MWC Special Feature

Emerging Strategic Nuclear Environment: Iran & North Korea  
 
While posted at Dakar in Senegal in West Africa ,I commenced in October 1980 the first leg of my travelathon crisscrossing continents on an Air Algeri flight which after a brief halt at Nouakchott , Mauritania , zigzagged East to Niamey, Niger's throbbing capital (thanks to uranium). Looking down from the plane, the journey across Sahara, crossing river Niger, over Timbuktu and Gao was fascinatingly dull. I wondered if all these little known places and Bamako (Mali), N'jamena (Chad) and Bangui (Central African Republic) might become household words like Kuwait, Abu Dhabi and Dubai, once the reportedly buried uranium wealth underneath were mined to fuel energy needs of last decade of this century and early 2lst century.
 
However, in spite of wake up calls in 1970s of hydrocarbon energy shortage, the corporate interests in oil and gas, which is so profitable, did little to develop nuclear or other means of energy. So Niger has become notorious for its uranium mines for weapons use, and some times for its famines. President George W. Bush used alleged attempts by Saddam Hussein, proved concocted, to get uranium from Niger for weapons, as one of the causes belli to invade Iraq.
 
How ever, it was the Bhopal ( India) born Pakistan national and German trained metallurgist and nuclear scientist and a globalize in nuclear weapons technology ,Dr. Abdul Qadir Khan, who last year brought into world focus, Timbuktu ,which even the much traveled Indian journalist Khuswant Singh thought was a only a verbal expression , when I told him about it. For in November 1979 after presenting my letters of credence in Bamako, saying now or never, I undertook a journey by road and by boat on river Niger, to sample some romance of the earlier travelers, to the famous Eldorado, where during medieval centuries a pound of salt fetched an ounce of gold, attracting traders, invaders and scholars making Timbuktu a great center of Islamic culture and civilization.  

Who would have ever thought in 1979 that Khan would love Timbuktu so much that he would even invest in a hotel there (It appears that Hotel La Colombe (?) has been named for his wife -shades of a minor Shah Jehan).But even Dr Watson would tell Sherlock Holmes why, so that he could travel from Pakistan to Timbuktu and back and supervise transfer of yellow cake to Pakistan and elsewhere. One can easily fly east from Timbuktu to Niger or go by road or river. He went around openly, flying around to Morocco, Mali, Chad, and Sudan and everywhere the maker of the Islamic bomb was a welcome hero.

The media accused Khan last year when the scandal about his proliferation activities exploded, of him even using Pakistan military aircrafts to transport furniture for his Timbuktu hotel project from Pakistan.  Pray Dr Watson, what came back in empty Pakistani military aircrafts. Yellow cake, of course. Not even the gullible would believe that such top-secret transfers were not known to the all-powerful ISI, the Intelligence Services of Pakistan or the western intelligence services. Recently a former Dutch Prime Minister said that he was stopped from moving against Khan by USA’s Central Intelligence Agency.
 
The Muslim world has been oppressed and exploited by the Christian West since centuries and Pakistan’s pioneering role is part of the battle to face up to the western challenge, whether as an ally ( against India ) or as an opponent ( sooner or later ). Nevertheless, for its nuclear arsenal, USA after 119 would have come down on Pakistan even more heavily. So Iran has only taken the Pakistan ignited torch to share its nuclear capability for peaceful uses with Muslim and other nations as part of millennia old Jihad versus Crusade. If non-Muslim third world nations too join in this struggle then it would also become a North vs. South struggle and confrontation.

AQ Khan’s contribution to Globalization of nuclear weapons technology

Khan ,a Pakistani national ,while employed in early 1970s by Physics Dynamic Research Laboratory ,based in Amsterdam ,a subcontractor to the URENCO consortium specializing in the manufacture of nuclear equipment , was persuaded in 1975 to take over Pakistan’s Uranium enrichment plant by Pakistan Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who after India’s 1974 nuclear implosion had vowed that Pakistan would have its Islamic bomb even if “ we eat grass”  Khan took over in 1976 bringing with him stolen secret URENCO blueprints for uranium centrifuge and the suppliers list .

Convicted in 1983 in abstention by a court in the Netherlands for stealing the designs, his conviction would be later overturned on a technicality. Then US supported and financed and Pakistan facilitated Jihad against USSR in Afghanistan was in full swing. The purloined material used for enrichment of Uranium was used in Pakistan's first nuclear device on 28 May 1998. There are allegations that the Pakistan’s nuclear weapons origins closely mirror Chinese designs from the late 1960’s.

In March 2001, when Al Qaida had shown its hand and attacked US embassies in Africa and the close collaboration with Pakistan’s ISI and military with the Talibans and Osama bin Laden was well known ,Khan , by now a national hero ,was quietly retired but remained an adviser to the new President General Pervez Musharraf . Khan’s proliferation activities could become mushroom clouds over the west. Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage in an article in Financial Times of 1 June 2001, expressed concern that, "people who were employed by the nuclear agency and have retired" may be assisting North Korea with its nuclear program. Unsaid were fears of Talibans, Al Qaida and nuclear secrets passed on to

Muslim countries like Libya and Iran among others.

In October 2003, Richard Armitage reportedly briefed Gen. Musharraf and so did Gen. Abizaid, then head of US Central Command. However, the nuclear genii were already out of the bottle. With the international inspections of Iran's nuclear operations and the October 2003 interception of a ship headed for Libya and carrying centrifuge parts, Pakistan’s game was out in the open , when United Nation's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), weighed in November 2003. In late January 2004, Pakistani officials concluded that Khan and Mohammed Farooq were doing black market deals, but acting on their won, in sale of sensitive technology to Iran and Libya, perhaps for their own personal gain .Musharraf first denied any government involvement (He is adept at denials as Indian Prime Ministers learn eventually). His pledged so-called harsh punishment amounted to house arrest. It only meant no one could meet or interview him.

Like Pakistan’s TV family mellow dramas, popular in India too, Khan admitted selling nuclear technology to Iran, Libya, and North Korea between 1989 and 2000 (to North Korea even beyond) and asked for clemency, which was promptly granted. Any international investigation, not including US and Chinese experts would show the truth of western acquiescence. Is murder of former Prime Minister Hariri of Lebanon more important than wide spread proliferation of nuclear weapons.

The network used to supply these activities has turned out to be global in scope, stretching from Germany to Dubai and from China to South Asia, and involves numerous middlemen and suppliers. Khan Research Laboratories' sales brochure had promoted the sale of components derived from Pakistan's nuclear weapons program and critical to the making of centrifuges.

Khan traveled openly during late 1990s to many countries around Niger, with Pakistani missions in Morocco, Nigeria, Sudan, Kenya, Malaysia etc providing him all help .This information is available in media and books. In Cleric Turaibi’s Sudan, where Osama was guest after leaving and returning to Afghanistan, Khan met the Sudanese President and the minister of education. Many times, he was accompanied by senior serving scientists of Pakistan's nuclear establishment, responsible for Pakistan's military nuclear development. These included Dr. Fakhrul Hassan Hashmi, Chief Scientific Adviser to Khan, Brig. Tajwar, Director-General Security Khan’s Research Laboratory, Dr. Nazir Ahmed, Director-General S&TC Division KRL among others. Khan and his aids visited at least 10 African countries in February 2000 alone.

An investigation into Khans’ activities revealed the transfer of nuclear weapons-related technology, centrifuge parts, and blueprints to Iran and Libya through a Malaysian middleman, Buhary Syed Abu Tahir. The network comprised of European middlemen from Germany, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland, which helped Khan in illicit trafficking and proliferation of nuclear technology through countries ranging from the United Arab Emirates, to South Korea, Switzerland, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. Times of India, in February and March 2004, reported that Khan sold Nuke Tech to Syria and Turkey. 

North Korea & Pakistan in a Missile for Nukes Tango;

In Pakistan’s wide ranging nuclear proliferation, especially with North Korea, almost all Pakistan Prime Ministers and Military Chiefs were reportedly involved. Khan’s network reportedly played a key role in North Korea’s nuclear program, including both centrifuge designs and a small number of actual complete centrifuges, in addition to a list of components needed to manufacture additional ones, after it had agreed under the 1994 Agreed Framework to freeze its reactors and reprocessing facilities. In return, in 1994 Pakistani Gen. Abdul Waheed sent Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto to Pyongyang for North Korean assistance in nuclear-capable long-range missiles and to bring back computer disks containing specifications for missiles. It was reportedly claimed that lack of money on Pakistan’s part made trading easier. Soon Khan made the first of his about 13 trips to North Korea, as part of a Pakistani delegation to Pyongyang, composed of both scientists and military officers. At that time, Gen. Musharraf was Gen Waheed’s director general for military operations.