A Q Khan nuclear network alive and
kicking By David Isenberg
WASHINGTON - When US President George W
Bush announced on February 11, 2004, that the
infamous nuclear-black-market network run by
Pakistan's Abdul Qadeer Khan had been rolled up,
everyone concerned with nuclear-proliferation
issues breathed a huge sigh of relief.
Khan's network had helped facilitate the
development of nuclear weapons and weapons
programs of all the most worrisome states in the
previous couple of decades, including Pakistan,
Iran, Iraq, Libya and North Korea, sparking crises
such as the one over Iran
that
continue to this day. But while Khan was relieved
of his job as head of Khan Research Laboratories
and was put under house arrest, where he remains
today, it seems that the relief was premature.
Though it seems like a plot line from a
James Bond film, clandestine acquisition of
nuclear technologies and materials is still very
much with us, according to a newly released study.
Preventing nuclear proliferation by both state and
non-state actors is very much an action-reaction
process. Proliferators illicitly acquire materials
and technologies critical to constructing nuclear
weapons, then states try to tighten loopholes or
strengthen export-control rules to prevent this
from happening in the future. But proliferators
find new ways to stay ahead.
Indeed, like
the fabled Phoenix, some of Khan's past associates
may yet rise to life again. The study notes that
"some of Khan's associates appear to have escaped
law-enforcement attention and could, after a
period of lying low, resume their black-market
business. Decapitating the nodes of
non-hierarchical networks does not necessarily
eradicate the enterprise."
Nuclear
Black Markets: Pakistan, A Q Khan and the Rise of
Proliferation Networks, a strategic dossier
released in the United States last Tuesday by the
London-headquartered International Institute for
Strategic Studies, was drafted by several
subject-matter experts and edited by Mark
Fitzpatrick, a former US deputy assistant
secretary of state for non-proliferation, and now
IISS senior fellow for non-proliferation.
Among the questions explored by the
176-page dossier is whether A Q Khan sold to North
Korea and Iran the weapon designs that he sold to
Libya and apparently offered to Iraq. The dossier
also details how Pakistan developed a
nuclear-weapons capability in 10 years after Khan
brought stolen technology for the enrichment of
uranium from the Netherlands.
The report
was released at the same time as delegates from
188 nations were meeting in Vienna at the
Preparatory Committee of the 2010 Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference.
Delegates there have been struggling to find ways
to strengthen the NPT. In recent years, in light
of past nuclear-weapons tests by Pakistan and
India and more recently North Korea and the
ongoing confrontation over Iran's nuclear program,
many have feared that other nations, and possibly
terrorist groups, will try to acquire nuclear
weapons.
While Khan himself has been
neutralized, the network he built, which started
providing "onward proliferation", as the dossiers
euphemistically phrased it, in the mid-1980s,
serves as a shining example to other nations.
Given that export controls over nuclear materials
and technologies have been strengthened, nations
seeking them have an incentive to turn to
clandestine means.
According to the
dossier, Iran has built a procurement structure
that is equivalent to, if not larger than, Khan's
global network. North Korea will need additional
black-market supplies to expand its small nuclear
arsenal. Pakistan and (to a lesser extent) India
have still not given up foreign procurement for
their nuclear-weapons programs.
Ironically, as Fitzpatrick pointed out,
while Pakistan has stripped Khan of his former
responsibilities and power, they are still very
much dependent on the network he set up, since the
countries producing and exporting nuclear
technology and raw materials were obliged not sell
such materials to Pakistan because it had not yet
entered international agreements on nuclear
non-proliferation. Thus Islamabad had no
alternative but to fall back on the networks Khan
and his associates had created.
That may
be one of the most worrisome developments for the
future, because networks that are formed to help
import items find exporting far more profitable,
according to the dossier. It noted:
When Khan managed to shift his
primary business operations from imports to much
more lucrative exports, many of his European and
South African accomplices stayed with him. The
new "business model" orientation offered the
European members of the network much more money
in comparison to what they had previously got
from Pakistan's secret nuclear program
coffers.
Although some previous IISS
dossiers have had problems, such as the one it
released in 2002 on Iraq, this one is important.
Since Khan confessed to his procurement network in
2004, after a Pakistani military-led
investigation, no one but the military has been
allowed to question him, despite the international
implications of his proliferation network.
Interestingly in light of his recent book
At the Center of the Storm, the Pakistani
investigation was prompted by former US director
of central intelligence George Tenet, who
presented proof of Khan's activities to President
General Pervez Musharraf.
While all of the
information in the dossier is from open sources
and is not new, it does confirm that the world
still knows remarkably little about the details of
how Khan's network operated, such as exactly what
its customers procured from it.
David Isenberg is a senior
research analyst at the British American Security
Information Council, a member of the Coalition for
a Realistic Foreign Policy, a research fellow at
the Independent Institute, and an adviser to the
Straus Military Reform Project of the Center for
Defense Information, Washington. These views are
his own.
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