DAR AL HARB/ISLAM - U.S.A./PAKISTAN: A.Q. KHAN, NUCLEAR BLACK MARKET & $600 MILLION A YEAR IN JIZYA PAYMENTS TO PAKISTAN

Awkward truth of scientist’s ‘nuclear supermarket’

As the US hands over the $600 million a year it has promised Pakistan, it might ask itself this: was this really not enough to buy a single interview with A. Q. Khan?

According to the account which President Musharraf has doggedly peddled, the country’s most famous nuclear scientist not only equipped his own country with its first nuclear weapons, but then – acting alone, Musharraf insists – sold to North Korea, Libya and possibly Iran the starter kits that helped them to win nuclear self-sufficiency.

This solitary villain and his “nuclear supermarket” would have been incredible even in a James Bond film. As an account of the spawning of the most serious nuclear threats the world now faces it has always been implausible. But even though Khan has done more damage to the cause of peace than Osama bin Laden, the US, since it coopted the Pakistani Government to its “war on terror” in 2001, has chosen to accept the portrayal of him as a “rogue scientist”, acting largely without government help for 20 years. Its officials have not managed to get a single face-to-face interview with him.

It is a public service, then, to try to answer the unanswered questions about Khan: Was Pakistan’s government complicit? How much did the US know? And where did the money go? The International Institute of Strategic Studies has done that (in what it bravely describes as a “dossier”, despite its ill-fated predecessors in that genre), although the answers are patchy.
The report usefully deflates the myth that Khan was “the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb”. He was a technician who helped it to master uranium enrichment, one of the trickier barriers, and illicitly to bring in the material to do so.

But even though successive Pakistani governments gave Khan great autonomy from the start, the IISS concludes that “it is logical to assume that the intelligence apparatus did know more than Pakistan has ever let on.”

The IISS is not the first to point out that Khan’s trades with North Korea particularly suggest government complicity, but it puts the point bluntly. It argues that the centrifuges, blueprints and uranium hexafluoride which Khan admits supplying to North Korea “were probably transported . . . on chartered Pakistani Air Force flights”. It is sceptical of the claim by Pakistani governments that they bought missiles from North Korea for cash, not for a barter of nuclear technology. “The broad cooperation between Pyongyang and Islamabad is significant reason to suspect state complicity” – at least knowing of the deal and “implicitly condoning” it, the report says.

But in Libya, Khan’s sales of centrifuge equipment “were almost exclusively private business transactions”, it argues. Mark Fitzpatrick, the report’s main author, points out that Khan would have had to share most of the reputed $100 million price of the Libyan contract with members of his network (40 of whom have been named).

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Rogue Pakistani scientist still actively involved in proliferation
By Kim Sengupta

The clandestine network trading in nuclear material and technology set up by rogue Pakistani scientist A Q Khan is still very much in business and actively involved in proliferation, a new report has claimed.

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However the influential think tank, International Institute of Strategic Studies, says that his extensive 'contact book' has been sold on allowing lucrative new deals to take place.

Only a part of Khan's worldwide organisation has been uncovered and some of the members prosecuted. But, said Mark Fitzpatrick, one of the authors of the report, "In this case decapitating the head does not mean the body is dead. Khan's network was horizontal and in many ways self-supporting. He may have been the dealmaker, but many of his contacts have been able to organise their own deals."

Just how much money was made by Khan's network remains unknown. "Just one deal with the Libyans is estimated to have got him around $100 million", said Mr Fitzpatrick. "But we do not know how much of that he had to share with his network."

Khan was pardoned by Pakistani leader General Pervez Musharraf after admitting his role in proliferation and publicly declaring that the Pakistani state had played no part in the scheme.

However it is widely believed that Khan, who stole nuclear technology while working in Holland was under the sponsorship of the Pakistani government desperate to have nuclear parity with India. The US and other Western governments have not been allowed to question Khan by General Musharraf who claims this will compromise national security. Mr Fitzpatrick said " A number of Pakistani officials encouraged Khan in what he was doing. They have not been prosecuted or punished in any way for this implicit complicity and we do not know what they are doing now.

"But Khan's contact list had been sold on to third parties who are continuing to obtain illicit supplies for their programme." According to the report, 'Nuclear Black Markets: Pakistan, A Q Khan and the rise of proliferation networks', Iran is one of the main buyers of illicit supplies. "Today, Iran remains the most active customer in the international nuclear black market", said Dr John Chipman, director-general of the IISS.

"Iran has sought dual-use goods from some of the same people and firms previously linked to Khan, but has also turned to new technology brokers."

"At least some Khan's associated appear to have escaped law enforcement attention and could, after a period of lying low, resume their black market business."


Pertinent Links:

1) Awkward truth of scientist’s ‘nuclear supermarket’

2) Rogue Pakistani scientist still actively involved in proliferation