State, scientists and sanity

By Muhammad Ahsan Yatu In the eighties an American research student wrote a paper on making of a nuclear bomb by spending dollar 2500 only.

Gentlemen from two embassies, French and Pakistani, approached him for the details.

To this writer the story had then brought a bit of solace.

At least there was one more state, which was equally crazy.

However, the powerful and the organised French could afford to be crazy, whereas we could not.

Our present troubles proved it so clearly.

Khan did, he did it in good faith and his subordinates too acted in good faith.

However, what he and others did was unauthorised, and no government was involved.

This is the summary of what A Q Khan said.

His statement is an attempt to save Pakistan from disgrace but more than that it is meant to save the skins of many holy cows, who are above anything including common law and the supreme law (The Constitution).

Whether or not the statement would satisfy those who have raised the nasty issue of nuclear proliferations, it is a question, whose answer may for the time being be in our favour but; in not so long a future a different answer is likely to come if we fail to end the present crisis sincerely by taking to task the holy cows as well, and by pledging our commitment to international norms, whole heartedly.

Now that entire programme has become overt, as President Musharraf said, a thorough investigation is needed into the financial mismanagement.

Request for clemency as for as physical punishment is concerned has some logic because scientists did accomplish a job, which was difficult to the extent of impossibility, given the poor knowledge base that we had and still have.

Yet, the plundered national wealth must be recovered: None, whether he is a scientist or a civilian or an indenter/contractor/collaborator or a money making general should be spared.

World is watching us, and not going for accountability would mean we are not sincere, neither to our own selves nor to the international community.

Nor have we, still, acquired the required vision that makes the nations dignified and honourable.

If a nation is poor in all kind of resources--natural, technical, political and social--and has to choose between honourable way of having bread and a borrowed way of making bombs and missiles and tanks and submarines and what not, what should it do? If it will do what Pakistan did, it will end up with what Pakistan ultimately earned, an irresponsible image.

This story is not exclusive to Pakistan.

All those nations, whose leadership is visionless faces the same fate.

Yet, some countries are lucky.

They managed their affairs wisely with the help of their friends in the world, even though their leadership had brought destruction to them.

Look how Japan and Germany were rebuilt.

Militarism failed both of them.

Today they do not have this bomb or that bomb, but they have prosperity, dignity and honour.

Pakistan was not lucky even externally.

Had it been having good friends in the comity of nations, it could have saved itself from such end results that its craze for war machines brought.

Unfortunately our friendship first with America, and then with China and again with America taught us nothing meaningful or nothing about how to have bread honourably.

America not only supported our mammoth conventional military build up, but also kept silence on, and even endorsed, our activities to acquire nuclear technology from black markets scattered all over the world including the one that operates in the USA.

China, the other friend, on the other hand helped us to struggle with the remaking of first generation discarded missiles.

Due to the kind of a visionless leadership that we had we were not aware of our selves, but both USA and China knew about our real needs, which were to have an educational base, economic organisation and societal harmony.

That was about our friendly countries, and about our brotherly countries story is no different.

Their part began after East Pakistan separated from us to become Bangladesh.

Afterwards, slowly and steadily, we moved towards West Asia, in search of an identity and also much needed financial assistance.

War against USSR in Afghanistan pushed us further into the West Asian camp.

After the unilateral withdrawal of the Soviets from Afghanistan our relationship with Saudi Arabia, the richest country in West Asia, grew faster.

Its results were Taliban in Afghanistan and about 4000 madrissas in Pakistan, and of course some facility in oil purchases and assistance in making the weaponry we had craze for.

This is what our friendly and brotherly countries did to us.

But who is to be blamed? What could friends, brothers and sisters do, when we were so crazy about building our military muscles, and so indifferent to acquiring societal strength.

It is told that Bhutto was in Azad Kashmir when he heard the news about India's testing of its nuclear bomb.

Next thing he did was to cut short his visit.

Back in Islamabad he discussed the idea of a Pakistani bomb with the gentlemen from army, and thus the job started.

Why should we make a N-bomb? Can we make it on our own? Do we have enough number of competent and committed scientists around? How much it will cost, and from where the funds will come? None raised these questions; and none thought about the repercussions.

The sad side of our state (governing system) is that it has remained visionless since the beginning.

None of our dummy-rulers (politicians) and the real rulers (generals) ever tried to know where do we stand geo-politically, politically, economically and most of all in knowledge and technology.

Bhutto and the gentlemen generals known that we were not having enough number of competent scientists in physics and material sciences, they might have done something first about the backwardness of nation in education.

Had they known that search for technology and material from here and there and that too secretly would cost us more than ten billion dollars, they might have dropped the idea forever.

Had they known that Pakistan is one of those lucky countries, which do not have nay threat from outside, they might have laughed at the idea of N-bomb? Had they known about the weak and dependent status of Muslim majority countries, they might have thought about doing something fruitful inside and elsewhere? When our leaders are so unaware about Pakistan and the world, what good one should expect them to do to this nation? Our state was visionless right at the beginning, it did not improve in 1974, and it is still the same.

However, in spite of making N-bombs, the situation in Physics, which is the most relevant and meaningful branch of knowledge regarding any industry including war industry, has become worst.

Today our level of competency in this particular science is much below than what it used to be in 1947.

And all of us know about our present financial, political and geo-political situation and status.

If the bomb was meant to force India into solving the Kashmir problem, even then the task had no wisdom.

Our leaders should have known about the Cuban Missile crisis, and ultimate surrender of the Soviets on this particular matter.

The USSR retreated even though it was capable of destroying half of Europe and one tenth of USA, but in so horrible a war entire Russia would have been destroyed.

So a military match with a much bigger and stronger adversary was not and is not in our interest as well.

It was also proved in the war of 1965, when we lost so many strategic places to India, in spite of our technical superiority in conventional weaponry.

Thus, through our love for making of weapons of mass deaths, we were not only wasting time and money, but also heading for a big trouble.

The Bomb did not make us better off either.

It did not help us improve any thing technologically.

Nor did it save us from having a humiliating end result of our Kargil expedition.

And now as Iran, Libya and A.Q.

Khan revealed, it brought to us a bad name also.

Anyway the bomb and its business did help us in one particular way.

What Iran and Libya told to IAEA should serve as an eye opener.

A defiant and rich and strong part of Ummah has spoken and submitted, and it should be enough to reconsider our attachment to militarism and to a myth called unity of Ummah.

There is no better way to live but to act like post WWII Germany and Japan.

We should spend whatever we have and whatever we get from our friends on social and industrial development, if we intend to live with dignity and honour.