling billions of dollars in weapons through Pakistan to anti-Soviet guerrillas in Afghanistan. Add another Cold War dimension to the picture, which Lubers alluded to: New Delhi’s warm relations with Moscow and the 1974 nuclear test turned a blind eye to Pakistani proliferation to help America balance India.
a role switch
US concerns were stirred only after Pakistan’s 1998 nuclear tests, which fueled Khan’s metamorphosis from a buyer to a seller. After Iran and Libya acknowledged receiving nuclear material from black marketers linked to Pakistan, US pressure forced Pakistan to launch an investigation into Khan’s activities.
What happened next was a remarkable charioteer. In a state-written confession, Khan appeared on national television apologizing in 2004, saying he had acted entirely on his own in transferring nuclear goods to other countries. After this, Pakistani dictator General Pervez Musharraf immediately forgave Khan. But to prevent the military from uncovering its role in the nuclear-smuggling scandal, Musharraf also barred international investigators from questioning Khan.
Before long, the charioteer began to unravel. Khan rejected his confession saying Musharraf had put pressure on him, while the Islamabad High Court had declared his house arrest illegal. Khan lived the rest of his life in his comfortable Islamabad villa with the security provided by the state.
Nevertheless, the US readily accepted this from the outset, knowing full well that Khan could not operate alone in a country that had always been under the grip of its military. British investigative journalists Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark in their book on the scandal concluded that Khan’s underground trade was “supervised by Pakistan’s ruling military faction”. According to French intellectual Bernard Henri Lévy, Musharraf himself was aware of “Khan’s black conspiracy”.
north korean link
In exchange for the supply of centrifuges to Pyongyang, Pakistan received North Korean ballistic missile technology, which helped it build its first intermediate-range, nuclear-capable missile, the Ghori. North Korea’s nuclear-weapon capability, however, did not depend on enriched uranium but on plutonium, which the mine network did not transport. Iran apparently obtained secondhand gear – Pakistanis discarded centrifuges, some containing traces of enriched uranium. Basic kits were sold to Libya, from aging centrifuges to natural uranium.
As Pakistan’s Kahuta facility progressed from the entry-level P-1 aluminum centrifuge to the P-2 merging-steel centrifuge—which could spin nearly twice as fast, thus doubling the rate of uranium enrichment—the mine’s The network discontinued the old centrifuges on other countries. However, till Khan’s last breath, the military generals of Pakistan ensured that no outside investigators interrogated him.
rule of consequences
Against this background, the US defense of Khan, a longtime supporter of the “Muslim bomb”, parallels its policy of not punishing the Pakistani military’s nexus with terrorist groups, thus leading to unexpected but far-reaching consequences. Such double shielding paved the way for Pakistan to emerge as the world’s sole state sponsor of Islamic terrorism protected by nuclear weapons.
Today, the US has a contingency plan to seize Pakistan’s nuclear weapons if they run the risk of falling into terrorist hands. However, such a threat comes from jihadists within Pakistan’s military and nuclear installation. The US has included Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on a list of foreign terrorist organizations, but not Pakistan’s rogue Inter-Services Intelligence, with which the CIA has long had links.
But as if underlining the law of unintended consequences, through its humiliating Afghanistan defeat at the hands of a terrorist militia, the US has tasted the bitter fruits of Pakistani generals’ cross-border use of jihadi proxies from behind their protective nuclear shields . .
Brahm Chelani is a geo-strategist and the author of nine books, including the award-winning ‘Water: Asia’s New Battleground’.
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