No More Chicken, Kiev?

Thoughts on the crisis in Ukraine, along with some contemporary history of the region.

(Originally Published in The Nation on 30th June, 2014)

Contrary to popular belief in Pakistan, the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) was not brought to its knees by Afghan Mujahideen supported by our boys. Mikhail Gorbachev’s policies of Glasnost (meaning ‘openness’) and perestroika (restructuring) and his reorientation of Soviet strategic aims led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The Last Soviet Soldier left Afghanistan in 1989, while Estonia had declared Independence from the Soviet Union in November 1988 and a pro-communist government was incharge in Kabul till 1992. The Berlin wall was not brought down by Afghan and Arab ‘Mujahideen’. Considering these essential facts, the fallacy of “destroying a superpower” seems shallow as a puddle. Following the breakup of the Soviet Union, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan emerged as Independent states.

Ukraine is the largest country within Europe according to area and the sixth largest European country by population. Census data from 2001 revealed that 78% of people living in the country were Ukrainians in ethnicity while 18% were ethnically Russian. Till 2004, Ukraine was a semi-presidential republic. In 2004, Viktor Yanukovych, the incumbent Prime Minister, was declared winner of the presidential elections, while the Supreme Court ruled the election to be rigged. The massive rigging caused a national outcry in support of opposition candidate Victor Yushchenko. It led to the “Orange Revolution” which resulted in a re-vote ordered by Ukraine’s Supreme Court, resulting in victory for Yushchenko. He remained President till 2010, when Viktor Yanukovych was elected President after the elections. During the ‘Orange Revolution’, Yanukovych was supported by Russia.

In November 2013, protests broke out in the country after President Yanukovych’s government rejected a far-reaching accord with the European Union, in favor of stronger ties with Russia. Thousands of people thronged into Central Kiev for peaceful protests. They occupied Independence Square, known as ‘Maidan’. The anger was fuelled by perceptions of political corruption and alleged links between the government and super-rich oligarchies. Police launched a brutal raid on student protestors, images of which spurred more people to join the protests. In January 2014, the Ukrainian parliament passed anti-protest laws which were later repealed. On 22nd January, two protestors died after clashes with the police. Protestors seized government buildings the following day in western Ukrainian cities. Prime Minister Mykola Azarov resigned on 28th January. The next month, violent clashes erupted in Kiev while the Speaker of Parliament refused to initiate debate on changing the Constitution. More than 77 people were killed and hundreds wounded due to a stand-off in Kiev.

President Yanukovych fled to southern Russia and the Ukrainian Parliament voted to remove him from his post. A national election followed in May, leading to the victory of Petro Poroshenko, a pro-European candidate. Mr. Poroshenko was known as the ‘Chocolate King’ as he owned the Roshen confectionary group. He was one of the leaders of the 2004 Orange Revolution and participated in the ‘Maidan’ movement in Kiev.
It is worth consideration that the protests against President Yanukovych were strongest in the Kiev area and Western Ukraine, where there is a greater affinity with Europe, rather than in the Russian-speaking East and South. Ukrainians in the East, working in heavy industry that supplies Russian markets, were fearful of losing their jobs if Ukraine moved closer to the European Union. Collapse of Government authority during the last few days of February 2014, led to a secession crisis in Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula which has a significant ethnic Russian population. Following the Russo-Turkish War of 1768-1774, Crimea had been annexed by the Russian Empire. Armed Russian soldiers began moving into Crimea on 28th February, 2014.

The ‘Maidan’ protestors had ‘started the fire’ by taking over government buildings and establishing ‘local authorities’. “After Yanukovych’s removal, it became the turn of the opponents of the Maidan,” Nicolai N. Petro, wrote in a magazine called, ‘The National Interest.’ Local representatives from the East and South convened in Kharkov and assumed all political authority until “legitimate political authority” in Kiev was restored. The Crimean delegation took the lead, seeing an opportunity to restore the autonomy that Kiev had largely taken away from them in 1998. But when the interim government in Kiev told them they could not hold a referendum on autonomy within Ukraine, and tried to replace those in charge of local security forces, the Crimean parliament declared independence and changed the wording of the referendum—altering the language from “staying within Ukraine” to “joining Russia.”
The Donbass followed a similar scenario. In March, local authorities in Lugansk asked Kiev to ensure the rights of Russian speakers and disarm its militias. When the interim government ignored these requests, those most impatient and distrustful of Kiev occupied government buildings in Donetsk, Lugansk and Kharkov, and organized a referendum for creating local republics that stopped short of asking to join Russia. In many areas in the region, a majority of those who voted were overwhelmingly in favor of regional sovereignty.

Faced with the problems of stabilizing the economy and keeping the country together, President Poroshenko has tried to steady the ship since assuming power. He signed the European Trade Association Agreement, which was the bone of contention for the previous regime. Experts believe that this agreement would benefit the Western and Central parts of Ukraine but workers in Eastern Ukraine will suffer because the country’s free trade access with Russia will be revoked. In his inaugural address, Mr. Poroshenko affirmed that the Ukrainian language will continue to remain the national language (despite the fact that 83 percent of journals, 87 percent of books, and 44 percent of television programs in Ukraine are solely in Russian, compared to 28 percent solely in Ukrainian) and that aspirations towards regional autonomy would not be tolerated by Kiev.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has overtly supported the rights of Russian speakers in Ukraine and it is feared, rightfully so, that the current fiasco can lead to the breakup of the country along ethnic and linguistic lines.

Father of the Bum?

Thoughts on Dr. AQ Khan's proliferation activities and his recent diatribes.



(Originally published by The Nation)

On 20th January, 1972, Chief Martial Law Administrator and President of Pakistan—Mr. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto—called a meeting of the country’s most eminent scientists in Multan. Pakistan had faced the ignominy of a terrible defeat at the hands of the Indian army a few months ago. Mr. Bhutto asked the scientists to start working on the assembly of a nuclear bomb. While the experienced heads declined to commit to this venture, younger scientists unanimously responded that it could be done in five years. Mr. Bhutto was satisfied by the response and left for a tour of Islamic countries soon afterwards.

In July 1974, a letter arrived at the Prime Minister’s secretariat (Mr. Bhutto had assumed the office of Prime Minister after passage of a new constitution in 1973) from the Netherlands. The correspondent claimed to be a physicist working for a European nuclear consortium. He claimed to have obtained blueprints for a revolutionary new process involved in building a nuclear bomb. The person, let’s call him AK, was working as a technical translator for the multinational URENCO consortium. In his letter, he claimed ‘writing innumerable research papers and an internationally renowned book.’ Son of migrants from the Indian state of Bhopal, AK had been living in Europe for 13 years and was passionate about ‘debates about the Hindus over the border, who had ransacked his old home in 1947.’ Mr. Bhutto tasked an Intelligence Agency to investigate the whereabouts of this mysterious scientist named AK. It was found that he had worked as Inspector of Weights and Measures for the Karachi post office in the 1960s, after obtaining a science degree from Karachi University. He left for West Germany for further studies and received an offer to attend a series of introductory lectures in Metallurgy in September 1962, by West Berlin Technical University. He moved, with his newly wed wife, to Holland in 1963 and continued his education at Delft Technological University. In his spare time, he used to write letters to European Newspapers and magazines that he felt had misrepresented Pakistan.

Mr. Bhutto was satisfied by AK’s track record and invited him to start the process of assembling a nuclear bomb for Pakistan. He was provided a laboratory to run, and unlimited funding as well as official patronage. After smuggling different parts required for building the bomb from a plethora of countries, and through not-so-legal channels, AK succeeded in completing the crucial step in manufacturing a nuclear bomb. The rest of the hard work was done by the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC), an organization that AK hated with a vengeance.

By this time, AK had developed an acute case of megalomania. AK’s psychiatrist at that time, Professor Haroon Ahmed mentioned in his reports that by this time, ‘he was suffering from depression, and was classically manic.’ He used to boast, “Jinnah built Pakistan, but I saved it.” AK even had an intelligence team follow his Dutch wife and daughters because he thought they were more loyal to Europe than they were to Pakistan. In 1984, he called a reporter at a local Urdu digest and asked him to send him a list of questions for an interview. He was so disappointed with the list that he threw it away and drafted his own set of questions. He asked himself: “What do you think was your greatest achievement?” and “Did the government recognize your contribution?” In February 1984, he called Nawai Waqt and used the same formula. He used to give charity to mosques and schools, all of which had to bear his name as ‘testimony to his greatness.’ In 1986, he invited a journalist from a small-circulation weekly digest called Hurmat to interview him at his laboratory. It resulted in a series of articles and a biography full of accolades for Mr. AK. One of the articles echoed AK’s inner thoughts: “In order to overcome the energy crisis in Pakistan, the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission should be overhauled and its leadership should be handed over to this Mard-e-Momin of Iqbal”.

After Pakistan’s requirements for nuclear materials were fulfilled, AK started selling different parts as surplus to the highest bidder. He first chose Dubai and later Timbuktu as his operational base for nuclear proliferation. The Afghan War prevented the United States from clamping down on his activities, but the noose started tightening in the 90’s. His footprints were all over the nuclear proliferation racket around the world, from Libya to Iran to North Korea, earning him the nickname “Typhoid Mary of Nuclear Proliferation.” In 2001, Musharraf was forced by the International community to get rid of AK and his crime syndicate, after two of AK’s ex-colleagues were found to have travelled to Afghanistan to meet Osama bin Laden (OBL) there. Intelligence sources in India and the US allege that AK co-owned Al-Shifa chemical factory in Sudan with OBL, and OBL had financed the construction of the Hendrina Khan Hotel in Timbuktu. In 2004, AK apologized to the nation in a televised address for his “errors of judgment related to unauthorized proliferation activities.” Musharraf noted in his memoir, “The truth is that he was just a metallurgist, responsible for only one link in the complex chain of nuclear development. But he had managed to build himself up into Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer rolled into one”.

The arrogant “Father of the Bomb” started writing elementary school-style essays for a national newspaper a few years ago, continuing his crusade against common sense and reason. He has made hundreds of factual errors in his “columns” over the years along with an attempted whitewash of history. His most recent diatribes have been directed against chairman of PAEC Munir Ahmed Khan and Dr. Abdus Salam, Pakistan’s only nobel laureate. AK has accused them of selling Pakistan’s nuclear secrets while comfortably ignoring his own efforts to sell the same secrets to the highest bidder.Without the efforts of these gentlemen, technicians such as AK would have failed. Perhaps people living in stone houses should avoid throwing stones at others.