Abdul Qadeer Khan, HI, NI (twice) (Urdu: عبدالقدیر خان); born April 27, 1936), known as A. Q. Khan, is a Pakistani nuclear scientist and metallurgical engineer, widely regarded as the founder of Pakistan's nuclear program. His middle name is occasionally rendered asQuadeer, Qadeer or Gaudeer, and his given names are usually abbreviated to A.Q. Khan is perhaps better known in much of the world for involvement in acquiring critical nuclear technology designs and using them to build Pakistan's gas-centrifuge program.
In interviews from May through July 2008, Khan recanted his previous confession of his involvement with Iran and North Korea. He said President Pervez Musharraf forced him to be a "scapegoat" for the "national interest."[2][3] Khan accuses the Pakistan Army and President Musharraf of proliferating nuclear arms.[4] He said centrifuges were sent from Pakistan in a North Korean plane loaded under the supervision of Pakistani security officials. He also said that he had traveled to North Korea in 1999 with a Pakistani Army general to buy shoulder-launched missiles from the government there.[5]
Islamabad High Court on February 6, 2009 declared Khan as a free citizen of Pakistan with freedom of movement inside the country. The verdict was rendered by Chief Justice Sardar Muhammad Aslam.[6]. In September 2009, expressing concerns over the Lahore High Court’s decision to end all security restrictions on Khan, the United States has warned that Dr.Khan still remains a ’serious proliferation risk’.
Early life
Khan is an ethnic Pashtun[7] born in Bhopal, India in 1936. His father Abdul Ghafoor Khan was an academician who retired from Education Department in 1935 and settled permanently in Bhopal[8]. In 1947, the family, emigrated from India to Pakistan. Khan studied in St. Anthony's High School and then enrolled at the D. J. Science College of Karachi, where he studied physics and mathematics under the supervision of noted solar physicist dr. Bashir Syed. He obtained a B.Sc. degree in 1960 from the University of Karachi, majoring in physical metallurgy. After his graduation, he worked as an inspector of weight and measures in Karachi. In 1961, he resigned from his position and flew to West Germanyto study metallurgical engineering at a technical university there. He then obtained an engineer's degree (Technology) in 1967 from Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands, and the Doctor of Engineering degree in metallurgical engineering under the supervision of Martin Brabers from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium[9], just outside of Brussels, in 1972. Khan is very fluent in German and he wrote his thesis in German rather than using English.
[edit]Work in the Netherlands
In 1972, the year he received his D. Eng., Khan joined the staff of the Physical Dynamics Research Laboratory (FDO) in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. FDO was a subcontractor for URENCO, the uranium enrichment facility at Almelo in the Netherlands, which had been established in 1970 by the United Kingdom, West Germany, and the Netherlands to assure a supply of enriched uranium for the European nuclear reactors. The URENCO facility used Zippe-type centrifuge technology to separate the fissionable isotope uranium-235 out of uranium hexafluoride gas by spinning a mixture of the two isotopes at up to 100,000 revolutions a minute. The technical details of these centrifuge systems are regulated as secret information by export controls because they could be used for the purposes of nuclear proliferation.
In May 1974, India carried out its first nuclear test, codenamed Smiling Buddha, to the great alarm of the Government of Pakistan. Around this time, Khan having a distinguished career and being one of the most senior scientists at the nuclear plant he worked at, had privileged access to the most restricted areas of the URENCO facility as well as to documentation on the gas centrifuge technology. India's surprise nuclear test and the subsequent Pakistani scramble to establish a deterrent caused great alarm to the Pakistani government as well as the Pakistani diaspora including individuals like Khan. A. Q. Khan believed that the Buddha had smiled in anticipation of Pakistan's death.
A subsequent investigation by the Dutch authorities found that he had passed highly-classified material to a network of Pakistani intelligence agents; however, they found no evidence that he was sent to the Netherlands as a spy nor were they able to determine whether he approached the Government of Pakistan about espionage first or whether they had approached him.
[edit]Relationship with Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
Khan did have a good and mutual relationship with Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. After India’s first successful nuclear test on May 18, 1974. Khan, at this time working in a centrifuge production facility in the Netherlands, began to approach Pakistani government representatives to offer help with Pakistan’s nuclear program. At first, he approached a pair of Pakistani military scientists who were in the Netherlands on business. In spite of his offers, the Pakistani military scientists discouraged him by saying: "As a metallurgical engineer, it would be a hard job for him to find a job in PAEC (Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission)".
Undaunted, Khan wrote a letter to Prime Minister of Pakistan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. His letter addressed to Prime Minister Bhutto that "he sets out his experience and encourages Prime Minister Bhutto to make a nuclear bomb using uranium, rather than plutonium, the method Pakistan is currently trying to adopt under the leadership of Munir Ahmad Khan".
On December, 1974, Khan came back to Pakistan to meet Prime Minister Bhutto and PAEC Chairman Munir Ahmad Khan, where he tried to convince Bhutto to adopt his Uranium route rather than Plutonium route. Bhutto did not agree to halt the plutonium route but decided on the spot to place Khan in charge of the uranium program as a parallel nuclear program advantage.[10] Later that evening, Bhutto met with his close friend and PAEC Chairman Mr. Munir Ahmad Khan in his house, where he told him that "He [Abdul Qadeer Khan] seems to make sense."
[edit]Development of nuclear weapons
In 1976, Khan and Lieutenant-General Zahid Ali Akbar Khan were put in charge of Pakistan's uranium enrichment program with the support of the then Prime Minister of Pakistan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. The uranium enrichment program was announced in 1972 and the work itself began in 1974 by the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) as Project-706 under the guidance of Munir Ahmad Khan, Khan joined the project in the spring of 1976. Khan took over the project from another Pakistani nuclear engineer, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood in the same year. In July of that year, he took over the project from PAEC and re-named the enrichment project as the Engineering Research Laboratories (ERL) atKahuta, Rawalpindi, subsequently, renamed the Khan Research Laboratories (KRL) by the then President of Pakistan, General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. The laboratories became the focal point for developing a uranium enrichment capability for Pakistan's nuclear weapons development programme.
[edit]Competing Against Munir Ahmad Khan and PAEC
But Kahuta Research Laboratories led by Khan was not mandated or involved with the actual design, development and testing of Pakistan's nuclear weapons which was the responsibility of PAEC. Nor was Kahuta Research Laboratories responsible for developing the front end of the nuclear fuel cycle, which comprised uranium exploration, mining, refining and the production of yellow cake as well as the conversion of yellow cake into uranium hexafluoride gas which is the feed material for enrichment and nuclear fuel fabrication or the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle comprising the civil and military nuclear reactor projects and the reprocessing program, all of which was developed and led from 1972 onwards by Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission under Mr. Munir Ahmad Khan.
Khan initially worked under Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC), headed by Munir Ahmad Khan, for a short period. But the pair fell out, and in July 1976, Prime Minister Bhutto gave Khan autonomous control of the uranium enrichment project, reporting directly to the Prime Minister's office, which the arrangement has continued since Khan founded the Engineering Research Laboratories (ERL) on 31 July 1976, with the exclusive task of indigenous development of Uranium Enrichment Plant. Within the next five years the target would be achieved.[11]
Kahuta Research Laboratories, led by Khan and the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, which was led by Munir Ahmad Khan created a tough institutional rivalry against each other. Khan was also a staunch critic of Munir Ahmad Khan's work. The Monthly Atlantic described Mr.Munir Ahmad Khan and Abdul Qadeer Khan as a "mortal enemy" of each other. According to the The Monthly Atlantic, A.Q. Khan tried to convince Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto that Uranium route would be faster than Munir Ahmad Khan's pursuit of plutonium reprocessing, then under way.[12] However, Munir Ahmad Khan and his team of nuclear engineers and nuclear physicists at the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission believed that they could run the reactor without Canadian assistance, and they insisted that with the French extraction plant in the offing, Pakistan should stick with its original plan. Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto did not disagree, but he saw the advantage of mounting a parallel effort toward enriched uranium and decided on the spot to place A.Q. Khan in charge.[12]
In the early 1980s, Khan's Kahuta Research Laboratories also sought to develop nuclear weapons in competition with the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission and claimed to have carried out at least one cold test in 1983, but it seems that this effort did not prove to be successful since the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission led by Munir Ahmad Khan had carried out the first cold test of a working nuclear device on March 11, 1983, and in the following years continued to carry out 24 cold tests of different weapons designs. That is why the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission also conducted the 1998 nuclear tests for Pakistan at Chagai and Kharan.
[edit]Missile Program Competition
Kahuta Research Laboratories also launched other weapons development projects in competition with the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission such as the development of the nuclear weapons-capable Ghauri missile. In early 1980s, the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission was developing the solid-fuelled Shaheen ballistic missile. In competition with the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, A.Q. Khan's Kahuta Lab. sought develop the liquid-fuelled Ghauri ballistic missile. Kahuta also set up its own laboratories and produced its both weapon and reactor grade level plutonium in competition with the PAEC.
[edit]1998 Pakistan Atomic Weapon Testing
The competition between KRL and PAEC became highly intense when India tested its nuclear bombs, Pokhran-II in 1998. India's second nuclear test caused a great alarm in Pakistan but the situation in Pakistan became more critical when then-Prime Minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif came into intense public pressure from Pakistani society to reply to India by conducting its own nuclear tests. Abdul Qadeer Khan repeatedly met with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in which he tried to get Prime Minister's permission to test Pakistan's nuclear weapons in Chagai. Despite his efforts, Nawaz Sharif instead granted permission to PAEC, under Dr. Ishfaq Ahmad to test country's first nuclear test.
The decision made by Nawaz Sharif was questioned by the Pakistani civil society. However, Nawaz Sharif avoided an intense rivalry between PAEC and KRL and asked A.Q. Khan to provide KRL's enriched uranium to the PAEC to test Pakistan's first nuclear tests in 1998. Nawaz Sharif also urged both KRL and PAEC to work together in the national interest of country. It was the enriched uranium in KRL that ultimately led to the successful detonation of Pakistan's first nuclear device on 28 May 1998.[11] Two days later, on May 30, 1998, PAEC tested a Plutonium-based nuclear device, according to a Pakistani defense analyst, the plutonium-based device was much more powerful than the Uranium device.
[edit]Relationships with the Pakistan Armed Forces
According to the media reports, it said that A.Q. Khan had an extremely close and cordial relationship with President General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq and the Military of Pakistan. Khan had also maintained an extremely close relationships with the Pakistan Air Force.
Khan Research Laboratories, as it was now known as, occupied a unique role in Pakistan Defense Industry, reporting directly to the office of the Prime Minister of Pakistan and having extremely close relations with the Military of Pakistan. The former Prime Minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto (late) once mentioned that during her term of office, even she was not allowed to visit Khan Research Laboratories. After President Zia-ul-Haq death, Khan sought to develop a close and friendly relationship with Pakistan's Chief of Army Staff (Pakistan) General (r) Mirza Aslam Beg. According to Khan, General Mirza Aslam Beg was aware of the selling of nuclear technology to Iran and North Korea and one of his top-trusted general was supervising it.
Khan has praised President Zia ul-Haq in his columns and numerous conferences. In an interview with Jang Group of Newspapers, Khan paid a tribute to General Zia-ul-Haq, in which he said "President General Zia-ul-Haq (late) is responsible in helping Pakistan acquire sensitive nuclear technology. He also said that he made significant contributions towards the country's nuclear program.
[edit]Heading Kahuta Research Laboratories and Khan Labs
Pakistan's establishment of its own uranium enrichment capability was so rapid that international suspicion was raised as to whether there was outside assistance to this program. It was reported that Chinese technicians had been at the facility in the early 1980s, but suspicions soon fell on Khan's activities at URENCO. In 1983, Khan was sentenced in absentia to four years in prison by an Amsterdam court for attempted espionage; the sentence was later overturned at an appeal on a legal technicality. Khan rejected any suggestion that Pakistan had illicitly acquired nuclear expertise: "All the research work [at Kahuta] was the result of our innovation and struggle," he told a group of Pakistani librarians in 1990. "We did not receive any technical know-how from abroad, but we cannot reject the use of books, magazines, and research papers in this connection."[citation needed]
In 1987, a British newspaper reported that Khan had confirmed Pakistan's acquisition of a nuclear weapons development capability, by his saying that the U.S. intelligence report "about our possessing the bomb (nuclear weapon) is correct and so is speculation of some foreign newspapers".[citation needed] Khan's statement was disavowed by the Government of Pakistan. and initially he denied giving it, but he later retracted his denial. In October 1991, the Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported that Khan had repeated his claim at a dinner meeting of businessmen and industrialists in Karachi, which "sent a wave of jubilation" through the audience.[citation needed]
During the 1980s and 1990s, the Western governments became increasingly convinced that covert nuclear and ballistic missile collaboration was taking place between China, Pakistan, and North Korea. According to the Washington Post, "U.S. intelligence operatives secretly rifled A.Q. [Khan's] luggage ... during an overseas trip in the early 1980s to find the first concrete evidence of Chinese collaboration with Pakistan'snuclear bomb effort: a drawing of a crude, but highly reliable, Hiroshima-sized nuclear weapon that must have come directly from Beijing, according to the U.S. officials." In October 1990, the activities of KRL led to the United States terminating economic and military aid to Pakistan, following this, the Government of Pakistan agreed to a freeze in its nuclear weapons development program. But Khan, in a July 1996 interview with the Pakistani weekly Friday Times, said that "at no stage was the program of producing nuclear weapons-grade enriched uranium] ever stopped".[13]
[edit]Nuclear Proliferation and Rise to Fame
The American clampdown may have prompted an increasing reliance on Chinese and North Korean nuclear and missile expertise. In 1995, the U.S. Government learned that KRL had bought 5,000 specialized magnets from a Chinese Government-owned company, for use in the uranium enrichment equipment. More worryingly, it was reported that the Pakistani nuclear weapons technology was being exported to other states aspirant of nuclear weapons, notably, North Korea. In May 1998, Newsweek magazine published an article alleging that Khan had offered to sell nuclear know-how to Iraq, an allegation that he denied. United Nations arms inspectors apparently discovered documents discussing Khan's purported offer in Iraq; Iraqi officials said the documents were authentic but that they had not agreed to work with Khan, fearing it was a sting operation.[citation needed] A few weeks later, both India and Pakistan conducted nuclear tests (Pokhran-II and Chagai-I, respectively) that confirmed both countries' development of nuclear weapons. The tests were greeted with jubilation in both countries; in Pakistan, Khan was feted as a national hero. The President of Pakistan, Muhammad Rafiq Tarar, awarded a Nishan-e-Imtiaz second time to him for his role in masterminding the Pakistani nuclear weapons development programme. The United States immediately imposed sanctions on both India and Pakistan and publicly blamed China for assisting Pakistan.
[edit]Involvement in Pakistan's Space Program
After his active role in Pakistan's nuclear program Khan sought to re-organize and revitalize the Pakistani's national space agency, SUPARCO. In the late of 1990s, Khan was actively and heavily involved in Pakistan's space program, especially the Satellite Launch Vehicle (SLV) and Pakistan's first Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) project. He also worked closely with SUPARCO's scientists in development and construction of Pakistan's first indigenously constructed launch facility and space port, Tilla Satellite Launch Center at Tilla District.
In 1999, Khan met with then-chief executive of Pakistan General Pervez Mushrraf with his indigenously self-designed Low Earth orbit (LEO)satellite. He briefed chief executive of Pakistan Pervez Musharraf.
He also suggested that Pakistan should launch a satellite from its own space centers and satellite launch centers. But General Musharrafseemed not to agree with him and did not grant him permission to develop his satellite. He was highly disappointed and he wrote about it in his column.[14]
In March 2001, Khan announced that Pakistani scientists were in the process of building the country's first Satellite Launch Vehicle (SLV) and that the project had been assigned to SUPARCO, which also built the Badr satellites. Khan also cited the fact that India had made rapid strides in the fields of SLV and satellite manufacture as another motivation for developing an indigenous launch capabilities.[15] He tried to convinced then-President of Pakistan Pervez Musharraf to launch the satellite from Pakistan. On December 10, 2001, despite his efforts, Pakistan launched its second Low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan aboard a Russian Zenit-2.
[edit]Investigations into Pakistan's nuclear proliferation
Khan's open promotion of Pakistan's nuclear weapons and ballistic missile capabilities became something of an embarrassment to Pakistan's government. The United States government became increasingly convinced that Pakistan was trading nuclear weapons technology to North Korea in exchange for ballistic missile technology. In the face of strong U.S. criticism, the Pakistani government announced in March 2001 that Khan was to be dismissed from his post as Chairman of Kahuta Research Laboratories, a move that drew strong criticism from the religious and nationalist opposition to Pervez Musharraf. Perhaps in response to this, the Government of Pakistan appointed Khan to the post of Special Science and Technology Adviser to the President, with the status of federal minister. While this could be regarded as a promotion for Khan, it removed him from hands-on management of KRL and gave the government an opportunity to keep a closer eye on his activities. In 2002, theWall Street Journal quoted unnamed "senior Pakistani Government officials" as conceding that Khan's dismissal from KRL had been prompted by the U.S. government's suspicions of his involvement in nuclear weapons technology transfers with North Korea.
Khan came under renewed scrutiny following the September 11, 2001 attacks in the U.S. and the subsequent US invasion of Afghanistan to oust the fundamentalist Taliban regime in Afghanistan. It emerged that al-Qaeda had made repeated efforts to obtain nuclear weapons materials to build either a radiological bomb or a crude nuclear bomb. In late October 2001, the Pakistani government arrested three Pakistani chief nuclear scientists, all with close ties to Khan, for their suspected connections with the Taliban.
The Bush administration continued to investigate Pakistani nuclear weapons proliferation, ratcheting up the pressure on the Pakistani government in 2001 and 2002 and focusing on Khan's personal role. It was alleged in December 2002 that U.S. intelligence officials had found evidence that an unidentified agent, supposedly acting on Khan's behalf, had offered nuclear weapons expertise to Iraq in the mid-1990s, though Khan strongly denied this allegation and the Pakistani government declared the evidence to be "fraudulent". The United States responded by imposing sanctions on KRL, citing concerns about ballistic missile technology transfers.
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