There are things we do not know. And in the ongoing saga of humiliation to which some of our top nuclear scientists have been subjected, a few things have yet to play themselves out. But the evidence available is ominous enough.

For putting two and two together, they suggest the unthinkable: the most serious threat to Pakistan's nuclear capability since Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the father of Pakistan's nuclear programme, vowed that Pakistanis would eat grass but build the bomb. This in response to India's testing of a nuclear device in 1974.

This may be reading too much into the detention and interrogation of some of the scientists and even military personnel associated with the Khan Research Laboratories (KRL), the heart of Pakistan's uranium-enrichment programme. But then the very hamfistedness of the operation - picking the scientists up Al Qaeda style - has given rise to the worst fears.

In Pakistan's temple of national security, nothing was more sacred than its nuclear programme. The people working in it were national heroes, some of them awarded the country's highest civil honours. If they are now treated so shabbily, isn't it a sign that Armageddon is at hand?

Pakistan made the bomb the hard way, at great cost, through painstaking effort spread over 20 years and in the teeth of implacable American hostility.

The man who pulled it off was Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan who, it is said, got the blueprints of enriching uranium through the centrifuge method from the Dutch plant Urenco where he had been working and brought them to Pakistan. Khan also brought a list of suppliers who would provide the equipment and spare parts that Pakistan would soon require.

Khan has his faults, among them a fatal tendency to self-projection, the last thing you'd want in a person working in such a sensitive field. But his achievement cannot be denied. Without him and the dedicated team he assembled, many of them now hounded by the intelligence agencies, Pakistan would not have built the bomb and army commanders would not have been able to assert that Pakistan's defence had become impregnable.

Now the person acclaimed as a national hero for over 20 years is having to fight a smear campaign suggesting that he or some other "rogue" scientists may have peddled nuclear secrets to Iran and Libya for money. Khan himself has been questioned at least thrice in recent days.

Needless to say, proliferation is a serious charge and calls for the strictest investigation. "Rogue" scientists peddling nuclear secrets and freelance terrorists carrying small nukes in briefcases (and then one of the briefcases being taken to Times Square, New York) represent the worst nightmare that can haunt the western mind. No one will tolerate proliferators and if there are any in Pakistan's nuclear community they should be smoked out and given their just deserts.

But, conceivably, the business of smoking out could be conducted more subtly. The scientists could have been called for questioning in ISI headquarters without the whole thing turning into a public spectacle.

Is this traditional Pakistani hamfistedness with all the hallmarks of a security establishment for whom subtlety remains an alien quality? Or are we trying to impress the Americans? What if the scientists come out clean? Who'll erase the humiliation they and their families have suffered? Demoralized is a small word, they feel betrayed. Is this the reward for high endeavour, they are all too likely to ask? Read the novels of John Le Carre. The British interrogate certified spies with more subtlety.

Far from doing Pakistan any good, this clumsiness only bolsters the case of Pakistan's detractors. For by raising the possibility that "rogue" scientists could have sold nuclear secrets, we lend credence to the charge of irresponsibility thrown at us.

The West has always argued that countries like Pakistan are not mature enough to handle nuclear weapons. And here we are saying that, well, we'll definitely look into the matter of "rogue" scientists who may have been less than responsible. Sounds very much like what western countries have been saying all along.

The West also expresses the fear that given Pakistan's endemic instability, its nuclear bombs could fall into the hands of "rogue" elements (for which read crazy and fanatical Islamists). From rogue scientists to rogue elements is but a short step and we ourselves are helping to make the connection.

Surrounded by layers of security and under the watchful eyes of the intelligence agencies, it is absurd to suggest that anyone in KRL could have peddled nuclear secrets on his own. But by taking this line, we are indicting not some "rogue" scientists but the entire national security establishment of Pakistan. The West files a First Information Report against our nuclear programme and Pakistan itself becomes an approver in the case.

This matter should have been handled with the utmost care and secrecy, with Pakistanis reporting to Pakistanis and not to the inspectors or monitors of any third country. And we should have had the good sense and the guts to draw a line somewhere.We have done America's bidding for small wages. We have changed tack and done the most amazing somersaults (even if some of those somersaults were good for us) at the sound of a single telephone call. Our support continues to be crucial as the US tries to pacify Afghanistan. We are not Iran or Libya. We are America's leading foot soldiers in George Bush's war against God knows what or whom.

Trading these services and employing a bit of backbone, we could have dug in our heels on the nuclear question and said enough is enough. We could have answered American concerns without going through the routine of humiliating our scientists and imperilling the future of our nuclear programme. For who would now like to work in KRL?

We could not have wished away the proliferation charges. But then no one has really accused Pakistan of supplying centrifuge blueprints to Libya or Iran. Pakistan got many of the spare parts and other material for its nuclear programme from middlemen and brokers stretching from the Gulf to Europe. If the same entrepreneurs did some business on the side and also supplied other nuclear hopefuls, how is Pakistan to blame?

American pressure on this question can be taken for granted. But quite often with the Musharraf regime's self-generated fears have proved far stronger than pressure applied, leading Pakistan to do things and perform services with an alacrity which has even taken its imperial benefactors by surprise.

So who can blame Pakistanis if they are worried? Who can blame them if they are stricken by the thought that what they are seeing may be the opening shots in the eventual de-nuclearization of their country?

Bear in mind, please, that for Pakistan over the years, the bomb has become less an instrument of deterrence than a symbol of national attainment. The line taken by the military that the bomb is the last line of national defence has always been a silly one. If the Pakistani military, more than half a million strong, cannot deter aggression nothing else can. Across a national landscape littered with failure, the bomb is a reminder of what Pakistan can achieve when sufficiently inspired.

So the question arises: now that Pakistan's nuclear programme stands demystified, its halo stripped away and its secrecy seriously compromised, will the Americans stop here? Or pressing home their advantage, and capitalizing on Pakistani weakness, will they insist on a regime of inspections and monitoring that will effectively check Pakistan's nuclear capability in its tracks?

There's just so much that a country can take. In the words of one of Pakistan's most able diplomatists, policy must not outstrip the domestic support sustaining it. Pakistan's guardians have "overloaded the circuit" by giving the impression of retreating on too many fronts and executing too many u-turns. While domestic support is too far behind, they, in their eagerness to please, have run too far ahead.

As if dancing to America's tune wasn't enough, recent developments with regard to India have fuelled the suspicion of another cave-in: too many concessions made without getting anything concrete in return. Now come developments on the nuclear front. The national grid indeed looks overloaded.