Bhaskar Roy, who retired recently as a senior government official with decades of national and international experience, is an expert on international relations and Indian strategic interests.
It would be advisable to take a moment and ponder why Pakistani nuclear Scientist Dr. A. Q. Khan's December 2003 letter to his wife, Henny, was revealed by his journalist friend Simon Henderson in a recent article.
It is known that Dr. Khan had told his daughter Dina, who lives in London, to see his letter was published if he was in serious trouble. The man to do this was his journalist friend Simon Henderson. Is Khan's life in danger? Both the Pakistani and Chinese establishments would like Khan to be silenced permanently.
Henderson is supposed to have received a copy of this now highly debated letter in 2007. Why did he not publish the letter then? Had he not got the green signal from Henny and Dina? In 2007, Gen. Pervez Musharraf was still the President of Pakistan.
He ensured that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the US did not get access to Khan to question him on his nuclear black market network. Musharraf kept Khan in a paradise prison all these years, honouring with the Nishan-e-Pakistan award, holding him in a comfortable housing, and addressing his needs, but did not give him independent access to the outside world.
Henderson says Khan did not have enough money to look after himself, and the Pakistani government increased his pension and gave him some lump sum amount.
Is it true that Dr. Khan was in such a poor financial situation? Not impossible, if one looks at his character and beliefs. A very pious man, he was not given to smoking or drinking. There are no credible reports to say he frequented casinos and night clubs of Europe, or had mistresses on whom he spent huge amounts of money. His family was from India, and the travails of partition had affected him deeply. It is difficult to accept Musharraf's statement that Khan had a huge ego. He was devoted to Pakistan and Islam, and the Islamic bomb. These are facts well recorded.
Khan was not a real nuclear physicist. He was a Metallurgical engineer. But he had access to nuclear designs and physics while working in Europe, and brought them to Pakistan. That is why he was known as "Photocopier nuclear scientist". But he was the only one of that kind in Pakistan, good at networking, and an able manager and organizer.
A plethora of reports were seen in the last six years talking about the huge wealth Khan had accumulated through nuclear proliferation, and the chateaus, mansions and property he had acquired in the middle East, North Africa and other places.
The publicity blitz about Khan's wealth and his proliferation involving some European partners and Malaysian companies was not questioned by anyone in the media. It was a very well constructed propaganda. The European and Malaysian partners were facts unearthed by international investigations. But Khan's wealth appears to have been fictionally created by the Pakistani intelligence, the ISI, to prove he was a rogue acting on his own.
The west swallowed it, and deliberately, because it served their purpose of using Pakistan for other strategic objectives, chiefly counter-terrorism war against the Al Qaeda. To put it squarely, the west especially the US, gave Musharraf-led Pakistan a way out of its dangerous proliferation that is going to worry most of the world, for very narrow ends.
A related issue of high strategic consideration for India is the smoking gun evidence in Khan's letter about China's role in nuclear and missile proliferation. Most of what the letter reveals has been known though denied by both China and Pakistan, and deliberately ignored by the US. If the Dutch got a copy of Khan's letter in 2004, the US and the UK would also have had it. The importance of Khan's letter is that it authenticates what is known.
Pakistan gave China centrifuge technology which Khan stole from Europe and helped set up the enrichment plant in Hanzhong. China, in turn, gave Pakistan the design of the atom bomb, helped it to marry a bomb with a missile, provided Pakistan with Uranium hexafluoride and enriched uranium.
This is only the tip of the Chinese proliferation iceberg. Entire Pakistani nuclear weapons complexes have been built with Chinese expertise. China procured for Pakistan heavy equipment from Europe to drill silos in mountain sides to store nuclear warheads.
Pushed to a corner, China may agree that when they assisted Pakistan's nuclear programme they were not signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), though that is a difficult call for Beijing's proverbial face. Given their track record, the Chinese will try to find a way around. Since they have 'deceived' the world 'denial' is the other weapon used in conjunction.
More important, however, is the even more pernicious Chinese proliferation to Pakistan. The plutonium plants in Pakistan's Kushals complex are China aided, and have started production. The Kushab-III and IV facilities have been completed or near completion. The fact is that Pakistan has now enough weapons grade uranium and plutonium to produce between 70 to 90 atomic and thermonuclear weapons.
How many warheads they have is a guess, but analysts put them at least around 50.
Successive US President from Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton declined to make a determination of Chinese proliferation to Pakistan. Nuclear capable Chinese M-II Missile (range 290 km) were sighted by US agencies in Pakistan, and photographed.
But the US President refused to make a "determination", that is, official confirmation. The American stakes were still elsewhere, and China and Pakistan were needed in another misplaced strategy.
North Korea is nuclear-weaponized or near about. It is well known the know-how went from Pakistan through A.Q. Khan. What Khan did was on official directions. Let us not forget Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's visit to Pyongyang in 1992, where she cut a deal to acquire missile technology. The quid pro quo was nuclear design and technology. The transactions were conducted using Chinese soil, facilities including refuelling of Pakistani aircraft belonging to Shaheen Airlines, an A.Q.Khan controlled company used for special assignments.
China was not an innocent bystander. Everything was done with Beijing's knowledge and oversight. But Beijing did not want to dirty its hands providing nuclear weapons technology to North Korea. It was happy to see Pakistan do it.
But China may have played a short sighted card on North Korea's nuclearization. Pyongyang has conducted two nuclear tests, one earlier this year. It has also demonstrated its missile capability, leaving the East Asian Security question open.
In a related development that cannot be ignored, Richard Holbrooke, US Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan observed (Sept. 16) that Al Qaeda was publicly soliciting Pakistani nuclear scientists to provide them with Pakistan's nuclear secrets (weapons making technology). This is significant. Holbrooke's disclosure, if it is one, eerily coincides with Henderson's exposition of A.Q. Khan's letter. It is well known that Khan and his Islamic nuclear scientist colleagues Bashiruddin Ahmed and Abdul Aziz were introduced to the Al Qaeda and the Taliban Chief Mullah Omar by the ISI between 1990 to 2001. There was more than one meeting.
A.Q. Khan started to become a baggage for Pakistan's military establishment by the mid-1990s. He had delivered what was required and he was not a nuclear scientists. The man who took over was Qamar Mubarakband, a very low profile real nuclear scientist, deeply Islamist, harbouring radical Islamic revivalism with power. This is an explosive mix.
US President Barak Obama has a huge problem in his hands.
Like his predecessors, is he willing to ignore a much larger threat to the world and America to chase a narrower objective when he is getting entrapped in quicksand laid by Pakistan's ISI and the army? Or is he really interested in putting Pakistan's officially backed proliferation on the mat?
After all, If there are any real 'rogue' states on this planet, they are China and Pakistan.
Sify VIDEOS - AQ Khan exposes Pak's nuke lies | Increase in Pakistan's nuclear arsenal worrisome: Indian Army chief | Sify VIDEOS - China denies role in N Proliferation | A Q Khan case a closed chapter: Pakistan | More articles by Bhaskar Roy
