Abdul Qadeer Khan - 1971 War and Return To Pakistan - Competition and Scope of Research

Competition and Scope of Research

Despite his initiation and significance, Qadeer Khan was never in charge of the actual development of nuclear weapons, mathematical and physics calculations, development, and eventual weapons testing. The PAEC and its chairman Munir Ahmad Khan was officially put the atomic bomb project's scientific director and oversaw the successful execution of the program by the mid 1980s. The government itself restricted to provide full scientific data of nuclear weapons to Qadeer Khan and such scientific documents were never provided to him by his fellow theorist. As opposed to others, Qadeer Khan had to required official government clarifications and special permissions in order for Qadeer Khan to have paid a visit such sites where he never visited alone and at least senior active duty officers would accompanied him. On contrary to Qadeer Khan's high expectation to be promoted as the scientific director, the military instead approved to appointment of Major-General General Zahid Ali as the scientific director of entire enrichment division. Later, General Zahid recommended Munir Khan appointment as the scientific director of atomic bomb project. This appointment came as a shock and surprised many in the government and the military as Munir Khan was not known to be aligned to conservative military. To cover the damage, General Zia who feared Khan may openly protest and damage nature of the atomic project, decided to rename the ERL after the name of Abdul Qadeer Khan.

From the outset, the military and the PAEC kept Qadeer Khan in dark and no knowledge was provided to him about the secret cold testings of the weapons and, in fact, Qadeer Khan was not invited or any one provided him the details, to the secret cold test of a nuclear device, codename Kirana-I that was conducted in March 1983 by the PAEC under Munir Ahmad Khan. In 1984, Abdul Qadeer Khan's KRL claimed to carry out its own nuclear cold test of a weapon. This was seemed to be unsuccessful as PAEC had already carried out the test in 1983, and would carry out 24 more cold tests of different nuclear weapon designs. In 1984, KRL had produces the first and fresh batch of weapon-grade uranium loosely based on the Zippe Type technology.

The PAEC's senior scientist who worked with him and under him, remember him as "an egomaniacal lightweight" given to exaggerating his scientific achievements in centrifuges. At one occasion, he had severe confrontation and disagreement on the scientific methods of the ultra-centrifuges, with much senior theorist dr. Allam who doubted Qadeer Khan's knowledge on mathematics and physics. At one point, Munir Khan once said that, "most of the scientists who work on the development of atomic bomb projects were extremely "serious." They were sobered by the weight of what they don't know; Abdul Qadeer Khan is a showman." After 1970s, the competition between the KRL and PAEC became deepens which eventually turned into scientific rivalry. From the beginning of the project, Abdul Qadeer Khan disliked the idea of PAEC involvement in KRL's enrichment projects. Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan was a staunch critic of Munir Ahmad Khan's work. Abdul Qadeer Khan, on many different occasions, unsuccessfully tried to remove Munir Ahmad Khan's role in the nuclear weapons research programme. In spite of that, Munir Ahmad Khan and the PAEC provided its full support to Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan's work. The Atlantic Monthly described the two as mortal enemies.