WHAT with things rising that should not be rising and other things falling that should not be falling, combined with the lack of any form of governance, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is not doing too well.\\r\\n\\r\\nThis is nothing new, but then there are degrees of degradation and with the present dispensation it all appears to be rapidly getting out of hand — some feel irretrievably. a few years ago, we were given the news via the relevant medical authorities that 20 per cent of Pakistan’s population was mentally disturbed. Now, with the population increasing by leaps and bounds (since population control figures nowhere on any of our governments’ agendas) this percentage has surely risen.\\r\\n\\r\\nA reading of a book published last year which has now found its way to Pakistan, Deception by adrian Levy & Catherine Scott-Clark (Atlantic Books, London, ISBN 978 1843545330), brought back to memory the issue of the Pakistan association for Mental Health and its Institute of Behavioural Sciences which arose in the year 2002.\\r\\n\\r\\nDeception tells the story of Pakistan, the United States and the Global Nuclear Weapons Conspiracy. It is packed with crime and criminals, villains and villainy, baddies who get away and goodies who are done in, and reads like a first-rate spy thriller — though it is anything but fiction.\\r\\n\\r\\nThe main character is our national hero, Dr abdul Qadeer Khan and the wrong done to which he has publicly confessed and for which he has apologised. One explanation for his popularity is given in the book: “In a country where there were few role models who strode the international stage (apart from cricketers), Khan was, as a friend observed, ‘one of the few extremely valuable Pakistanis.’ Period.”We are all highly familiar with the details of his success story so no explanations are needed other than to outline his linkage to the state of the nation’s mental health. In October 1983 “the Dutch ambassador in Islamabad delivered a subpoena to Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign affairs charging Khan with nuclear espionage at URENCO in 1973.” There was no response so in November the Dutch convicted Khan in absentia, sentencing him to four years’ imprisonment.\\r\\n\\r\\nThe story has it that Dr Khan’s explosive temperament, the tensions of running his secretive and elaborate Kahuta project, coupled with the criminal proceedings, affected his family life and under advice he sought out Prof Haroon ahmed “Pakistan’s foremost psychiatrist…. Dr ahmed drew from Khan an admission. His stress levels were rising uncontrollably as he competed to be the first to give the Islamic world a bomb.” Khan became a regular patient and as time went by wished to repay his therapist. So, “when he learned that Dr ahmed was attempting to open the country’s first free mental health clinic and centre for behavioural sciences in Karachi, he decided to become its patron.” Dr ahmed could not refuse and Khan was inducted into the governing body.\\r\\n\\r\\nAs the years passed, Khan devoted sporadic attention to the psychiatric hospital, sending over scores of expensive air-conditioning units, building a huge porch — in short providing, according to Dr ahmed, “the sort of stuff needed by five star hotels. I was losing control of the hospital.”\\r\\n\\r\\nThe psychiatrist’s relationship with Khan was shattered in December 2002 “when Qaiyum Khan, the scientist’s brother, had arrived to take over Dr ahmed’s Institute of Behavioural Sciences, accompanied by a retired general, two colonels and fifty armed men. ‘They told me to leave as a.Q. Khan was now chairman of the governing body. He’d ploughed in so much money he wanted to run the show and he wanted me out,’ Dr ahmed recalled.
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