Abdul Qadeer Khan was one of Pakistan's top scientists,[3] and was involved in the country's various scientific programmes until his debriefing.[3] In January 2004, Khan was officially summoned for a debriefing on his suspicious activities in other countries after the United States provided evidences to the Pakistan Government, and confessed it a month later.[3] However, it has been alleged that these activities were government sanction, though the Pakistan government sharply dismissed the claims.[4][5] After years of debriefing, the Islamabad High Court (IHC) on 6 February 2009 declared Abdul Qadeer Khan to be a free citizen of Pakistan, allowing him free movement inside the country. The verdict was rendered by Chief Justice Sardar Muhammad Aslam.[6] In September 2009, expressing concerns over the Islamabad High Court's decision to end all security restrictions on Khan, the United States warned that Khan still remains a "serious proliferation risk".[7]
Early life
Khan was born in Bhopal, India (then British Indian Empire) into a Pashtun, but Urdu-speaking family in 1936. His father Dr. Abdul Ghafoor Khan was an academic who served in the Education Ministry of the British Indian Government and after retirement in 1935, settled permanently in Bhopal State.[8] After the partition in 1947, the family emigrated from India to Pakistan, and settled in West-Pakistan.[9] Khan studied in Saint Anthony's High School of Lahore, and then enrolled at the D.J. Science College of Karachi.[9] There, he took his double BA degree in Physics and in Mathematics under the supervision of physicist Dr. Bashir Syed.[9] In 1956, he attended Karachi University and obtained a B.S. degree in Metallurgy in 1960 and subsequently got the internship at the Siemens Engineering.[9]
After the graduation, he was employed by the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation and worked as an city inspector of weight and measures in Karachi, Pakistan.[9] In 1961, he went to West Berlin to study Metallurgical engineering at the Technical University Berlin.[9] In 1967, Qadeer Khan obtained an engineer's degree in technology from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, and a doctorate engineering in Metallurgical engineering under the supervision of Martin Brabers from the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, in 1972.[9] Qadeer Khan's doctoral dissertations were written in fluent German.[9] His doctoral thesis dealt and contained the fundamental work in martensite, and its extended industrial applications to the field of Morphology, a field that studies the shape, size, texture and phase distribution of physical objects[9][10]
Research in Europe
In 1972, the year he received his doctorate, Abdul Qadeer Khan through a former university classmate, Friedrich Tinner, and a recommendation from his old professor and mentor, Martin J. Brabers, joined the senior staff of the Physics Dynamics Research Laboratory in Amsterdam.[11] At first, he was responsible for evaluating the high-strength metals to be used for centrifuge components.[12] The Physics Laboratory was a subcontractor for URENCO Group, the uranium enrichment research facility at Almelo, Netherlands, which had been established in 1970 by the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands to assure a supply of enriched uranium for European nuclear reactors.[11] According to one of Qadeer Khan's closest theorist, Dr. Ghulam Dastigar Alam, pointed out that Qadeer Khan was highly proficient in German, French and English languages, and the Physics Laboratories administration gave him a handful set of drawing of a centrifuge machines for translation.[11] Soon after, Qadeer Khan left the laboratories to join the senior scientific staff of the URENCO Group after URENCO offered him a prestigious position.[11] There, Qadeer Khan was in charge and responsible for performing physics experiments on uranium metallurgy[11] and was tasked to produce commercial-grade uranium usable for light water reactors.[11] In the meantime, the URENCO Group gave drawings of centrifuges for the solution of engineering problems that URENCO's engineers were facing.[11] The URENCO facility used Zippe-type centrifuge technology to separate the fissile isotopes 235U from non-fissile 238U by spinning UF6 gas at up to 100,000RPM.[11] Abdul Qadeer Khan's academic and leading-edge research in metallurgy brought great laurels to URENCO Group.[11] In a short span of time, Khan earned a great reputation there, and enjoyed a distinguished career at URENCO.[11] One of his greatest achievements was to enhance and improve the efficiency of the gas-centrifuges, which he did all alone.[11] URENCO enjoyed a great academic relationship with Dr. Qadeer Khan, and URENCO had Qadeer Khan as one of the most senior scientists at the research facility where he worked and researched.[11] Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan was responsible for improving the efficiency of the centrifuges used by URENCO, and greatly contributed to the technological advancement of the Zippe technology, a technology that was developed by Gernot Zippe, a mechanical engineer, in the Soviet Union during the 1940s.[11] URENCO granted Qadeer Khan access to the most restricted areas of its facility as well as to the most restricted and highly classified documentation on gas centrifuge technology.[11] During this time, URENCO had granted this privilege to few of the senior academic scientists who were working in the highly secretive and classified research projects.[11]
Uranium enrichment is an extremely difficult process, as 235U exists in natural uranium at a concentration of only 0.7%; for the purposes of most power-generation reactors the concentration of that isotope has to be increased about fivefold, to at least 3%. The trick is to isolate and shed a similar isotope known as 238U, which is barely 1% heavier. By spinning at very high speeds—electrically driven to 100,000 Rpm, in perfect balance, on superb bearings, in a vacuum, linked by pipes to thousands of other units doing the same—this is what the centrifuge achieves. Much of the technical details of these centrifuge systems are regulated as secret information and subject to export controls because they could be used for the purposes of proliferation, and useful to make weapon-grade fuel for weapon making purposes.[11]
1971 war and return to Pakistan
The clandestine and highly secretive atomic bomb project of Pakistan was given a start on 20 January 1972, when President (later Prime minister) Zulfikar Ali Bhutto chaired a secret meeting of academic scientists at Multan.[13] Known as the Multan meeting where only senior scientists were delegated to meet with Bhutto, the atomic bomb project was launched under the administrative control of Bhutto, and the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (or PAEC) under its chairman, Munir Ahmad Khan.[13] Earlier efforts were directed towards the implosion-type bomb with exploration of the Plutonium route.[13] Abdul Qadeer Khan did not join the atomic bomb project whereas had no knowledge or information of this integrated atomic project until 1974, the controversy that highly doubts Abdul Qadeer Khan's "father-like" claim. On 18 May 1974, India conducted a surprise nuclear test, codenamed Smiling Buddha, near Pakistan's eastern border when Indian Premier Indira Gandhi gave verbal authorisation to the scientists at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) to conduct a test of a device that they had built, the preparation was completed under extreme secrecy.[13] The test was conducted at the long-constructed Indian Army base, known as Pokhran Test Range (PTR). It was only three years since Pakistan's humiliating defeat in the 1971 Indo-Pak Winter war and the Winter war had put Pakistan's mortal existence in great danger.[14] This nuclear test, Smiling Buddha, greatly alarmed the Government of Pakistan.[13] Prime minister Bhutto squeezed the time limit of the atomic bomb project from five years to three years, in a vision to evolved and derived the country's scientific atomic project as from the "atomic capability to sustainable nuclear power".[13] Sensing the importance of this test, Munir Ahmad Khan secretly launched the Project-706, a codename of a secret uranium enrichment programme under the domain of the atomic project.[13] The program's first technical directorship was handed over nuclear engineer Sültan Mahmood of PAEC.[13]
When the news reached to Abdul Qadeer Khan, he immediately went to the Pakistan consulate-general in Amsterdam and approached to Pakistan government officials where he offered to help Pakistan's secret atomic bomb project.[15] At first, he persuaded with a pair of PAF military scientists who were in the Netherlands to buy an air tunnel.[15] At the consulate-general, the military scientists dissuaded him by quoting as "hard to find" a job in PAEC as a "metallurgist".[15]
Undaunted, Abdul Qadeer Khan wrote to Prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, highlighting his experience and encourages Prime Minister Bhutto to make an atomic bomb using uranium, rather than plutonium, the method Pakistan was trying to adopt under the leadership of Munir Ahmad Khan".[15] According to Kuldip Nayyar, although the letter was received by Prime minister Secretariat, Qadeer Khan was still unknown to the Government, leading Bhutto to ask the ISI to run a complete background check on Khan and prepare an assessment report on Khan and his profession.[16] The ISI submitted its report and recommending Khan as an incompetent scientist in the field of nuclear technology based on his academic discipline.[16] But, Bhutto was unsatisfied with ISI's report and was eager to know more about Khan, therefore Bhutto asked Munir Ahmad Khan to dispatch a team of PAEC's scientists to meet Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan.[17] The PAEC intelligence team compromising Sultan Mahmood travelled to Amsterdam and arrived where Qadeer Khan was staying with his family at night and the discussion was held until the next day.[17] The meeting was held the whole night, and the team returned to Pakistan the next day.[17] Following this, Bhutto immediately decided to meet with Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, and directed a confidential letter to Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan. Soon after, Abdul Qadeer Khan took a leave from URENCO Group, and departed for Pakistan in 1974.[17]
Initiation and atomic bomb project
In December 1974, Abdul Qadeer Khan travelled to Pakistan and immediately went to Prime minister Secretariat without even stopping at the local hotel.[18] The meeting was held at midnight and remained under extreme secrecy with only few knowing about it.[18] There, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan met with Zulfikar Bhutto, Munir Khan, and Dr. Mübaschir Hassan, Bhutto's Science Adviser.[18] During the meeting, Abdul Qadeer Khan enlightened the importance to Uranium and advocated the development of the atomic bomb using the highly-enriched uranium, but was unable to convince Bhutto to adopt uranium as the best approach rather than plutonium to make an atomic bomb.[18] Many of the theorists at that time, including Munir Khan maintained that "plutonium and the nuclear fuel cycle has its significance".,[14] and Munir Khan insisted that with the French extraction plant in the offing, Pakistan should stick with its original plan.[14] Bhutto did not disagree, but saw the advantage of mounting a parallel effort toward enriched uranium.[14][19] After Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan took off from the Prime minister Secretariat, Zulfikar Bhutto quietly told with his close friends Munir Ahmad Khan and Mübascher Hassan that, "He [Abdul Qadeer Khan] seems to make sense."[18] Next day early morning, another meeting was held where Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan persuaded again to Bhutto and tried to convince him to halt the plutonium pursuit, with other PAEC officials were also presented.[18] At this final meeting with Zulfikar Bhutto, Qadeer Khan also advocated the development of specific kind of metalized uranium-based gun-type atomic bomb, which many of his fellow theorists said would be unlikely to work.[20]
Prior to Abdul Qadeer Khan's inclusion, the uranium route was considered secondary, with most efforts applied to develop a device with weapons-grade plutonium.[18] In the spring of 1976, Abdul Qadeer Khan joined the atomic bomb project, and became part of the enrichment division at PAEC.[18] After enrichment division's director, Mahmood, briefed Khan on the project, the pair disagreed, and Abdul Qadeer Khan became highly unsatisfied with the work led by Mahmood.[18] He wrote a letter to Munir Ahmad Khan, that was later directed to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, in which he expressed his discontent with Mahmood informing that he wanted to work independently.[18]
Kahuta Research Laboratories
Bhutto sensed great danger as the scientists were split between uranium and plutonium routes.[18] Therefore, Bhutto called Abdul Qadeer Khan for a meeting, which was held at the prime minister secretariat. With the backing of Bhutto, Qadeer Khan took over the enrichment programme and renamed the project to Engineering Research Laboratories (ERL).[18] Abdul Qadeer Khan insisted to work with the Corps of Engineers to lead the construction of the suitable operational enrichment site, which was granted. The E-in-C directed Brigadier Zahid Ali Akbar of Corps of Engineers to work with Qadeer Khan in Project-706.[18] The Corps of Engineers and Brigadier Akbar quick acquired the remote city of Kahuta which had prestige of having being the dangerous mountainous area.[21] The military realized the seriousness of the atomic experiments being performed in populated places therefore, Kahuta was an ideal and optimum location for physics experiments.[21] Bhutto would later Brigadier Zahid Akbar to Major-General and handed over the directorship of the Project-706, with Qadeer Khan being its senior scientist.[22]
On the other hand, the PAEC did not forgo the isotope separation program and a parallel programme was being directed by theoretical physicist Dr. G.D. Allam at Air Research Laboratories (ARL) located at Chaklala PAF base, though G.D. Allam had not seen a centrifuge, but only had a rudimentary knowledge of the Manhattan Project.[23]
At first, the ERL suffered many setbacks, and heavily relied upon on the foreign assistance brought by Qadeer Khan.[23] Meanwhile in April 1976, theorist Ghulam Dastigar Alam accomplished great feat by successfully rotating the first generation centrifuge to ~30,000 RPM.[23] When the news were reached Qadeer Khan, he immediately requested to Bhutto for G.D. Alam's assistance which was granted by the PAEC, first dispatching the team of scientists including G.D. Alam to ERL.[23] At ERL, Qadeer Khan joined the team of theoretical physicists headed by theorist dr. GD Allam, working on the physics problems involving the differential equations in the centripetal forces and angular momentum calculations in the ultra-centrifuges.[23] On 4 June 1978, the enrichment programme became fully functional after Dr. G.D. Alam succeeded in separated the 235U and 238U isotopes in an important physics experiment which Dr. A.Q Khan was also took part in and witnessed.[23] In 1981, the ERL itself became fully functional instutition, passing the level of reactor-grade to weapons-grade production and manufacturing the first long metal rods of the fissile core.[24] In 1981, when General Akbar was posted at General's Headquarter (GHQ), Abdul Qadeer Khan took over the operations of ERL as its interim director and senior scientist.[21][22] In 1983, Abdul Qadeer Khan's appointment as director of ERL was personally approved by President Zia-ul-Haq and rename the ERL after his name, in conjunction to his honour.[25]
Competition and scope of research
Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan is being honoured by President Farooq Leghari, 1996.
Despite his initiation and significance, Qadeer Khan was never in charge of the actual development of nuclear weapons, mathematical and physics calculations, development, and eventual weapons testing.[25] The PAEC and its chairman Munir Ahmad Khan was officially put the atomic bomb project's scientific director and oversaw the successful execution of the program by the mid 1980s.[25][26] The government itself restricted to provide full scientific data of nuclear weapons to him and such scientific documents were never provided to him by his fellow theorists.[26] The government had him required the government security clearance and clarifications of his visits of such secret weapons development sites, which he would be visiting with senior active duty officers.[26] On contrary to his high expectation, the military instead approved to appointment of Major-General Zahid Ali as the scientific director of entire enrichment program.[23] Later the outgoing General Zahid recommended Munir Khan appointment as the scientific director of atomic bomb project. This appointment came as a shock and surprised many in the government and the military as Munir Khan was not known to be aligned to conservative military.[23]
From the outset, the military and the PAEC kept Qadeer Khan in dark and no knowledge was provided to him about the secret cold testings of the weapons and, in fact, Qadeer Khan was not invited or any one provided him the details, to the secret cold test of a nuclear device, codename Kirana-I that was conducted in March 1983 by the PAEC under Munir Ahmad Khan.[26] In 1984, the KRL claimed to carry out its own nuclear cold test of a weapon, but this was seemed to be unsuccessful as PAEC had already carried out the test in 1983.[27]
The PAEC's senior scientist who worked with him and under him, remember him as "an egomaniacal lightweight"[25] given to exaggerating his scientific achievements in centrifuges.[25] At one occasion, he had severe confrontation and disagreement on the scientific methods of the centrifuges, with much senior theorist dr. Allam who doubted Qadeer Khan's knowledge on mathematics and physics. At one point, Munir Khan once said that, "most of the scientists who work on the development of atomic bomb projects were extremely "serious". They were sobered by the weight of what they don't know; Abdul Qadeer Khan is a showman."[25] During the timeline of atomic bomb project, Qadeer Khan pushed his research into rigorous theoretical physics calculations and topics to compete, but yet failed to impress his fellow theorists at PAEC, generally at the the physics community.[27] Later in years, Abdul Qadeer Khan had became a staunch critic of Munir Ahmad Khan's research in physics, and on many different occasions, he had tried unsuccessfully to remove Munir Khan's role in the atomic bomb projects. Their scientific rivalry became common and widely popular in the physics community and seminars held in the country over the years; The Atlantic Monthly described the two as mortal enemies.[14]
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