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

Rogue in the Ranks
hardware for building an enrichment plant in Kahuta. Dr Khan had built
up an elaborate network in the West for the procurement of centrifuge
enrichment information. Most of the equipment was acquired from
Western European countries. From 1977 to 1980, Pakistan smuggled
an entire plant for converting uranium powder into hex fluoride, the
gas-fired material used as feed for the Kahuta plant. 12 The classified
information, smuggled out by Dr Khan during his employment in
Europe, helped develop those contacts. In a later interview with
Pakistan’s Defence Journal, Dr Khan proudly recounted how his team
openly procured key components from western companies. ‘Many
suppliers approached us with the details of the machinery and with
figures and numbers of instruments and materials,’ he said. ‘They
begged us to purchase their goods.’
The 1978 communist revolution and subsequent invasion of
Afghanistan by the Soviet forces brought about a profound geostrategic
change in the region. Pakistan became a crucial frontline
state for the West. To win Islamabad’s support against the perceived
Soviet expansionism, the USA lifted the sanctions against it. The USA
needed Pakistan more than Pakistan needed the USA. The Reagan
administration decided to shut its eyes to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons
programme, which had earlier caused serious strains in Pak-US relations.
General Zia’s military regime fully exploited Pakistan’s emerging geostrategic
importance to the West and accelerated the country’s nuclear
programme. According to a former senior Pakistani official who was
associated with the country’s nuclear programme from its inception,
by 1983 Pakistan had achieved full nuclear capability and could have
conducted a test explosion. 13 In an interview after the 28 May nuclear
tests, Dr Khan told me that his organization had conducted several
cold tests in 1983 and 1984. He said that he informed General Zia in
December 1984 that, if he wanted to test the device, a weeks’ notice
would be more than enough. But General Zia was not willing to take
the risk.
There is strong evidence to suggest that, by 1984, Pakistan had
crossed ‘the red line’ in uranium enrichment to more than five per
cent. That was the period when Pakistan feared an imminent attack by
India for allegedly supporting the Sikh insurgency in Indian Punjab.
Pakistan accelerated its nuclear weapons programme as the threat
of war loomed large. In an interview with Nawai Waqt, a respected
Urdu-language national daily, in February 1984, Dr Khan declared that
Pakistan was on the verge of achieving nuclear capability. 14 That was
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