Investigators now believe Abdul Qadeer Khan, father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, was responsible for uranium enrichment equipment going to Iran and North Korea.
Pakistani and international investigators also found Libya paid Khan $100 million for atomic warhead designs and plans for a complete bomb factory, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday.
However, still undetermined is whether Khan could have run his network without the knowledge of Pakistani military and political leaders.
Neither Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf nor his predecessors fully investigated Khan despite years of allegations from U.S. officials and international media," investigators told the Times. They said they had believed Kahn was accumulating enormous wealth and had made an unauthorized trip to Dubai where he met with "dubious characters" violating Pakistani rules.
"The military knew that Khan's orders came from the very top and that it was state policy to get the bomb, by hook or by crook," said a former senior Pakistani military officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "He delivered what we all thought was impossible, and that was what mattered."
CRS report criticises madrassa reform
WASHINGTON: A report presented to Congress points out that although President Pervez Musharraf vowed to begin regulating Pakistan’s religious schools, and his government launched a five-year, $113 million plan to bring the teaching of “formal” or secular subjects to 8,000 “willing” madrassas, no concrete action was taken until June of that year, when 115 madrassas were denied access to government assistance due to their alleged links to militancy.
The report produced by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) and written by its Asian affairs analyst K Alan Kornstadt, notes that President Musharraf set a December 31, 2002 deadline for such schools to register with the government or face closure. In November 2003, the government decided to allocate about $50 million annually to provide assistance to registered seminaries, especially by paying the salaries of teachers hired to teach non-religious subjects.
In July 2004, Pakistan’s then-education minister announced government agreements with private companies to provide computer education at all of the country’s public schools. She later declared Islamabad’s intention to provide financial grants to madrassas that seek to “impart modern-day education”.
According to the CRS report, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) is implementing a five-year, $100 million bilateral agreement, signed in August 2002, to increase access to quality education throughout Pakistan, with an emphasis on Balochistan and Sindh.
“Yet the most notable project is Education Sector Reform Assistance (ESRA), which accounts for more than three-quarters of the USAID-reported $77.7 million budgeted to date. In this project, USAID contracted with the North Carolina-based Research Triangle Institute to strengthen education policies and planning, increase the capacity of teachers and education administrators, improve youth and adult literacy, expand public-private partnerships to improve access to and delivery of education services, and establish teaching methods that instil democratic attitudes and behaviours among children and educators and draw families into the life of the school community,” the CRS document states.
In financial year 2005, USAID will increase its funding for its Primary Education and Literacy programme in Pakistan to nearly $67 million, almost tripling the 2004 outlay of $24 million. There are concerns, however, that US funding to assist Pakistan’s education reform efforts has thus far been too small to have significant effect. Some analysts suggest that donors such as the US may do best to direct their resources at reform of Pakistan’s public education sector, as they see in this the most effective and least controversial means of reversing the influence of Islamic extremists and their threat to Pakistani stability.
According to CRS, while wealthy citizens are able to send their children to private, English medium schools, the vast majority of Pakistanis must choose between a deteriorated public system that can be physically difficult to access and religious schools that will feed, clothe, and oftentimes house their children for free. “Some analysts are critical of Pakistan government for what they view as excessive spending on the military in a country where abject poverty is rife. Corruption and economic demands also are factors. In many locales, schools and textbooks are available, and teachers are paid, but never report for work.”
Pakistani officials, the report points out, insist that President Musharraf is serious in his aims to bring madrassa curriculum closer in substance to that provided in non-religious schools, with the long-term goal being a curriculum that is nearly identical.”
Some Western NGOs, working with private donations, have teamed with local Islamic groups to reform madrassa curricula. “Despite President Musharraf’s repeated pledges to crack down on the more extremist madrassas in his country, there is little concrete evidence that he has done so. According to two observers, ‘most madrassas remain unregistered, their finances unregulated, and the government has yet to remove the jihadist and sectarian content of their curricula’. Many speculate that Musharraf’s reluctance to enforce reform efforts is rooted in his desire to remain on good terms with Pakistan’s Islamist political parties, which are seen to be an important part of his political base.”
The CRS document stresses that more than three years after its creation, the Pakistan Madrassa Education Board appears to have had “little success in fulfilling its mandate”. Resistance to reform efforts is not limited to Islamist groups, but can also been seen in the statements of Pakistan’s top political leaders. The September 2004 replacement of Education Minister Zobaida Jalal with former intelligence chief Lt Gen Javed Ashraf Qazi was seen by some analysts as a “setback” to reform efforts.
Yet other observers see the move as potentially shielding the government from criticism by conservatives as it goes ahead with reform efforts. The CRS report says that even setting aside the question of President Musharraf’s sincerity and full commitment on this issue, resistance to the reform of Pakistan’s madrassas is “fierce”, and the schools identified as the most immediately threatening to Pakistani society and US interests - though small in number - may be immune to governmental pressure due to their access to external funding sources and their close connections to powerful Islamist politicians.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_3-1-2005_pg7_11