Is Dr. Qadeer Guilty as Accused?

Pakistan’s nuclear pot had been stirring for months, since General Musharraf himself and his acolytes started spilling the beans about its scientists being possibly involved in nuclear proliferation and transfer of technology to ‘rogue’ states. However, the latest development—in which the ‘father’ of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, has reportedly ‘confessed’ his hand in transfer of technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea—opens a huge Pandora’s Box, engulfing Pakistan into its most serious crisis of confidence since the deabcle of East Pakistan in 1971. Pakistan is already shaking under the impact of this latest national trauma.

Dr. Abdul Qadeer is arguably the most popular and charismatic Pakistani alive. His aura has loomed like a titan over Pakistan, ever since Pakistan exploded its nuclear bombs on May 28, 1998, in the mountains of Chaghai, Baluchistan, close to the border with Iran, in response to its arch-rival India’s gratuitous nuclear blast of three weeks earlier. He won the heart of every Pakistani, big or small, for having armed the country with a fail-safe deterrent against India’s nuclear demon. Dr. Qadeer was seen as Pakistan’s saviour, guaranteeing its territorial integrity against a rapacious India. No one, until now, could dare to cast a glance in the direction of, much less think of dislodging him from, his high pedestal where a grateful nation’s ungrudging awe and admiration had placed him. This included Musharraf and his pompous generals,too, until they decided to forsake Qadeer, dislodge him from his high pedestal and make a horrible example of him.

Allegorically speaking, Musharraf has dealt as symbolic a blow to Qadeer’s aura and stature as the American ‘conquerors’ of Iraq did last year to Saddam Hussain’s by dismantling his bronze statue in Baghdad’s Firdousi Square.

The question is, why has Musharraf chosen to target Qadeer, and that too in such a clumsy and ham-fisted manner?

Not surprisingly, the charge sheet against Dr. Qadeer and some of his lieutenants at the Khan Laboratories at Kahuta, near Islamabad, has come off the bat of ISI, Pakistan’s dreaded intelligence agency. It is ISI whose sleuths have been grilling Dr. Qadeer’s associates at Kahuta for weeks on end since last November, so much so that the families of these scientists hve been forced to knock at the door of the judiciary for redressal.

The cloak-and-dagger operation began soon after the International Atomic Energy Agency ( IAEA ) allegedly reported to Pakistani authorities that they suspected Pakistan had transferred nuclear technology to Iran and North Korea. Libya was subsequently thrown in for good measure, especially at Washington’s intervention.

But it were Pakistan’s own official sources that nonchalantly blew the whistle on their scientists and leaked it to the whole world that they suspected foul play from their own people. They were the ones who started the sinister character- assassination campaign against their own benefactors by alleging that some of them were guilty of selling nuclear technology ‘for persoanl gains’. What prompted them to sling mud at their heroes so vicariously? Who gave them the license for it? What was the compulsion on them to name names with such relish? Why couldn’t the questioning of the Pakistani scientists be kept under wraps and done quietly? Who decided to blow the cover from such a sensitive investigation and let the world in on the grilling of some of Pakistan’s most- prized brains?

For answers to all these questions, one should go back to the early after-math of 9/11 when Musharraf was surprisingly anointed as a frontline soldier in George W. Bush’s ‘war on terrorism.’Overnight, he was morphed from an international pariah into a world-class statesman eagerly sought out by the likes of Bush and Blair. But there was also a price tag attached. Which, among other things, included a cap on Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions. Which translated into de-mythologising Dr. Qadeer, the god-father of Pakistan’s nuclear programme. The strategy was simple and common sense. A family without its father becomes orphan. So Pakistan had to be portrayed as an irresponsible and rogue nuclear power.

For starters, therefore, Dr. Qadeer was quietly but unceremoniously relieved from the command of Kahuta and kicked upward to a sinecure but toothless position of ‘adviser’ to the then Chief Executive, and subsequently to the PM. He has now also been kicked out from that largely ceremonial position. Interestingly, however, his marching orders have come not from the Prime Minister he was adviser to but from the military high command, presided over by Musharraf. This makes an obvious mockery of Musharraf’s oft-repeated claim that he has transferred power to the elected representatives of the people.

But removing Dr. Qadeer from Kahuta was considered insufficient to cap or bottle up Pakistan’s nuclear programme. Kahuta itself had to be tarnished as a den of rogues and scoundrels. Fortuitously for the schemers, help came from least expected sources to make it a reality. Iran ‘volunteered’ information to IAEA to save its own skin; Libya chipped in because of its impetuous leader, Col. Qaddafi’s typically maverick behaviour. Qaddafi has been broken in favour of the west and can henceforth be relied upon to do the west’s biddings a la Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak.

It seems that Musharraf and his mentors concluded that the evidence furnished by Iran and Libya was sufficient to administer the long-sought coup de grace to Qadeer and make as much a horrible example of him as Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was made of in the 70s.

The lightning charge against Qadeer has been launched by Musharraf himself. It was he who conclusively stated in his interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that “…as far as Pakistanis are concerned, it is clear ( proliferation ) was done by individuals for their own personal financial gain…” As Dawn’s Ayaz Amir ruefully observed, Musharraf was under no heat from Amanpour to volunteer such a specific and categorical judgment, and yet he did leaving, in Amir’s words, “ nothing to chance.”

The question, again, arises why did Musharraf have to be so assertive and robust in his denunciation of his own scientists? Who forced him to become, on his own steam, the prosecutor, the judge and the hangman—all rolled into one?

The answer is that Musharraf has an agenda to fulfil and he is working according to the timetable given to him by his White House minders.

It is widely believed that at his last summer’s tete-a-tete with Musharraf at Camp David, Bush had given his protégé a long list of ‘must dos’, at least three of which required immediate attention. These were: settling Kashmir with India; freezing Pakistan’s nuclear programme and; recognising Israel. And all this should be done by summer this year when Bush will have received his party’s nomination for a second crack at the White House. He would want to face the American voters with some feathers in his cap.

Musharraf set the ball rolling on Kashmir, on India’s terms, on the sidelines of Islamabad’s SAARC summit in early January.

Disgracing Qadeer is essential to cast a long shadow of doubt on Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions and usurp its control completely from technicians and entrust it to the army at Musharraf’s beck and call. Sharing nuclear controls with Washington would, then, be the next logical step.

As for the recognition of Israel, Musharraf’s ‘chance’ meeting with Shimon Peres at Davos, Switzerland, was in preparation to ram this unpalatable thing down the throats of the Pakistani people; secret contacts and negotiations with Israel—in U.S. and Turkey—have reportedly covered a lot of ground, already.

Musharraf’s calculated gamble to take on a national hero like Dr. Qadeer is a sign of his over-confidence. He thinks the chips are down in his favour, so much so that he can get away with the decapitation of Pakistan’s prized icon. He has bottled up the maulvis and pulverized the combined opposition to his autocratic rule. He is untouchable and safe, especially with Bush in the White House.

Musharraf is also determined to shield his peers in the military brass, past and present, against any blemish in the scam being associated with Qadeer & company. This is despite common perception in Pakistan that the army has institutionalised corruption and money making in its higher echelons. Musharraf’s predilection for ‘brass’ is in defiance of the well-known fact that scientists of Kahuta, including Dr. Qadeer, were kept under constant military monitoring and surveillance. It is thus apocryphal that they indulged in corruption without the knowledge of their military minders.

As far as the people of Pakistan are concerned, Musharraf seems to have concluded that they are incapable, or too impatient, to carry on a sustained agitation. Their anger, and protest, is, at best, a tempest in a tea-cup which ebbs fairly quickly. What happened—or didn’t happen—after the fall of Dhaka in 1971, and Bhutto’s hanging by the generals in 1979, lends credence to this impression. However, there is always room in a nation for a new beginning, and this brazen humiliation of Dr. Qadeer could just be the trigger for a new awakening of the people of Pakistan.

Musharraf’s over-confidence speaks volumes in the charge sheet made public against Dr. Qadeer. It reads like a typical history of greed and plunder normally associated with corrupt politicians and generals in Pakistan. Which entitles a layman in Pakistan to pose the obvious question: if Qadeer has done all that, and has feathered his nest with such abundance, why not put him on trial in an open court? What is the fear in putting him in the dock in full glare of public scrutiny?

But Musharraf will not do it, on the alibi of guarding national secrets. His reluctance to try Qadeer publicly is symmetrical with the reluctance of his mentor, Bush, to try the hapless detainees of Guantanamo in an open court. Musharraf’s fear is that most skeletons in Dr. Qadeer’s closet would be found wearing the military uniforms.