An interview with AQ Khan – the father of the Pakistani bomb – appeared in The Guardian over the weekend. This was Khan’s first interview with the foreign media for a few years, and he was in belligerent form.
The entire Khan affair seems to capture the ambiguous relationship between Pakistan and the US. There is no doubt that Khan is a national hero in Pakistan. One of the spookier aspects of visiting the country are the stone monuments to the country’s nuclear virility – complete with the nuclear symbol – that greet you on the outskirts of the major cities.
But for the Americans, Khan is pretty close to being public enemy number one. One senior American intelligence official has described him as “more dangerous than Osama bin Laden”, because of his role in sponsoring nuclear proliferation.
But while bin Laden has to hide out somewhere in the borderlands between Pakistan and Afghanistan, Khan is able to live openly (albeit under house arrest) in Islamabad. And now the new government is letting him give interviews. Given the renewed worries about nuclear proliferation, the Americans cannot be amused. But there seems to be little they can do about it.
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