Dr. Abdul Qadeer (AQ) Khan, seen by many as the ‘father of Pakistan's nuclear programme’ has written a self-aggrandising, self-serving and self-justifying piece for The International News . The piece, which details the history of Pakistan’s Kahuta uranium enrichment facility which provides material for the country’s nuclear weapons, is also smug, dull, and makes several notable omissions about how Khan has helped make the world a more dangerous place.

Khan says…

While both India and Pakistan are fully justified in pursuing their individual nuclear programmes and not to allow themselves to be blackmailed or bullied by other countries, it is in the larger interests of their millions of people that they remove mutual distrust and come to a clear, unambiguous and failsafe understanding regarding the manufacture or use of nuclear weapons.

How long has he held this view? Was this removal of ‘mutual distrust’ and the need for ‘a clear, unambiguous and failsafe understanding regarding the manufacture or use of nuclear weapons’ close to his heart when he passed technology and blueprints to other countries including Iran, Libya and North Korea, enabling them to launch their own nuclear programmes? We somehow doubt it.

It’s all too clear that AQ Khan have led his country and the wider world - to danger, uncertainty and, quite possibly, horror. He ends his piece with ‘Pakistan Zindabad’. Long live Pakistan. If it does, it will be no thanks to him.