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Remembering
Unsung Heroes: Munir Ahmad Khan
The tremendous contribution
made by Munir Ahmed Khan in making PAKISTAN nuclear.
[USMAN SHABBIR]
The Multan
Conference, Jan 20, 1972: The day the bomb was born
Bhutto began the nuclear
quest with his characteristic sense of urgency. He had
taken power in mid-December 1971, and in January he
hastily called together some fifty of Pakistan's top
scientists and government officials for what was to
be a very secret meeting. At the time, the new government
was still in a state of enormous confusion, and Bhutto's
aides originally scheduled in the meeting for the town
of Quetta, the provincial capital of Balochistan. It
was January, with winter storms blowing down from Afghanistan
to the north, and Quetta had no facilities adequately
heated for the selected scientists and bureaucrats to
meet in. No one complained, when, the government laid
on military planes to fly the freezing scientists south
and east to the town of Multan. The day was sparkling
clear, and Bhutto convened the meeting under a brightly
coloured canvas canopy, on the lawn of a stately old
Colonial mansion. The scientists and administrators
who were there were far and away the best brains in
Pakistan, and some were as good as could be found anywhere
in the world. The Pakistani people and their Islamic
forebears had historically nurtured a rich scientific
tradition, and the country, though in some ways underdeveloped
could count on a surprisingly strong scientific establishment.
Three names are especially worth remembering.
Abdus Salam - the Professor
to his worshipping younger colleagues - had founded
the Third World-oriented International Centre for Theoretical
Physics in Trieste, Italy, and would go on to win the
Nobel Prize for Physics in 1979....more
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The Tribal Areas of the North West
Frontier Province, particularly South Waziristan,
the rebel centre of the Faqir of IPI in the later
half of the British rule, are making world headlines
again.
The dreaded happenings there and
their final outcome can have a major impact on Pakistan
and the larger region as a whole. In fact, the eventual
outcome of the fierce conflict between the tribal
rebels and the 500 to 600 foreign terrorists or members
of the Al-Qaeda hardliners, they are shielding in
that 6,620 kilo square milometer area, can have global
ramifications.
The Faqir of IPI's revolt against
the British peaked in 1919, and then again in 1936-37
and since then that area has been largely forbidden
territory for outsiders. And now the Americans are
opposing Al-Qaeda presence there and want the Pakistan
government do far more to oust them from there or
eliminate them altogether. And the Pakistan government
is finding that a hard task, demanding heavy loss
of life on both sides as the military operation in
the second half of March demonstrated.....more
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| Pakistan's
Dr AQ Khan appearing on the TV and confessing that he
was involved in the nuclear smuggling, only added sensation
to an already very sensitive issue of nuclear smuggling.
We find almost all leaders of the developed world, giving
us long lectures about how abhorring and criminal activity
this action is. Also how disastrous an activity would
emerge if these weapons are attained by criminal groups
and they make atom bomb which they would use against
America or the American interests. All lecturers will
tell us to simply ignore who made the first bomb? Who
used the first bomb? And who is sitting on the biggest
stock of the nuclear weapons?, it is something just
not good for others to acquire or even make efforts
to acquire, so we who have got these nuclear weapons
must contain their progress as much as we can-giving
us an impression that our all nuclear technology and
all its future nuclear progress owes its existence to
nuclear smuggling. But when we look around, unfortunately
nuclear smuggling is a widespread business, mostly being
conducted by the western world companies and is being
committed on a very large scale. One really needs to
ask why is the crime so open and so much in quantum?
The answer probably lies in the statement of the Indian
Foreign Minister when he said “Because of imperfect
non-proliferation order”, and very regrettably,
the major players of nuclear smuggling and nuclear non-proliferation
are those who are also the major preachers of all actions
against it. The American president is sitting on the
world's biggest stock of nuclear and other destructive
weapons, and when he gives long lectures on the advantages
of non-proliferation, it is as if Jack the Ripper is
giving a lecture on advantages of “Law and Order
”....more
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