| History is growing old. It is losing its short-term memory. It is beginning to forget things. |
| It has forgotten the 200,000 souls or more evaporated in the atomic holocaust at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. |
| It has forgotten the furore that attended Pakistan’s acquisition of nuclear technology in the 1980s. It has forgotten the avuncular accommodation shown by President Reagan’s administration because Pakistan was a frontline state in the surrogate war in Afghanistan between the Russians and the Americans, and it has forgotten the subsequent volte face when that war ended. |
| It has forgotten when the Indian journalist Kuldip Nayar was taken by Mushahid Hussain to visit Dr Qadeer Khan so that the news of our new-found nuclear capability could be conveyed to the Indian government, after which a long silence followed during which it was suspected that this scoop was itself being peddled for cash, just as the forbidden know-how was to be later by Dr Khan. |
| It has forgotten the assurances our Governments gave us and to others that our nuclear assets were in safe hands and under the strictest vigilant control. |
| Who was in fact in command of them? [EXTRACT] |
Published in DAWN 19 Oct. 2004, and reprinted in WHEN BUSH COMES TO SHOVE & OTHER WRITINGS (2006). |
