Ignore AQ Khan, but watch Pak carefully

It is gratifying that India has officially refrained from responding to the nuclear ravings of Abdul Qadeer Khan. The thoughtless man has just suggested that Delhi can be “targeted” from Kahuta, near Islamabad, in a time-frame of five minutes.

Dr Khan, known as the father of Pakistan’s atom bomb, has no official status now. When he was caught by the international community for trying to run a nuclear Walmart, so deep and far-going were his efforts at peddling nuclear ware on the sly, the Pakistani authorities mothballed him in order to protect themselves and he was placed under house-arrest. After being freed under a judicial order, the disgraced scientist, now feeling forlorn at age 80, is apt to feel that he hasn’t received his due for services rendered to his country.

This may possibly explain his militarist bombast. At the same time, the ease with which the dodgy scientist has made his vulgar observation marks him out as insensitive to the monstrous consequences of nuclear weaponry and uncaring attitude towards bilateral and geopolitical considerations. Indeed, Dr Khan is just the sort of person the far right in Pakistan, including those ensconced in that country’s military establishment and a section of its political class, would seek to exploit to keep the momentum going for itself by appearing to be psychologically attacking India.

We have our own crazies here, who at the drop of a hat urge members of a particular religious community to migrate to Pakistan.

Some of these ideologically fraught personalities sit on the Treasury benches in our Parliament.

The government would do well to ensure that such personages do not go into a tit-for-tat mode against the motivated comments of Pakistan’s former nuclear czar.

That would be playing into the hands of the Pakistani far right. It would also invite ridicule for India.

Mature elements of the political spectrum in both countries, as well as senior policymakers, are aware of the nuclear balance and retaliation capabilities available to each. They are unlikely to speak on such a delicate matter in a cavalier fashion.

Dr Khan was first a nuclear thief. He was caught by the Dutch smuggling nuclear designs out of Holland but was freed by them on a nod from the CIA.

That in a nutshell is the well-recorded story of Pakistan’s nuclear journey about which Dr Khan is now trying to appear heroic.

We shouldn’t be paying any attention to what he has to say. But we will be well-advised to keep a close eye on whether the Pakistani nuclear establishment, and the elements within the system that would make a call on mating the bomb to the means of its delivery, are not surreptitiously taken over by jihadists.