Pakistan’s High Court freed nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan from house arrest yesterday. The move is certainly controversial as Khan was the point man for a massive nuclear proliferation ring. Khan first came onto the radar of Western intelligence agencies in the late 1970s. But little was done to stop him, and his sponsors, from building Pakistan’s nuclear program and then sharing the fruits of their labor with the rest of the Muslim world until well into the 1990s. Khan is now, and always has been, a creature of Pakistan’s military establishment. As has been documented by a number of analysts, Khan carried out his proliferation scheme at the behest of his superiors in the Pakistani military. Consider what deceased Pakistani president General Muhammad Zia ul Haq said about Pakistan’s nuclear program in the 1980s. In their new book, The Nuclear Express, scientists Thomas C. Reed and Danny B. Stillman, quote ul Haq as saying: “We should acquire and share nuclear technology with the entire Islamic world.” That was in the early 1980s, when Pakistan’s nuclear program was in its infancy. In 1986, when the Pakistani nuclear program was much further along and the first nuclear device had been assembled, Zia said: “It is our right to obtain the technology [of nuclear weapons], and when we acquire this technology, the Islamic world will possess it with us.” Khan became a hero in Pakistan for carrying out Zia’s vision. And we must now ask: Why is he being freed now? True, his house arrest was somewhat contrived. It was probably just a tool to quell international outrage and to restrict outside access to Khan. Western intelligence agencies wanted to rigorously question Khan, but according to published reports this was never allowed. It is a safe bet that this is a message from Pakistan’s military establishment. Interpreting that message is key. It could be that with all of the controversy surrounding the Mumbai attacks, and the entrenchment of al Qaeda and the Taliban in Northern Pakistan, the military wants to let the world know that it still has additional bargaining chips.
