Thread by @PrudentHermit, | How Pakistan got its Nuclear bomb ?

| How Pakistan got its Nuclear bomb ? | An Inside Story | Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto who came to Shimla in July 1972, in the aftermath of the war, to meet Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to cajole and plead with her to agree to release 93,000 troops held by (1/37)

India, hand over the territory seized by Indian troops, and thus save democracy in Pakistan by preventing a takeover by the army. He promised eternal peace in exchange. Aware of the Pakistan prime minister’s background and somewhat wary of his plans, (2/37)

the R&AW knew that though one war had ended, perhaps another deadlier one was about to begin. The hunt to unearth Pakistan’s nuclear plans was underway. Bhutto went into overdrive to woo Muslim world leaders like Muammar Qaddafi and the Saudi monarchy. (3/37)

The higher echelons of the R&AW were under pressure from the Indian government to find out exactly where the Pakistanis were shopping for nuclear weapons. Even the organization’s new recruits, being trained in a makeshift facility in a south Delhi (4/37)

basement, found themselves initiated into the world of international nuclear espionage. This was a time when nukes were the privilege of a few countries and the information available to would-be spies was at best vague.
Under US pressure, France had (5/37)

reneged on a nuclear deal signed with Bhutto in 1976 for a nuclear reprocessing plant to produce weapons-grade plutonium. There were disagreements in Pakistan between Munir Ahmed Khan, the head of PAEC, who had put most of the nuclear infrastructure (6/37)

together, and the new pretender to the throne, Abdul Qadeer Khan, who was a metallurgist and not a nuclear scientist, and who would later usurp the title ‘Father of the Pakistan Bomb’. Europe was the scene of Pakistan’s nuclear acquisition activity in (7/37)

the 1970s. In 1975, cars bearing Belgian and French diplomatic number plates would often be seen late at night outside A.Q. Khan’s modest home in the suburb of Zwanenburg, close to Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport. One of the visitors was surely Siddique (8/37)

Ahmed Butt, posted in the Pakistan Embassy by Bhutto as counsellor, science and technology. Khan was working with the nuclear manufacturer URENCO. The Dutch intelligence agency Militaire Inlichtingendienst (MID) wanted to arrest Khan but the Central (9/37)

Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the US dissuaded them as it wanted to keep a watch on his activities. Fearing arrest, Khan fled to Pakistan in December 1975.
Since international restrictions were not fully in place, it was possible to acquire some parts (10/37)

and auxiliary equipment, even though the device itself was a prohibited item. Thus, 6500 specially hardened steel tubes along with specialized rotors for uranium centrifuge plants could be purchased in the Netherlands. Dutch had allowed A.Q. Khan to (11/37)

steal uranium enrichment technology for centrifuges. Free market capitalism was in action in Europe in those days as the Pakistanis shopped for vital equipment. Some German companies provided vacuum pumps and gas purification equipment along with an (12/37)

unknown number of specially formed aluminium parts. Three contracts were signed by a German businessman with a Karachi-based company, Arshad Amjad and Arbid Private Limited, to supply three plants. These three plants together would have formed a (13/37)

production unit for manufacturing the uranium hexafluoride needed for uranium enrichment. France had at first barred the supply of 10,000 metal bellows whose sole use was in stabilizing gas centrifuge rotors, but then allowed a Belgian sub-contractor (14/37)

to supply this along with dyes so that Pakistan could manufacture the bellows themselves. The Swiss too joined in this business of nuclear retail to Pakistan.
The Pakistanis operated smartly and were frank and straightforward in their requests, (15/37)

knowing the loopholes in the restrictions listed by the London Club (the informal name of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, which first met in London in 1975).

in 1977, they write, three Pakistanis approached Vakuum Apparat Technik wanting to buy (16/37)

highly specialized valves for a centrifuge enrichment plant. The London Club’s regulations restricting the sales of materials that could lead to the development of nuclear weapons had listed centrifuges in the trigger list but not the valves. So, the (17/37)

Swiss were happy to sell. Encouraged, the Pakistanis approached another Swiss company, CORA Engineering, in the summer of 1978 to buy ‘a gasification and solidification unit to feed uranium hexafluoride gas into the centrifuges and then to transform it (18/37)

back into a solid at the end of the centrifuge process’. Sure enough, Berne cleared this as it was again not listed in the London Club regulations. Ultimately, the plant was flown to Pakistan in three Hercules C-130 transport aircraft. In Britain, the (19/37)

Pakistanis were operating through various front companies run by Abdus Salam (not the Nobel laureate) who ran a down-in-the-dumps radio shop in Colindale, North London, called Salam Radio (later rechristened S.R. International) and another (20/37)

off-the-shelf company, Weargate. Peter Griffin, who would later play a stellar role in Pakistani acquisitions and had moved from Europe to Dubai, was a director in these companies. Having failed to get high- frequency inverters from Holland in 1975, (21/37)

the Pakistani team of Weargate got the order for thirty inverters routed through Ernest Piffl of Team Industries. Pakistanis placed two more orders through the same channel, and although the mother company refused to supply, the second order through (22/37)

the British arrangement went through. The third order was embargoed by the British government, and strictly speaking, the British were not violating any regulation till then. They continued to supply under the arrogant assumption that the Pakistanis (23/37)

would not know what to do with such sophisticated equipment until they started receiving demands for modifications and enhancement.
Although the London Club ( Nuclear Supply Group ) did get alarmed and begin to impose restrictions against these (24/37)

activities, by the end of 1979, Pakistan’s nuclearization had become secondary to Western strategic interests. Irony - US President Jimmy Carter offered India heavy water and uranium for its nuclear reactors in 1977 in exchange for the US being able to (25/37)

inspect its nuclear materials, Morarji Desai declined. Later, in 1978, Desai indiscreetly, told General Zia ul-Haq that India was aware that Pakistan was making a nuclear bomb. Why ….?? Anybody Zia went into a rigorous security clampdown. The R&AW was (26/37)

up against a known adversary but also the indiscretions and opposition of their own people. establishment of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) by Agha Hasan Abedi. The bank ran entirely on Abedi’s personality; his phenomenal contacts (27/37)

among the high and mighty ranged from CIA directors Richard Helms and William Casey, the Saudi intelligence chief Kamal Adham and his deputy, former Presidents, and known international wheeler-dealers like Adnan Khashoggi, Manucher Ghorbanifar and (28/37)

Ghaith Pharaon. The bank was involved in various shady transactions, including ones for Pakistan’s nuclear purchases. By April 1978, Pakistan had successfully enriched a small quantity of uranium, but not weapons-grade uranium. That would mean more (29/37)

equipment and further experiments and would take another three years or so. This was also the time that Pakistan was getting drawn into the Soviet–Afghan War along with the US and Saudi Arabia. By 1979, Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s national (30/37)

security advisor, would declare that the Afghan resistance (the Mujahideen) should be supplied with arms and money and that to get Pakistani cooperation the US would ‘require a review of our policy toward Pakistan, more guarantees to it, more arms aid, (31/37)

and alas, a decision that our security policy toward Pakistan cannot be dictated by our non-proliferation policy’.
Ronald Reagan obtained a waiver on the Symington Amendment and use the ambiguously worded Pressler Amendment to continue to certify (32/37)

that Pakistan did not possess a nuclear bomb to get Congressional clearance for funds for the jihad. Pakistan’s sins were forgiven and overlooked throughout the period of the Afghan jihad, and until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The price (33/37)

was going to be non- interference in Pakistan’s nuclear project. This was paid by the world—in letting A.Q. Khan get away with his international nuclear Walmart in the 1980s through the next decade, which included the acquisition of North Korean (34/37)

missiles for uranium enrichment technology. Western policies on non-proliferation took a beating. A.Q. Khan was known as the ‘father’ of Pakistan’s bomb even though he was
sidelined when the tests took place in Chagai in May 1998. The honour for this (35/37)

had been given to his arch-rival Munir Ahmed Khan and his team. A.Q. Khan was becoming too big for his boots.

Sources and Further Readings on
1. The Atomic Bazaar by William Langewiesche
2. The Islamic Bomb by Steve Weissman and Herbert Krosney (36/37)

3. Pakistan, the United States, and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons by Levy, Adrian and Catherine Scott-Clark

(37/37)

Sources The Unending Game by @Vikram_Sood

Latest Threads Unrolled: