Abdul Qadeer Khan - 1971 War and Return To Pakistan

1971 War and Return To Pakistan

The clandestine and highly secretive atomic bomb project of Pakistan was given a start on 20 January 1972, when President (later Prime minister) Zulfikar Ali Bhutto chaired a secret meeting of academic scientists at Multan. Known as the Multan meeting where only senior scientists were delegated to meet with Bhutto, the atomic bomb project was launched under the administrative control of Bhutto, and the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (or PAEC) under its chairman, Munir Ahmad Khan. Earlier efforts were directed towards the implosion-type bomb with exploration of the Plutonium route. Abdul Qadeer Khan did not join the atomic bomb project whereas had no knowledge or information of this integrated atomic project until 1974, the controversy that highly doubts Abdul Qadeer Khan's "father-like" claim. On 18 May 1974, India conducted a surprise nuclear test, codenamed Smiling Buddha, near Pakistan's eastern border when Indian Premier Indira Gandhi gave verbal authorisation to the scientists at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) to conduct a test of a device that they had built, the preparation was completed under extreme secrecy. The test was conducted at the long-constructed Indian Army base, known as Pokhran Test Range (PTR). It was only three years since Pakistan's humiliating defeat in the 1971 Indo-Pak Winter war and the Winter war had put Pakistan's mortal existence in great danger. This nuclear test, Smiling Buddha, greatly alarmed the Government of Pakistan. Prime minister Bhutto squeezed the time limit of the atomic bomb project from five years to three years, in a vision to evolved and derived the country's scientific atomic project as from the "atomic capability to sustainable nuclear power". Sensing the importance of this test, Munir Ahmad Khan secretly launched the Project-706, a codename of a secret uranium enrichment programme under the domain of the atomic project. The program's first technical directorship was handed over nuclear engineer Sültan Mahmood of PAEC.

When the news reached to Abdul Qadeer Khan, he immediately went to the Pakistan consulate-general in Amsterdam and approached to Pakistan government officials where he offered to help Pakistan's secret atomic bomb project. At first, he persuaded with a pair of PAF military scientists who were in the Netherlands to buy an air tunnel. At the consulate-general, the military scientists dissuaded him by quoting as "hard to find" a job in PAEC as a "metallurgist".

Undaunted, Abdul Qadeer Khan wrote to Prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, highlighting his experience and encourages Prime Minister Bhutto to make an atomic bomb using uranium, rather than plutonium, the method Pakistan was trying to adopt under the leadership of Munir Ahmad Khan". According to Kuldip Nayyar, although the letter was received by Prime minister Secretariat, Qadeer Khan was still unknown to the Government, leading Bhutto to ask the ISI to run a complete background check on Khan and prepare an assessment report on Khan and his profession. The ISI submitted its report and recommending Khan as an incompetent scientist in the field of nuclear technology based on his academic discipline. But, Bhutto was unsatisfied with ISI's report and was eager to know more about Khan, therefore Bhutto asked Munir Ahmad Khan to dispatch a team of PAEC's scientists to meet Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan. The PAEC intelligence team compromising Sultan Mahmood travelled to Amsterdam and arrived where Qadeer Khan was staying with his family at night and the discussion was held until the next day. The meeting was held the whole night, and the team returned to Pakistan the next day. Following this, Bhutto immediately decided to meet with Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, and directed a confidential letter to Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan. Soon after, Abdul Qadeer Khan took a leave from URENCO Group, and departed for Pakistan in 1974.