The global risks of Pakistan’s A-bomb
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.023383
“The student body has become very conservative, very Islamist, their outward appearance has changed,” says Professor Hoodbhoy, the chair of the physics department at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad. “It’s row after row of these burqa women.”
Students avoid talking politics with Hoodbhoy, a cautionary voice on nuclear weapons in a nation that takes boisterous pride in having them. “They think I’m on the wrong side,” he says.
International concerns are mounting again about the security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons as fighting rages with the Taliban. But thanks to safeguards, experts worry much less about the Islamic fighters in the hills making off with a warhead. It’s the radicals among the educated â potential insiders â who are in a more realistic position to abscond with nuclear material and know how to use it.
