Obviously everyone is aware of who Abdul Qadeer Khan is. You can't pick up a paper, turn on any news channel, or anything without hearing about him or how he is supposed to be the ‘father' of Pakistan's bomb/atomic programme. Or some hard done by patriot who was a ‘super scientist' that returned to Pakistan to help secure its continued existence, but ended up getting the ‘rough end of it' by Musharaf.

The majority of the Pakistani public seem to think so, (given half the chance many would probably think that the formation of Pakistan was down to him as well - just ask all the people who think he's some kind of demigod on Facebook), and it's not just the largely uneducated masses, but something which is the prevalent view throughout all levels of society. Overseas he is the bogeyman who is the face of Pakistan's supposed nuclear proliferation efforts. He is the ‘proof' that Pakistan cannot be trusted with any degree of nuclear technology.

So he's well known in Pakistan and abroad. Being known is something he's pretty good at though, because nowadays he's increasingly on TV more so than normal (probably as he and his political allies are unsettled due to the news of Musharraf's likely return - so are getting their 'punches' in first). In doing so he's doing what he does best, being a liar, a braggart, and someone who takes the credit for the work of others, whilst whitewashing his own acts of nothing less than treason. He's been so good at self propagation that Pakistanis seem to think proliferation is a good thing. That's no mean feat considering the country is now suffering because it has difficulty in persuading the international community to allow it access to more modern civilian nuclear technology. The mere notion that Pakistan would be the beneficiary of a nuclear power deal like the one signed between India and the US is treated with utter derision.

He was caught red handed in his proliferation efforts, and that has been independently verified by a number of sources. There really was no escape for him, and in fact there is more to his proliferation efforts because some of what he did has not been made public, but was very damaging to national security. Some of this was linked to his time at KRL, (something he likes to boast about to no end), but dig deeper and you start to wonder about just what went on there under his ‘leadership'. How hard can it be to purchase designs and technology from China and North Korea, and stick a ‘Made in Pakistan' sticker on the finished product? To be brutally honest that is what a lot of the weapons that came out of KRL were. They were already tried and tested designs. Khan did nothing except buy them.

Though a lot of what went on there is not yet in the public domain, there is one thing I can say to get people thinking. Look back at the weapons delivery programmes of the established nuclear powers during the Cold War. Specifically look at ballistic missile technology. The easiest and most basic ballistic missiles to manufacture were the first generation missiles which were liquid fuelled. Most of this borrowed a great deal from technology captured from Nazi Germany's V-2 programme. In fact the Scud missile of today is little more than a bastard child of Hitler's cast off ‘hand me downs'. It's not a big deal, and it's definitely not hard to make.

If you look at the UK's defunct ballistic missile programme it gives a good idea as to the problems with ballistic missile operation. By the time the UK had an operational nuclear armed jet bomber deterrent (the ‘V Force'), the two superpowers had moved on, or were in the process of moving onto ballistic missiles as their primary means of delivery because the improvement in air defences meant the survival of a nuclear bomber could not be guaranteed. So the UK started development of a liquid fuelled ballistic missile which would result in a highly capable design called Blue Streak. Sadly, it took 15 minutes to fuel, (the Avro Vulcan jet bomber on QRA could be off the ground in about four minutes or less), so was useless as a quick reaction weapon as Soviet missiles may have been raining down on the UK in about 12 minutes. It was also highly vulnerable to pre-emptive strike as a result. In fact whatever the UK did, it was always destined to be one step behind until it came to an agreement to obtain solid fuelled Polaris submarine launched ballistic missiles in the aftermath of the cancellation of 'Skybolt', the American nuclear armed ALCM (upon which it had pinned all its hopes after cancelling all other weapon's delivery programmes). This all happened in the 1950s and 1960s.

By the time Pakistan's programme had delivered its first functioning bomb design in 1983, aircraft delivered bombs as a primary means of delivery for a nuclear deterrent had long been discounted in South Asia as they had been elsewhere. (Incidentally, by the end of the decade a total of 24 cold tests of Pakistanis warheads had been carried out, but AQ Khan only claims to have carried out one cold test in 1984 of a design that was supposedly obtained from China, which begs the question: If he's such a good scientist, why did he have to allegedly obtain a design from China?). Also by this time solid fuelled ballistic missile technology wasn't exactly hard to come by, and liquid fuelled missiles were so prevalent that all manner of countries with hardly anything going for them were quite happily producing them. The most (in)famous of these was of course Iraq. Pakistan was therefore in a good position to be able to build ballistic missiles as its primary means of delivery. That was obviously how things had to progress. Like the UK though, Pakistan does not have much strategic depth, so the easier to design and build liquid fuelled missiles were not really viable as a primary means of delivery because they were vulnerable to being caught on the ground. The answer therefore had to be a solid fuelled missile. The ability to produce them was not beyond Pakistan's scientists. Technology had come so far and was so well known that it was enough for Pakistan to skip a liquid fuelled missile altogether, and that is exactly what happened. Pakistan's ballistic missile programme was a solely solid fuelled affair. Look back at the missiles from the very start, Hatf-1, Hatf1A, etc, etc...they are solid fuelled.

So where did the liquid fuelled Ghauri come from? Why did Pakistan need it? If this was supposed to be a stop gap until the solid fuelled Shaheen was operational, then it would have been in service perhaps a decade sooner at least. It's not much different from a Scud after all, and a Scud is hardly any different to speak of than a WWII V-2. It shouldn't have been too hard for Pakistan to have had Ghauri in service in the 1980s. It looks strange therefore when you take into account that the service entry dates of both missiles were so close. So close in fact, that Ghauri isn't really worth it because the more capable and operationally effective Shaheen was just around the corner. Just what was going on at KRL under Khan's leadership? If he's such a super scientist, why did it take so long to get a liquid fuelled missile operational? It's not like he made it himself. He'd simply just obtained it from the North Koreans. Why? What was the point in squandering scare resources on something that wasn't required?

He wasn't the driving force behind Pakistan's atomic programme either; he's not even a nuclear scientist. He's a metallurgist. To say he was the ‘father' of Pakistan's bomb therefore is akin to going for a heart bypass and have the anaesthetist do the whole operation. It's simply not possible, (and if you think it is, please feel free to prove me wrong by having an anaesthetist go the whole hog). Perhaps he is a good metallurgist. However, if truth be told his greatest skill has been in self propaganda. He's been at it for decades, and has managed to persuade the vast majority of Pakistanis that he was the driving force behind the atomic programme. In fact he's been so good at this that the majority of Pakistanis think it was probably a one man show.

That's not true. For a start the entire programme pre-dates AQ Khan's return to Pakistan, and involved a vast number of other people, many of whom really were nuclear scientists. Important aspects of the programme, without which it could not have progressed, were set up (and in some cases even delivered) before AQ Khan arrived in Pakistan, or at least before he was given any position of note. In fact even at KRL a lot of his team were mainly people seconded from Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, and their job concerned just one aspect of producing the fissile material for warheads, enriching uranium gas. That's pretty much it. That was AQ Khan's role in Pakistan's atomic programme, and by no means was it a one man show. It was a team effort, involving hundreds of scientists and engineers, belonging to different disciplines in KRL. Even then, though equally important in its own right, (just as the pre and post-enrichment phases were), enrichment would have been impossible without the production of the uranium hexafluoride gas, which was produced by PAEC and supplied to KRL. (At the time PAEC's mandate comprised at least twenty labs and projects, comprising the complete nuclear fuel cycle and the nuclear weapons programme). AQ Khan's position at KRL however did allow him to go around flogging centrifuges to people like Libya and Iran, but thankfully having the material and the machinery to make nuclear weapons is not enough. You need the ‘human element', the knowledge, and the expertise, and the neither of AQ Khan's high profile centrifuge customers had that. The Libyans gave up altogether, and the Iranians have abandoned AQ Khan's centrifuges because they couldn't get them to work.

If Pakistan actually needs a nuclear hero, one that deserves the title of being the ‘father' of the atomic programme, then we can skip AQ Khan altogether, because it plainly isn't him. There is a person in the history of programme who fits the bill better though, and that is a certain Munir Ahmad Khan, the long-term Chairman of PAEC, and now sadly no longer with us. AQ Khan was very jealous of MA Khan though, and it shows whenever he mentions him. Lately he has been given to slandering MA Khan, dismissing him as "incompetent" and with little academic of professional background to note. Pakistanis by and large couldn't care less about this, but now some people seem to be getting sick of AQ Khan's constant stream of deranged and deluded ranting.

He's on TV often enough repeating them, but here's a list of some of his latest howlers that he made during an interview by Shahid Masood on ARY News about a week ago:

1. He and his team carried out the Chaghi and Kharan tests in 1998.
2. The nuclear programme only consisted of Kahuta and nothing else.
3. Pakistan never worked on any plutonium route or had any such capability.
4. The Kahuta project was zero before he arrived.
5. He was a great scientist holding an important position in Holland before returning to Pakistan.
6. He would change the destiny of the nation if elected President of Pakistan.
7. He is a metallurgist and a physicist at the same time.
8. Only he could have built, (and did build), a nuclear capability for Pakistan.
9. He was pressured into confessing about proliferation.
10. He broke no international law with regard to proliferation as Pakistan never signed the NPT.

You may be familiar with Defence Journal; it's a Pakistani defence publication that has published some really good material over the years. Well, in a forthcoming issue of DJ there will be a good rebuttal of some of the lies AQ Khan has been telling, specifically those targeted at MA Khan, and some concerning specific aspects of the programme. The best thing is though, is that this article comprehensively rebuts AQ Khan's slandering by using material which is freely available. For example, look up MA Khan's academic and professional background, and the scale of the work that was being developed under him in PAEC, and then make an impartial judgement as to whether AQ Khan's opinion of him is correct. There are rebuttals against his slandering of other key scientists as well, and also technical rebuttals of AQ Khan's lies. So look out for the issue, and have a good read of the article.

Think of this article in Defence Journal as the first in what will hopefully be a long series of rebuttals and exposures of AQ Khan. Obviously he won't shut up, but this article in Defence Journal is probably the first in what will hopefully be a concerted effort to set the record straight.