THE recent article by Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan carried in the Newsweek, excerpted in our paper yesterday on the basis of an AFP Washington dateline story has caught our attention. It says that if Pakistan had nukes in 1971 Bangladesh would not have won its independence. This is a rabid expression of insensitivity towards a people's war waged against a genocidal force in 1971. His remarks demonstrate a very poor knowledge of history of the events that led to the war of liberation against Pakistan occupation forces in 1971. His observation is not only far removed from the contextual reality but also echoes the views of the prejudiced segment of the Pakistani population. To our knowledge, many among the intelligentsia in Pakistan have long since spurned any self- deceiving notion against Bangladesh's freedom struggle. While emphasizing Pakistan's case for going nuke in a foreign weekly magazine, he had no business of undermining Bangladesh's liberation war. It is a crude attempt to denigrate not only the legitimate struggle of freedom loving people of Bangladesh but also a revelation of a convoluted mindset. Besides, his pointer to Bangladesh is entirely misplaced because if nuclear might could decide fate of freedom struggle or right to independence, Soviet Russia could still remain in Afghanistan and Vietnam should have been under US occupation forces till today. A man who has been infamously involved in nuke-secrets black marketing cannot be credited with any high sense of ethics.
