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We will rip the chest of anyone dared to harm our Doctor, our father.

Benazir’s Mantra

They are just a small part of the security and surveillance entourage that surround Doctor Abdul Qadeer Khan and his every movement, and the house is one of several palatial villas he owns in Islamabad.

AQ Khan, credited with fathering Pakistan’s nuclear bomb, is publicly hailed as a national hero. Born in 1936 in Bhopal, India, he was 10-years-old when his family migrated by train to Pakistan during the partition of the subcontinent.

But enemies deride him as little more than a metallurgist who stole data.

“He’s a metallurgist, not a nuclear scientist as widely advertised. He has certainly not made any outstanding inventions,” said Pervez Hoodbhoy, professor of physics at the Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad.

Mr Khan’s contribution to Pakistan’s nuclear programme was the procurement of a blueprint for uranium centrifuges, which transform uranium into weapons-grade fuel for nuclear fissile material. He was charged with stealing it from the Netherlands while working for Anglo-Dutch-German nuclear engineering consortium Urenco and bringing it back to Pakistan in 1976.

He was later cleared of the charges on technicalities. But his enemies continue to accuse him of having done so.

On his return, he was put in charge of Pakistan’s uranium enrichment project with unlimited resources at his disposal. Covert and thus not subject to scrutiny and audit.

Z A Bhutto reportedly talked him into returning back to Pakistan and work on the “Islamic Bomb” as the project was then called by the western media.

By 1978 Qadeer’s team had enriched uranium. Bhutto ended up being hanged by Gen Zia on murder charges.

By 1984 Pakistani they were ready to explode a nuclear device, Qadeer told The News daily in a 1998 interview.

The project is credited with ultimately leading to Pakistan’s first nuclear test explosion in May 1998.

In 1981 the Engineering Research Laboratories was renamed AQ Khan Research Laboratories (KRL) in his honour.

Mr Khan’s golden aura began to dim in March 2001 when President General Pervez Musharraf, reportedly under US pressure, removed him from the chairmanship of the KRL and made him special advisor on strategic and KRL affairs. Supposedly only a ceremonious position.

Now the father of the first nuclear bomb in the Islamic world is at the centre of allegations about the proliferation of nuclear know-how to a rogues gallery of states: North Korea, Iran and Libya.

He is under house arrest and unofficially charged with having sold nuclear secrets for personal gain.

“If the international community had a proliferation most-wanted list, AQ Khan would be the ‘most-wanted’ on the list,” Robert Einhorn, assistant secretary of state for non-proliferation under former US president Bill Clinton, was quoted saying in The News in January 2003.

Pakistan’s nuclear establishment was stunned to see its most revered hero subject to questioning in December 2003 after Islamabad was sent a letter from the International Atomic Energy Agency, a UN watchdog, which raised claims that Pakistani scientists were the source of sold-off nuclear knowledge.

Mr Khan is the only one of 13 nuclear scientists, engineers and administrators who have since been questioned who was not taken into custody. But now he remains under house arrest and his assets frozen and being scrutinized. His movements are restricted and no one is allowed to meet him, according to an intelligence official.

The government says Qadeer along with Nazeer are key suspects in the sale of nuclear technology, namely the uranium centrifuge designs, for personal profit.

Mr Hoodbhoy, an ardent critic of Qadeer, believed the accusations, while yet to be publicly proved, were plausible. “He’s a man who does things for profit. He operates in a milieu where the sharing of such things is not regarded badly,” Mr Hoodbhoy said.

Hoodbhoy, like Mansoor Ejaz, is a familiar face at foreign media news analysis programs and coverages on Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities and related issues.

Mr Khan and his KRL associates may have traded nuclear information with foreign brokers based in Dubai, an official familiar with KRL said.

“Mr Khan and the group was mostly responsible for bringing resources for Pakistan’s nuclear programme from outside, particularly through a Dubai-based group of international brokers,” the official said, requesting anonymity. “While they were dealing with these brokers, the suspicion is that they may have passed on nuclear know-how to these brokers, who then passed it on Iran and Libya.”

Mr Khan himself said in a speech to the Pakistan Institute of National Affairs in 1990 that he had shopped around on world markets while developing Pakistan’s nuclear programme.

“It was not possible for us to make each and every piece of equipment within the country,” he said. “We devised a strategy by which we would go and buy everything we needed in the open market.”

After the May 1998 tests resulted in international sanctions, the sense of anti-Western nationalism among Pakistan’s nuclear establishment and the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) grew, Mr Hoodbhoy said. “People in PAEC were saying, If the US imposes sanctions, and the economy collapses, why not sell our bomb and prevent economic collapse?’”

Mr Hoodbhoy described the atmosphere at the KRL as “very religiously charged”. “They have, especially over the last decade or so, become much more religious and their attitudes are considerably more anti-Western than 30 years ago,” he said. Mr Khan believed in nuclear defence as the best deterrence. Talking to The News after the 1998 tests, he said Pakistan “never wanted to make nuclear weapons. It was forced to do so”.

Mr Hoodbhoy said he espoused Islamic nationalism. “He thinks the bomb is essential to protect Islam against assault from those who hate Islam,” Mr Hoodbhoy said.

But Retired Army Chief of Staff Gen Aslam Baig thinks that the real motive behind the present witch-hunting was money. “Inter-departmental rivalry is the real issue behind this. When Bhutto started the nuclear program in 1976 he asked Dr. Qadeer to come back to Pakistan from Denmark . Funds were made available to him. It was a covert operations. It was non-auditable. Israel, India and the rest of the countries did it in a similar way. If you ask him to produce receipts it is not possible. Qadeer created a network of sellers, agents, middlemen etc. covertly, to make things happen. As an example he used ARY Gold’s network and whenever Qadeer used to make payments he would make these payments through a well set and well kept network. Transactions used to be very cumbersome too, said the retired general.

“Now come to think of it that one government department like Atomic Energy Commission’s funds are audited and one govt department’s funds are not. Some govt officials are also involved in this interdepartmental rivalry now, ” says Baig very confidently.

“I have been a member of the Nuclear Command Authority. Dr. Qadeer used to submit balance sheets to the Authority every year and the authority used to approve his statements and accounts every year. Now if some one got the fringe benefit out of the interests earned with the government funds in their personal bank accounts which were actually used for covert activities, then that cannot be avoided and there is nothing wrong with it, ” Gen Baig felt.

Question is why now, says a Pakistani analyst.

“The timing of this investigation raises eye-brows. Pakistan is the only Muslim state who has nuclear arsenal. Nukes are of course WMDs. All other Muslim states like Iraq, Libya no longer have WMDs. Their perceived threats have been neutralized. Except for Pakistan. And to some extent Syria and Iran. Thus it is Pakistan’s turn now. But since Pakistan cannot be tackled overtly because it is “still an ally” in the West’s fight against terrorism, a cloak and dagger style diplomacy, pressure-tactics, blackmailing, etc are being used agianst Pakistan. Actually such style of diplomacy or politics is in sync with Bush’s doctrine of pre-emptiveness.” the Western-educated Pakistani analyst stated.

Gen Musharraf has pledged harsh punishment to any Pakistani scientist found guilty of transferring nuclear technology to Iran or any country.

Talking to BBC, Musharraf also rejected reports that former army chief General Aslam Beg had approved the transfer of nuclear technology to Iran under the former governments of prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif.

The president said “some unscrupulous individuals” might have taken advantage of the autonomy given to Kahuta Research Laboratories (KRL) to act “unilaterally, without the knowledge” of the governments or military chiefs.

Whether Dr Qadeer is really one of those “unscrupulous individuals” is yet to be seen.

In the meanwhile, Pakistanis are in a state of shock and awe. They are not willing to let go their “hero Qadeer” while the establishment stacks up the charges against the proliferators.

(By Irshad Salim with input from Agencies)