Love him or hate him, the problem with Khan is that he is a loose cannon —File Photo

‘(HE) continues to receive a special pension of Rs2.07 lacs (Rs207,000) per month, has been given a one time grant of Rs2.5 million, he has been provided with 8 servants of his choice, a nurse and a physiotherapist visit him daily, a Chinese doctor is on call for him, a team of specialist doctors visits him every week, he is flown on special plane to visit his relatives, next door he retains a house as a guest house with rent and all bills paid by Government, four vehicles are provided to him for his personal use besides security vehicles along with other facilities, etc’ [sic].

The perks of life at the top? Not quite. This list of goodies forms part of Intra Court Appeal No 797 of 2009 filed by the Government of Pakistan. The respondent? Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan.

Luxury notwithstanding, A.Q. Khan has been fighting for his freedom from what he regards as quasi-imprisonment for a while now. In February, the now defunct Islamabad High Court declared him to be a free man subject to some security conditions. But within months, Khan was chafing under the ‘protocol’ accorded to him and went to the Lahore High Court where a judge agreed to do away with the ‘protocol’ and lift all restrictions last month.

Not so fast, cried the federal government and immediately filed an appeal and got a two-member bench of the LHC to suspend the single judge’s order earlier this month.

Among the many points in the government’s appeal, one point stands out for the layman. Apparently, according to the government’s filing, the Islamabad High Court tried to end the long-running saga of Khan’s quest for freedom by cobbling a compromise between Khan and the government in February and set out the terms and conditions of Khan’s ‘freedom’ in Annex A of its February judgment.

But Khan, according to the government, chose to ignore those conditions. From the government’s appeal: ‘[I]t is regrettable that Dr Khan chose to disregard the terms that he himself agreed in the Annex A. He started visiting places though he was advised not to visit them in the interest of his safety and well-being. Annex A restrained him from interacting with media whereas he was freely inviting people.... The petitioner was using mobile cell phones to accept calls from foreigners and media person and disregarding all security concerns.’

Love him or hate him, the problem with Khan is that he is a loose cannon and seems bent on trying to settle scores with Musharraf personally or the nuclear establishment generally through the media.

The latest exhibit (though it is not clear why now) is the Simon Henderson article in The Sunday Times which carried excerpts from the letter Khan purportedly addressed to his wife as an ‘insurance policy’ against the state and distributed to his relatives.

Addressing the contents of that letter is a separate piece altogether, perhaps even a book or two. There is an official, ‘Pakistani’ point of view, one which questions the extent of Khan’s network, its place in the wider world of the black market in nuclear paraphernalia, whether Pakistan in fact broke any international law given that it wasn’t part of the relevant treaties, etc.

But nobody, at least no government or concerned agency internationally, seems willing to listen to it because Khan is also a handy stick to beat Pakistan with. If you start with the very reasonable proposition that more nuclear weapons make people queasy and that Pakistan isn’t exactly a state to inspire utmost confidence in rational behaviour, then you can understand why Pakistan is under the cosh.

But that is not necessarily fair or right. The security establishment/army high command has acted foolishly (Kargil and support for militancy beyond its sell-by date are just two examples), but nuclear weapons are an entirely different category. As far back as 1981, Kenneth Waltz questioned facile assumptions of rogue nations being reckless with nuclear weapons.

But even if you don’t want to believe the government and the army on that count, there is another reason to worry if Khan remains in the media limelight: we will be unable to focus properly on present-day issues regarding nuclear doctrine, command and control systems and safety and security.

Naeem Salik, a lecturer at the National Defence University and considered by insiders as a knowledgeable man, has published a book, The Genesis of South Asian Nuclear Deterrence: Pakistan’s Perspective (OUP), in which he makes a telling observation:

‘During its formative phase, from mid-1970s to May 1998 … it was obvious that no public debate on issues such as nuclear doctrine, command and control, or safety and security could take place. However, more inexplicable is the fact that even an in-house debate did not take place within the military or the foreign policy establishment, nor was there any discourse on these aspects within the few think tanks and academia’ (emphasis added).

That is downright scary. Salik argues, somewhat persuasively, that the security establishment has woken up to this concern and quickly developed the requisite policies and put in place effective systems and safeguards over the last decade.

But as long as A.Q. Khan’s forays into the media limelight continue, that debate – a public debate and not just one inside an insulated institutional structure – will remain stillborn and we will have to take the army and the nuclear establishment at its word. For example, it is one thing to accept that our nuclear programme is safe from ‘outside’ interference, but it is quite another to question whether nuclear doctrine dictated by an army in which conservative influences may be growing is likely to keep the country as strategically safe as possible.

So pushing A.Q. Khan out of the picture is good for all us because it will allow the country to focus on other, more important issues. But how can that be done?

Prosecuting him under the Official Secrets Act or provisions of the National Command Authority Ordinance, 2007 for further indiscretions is possible – indeed some in the nuclear establishment have been pushing for this – but unlikely given that it will risk new disclosures from a vengeful Khan who has been nursing his bitterness for years. In any case, it can be argued that the government is barking up the wrong tree by going to the courts because the law is not geared to deal with hard cases such as A.Q. Khan.

Perhaps what is needed to bury the issue once and for all, or at least reduce its potential sting, is for a concerted, public campaign to put Khan’s role in the nuclear programme in the correct perspective. Unmask the ‘father of the bomb’ and diminish, accurately, his role and he may choose to stay quiet himself.

After all, if one thing is certain it is that Khan is a man with a big ego. Hack away at his standing in the domestic public eye, and he may choose to live out his days in quiet retirement. And that way maybe the country can get on with debating the more serious issues.

cyril.a@gmail.com