Abdul Qadeer Khan, also referred to as A.Q. Khan, (born April 1, 1936, Bhopal, India), Pakistani engineer, a key determine in Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program who was additionally concerned for many years in a black market of nuclear expertise and know-how whereby uranium-enrichment centrifuges, nuclear warhead designs, missiles, and experience had been bought or traded to Iran, North Korea, Libya, and probably different international locations.
In 1947, throughout Khan’s childhood, India achieved independence from Britain, and Muslim areas within the east and west had been partitioned to kind the state of Pakistan. Khan immigrated to West Pakistan in 1952, and in 1960 he graduated from the University of Karachi with a level in metallurgy. Over the following decade he pursued graduate research overseas, first in West Berlin after which in Delft, Netherlands, the place in 1967 he acquired a grasp’s diploma in metallurgy. In 1972 he earned a doctorate in metallurgical engineering from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. Meanwhile, in 1964 he married Hendrina Reterink, a British nationwide who had been born to Dutch expatriate mother and father in South Africa and raised in what was then Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) earlier than shifting to the Netherlands.
In the spring of 1972 Khan was employed by Physical Dynamics Research Laboratory, a subcontractor of the Dutch accomplice of URENCO. URENCO, a consortium of British, German, and Dutch firms, was established in 1971 to analysis and develop uranium enrichment by way of using ultracentrifuges, that are centrifuges that function at extraordinarily excessive speeds. Khan was granted a low-level safety clearance, however, by way of lax oversight, he gained entry to a full vary of knowledge on ultracentrifuge expertise and visited the Dutch plant at Almelo many instances. One of his jobs was to translate German paperwork on superior centrifuges into Dutch.
Khan was closely influenced by occasions again residence, notably Pakistan’s humiliating defeat in a short conflict with India in 1971, the next lack of East Pakistan by way of the creation of a brand new impartial nation, Bangladesh, and India’s take a look at of a nuclear explosive gadget in May 1974. On September 17, 1974, Khan wrote to Pakistan’s prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, providing his help in getting ready an atomic bomb. In the letter he supplied the opinion that the uranium path to the bomb, utilizing centrifuges for enrichment, was higher than the plutonium path (already below approach in Pakistan), which relied on nuclear reactors and reprocessing.
Bhutto met Khan in December 1974 and inspired him to do every part he may to assist Pakistan attain the bomb. Over the following 12 months Khan stole drawings of centrifuges and assembled an inventory of primarily European suppliers the place elements could possibly be procured. On December 15, 1975, he left the Netherlands for Pakistan, accompanied by his spouse and two daughters and carrying his blueprint copies and suppliers listing.
Khan initially labored with the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC), however variations arose with its head, Munir Ahmad Khan. In mid-1976, at Bhutto’s course, Khan based the Engineering Research Laboratory, or ERL, for the aim of growing a uranium-enrichment functionality. (In May 1981 the laboratory was renamed the Khan Research Laboratory, or KRL.) Khan’s base of operations was in Kahuta, 50 km (30 miles) southeast of Islamabad; there Khan developed prototype centrifuges based mostly on German designs and used his suppliers listing to import important parts from Swiss, Dutch, British, and German firms, amongst others.
In the early Nineteen Eighties Pakistan acquired from China the blueprints of a nuclear weapon that used a uranium implosion design that the Chinese had efficiently examined in 1966. It is usually believed that the Chinese examined a spinoff design for the Pakistanis on May 26, 1990. Khan, having happy Pakistan’s wants for its personal uranium weapon, started within the mid-Nineteen Eighties to create entrance firms in Dubayy, Malaysia, and elsewhere, and thru these entities he covertly bought or traded centrifuges, parts, designs, and experience in an intensive black-market community. The clients included Iran, which went on to construct a uranium-enrichment advanced based mostly on the Pakistani mannequin. Khan visited North Korea no less than 13 instances and is suspected of getting transferred enrichment expertise to that nation. (His laboratory additionally developed Pakistan’s Ghauri ballistic missile with assist from the North Koreans.) Libya, equipped by Khan, embarked upon a nuclear weapons program till it was interrupted by the United States in 2003.
On January 31, 2004, Khan was arrested for transferring nuclear expertise to different international locations. On February 4 he learn a press release on Pakistani tv taking full duty for his operations and absolving the army and authorities of any involvement—a declare that many nuclear consultants discovered troublesome to imagine. The subsequent day he was pardoned by Pakistan’s president, Pervez Musharraf, however he was held below home arrest till 2009. Khan’s critics, notably within the West, expressed dismay at such lenient therapy of a person whom one observer referred to as “the greatest nuclear proliferator of all time.” For many Pakistanis, nonetheless, Khan stays a logo of satisfaction, a hero whose contribution strengthened Pakistan’s nationwide safety towards India.