Pakistan is not the original birth place of the Islamic fundamentalist  and jihadi organizations.  Islamic fundamentalism and jihadi terrorism were born elsewhere in the Islamic Ummah and thereafter spread to Pakistan after the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. 

But, Pakistan is the original birth place of the concept of the nuclear jihad, which highlighted the need for an Islamic atomic bomb and advocated  the right and the religious obligation of the Muslims to acquire  weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and use them, if necessary, to protect their religion. The jihadi terrorists and their ideologues in Pakistan perceived the nuclear weapon as the ultimate weapon of retribution against States which they viewed as enemies of Islam, particularly the USA and Israel. 

It was, in fact, the late Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto, a Western-influenced liberal and not a religious fundamentalist, who first projected Pakistan's clandestine quest for an atomic bomb as the quest for an Islamic bomb to counter what he described as the Christian, Jewish and Hindu atomic bombs.  He used this depiction in order to convince other Islamic States such as Libya, Saudi Arabia and Iran to fund Pakistan's clandestine military nuclear programme. 

It was only subsequently that Pakistani jihadi organizations such as the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) and fundamentalist organizations such as the Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI)  and the Jamiat-ul-Ulema Islam (JUI) adopted Z.A.Bhutto's depiction of the Islamic bomb and projected it as rightfully belonging to the Islamic Ummah as a whole. 

They described Pakistan's nuclear and missile capability as held by it on trust on behalf of the Ummah.  In 2000, when Abdul Sattar, Gen.Pervez Musharraf's then Foreign Minister, advocated Pakistan's signing of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), the Islamic fundamentalist and jihadi organizations started a public campaign against him and projected him as a traitor and as anti-Islam. Thereafter, he gave up his advocacy.  

After he shifted to Afghanistan from the Sudan in 1996, Osama bin Laden of Al Qaeda  not only started speaking of the right and the religious obligation of the Muslims to acquire WMD and use them, if necessary, to protect Islam, but also initiated a project for the acquisition/ development of WMD under the leadership of Abu Khabab in his training complex in Afghanistan. 

After 1998, Al Qaeda and the International Islamic Front (IIF) for Jihad against the Crusaders and the Jewish People launched a campaign for the recruitment of students of science and scientists already working in the scientific establishments of the Islamic countries for helping them in their quest for the acquisition/development of WMD. 

Many analysts of what has come to be known as catastrophic or new terrorism have remarked on the presence of a large number of educated persons in the ranks of the jihadi terrorist organizations.  Even the pre-1991 ideological terrorist organizations of the world, influenced by leftist ideologies, had attracted a large number of educated youth.  Thus, the attraction of educated youth to terrorism is not a new phenomenon. Most of them were students or graduates or teachers of humanities. There were hardly  any students of science or scientists in their ranks. 

What is new about jihadi terrorism is the gravitation of a number of students of science or working scientists to the jihadi organizations to help the terrorists in their jihad. While the students of science came to the jihadi organizations from many Islamic countries of the world, working scientists came mainly from Pakistan. 

The late Gen.Zia-ul-Haq, who ruled Pakistan from 1977 to 1988, strengthened the Islamic motivation of not only the Pakistani Armed Forces, but also of its scientific community in the nuclear field.  Just as he started projecting the Pakistani Army not only as the Army of the State of Pakistan, but also as the Army of Islam to serve the Islamic cause, similarly, like Z.A. Bhutto whom he overthrew and sent to the gallows, he started providing a religious justification for Pakistan's clandestine quest for the atomic bomb. 

Zia's policies resulted in the injection of the fundamentalist virus into the Pakistani Army and the scientific establishment. While the increasing influence of fundamentalism in the lower and middle levels of the Pakistani Armed Forces received the attention of the analysts of the world, a similar increase in the influence of fundamentalism in the scientific establishment did not receive similar attention despite the fact that sections of the Pakistani media had been reporting about the presence of unidentified scientists of Pakistan's nuclear establishment in the religious conventions of Pakistani jihadi organizations such as the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET). 

The first indications of the presence of pro-jihadi scientists in Pakistan's nuclear establishment came to notice during the US military operations in Afghanistan against Al Qaeda and the Taliban when documents recovered by the US forces reportedly spoke of the visits of Sultan Bashiruddin Ahmed and Abdul Majid, retired scientists of Pakistan's nuclear establishment, to Kandahar when bin Laden was operating from there before 9/11.  Sultan Bashiruddin was the first head of the Kahuta uranium enrichment project before A.Q.Khan, who subsequently became famous as the father of the Pakistani atomic bomb, replaced him in the 1970s. 

At the instance of the USA, the Pakistani authorities detained the two for some weeks and interrogated them. They reportedly admitted visiting Kandahar and meeting bin Laden, but maintained that the visit was in connection with the work of a humanitarian relief organisatiion for helping the Afghan people which they had founded and had nothing to do with Al Qaeda's quest for WMD. 

Since no evidence linking them to Al Qaeda's Abu Khabab project could be found, they were released, but banned from traveling abroad.  However, the USA and, at its instance ,the UN Security Council initiated action for banning their so-called humanitarian organization and for freezing its bank accounts. 

Since 9/11, one of the major concerns of the US intelligence and counter-terrorism agencies has been over the dangers of Al Qaeda and its jihadi associates in the IIF managing to acquire a WMD capability. In this connection, attention was particularly focused on Pakistan as the most likely spot from which such leakage could occur. 

Pakistan has been the epicentre of State-sponsored nuclear proliferation since the late 1980s.  Having benefited from funds contributed by Libya, Iran and Saudi Arabia for its clandestine military nuclear project, the Pakistan State had to agree to requests from these countries for helping them in acquiring a  similar capability. 

Large sections of the media and the community of strategic analysts have been writing as if the Pakistan State's collusion with Iran in the nuclear field came to light only last year. In fact, this came to light in the early 1990s when Nawaz Sharif was the Prime Minister. The Pakistani political and military establishment, including Nawaz Sharif himself, had then strongly refuted these reports. 

If one goes back to the 1990s---immediately before and after the first Gulf war of 1991—one would find  reports of the role played by Gen.Mirza Aslam Beg, the then  Chief of the Army Staff (COAS), and Dr.Abdul Qadir Khan, in the clandestine nuclear co-operation not only with Iran, but also with Iraq.  Dr.A.Q.Khan had been the honoured guest of Saddam Hussein, the then President of Iraq, on many occasions. 

The reports of those years were dismissed by the apologists for Pakistan in the US on the following grounds: first, the reports about the co-operation with Iran came from sources in the anti-Teheran Mujahideen-e-Khalq, which were not reliable. Second, it did not sound logical that Pakistan should be helping Iran as well as Iraq, both sworn enemies of each other. 

Such arguments have no validity in the case of Pakistan. Duplicity has been the defining characteristic of Pakistan's foreign policy ever since it was born in 1947. It co-operated with China against India and with the US against China. It co-operated with the USA against Iran by allowing the USA's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to use Pakistani territory for its operations against the Islamic regime in Iran and , at the same time, had no qualms about helping the Islamic regime in strengthening its conventional capability and developing a nuclear capability. 

The political and military leadership of Pakistan clandestinely helped not only other Islamic countries, but also North Korea. Whereas in the case of the Islamic countries, the motivation was money and religion, in the case of North Korea it was the desire for the North Korean missile technology. 

When Pakistan faced difficulties in the late 1980s in developing its indigenous missiles (based on the Hatf series), it was to China it turned.  Beijing helped it by supplying it with technology and fully tested short and medium range missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons up to Delhi and Mumbai in India, but was reluctant to supply long-range missiles capable of striking Chennai and Kolkatta. 

It was then that Pakistan turned to North Korea when Benazir Bhutto succeeded Nawaz as the Prime Minister in 1993. During a visit made by her  to North Korea from China, the agreement for co-operation in the missile field was concluded. Gen.Pervez Musharraf, who was the Director-General of Military Operations under her, was made responsible for co-ordinating this project. He and A.Q.Khan had made many secret visits to North Korea in this connection---together as well as separately of each other. 

Initially, Pakistan paid for North Korea's missiles and related technology with dollars and wheat purchased from the US and Australia and diverted to it. The supplementary agreement to help North Korea in developing a military nuclear capability was reached after Musharraf assumed power in October,1999. 

Zia, Benazir, Nawaz, Beg, Gen. Asif Nawaz Janjua, who succeeded Beg. Gen. Abdul Waheed Kakkar, his successor, and Gen.Jehangir Karamat, his successor and Musharraf's predecessor, were all privy to the clandestine nuclear/missile relationship with  Iran,Libya and North Korea. 

Right from its inception, the clandestine nuclear and missile projects in Pakistan were treated as a top secret intelligence operation of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to ensure deniability.  All payments to the foreign suppliers were made not from the accounts of the Government of Pakistan, but from private accounts in the BCCI, which collapsed in 1991, and other Dubai and Geneva based banks. These accounts were opened by the Gokul brothers of Geneva, one of whom was jailed for cheating in the UK after the collapse of the BCCI, Shaukat Aziz, Pakistan's present Finance Minister, who was working in  the Gulf for the Citibank in the 1990s, Dawood Ibrahim, the mafia leader who was designated by  the USA as an international terrorist in October last year, Dubai-based Pakistani smugglers and A.Q.Khan and other trusted Pakistani scientists. 

The financial contributions from Libya, Iran and Saudi Arabia were transferred to these accounts from numbered secret Swiss accounts and payments to the overseas suppliers were made from these accounts. 

In response to periodic Western media reports about Pakistan's clandestine co-operation with these countries, Musharraf has been taking shifting stands just as he has been doing so in the case of the Pakistani links with Al Qaeda and other jihadi terrorist groups.  

When the first reports about Pakistan's clandestine co-operation with North Korea in the missile and nuclear fields appeared, he totally denied them and repeatedly maintained that Pakistan's medium and long-range missiles were totally indigenous and there was no North Korean role. In October last year, during a visit to South Korea, he changed this stand and openly admitted for the first time North Korean inputs in Pakistan's missile programme.  However, he continues to deny any Pakistani inputs into North Korea's nuclear programme.  At the same time, he sought to blame the previous Governments of Nawaz and Benazir for the missile co-operation with North Korea as if he had no role in it. 

After 9/11, when there was considerable speculation about the dangers of Pakistan's WMD assets falling into the hands of Al Qaeda, he asserted on innumerable occasions that Pakistan's nuclear capability was in the secure hands of the military and that there was no question of its leakage to anybody outside Pakistan. 

After Libya and Iran made a clean breast of the inputs received by them from Pakistan, he has again shifted his stand. He is now trying to give the impression as if this was the unauthorized doing of rogue elements in Pakistan's scientific community who, according to him, betrayed Pakistan's nuclear secrets out of greed for money. 

He has been enacting an elaborate nuclear charade of detaining and "debriefing" A.Q.Khan and eight other nuclear scientists close to him and four ISI officers who had served in the Kahuta uranium enrichment factory and by projecting the proliferation which has taken place, which he no longer denies, as the act of these rogue elements. 

When President Vladimir Putin of Russia visited India  a year ago, he stated in an interview that Musharraf had repeatedly assured him that Pakistan's nuclear and missile assets were in the safe hands of the Army and that there was no question of their leakage to  Al Qaeda or other jihadi terrorists.  

Putin added that while he had no reasons to distrust Musharraf, he continued to be concerned over the dangers of individual members of the Pakistani scientific community helping the jihadi terrorists to develop a WMD capability. Even though he did not say so explicitly, it was apparent that he was having in mind the case of Sultan Bashiruddin and Abdul Majid and was worried that they represented only the tip of the jihadi rogue iceberg in Pakistan's nuclear and missile fields. 

Putin's concerns have been justified by the recent discoveries of the role of over a dozen members of Pakistan's WMD community, civilian scientists as well as their military supervisors, in the proliferation of nuclear technology and material to Libya and Iran.  Even if one were to accept Musharraf's unconvincing arguments that this was a rogue operation by greedy scientists without the knowledge of the military, these concerns would only be aggravated and not lessened because if greedy scientists were prepared to help other States in return for money, they would be equally capable of selling material and expertise to jihadi terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda, which can pay as well as these Islamic States. 

If an Islamic fundamentalist orientation was an additional factor in their sale/transfer of these technologies to Iran and Libya, the international community would have reasons to be even more concerned. Till now, strategic analysts have been focusing only on the dangers of a possible Talibanisation or Al Qaedisation of the Pakistan Army. It is time now to pay more attention to the dangers of a Talibanisation or Al Qaedisation of Pakistan's scientific community. 

The recent developments and the shifting stands of Musharraf only add to the misgivings in the minds of many about him.  If he has been telling a lie by putting all the blame on individual scientists, it shows how he continues to be as unreliable as before befitting his reputation as "tricky Mush". If he is telling the truth, it shows how ineffective is his control over the jihadi elements in the Pakistani Army and scientific establishment. 

B. Raman is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute for Topical Studies, Chennai, and Distinguished Fellow and Convenor, Advisory Committee, Observer Research Foundation, Chennai Chapter.