THE most hilarious chapter in the just released dossier of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) on Nuclear Black Markets: Pakistan, A.Q. Khan and the rise of proliferation networks— a net assessment is the one in which the authors claim to investigate his personal motives in doing what he did and his world view.

To begin with, Dr Khan in spite of his position as a nationally revered figure is said to have harboured further personal ambitions. His problem, according to the dossier, was that the secretive nature of the Pakistani nuclear programme meant his achievements had to be kept hidden from the rest of the world.

It said Khan aspired to defy the West, which had portrayed him as a villain and convicted him of stealing centrifuge designs (in the Netherlands). He felt his capabilities had been insulted. He may also have felt a genuine sense of injustice, and of being victim of hypocrisy, given the high number of Western industrialists who were more than ready to do business with him. He had to prove he could deliver and outwit the West and its hurdles.

The dossier says that combined with this was his personal anger and Pakistan’s sense of having been victimised owing to India’s nuclear test (France, Germany and Canada reneged on contracts for the nuclear facilities under intense US pressure after India’s 1974 test). He reportedly told his interrogators that he believed that ‘the emergence of more nuclear states would ease Western attention on Pakistan’, an explanation that rings true.

Dr Khan is quoted to have said that he believed he was ‘helping the Muslim cause’, but this, according to the dossier, was less credible explanation since the recipients of his assistance included North Korea, a non-Muslim country. In fact, he was not quite spreading the Islamic bomb, but acting for those states that defied the West in their nuclear pursuits, and more generally, in their foreign policies. In the opinion of the authors of the dossier, explaining his actions through this religious dimension obscures the financial motivation that appears to have been behind his dealings with Iran. He may also have felt the need for revenge against Gen Zia who in 1987 had rebuked him.

The Iran case can be explained, the dossier says, by simple market mechanisms: there was a longstanding demand from Tehran, and there was now an available supply of discarded P-1 centrifuges. This provided an opportunity to expand the business of the network, giving profits to all collaborators, who included his business partners as well as those within KRL and some government officials who might have facilitated or overlooked the deal.

According to the dossier, the offer to Iraq in 1990 showed that there was no consistent political strategy behind the network’s exports: it did not make sense to sell simultaneously to Saddam Hussain and to his archenemies in Tehran. Dr Khan used the Nodong deal with North Korea to retain his value in competition with his PAEC rivals. As for his motive for Libya – it seems, he simply wanted to make money and to satisfy his ego. He felt hurt that his authority had been called in question, and that he had been removed from KRL, and thus wanted to prove that he could deliver a nuclear capability anywhere in the world through the network, for which the Libya deal was an opportunity to ‘go global’, expanding from its original Pakistani roots.

In conclusion, the dossier said, in sum a constellation of different motivations explained the various deals made by the Khan network, varying in importance over time and according to circumstances: ego profit, nationalism and Islamic identity.

Let us first take the question of ego. All one needs to do is to go through the vernacular press of Pakistan and part of the English press also from mid-1970s up to 1997 to get an idea of celebrity-level media exposure of Dr Khan on an almost daily basis. Columns after columns were being written during this period about his achievements elevating him to a position in the hierarchy of national heroes second only to the Quaid-i-Azam. The successive governments in Islamabad had deliberately allowed him to brag about his achievements in local and international media in order to keep India on the tenterhooks, not knowing whether to believe that Pakistan has a basement bomb or to dismiss Dr Khan’s claims as mere bluff. His ego was being satisfied on daily basis in full public view both inside and outside the country.

One recalls when Dr Khan claimed in 1984 that he had soft tested the nuclear device on computer; it was a deliberate government manoeuvre to warn off India which at that time was perhaps planning a provocative military exercise on Pakistani borders. And when in 1987 Dr Khan revealed to an Indian journalist that Pakistan possessed the bomb, it was also a deliberate well- thought-out leak to pressurise the US to enhance the second economic and military aid package which at that time was in the offing from the $3.05 billion (the amount of first package) to nearly $6 billion.

Mr Mushahid Hussain Syed, a former journalist, now secretary-general of the ruling PML who arranged this meeting between Dr Khan and Indian journalist Kuldip Nayyar, has since been very close to Pakistan’s permanent establishment. And again for India’s benefit a report was leaked to Bob Woodward of Washington Post in 1988 which claimed that Pakistan has physically tested its bomb in some Chinese territory. So, the information that Gen Zia rebuked Dr Khan on his leaks in 1984 and 1987 appears to be nothing more than an exercise in deliberate disinformation.

The profit motive has not been backed by any concrete evidence of his wealth. The kind of private enterprise he was running he should have been among at least 100 richest men in the world. But there is no hard evidence of that. If he had actually received any money from this enterprise then it must have either gone into Pakistan government’s coffers or he must have sold the knowledge and material for free. He indeed was allowed to own property, businesses and huge bank accounts presumably to finance the import of material and technology for domestic purposes as such transactions per force had to remain clandestine and could not have been shown in the official accounts which were closely monitored by the World Bank and the IMF.

But when Dr Khan retired there were newspaper reports that all the properties, businesses and bank accounts automatically went back to the government.

And if he was doing what he is accused of doing motivated by his nationalism, then it would not have remained a personal enterprise and if he did it for Islamic identity, he would not have sold his nuclear secrets to North Korea.