Frontline Pakistan : The Struggle With Militant Islam - Arz-e-Pak

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the ranks
the nuClear
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a senior member of the Bush administration, who visited Islamabad
soon after 11 September, raised, during a meeting with Musharraf,
the US concern about some Pakistani nuclear scientists having
contacts with al-Qaeda and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. There
was a growing anxiety in Washington about the possibility of nuclear
weapons falling into the hands of Islamic fundamentalists and making
their way to al-Qaeda-linked terrorist groups. The apprehension had
grown after intelligence reports that the scientists might have been
helping al-Qaeda to acquire weapons of mass destruction (WMD). 1
On 23 October 2001, acting on an American request, Pakistani
authorities detained for interrogation Bashiruddin Mahmood and
Abdul Majeed, two retired senior officials at the Pakistan Atomic
Energy Commission (PAEC). 2 The British-trained scientists had had a
long career in Pakistan’s nuclear programme and had held a variety
of senior positions until they retired in summer 1999. They had strong
Islamic fundamentalist leanings and had devoted themselves to relief
and reconstruction work in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan since then.
They had set up a non-governmental organization known as Ummah
Tameer-e-Nau (UTN), which worked on various development projects
in Kabul and Kandahar.