Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan link wasa famous Pakistani nuclear link scientistand a metallurgical engineer. He was widely regarded as the founder ofgas-centrifuge enrichment technology for Pakistan’s nuclearlink deterrent programme. Pakistan’snuclear link programme was a sourceof extreme national pride. As its “father”, AQ Khan, who headed Pakistan’snuclear link programme for some 25 years,was considered a national hero.
Abdul Qadeer Khan link,known as AQ Khan, was born on April 1, 1936 and died on October 10, 2021.He was a Pakistani nuclear link physicistand metallurgical engineer who was colloquially known as the “father ofPakistan’s atomic weapons programme”. Though, AQ Khan was celebrated inPakistan for bringing balance to the South Asian region after India’snuclear link tests; he was also noted forhis scientific ability.
AQ Khan had migrated to Pakistan from India in 1951 and was educated inWestern Europe’s technical universities from metallurgical engineeringdepartment where he pioneered studies in phase transitions of metallicalloys, uranium metallurgy, and isotope separation based on gascentrifuges. After learning of India’s ‘Smiling Buddha’ nuclearlink test in 1974, AQ Khan joined hisnation’s clandestine efforts to develop atomic weapons when he founded theKhan Research Laboratories (KRL) in 1976, and was both its chief scientistand director for many years.
In January 2004, AQ Khan was subjected to a debriefing by the Musharrafadministration over evidence of nuclearlink proliferation handed to them by theBush administration of the United States. Khan admitted his role in runningthe proliferation network – only to retract his statements in later yearswhen he levelled accusations at President Musharraf over the controversy in2008.
AQ Khan was accused of selling nuclearlink secretsillegally and Khan has been under house arrest since 2004 when he confessedto the charges and was pardoned by then-President Gen Pervez Musharraf.After years of house arrest, AQ Khan successfully filed a lawsuit againstthe Federal Government of Pakistan at the Islamabad High Court whoseverdict declared his debriefing unconstitutional and freed him on 6February 2009.
*Early life link and work*
Abdul Qadeer Khan link wasborn on 1 April 1936 in Bhopal, a city then in the erstwhile British Indianprincely state of Bhopal. His family is of Orakzai (a Pashtun tribe)origin. His father, Abdul Ghafoor, was a schoolteacher who once worked forthe Ministry of Education, and his mother, Zulekha, was a housewife with avery religious mind. His older siblings, along with other family members,had emigrated to Pakistan during the bloody partition of the Subcontinent(splitting off the independent state of Pakistan) in 1947, who would oftenwrite to Khan’s parents about the new lifelink they had found in Pakistan.
After his matriculation from a local school in Bhopal, in 1952 Khanemigrated from India to Pakistan on the Sind Mail train, partly due to thereservation politics at that time, and religious violence in India duringhis youth had left an indelible impression on his world view. Upon settlingin Karachi with his family, AQ Khan briefly attended the DJ Science Collegebefore transferring to the University of Karachi where he graduated in 1956with a Bachelor of Science (BSc) in physics with a concentration onsolid-state physics.
From 1956 to 1959, Khan was employed by the Karachi MetropolitanCorporation (city government) as an Inspector of weights and measures, andapplied for a scholarship that allowed him to study in West Germany. In1961, Khan departed for West Germany to study material science at theTechnical University in West Berlin where he academically excelled incourses in metallurgy, but left West Berlin when he switched to the DelftUniversity of Technology in the Netherlands in 1965. In 1967, Khan obtainedan engineer’s degree in Materials Technology – an equivalent to a Master ofScience (MS) offered in English-speaking nations such as Pakistan – andjoined the doctoral programme in metallurgical engineering at theKatholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium.
He worked under Belgian professor, Martin J. Brabers at Leuven University,who supervised his doctoral thesis which Khan successfully defended, andgraduated with a DEng in metallurgical engineering in 1972. His thesisincluded fundamental work on martensite and its extended industrialapplications in the field of graphene morphology. The same year, Khanjoined the Physics Dynamics Research Laboratory (or in Dutch: FDO), anengineering firm based in Amsterdam, from Brabers’s recommendation. The FDOwas a subcontractor for the Urenco Group which was operating a uraniumenrichment plant in Almelo and employed gaseous centrifuge method to assurea supply of nuclear link fuel for nuclearlink power plants in the Netherlands.
Soon after, Khan left FDO when Urenco offered him a senior technicalposition, initially conducting studies on the uranium metallurgy.
Uranium enrichment is an extremely difficult process because uranium in itsnatural state only comprises just 0.71% of uranium-235 (U235), which is afissile material, 99.3% of uranium-238 (U238), which is non-fissile, and0.0055% of uranium-234 (U234), a daughter product which is also anon-fissile. The Urenco Group utilized the Zippe-type of centrifugal methodto electromagnetically separate the isotopes U234, U235, and U238 fromsublimed raw uranium by rotating the uranium hexafluoride (UF6) gas at upto ~100,000 revolutions per minute (rpm). Khan, whose work was based onphysical metallurgy of the uranium metal, eventually dedicated hisinvestigations to improving the efficiency of the centrifuges by 1973–74.
*Scientific career in Pakistan*
Upon learning of India’s surprise nuclearlink test, ‘Smiling Buddha’ in May 1974,Khan wanted to contribute to efforts to build an atomic bomb and met withofficials at the Pakistani Embassy in The Hague, who dissuaded him bysaying it was “hard to find” a job in PAEC as a “metallurgist”. In August1974, Khan wrote a letter which went unnoticed, but he directed anotherletter through the Pakistani ambassador to the Prime Minister’s Secretariatin September 1974.
Unbeknownst to Khan, his nation’s scientists were already working towardsfeasibility of the atomic bomb under a secretive crash weapons programmesince 20 January 1972 that was being directed by Munir Ahmad Khan, areactor physicist, which calls into question of his “father-of” claim.After reading his letter, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had hismilitary secretary run a security check on Khan, who was unknown at thattime, for verification and asked PAEC to dispatch a team under BashiruddinMahmood that met Khan at his family home in Almelo and directed Bhutto’sletter to meet him in Islamabad.
Upon arriving in December 1974, Khan took a taxi straight to the PrimeMinister’s Secretariat. He met with Prime Minister Bhutto in the presenceof Ghulam Ishaq Khan, Agha Shahi, and Mubashir Hassan where he explainedthe significance of highly enriched uranium with the meeting ending withBhutto’s remark: “He seems to make sense”.
The next day, Khan met with Munir Ahmad and other senior scientists wherehe focused the discussion on production of highly enriched uranium (HEU),against weapon-grade plutonium, and explained to Bhutto why he thought theidea of “plutonium” would not work.
Later, Khan was advised by several officials in the Bhutto administrationto remain in the Netherlands to learn more about centrifuge technology butcontinue to provide consultation on the Project-706 enrichment programmeled by Mahmood. By December 1975, Khan was given a transfer to a lesssensitive section when Urenco Group became suspicious of his indiscreetopen sessions with Mahmood to instruct him on centrifuge technology. Khanbegan to fear for his safety in the Netherlands, ultimately insisting onreturning home.
*Khan Research Laboratories and atomic bomb programme*
In April 1976, Khan joined the atomic bomb programme and became part of theenrichment division, initially collaborating with Khalil Qureshi – aphysical chemist. Calculations performed by him were valuable contributionsto centrifuges and a vital link to nuclearlink weapon research but continue to pushfor his ideas for feasibility of weapon-grade uranium even though it had alow priority, with most efforts still aimed to produce military-gradeplutonium. Because of his interest in uranium metallurgy and hisfrustration at having been passed over for director of the uranium division(the job was instead given to Bashiruddin Mahmood), Khan refused to engagein further calculations and caused tensions with other researchers. Khanbecame highly unsatisfied and bored with the research led by Mahmood –finally, he submitted a critical report to Bhutto, in which he explainedthat the “enrichment programme” was nowhere near success.
Upon reviewing the report, Bhutto sensed a great danger as the scientistswere split between military-grade uranium and plutonium and informed Khanto take over the enrichment division from Mahmood who separated theprogramme from PAEC by founding the Engineering Research Laboratories(ERL). The ERL functioned directly under the Army’s Corps of Engineers,with Khan being its chief scientist, and the army engineers located thenational site at isolated lands in Kahuta for the enrichment programme asideal site for preventing accidents.
The PAEC did not forgo their electromagnetic isotope separation programme,and a parallel programme was led by GD Alam at the Air ResearchLaboratories (ARL) located at Chaklala Air Force Base, even though Alam hadnot seen a centrifuge, and only had a rudimentary knowledge of theManhattan Project. During this time, Alam accomplished a great feat byperfectly balancing the rotation of the first generation of centrifuge to~30,000 rpm and was immediately dispatch to ERL which was suffering frommany setbacks in setting up its own programme under Khan’s direction basedon centrifuge technology dependent on Urenco’s methods. Khan eventuallycommitted to work on problems involving the differential equationsconcerning the rotation around fixed axis to perfectly balance the machineunder influence of gravity and the design of first generation ofcentrifuges became functional after Khan and Alam succeeded in separatingthe 235U and 238U isotopes from raw natural uranium.
In the military circles, Khan’s scientific ability was well recognized andwas often known with his moniker “Centrifuge Khan” and the nationallaboratory was renamed after him upon the visit of President MuhammadZia-ul-Haq in 1983. In spite of his role, Khan was never in charge of theactual designs of the nuclear link devices,their calculations, and eventual weapons testing which remained under thedirectorship of Munir Ahmad Khan and the PAEC.
During the timeline of the bomb programme, Khan published papers onanalytical mechanics of balancing of rotating masses and thermodynamicswith mathematical rigor to compete, but still failed to impress his fellowtheorists at PAEC, generally in the physics community. In later years, Khanbecame a staunch critic of Munir Khan’s research in physics, and on manyoccasions tried unsuccessfully to belittle Munir Khan’s role in the atomicbomb projects.[37] Their scientific rivalry became public and widelypopular in the physics community and seminars held in the country over theyears.
*Nuclear link tests: Chagai-I*
Many of his theorists were unsure that military-grade uranium would befeasible on time without the centrifuges, since Alam had notified PAEC thatthe “blueprints were incomplete” and “lacked the scientific informationneeded even for the basic gas-centrifuges.” Calculations by Tasneem Shah,and confirmed by Alam, showed that Khan’s earlier estimation of thequantity of uranium needing enrichment for the production of weapon-gradeuranium was possible, even with the small number of centrifuges deployed.
Khan stole the designs of the centrifuges from Urenco Group. However, theywere riddled with serious technical errors, and while he bought somecomponents for analysis, they were broken pieces, making them useless forquick assembly of a centrifuge. Its separative work unit (SWU) rate wasextremely low, so that it would have to be rotated for thousands of RPMs atthe cost of millions of taxpayers money, Alam maintained. Though Khan’sknowledge of copper metallurgy greatly aided the innovation of centrifuges,it was the calculations and validation that came from his team of fellowtheorists, including mathematician Tasneem Shah and Alam, who solved thedifferential equations concerning rotation around a fixed axis under theinfluence of gravity, which led Khan to come up with the innovativecentrifuge designs.
Scientists have claimed that Khan would have never gotten any closer tosuccess without the assistance of Alam and others. The issue iscontroversial; Khan maintained to his biographer that when it came todefending the centrifuge approach and really putting work into it, bothShah and Alam refused.
Khan was also very critical of PAEC’s concentrated efforts towardsdeveloping a plutonium ‘implosion-type’ nuclearlink and provided strong advocacyfor the relatively simple ‘Gun-type’ device that only had to work withhigh-enriched uranium— a design concept of gun-type device he eventuallysubmitted to Ministry of Energy (MoE) and Ministry of Defence (MoD). Khandownplayed the importance of plutonium despite many of the theoristsmaintaining that “plutonium and the fuel cycle has its significance”, andhe insisted on the uranium route to the Bhutto administration when France’soffer for an extraction plant was in the offing.
Though he had helped to come up with the centrifuge designs, and had been along-time proponent of the concept, Khan was not chosen to head thedevelopment project to test his nation’s first nuclear-weapons (hisreputation of a thorny personality likely played a role in this) afterIndia conducted its series of nuclearlink tests,’Pokhran-II’ in 1998. Intervention by the Chairman Joint Chiefs, GeneralJehangir Karamat, allowed Khan to be a participant and eyewitness hisnation’s first nuclear link,’Chagai-I’ in 1998. At a news conference, Khan confirmed the testing of theboosted fission devices while stating that it was KRL’s highly enricheduranium (HEU) that was used in the detonation of Pakistan’s first nuclearlink on 28 May 1998.
Many of Khan’s colleagues were irritated that he seemed to enjoy takingfull credit for something he had only a small part in, and in response, heauthored an article, Torch-Bearers, emphasising that he was not alone inthe weapon’s development. He made an attempt to work on the Teller–Ulamdesign for the hydrogen bomb, but the military strategists had objected tothe idea as it went against the government’s policy of minimum credibledeterrence.
*Court controversy and objections*
In 1979, the Dutch government eventually probed Khan on suspicion of nuclearlink espionage but he was not prosecuteddue to lack of evidence, though it did file a criminal complaint againsthim in a local court in Amsterdam, which sentenced him in absentia in 1985to four years in prison. Upon learning of the sentence, Khan filed anappeal through his attorney, SM Zafar, who teamed up with theadministration of Leuven University, and successfully argued that thetechnical information requested by Khan was commonly found and taught inundergraduate and doctoral physics at the university— the court exoneratedKhan by overturning his sentence on a legal technicality. Reacting to thesuspicions of espionage, Khan stressed that: “I had requested for it as wehad no library of our own at KRL, at that time. All the research work [atKahuta] was the result of our innovation and struggle. We did not receiveany technical ‘know-how’ from abroad, but we cannot reject the use ofbooks, magazines, and research papers in this connection.”
In 1979, the Zia administration, which was making an effort to keep theirnuclear link capability discreet to avoidpressure from the Reagan administration of the United States (US), nearlylost its patience with Khan when he reportedly attempted to meet with localjournalist to announce the existence of the enrichment programme. Duringthe Indian Operation Brasstacks military exercise in 1987, Khan gaveanother interview to local press and stated: the Americans had been wellaware of the success of the atomic quest of Pakistan, allegedly confirmingthe speculation of technology export. At both instances, the Ziaadministration sharply denied Khan’s statement and President Zia met withKhan and used a “tough tone”, promising Khan severe repercussions had henot retracted all of his statements, which Khan immediately did.
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In 1996, Khan again appeared on his country’s news channels and maintainedthat “at no stage was the program of producing 90% weapons-grade enricheduranium ever stopped”, despite Benazir Bhutto’s administration reaching anunderstanding with the Clinton administration to cap the programme to 3%enrichment in 1990.
*North Korea, Iran and Libya*
The centrifuges removed from Libya by the United States as seen in theimage were developed by Khan, known as P1, when he worked for Urenco Groupin the 1970s.
The innovation and improved designs of centrifuges were marked asclassified for export restriction by the Pakistan government, though Khanwas still in possession of earlier designs of centrifuges from when heworked for Urenco Group in the 1970s. In 1990, the United States allegedthat highly sensitive information was being exported to North Korea inexchange for rocket engines. On multiple occasions, Khan levelledaccusations against Benazir Bhutto’s administration of providing secretenrichment information, on a compact disc (CD), to North Korea; theseaccusations were denied by Benazir Bhutto’s staff and military personnel.
Between 1987 and 1989, Khan secretly leaked knowledge of centrifuges toIran without notifying the Pakistan Government, although this issue is asubject of political controversy. In 2003, the European Union pressuredIran to accept tougher inspections of its nuclearlink programme and the InternationalAtomic Energy Agency (IAEA) revealed an enrichment facility in the city ofNatanz, Iran, utilizing gas centrifuges based on the designs and methodsused by Urenco Group. The IAEA inspectors quickly identified thecentrifuges as P-1 types, which had been obtained “from a foreignintermediary in 1989”, and the Iranian negotiators turned over the names oftheir suppliers, which identified Khan as one of them.
In 2003, Libya negotiated with the United States to roll back its nuclearlink to have economic sanctionslifted, effected by the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act, and shippedcentrifuges to the United States that were identified as P-1 models by theAmerican inspectors. Ultimately, the Bush administration launched itsinvestigation of Khan, focusing on his personal role, when Libya handedover a list of its suppliers.
Govt work, academia, and political advocacy
Khan’s strong advocacy for nuclearlinkof technology eventually led to his ostracization by much of the scientificcommunity, but Khan was still quite welcome in his country’s political andmilitary circles. After leaving the directorship of the Khan ResearchLaboratories in 2001, Khan briefly joined the Musharraf administration as apolicy adviser on science and technology on a request from PresidentMusharraf. In this capacity, Khan promoted increased defence spending onhis nation’s missile programme to counter the perceived threats from theIndian missile programme and advised the Musharraf administration on spacepolicy. He presented the idea of using the Ghauri missile system as anexpendable launch system to launch satellites into space.
At the height of the proliferation controversy in 2007, Khan was paidtribute by Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on state television while commentingin the last part of his speech, Aziz stressed: “The services of [nuclear]scientist … Dr. [Abdul] Qadeer Khan are “unforgettable” for the country”.
In the 1990s, Khan secured a fellowship with the Pakistan Academy ofSciences— he served as its president in 1996–97. Khan published two bookson material science and started publishing his articles from KRL in the1980s. Gopal S. Upadhyaya, an Indian metallurgist who attended Khan’sconference and met him along with Kuldip Nayar, reportedly described himas: Khan was a proud Pakistani who wanted to show the world that scientistsfrom Pakistan are inferior to no one in the world. Khan also served asproject director of Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences andTechnology and briefly tenured as professor of physics before joining thefaculty of the Hamdard University; he remains on the board of directors ofthe university. Later, Khan helped established the AQ Khan Institute ofBiotechnology and Genetic Engineering at Karachi University.
In 2012, Khan announced the forming of a conservative political advocacygroup, ‘Tehreek-e-Tahaffuz-e-Pakistan’ (‘Movement for the Protection ofPakistan’), which was dissolved in 2013.
*Legacy*
During his time in the atomic bomb project, Khan pioneered research in thethermal quantum field theory and condensed matter physics, while heco-authored articles on chemical reactions of the highly unstable isotopeparticles in the controlled physical system. He maintained his stance ofthe use of controversial technological solutions to both military andcivilian problems, including the use of military technologies for civilianwelfare. Khan also remained a vigorous advocate for a nuclearlink testing programme and defencestrength through nuclear link. Hehas justified Pakistan’s nuclear linkdeterrenceprogramme as sparing his country the fate of Iraq or Libya. In an interviewin 2011, Khan maintained his stance on peace through strength andvigorously defended the nuclear link weaponsprogramme as part of the deterrence policy:
Pakistan’s motivation for nuclear linkarose from a need to prevent “nuclear blackmail” by India. Had Iraq andLibya been nuclear link powers, theywouldn’t have been destroyed in the way we have seen recently. … If(Pakistan) had an [atomic] capability before 1971, we [Pakistanis] wouldnot have lost half of our country after a disgraceful defeat.
*— Abdul Qadeer Khan, statement on 16 May 2011, published in Newsweek. *
While Khan hads been bestowed with many medals and honours by the federalgovernment and universities in Pakistan, Khan also remained the onlycitizen of Pakistan to have honoured twice with Nishan-e-Imtiaz.
Nishan-e-Imtiaz (1999)
Nishan-e-Imtiaz (1996)
Hilal-e-Imtiaz (1989)
Sir Syed University of Engineering and Technology[68]
60 Gold medal from universities in the country.[68]
University of Karachi[68]
Baqai Medical University[79]
Hamdard University[68]
Gomal University[68]
University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore[68]
Publications
*Books*
*· * Khan, Abdul Qadeer (1972). Advances in Physical Metallurgy (inEnglish, German, and Dutch). Amsterdam, Netherlands: Elsevier Press.
*·* Khan, Abdul Qadeer (1983). Metallurgical Thermodynamics and Kinetics(in English, German, and Dutch). Islamabad, Pakistan: The Proceedings ofthe Pakistan Academy of Sciences.
*· * Khan, Abdul Qadeer; Hussain, Syed Shabbir; Kamran, Mujahid (1997). Dr.A.Q. Khan on science and education. Islamabad, Pakistan: Sang-e-MeelPublications. ISBN 978-969-35-0821-5.–Wikipedia.org