William Langewiesche: The Wrath of Khan, Father of Pakistan's Islamic Bomb
[William Langewiesche is a national correspondent for The Atlantic.]
...He has aged considerably, and has lost weight and sickened, but apparently he is not being poisoned. After decades of soft living he suffers from various physical ailments, including constipation and, more significant, chronic high blood pressure, which led last summer to a brief hospitalization. He is also deeply despondent—convinced that he served his nation honorably, and that even as he transferred its nuclear secrets to other countries, he was acting on behalf of Pakistan, and with the complicity of its military rulers. He sleeps poorly at night. Last spring he managed to slip a note out to one of his former lieutenants. It was a scribbled lament in which he asked about General Musharraf, "Why is this boy doing this to me?" The answer seems obvious: it is a requirement for maintaining power. Ordinary Pakistanis remain on Khan's side. But out of self-protection the elites must turn away from him now....
Khan's personal history is obscured as much by adulation as by secrecy. Something is known of his childhood. He was born in 1936, to a Muslim family in Bhopal, India—a city now known for the 18,000 deaths caused there by an accidental venting, one night in 1984, at a Union Carbide insecticide plant. Bhopal in the 1930s was split between Hindus and Muslims. The two groups lived in wary but peaceful proximity, despite growing sectarian animosity elsewhere on the Subcontinent. Khan was one of seven children. His father was a retired schoolmaster of modest means, with a thin, severe face, a white beard, and a turban. He was a partisan of the Muslim League, and when visiting the bazaar would warn like-minded men of Mahatma Gandhi's craftiness, and his ambition to annihilate the Muslims. These were of course common fears at the time, and they were reflected on the Hindu side as well. After World War II, as Great Britain rushed to withdraw from its burdensome colonial charge, and India's factions deadlocked over a power-sharing arrangement, a partition was decided upon that would carve a separate Muslim nation, called Pakistan, from Indian soil. The new nation would itself be split in two, between the Muslim-majority area of the west, primarily along the Indus River, and a smaller Muslim area far to the east, on the delta of the Ganges, in Bengal. It was an awkward exit strategy, but better than trying to control a full-blown civil war. A British official was sent from London, and with no previous expertise in the region, he drew up the boundaries within a few weeks.
Khan by then was a schoolboy, and according to Zahid Malik, he was a perfect one. He was devout, studious, and respectful of his teachers, and for good measure he was also a perfect son. All this and more, Malik believes, had been foretold. He writes that some months after Khan's birth his mother took the infant to a fortune-teller, known as the Maharaj, to look into his future. After performing calculations the Maharaj said, "The birth of this child will bring good fortune to his family. The child is very lucky. He is going to do a lot of good deeds in his life ahead. He will receive two kinds of education."
In the book Malik pauses to explain: "Probably the Maharaj referred to the Science of Metallurgy and Nuclear Physics, or perhaps to a local and foreign education system."
The fortune-teller continued, "Up to the age of eight months, he will suffer from stomach pain and a cough, after which he will have a long and healthy life. He will outstand in his family and will be a source of great pride and honor to his parents, brothers, and sisters. He is going to do very important and useful work for his nation and will earn immense respect." Furthermore, "Due to your son's good luck, you will soon be rewarded with great wealth."
But first there were troubles to endure. At the time of the Partition, in 1947, one of the greatest migrations in human history got under way, as over the course of a few months more than 10 million people—Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims—fled the hostility of their old communities and sorted themselves out in the new nations. They moved by train and bus, and on foot. In the absence of governmental power India's social hatreds took form, and the migrants were attacked by mobs. The history is obscure and highly propagandized, but it seems that entire trainloads were massacred on both sides, that rape was rampant, and that several hundred thousand people died. In Pakistan perhaps seven million Muslims arrived, however traumatized.
Abdul Quadeer Khan was not initially among them: his parents chose to remain in Bhopal, where their lives seemed comfortable enough. But the city was no longer really their home, and over the subsequent few years its Muslim residents endured increasing harassment by their Hindu neighbors and the Hindu police. Three of Khan's older brothers and one of his sisters eventually left for Pakistan, and in the summer of 1952, having passed his matriculation exam, A.Q., at the age of sixteen, followed them there. He traveled across India by train, among a group of other Bhopali Muslims who were intimidated and attacked by Hindu railroad officials and the police. Jewelry and money were stolen from his companions, and people were beaten. Khan lost merely a pen, but the bullying marked him for life. The train ride ended at the border town of Mona Bao, beyond which lay a five-mile stretch of barren desert, and Pakistan. Zahid Malik describes Khan's crossing in the style of a founding epic. Carrying his shoes and a few books and belongings, the young A. Q. walked barefoot across the blistering sands to arrive at last in the Promised Land. He went to live with one of his brothers in Karachi. His mother arrived soon afterward. His father stayed in Bhopal, and died there some years later. Khan enrolled at the D. J. Science College of Karachi, where he excelled.
Pakistan by then was five years old. It was still a democracy, albeit a messy one. It had already fought and lost its first war with India over the disputed territory of Kashmir, a mountainous and predominantly Muslim region which for complex political reasons went to India at the time of the Partition. Pakistan had drawn the wrong lessons from its battlefield loss. It was born a poor nation and could not afford war, but its people hated India, and its military was on the rise. In 1958, on the pretext of threats to the nation, the army of Pakistan overthrew the democratic government and declared martial law. It is not known how Khan reacted. He was twenty-two, and in his final years in college. He believed, as many Pakistanis still do, that India had never accepted the Subcontinent's partition, and (as he told his friends) that Hindus were tricksters with hegemonic designs. It is possible, therefore, that he accepted the need for firm leadership. In later years he argued publicly against military rule despite the fact that he was providing Pakistan's generals with the ultimate weapon, and with that weapon, increased arrogance and strength. But in 1958 he was still essentially an apolitical young man, intent on studying science.
He graduated from college in 1960, and at the age of twenty-four became an inspector of weights and measures in Karachi. It was the sort of government job that might have lasted a lifetime, but Khan was more ambitious, and he secured the funding to pursue his education abroad. In 1961 he resigned from his job, and flew to West Berlin to study metallurgical engineering at a technical university there. His German grew fluent. He was lonely for Pakistan, but open to the experience of living in Europe, and to making new friends....
Read entire article at Atlantic Monthly
...He has aged considerably, and has lost weight and sickened, but apparently he is not being poisoned. After decades of soft living he suffers from various physical ailments, including constipation and, more significant, chronic high blood pressure, which led last summer to a brief hospitalization. He is also deeply despondent—convinced that he served his nation honorably, and that even as he transferred its nuclear secrets to other countries, he was acting on behalf of Pakistan, and with the complicity of its military rulers. He sleeps poorly at night. Last spring he managed to slip a note out to one of his former lieutenants. It was a scribbled lament in which he asked about General Musharraf, "Why is this boy doing this to me?" The answer seems obvious: it is a requirement for maintaining power. Ordinary Pakistanis remain on Khan's side. But out of self-protection the elites must turn away from him now....
Khan's personal history is obscured as much by adulation as by secrecy. Something is known of his childhood. He was born in 1936, to a Muslim family in Bhopal, India—a city now known for the 18,000 deaths caused there by an accidental venting, one night in 1984, at a Union Carbide insecticide plant. Bhopal in the 1930s was split between Hindus and Muslims. The two groups lived in wary but peaceful proximity, despite growing sectarian animosity elsewhere on the Subcontinent. Khan was one of seven children. His father was a retired schoolmaster of modest means, with a thin, severe face, a white beard, and a turban. He was a partisan of the Muslim League, and when visiting the bazaar would warn like-minded men of Mahatma Gandhi's craftiness, and his ambition to annihilate the Muslims. These were of course common fears at the time, and they were reflected on the Hindu side as well. After World War II, as Great Britain rushed to withdraw from its burdensome colonial charge, and India's factions deadlocked over a power-sharing arrangement, a partition was decided upon that would carve a separate Muslim nation, called Pakistan, from Indian soil. The new nation would itself be split in two, between the Muslim-majority area of the west, primarily along the Indus River, and a smaller Muslim area far to the east, on the delta of the Ganges, in Bengal. It was an awkward exit strategy, but better than trying to control a full-blown civil war. A British official was sent from London, and with no previous expertise in the region, he drew up the boundaries within a few weeks.
Khan by then was a schoolboy, and according to Zahid Malik, he was a perfect one. He was devout, studious, and respectful of his teachers, and for good measure he was also a perfect son. All this and more, Malik believes, had been foretold. He writes that some months after Khan's birth his mother took the infant to a fortune-teller, known as the Maharaj, to look into his future. After performing calculations the Maharaj said, "The birth of this child will bring good fortune to his family. The child is very lucky. He is going to do a lot of good deeds in his life ahead. He will receive two kinds of education."
In the book Malik pauses to explain: "Probably the Maharaj referred to the Science of Metallurgy and Nuclear Physics, or perhaps to a local and foreign education system."
The fortune-teller continued, "Up to the age of eight months, he will suffer from stomach pain and a cough, after which he will have a long and healthy life. He will outstand in his family and will be a source of great pride and honor to his parents, brothers, and sisters. He is going to do very important and useful work for his nation and will earn immense respect." Furthermore, "Due to your son's good luck, you will soon be rewarded with great wealth."
But first there were troubles to endure. At the time of the Partition, in 1947, one of the greatest migrations in human history got under way, as over the course of a few months more than 10 million people—Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims—fled the hostility of their old communities and sorted themselves out in the new nations. They moved by train and bus, and on foot. In the absence of governmental power India's social hatreds took form, and the migrants were attacked by mobs. The history is obscure and highly propagandized, but it seems that entire trainloads were massacred on both sides, that rape was rampant, and that several hundred thousand people died. In Pakistan perhaps seven million Muslims arrived, however traumatized.
Abdul Quadeer Khan was not initially among them: his parents chose to remain in Bhopal, where their lives seemed comfortable enough. But the city was no longer really their home, and over the subsequent few years its Muslim residents endured increasing harassment by their Hindu neighbors and the Hindu police. Three of Khan's older brothers and one of his sisters eventually left for Pakistan, and in the summer of 1952, having passed his matriculation exam, A.Q., at the age of sixteen, followed them there. He traveled across India by train, among a group of other Bhopali Muslims who were intimidated and attacked by Hindu railroad officials and the police. Jewelry and money were stolen from his companions, and people were beaten. Khan lost merely a pen, but the bullying marked him for life. The train ride ended at the border town of Mona Bao, beyond which lay a five-mile stretch of barren desert, and Pakistan. Zahid Malik describes Khan's crossing in the style of a founding epic. Carrying his shoes and a few books and belongings, the young A. Q. walked barefoot across the blistering sands to arrive at last in the Promised Land. He went to live with one of his brothers in Karachi. His mother arrived soon afterward. His father stayed in Bhopal, and died there some years later. Khan enrolled at the D. J. Science College of Karachi, where he excelled.
Pakistan by then was five years old. It was still a democracy, albeit a messy one. It had already fought and lost its first war with India over the disputed territory of Kashmir, a mountainous and predominantly Muslim region which for complex political reasons went to India at the time of the Partition. Pakistan had drawn the wrong lessons from its battlefield loss. It was born a poor nation and could not afford war, but its people hated India, and its military was on the rise. In 1958, on the pretext of threats to the nation, the army of Pakistan overthrew the democratic government and declared martial law. It is not known how Khan reacted. He was twenty-two, and in his final years in college. He believed, as many Pakistanis still do, that India had never accepted the Subcontinent's partition, and (as he told his friends) that Hindus were tricksters with hegemonic designs. It is possible, therefore, that he accepted the need for firm leadership. In later years he argued publicly against military rule despite the fact that he was providing Pakistan's generals with the ultimate weapon, and with that weapon, increased arrogance and strength. But in 1958 he was still essentially an apolitical young man, intent on studying science.
He graduated from college in 1960, and at the age of twenty-four became an inspector of weights and measures in Karachi. It was the sort of government job that might have lasted a lifetime, but Khan was more ambitious, and he secured the funding to pursue his education abroad. In 1961 he resigned from his job, and flew to West Berlin to study metallurgical engineering at a technical university there. His German grew fluent. He was lonely for Pakistan, but open to the experience of living in Europe, and to making new friends....