MicroPakistan

I am putting up a documentary made by BBC2 following the AQ Khan story from its beginnings in 1972 at URENCO in Holland to its end at his home in Bani Gala, in the suburbs of Islamabad. I had only read a bit about what happened, but instinctively, as many other Pakistanis still believe, I felt that he was being used as a scapegoat. This documentary seems to be very well researched, just like most BBC documentaries, and claims that it was A Q Khan who pulled all the strings and reaped all the profits from the sale of nuclear weapons technology through his international network.

However, since then doubt has been cast over this claim by the Swedish Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission (SWMDC) headed by Hans Blix, a former chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC); In December 2006 it said in a report that A Q Khan could not have acted alone, “without the awareness of the Pakistani government”.

Either way it sheds some light on a very sad episode in Pakistan’s short nuclear history. On the one hand those belonging to A Q Khan’s school of thought would argue that nuclear weapons are not the birth right of any particular nation and each and every country has the right to posess them; which is exactly what A Q Khan was making possible. While others would argue that that would make the world a much more dangerous place.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to find the last part of this documentary online, which means that we’re left without the ending. However, I think the end is one thing all Pakistanis are certain about (house arrest, prostrate cancer, presidential pardon, and deep vein thombrosis). It is the route that Dr A Q Khan took that was a bit sketchy and the documentary does a good job of explaining it. **UPDATE** Part 6 added.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6