Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood (Urdu: سلطان بشیر الدین محمود; b. 1940) is a Pakistani nuclear engineer and a scholar of Islamic studies. After a career in the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC), he founded the Ummah Tameer-e-Nau (UTN) in 1999 – a radical organisation that was banned and sanctioned by the United States in 2001. He was the subject of a criminal investigation launched by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) over unauthorized travel to the Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan prior to the September 11 attacks in 2001. Mahmood has been listed and sanctioned by the Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee of the United Nations Security Council since December 2001. He has also been sanctioned as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the United States' Office of Foreign Assets Control, with an address listing at the Al-Qaeda Wazir Akbar Khan safe house in Kabul. He is also under the European Union sanctions since 2002. He has since been living in anonymity in Islamabad, authoring books on the relationship between Islam and science. His son Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry is the 22nd Director-General of Inter-Services Public Relations of the Pakistan Armed Forces.
Life and education Mahmood was born in Amritsar, Punjab, British India to a Punjabi Muslim family. There are conflicting reports concerning his date of birth; his personal admission noted the birth year as 1940, while the UN reports estimated it as 1938. His father, Chaudhry Muhammad Sharif Khan, was a local zamindar (lit. feudal lord). His family emigrated from India to Pakistan following religious violence during the partition of India in 1947; the family settled in Lahore, Punjab. His son Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry serves as the 22nd Director-General of Inter-Services Public Relations of the Pakistan Armed Forces. Another one of his sons, Asim Mahmood, is a doctor. After graduating with distinctions from a local high school standing at top of his class, Mahmood was awarded a scholarship and enrolled at the Government College University to study electrical engineering. After spending a semester, he transferred to the University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore, and graduated with a Bachelor of Science with honours in 1960. His credentials led him to join the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) where he gained another scholarship to study in the United Kingdom. In 1962, Mahmood went to attend the University of Manchester where he studied for a double master's degree. First completing a masters' programme in control systems in 1965, he then received another master's degree in nuclear engineering in 1969 from the University of Manchester. While in Manchester, Mahmood was an expert on the Manhattan Project and was reportedly in contact with South African scientists in discussing the jet-nozzle method for uranium enrichment. However, it remains unclear how much interaction had taken place during that time.
Career
Mahmood joined the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) in 1968, joining the Nuclear Physics Division at the Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology (PINSTECH) working under Dr. Naeem Ahmad Khan. His collaboration took place with Samar Mubarakmand, Hafeez Qureshi, and he was a vital member of the group before it was discontinued in 1970. Mahmood was one of the foremost experts on civilian reactor technology and was a senior engineer at the Karachi Nuclear Power Plant (KANUPP I)— the first commercial nuclear power plant in Pakistan. He gained notability and publicity in the Pakistan Physics Society for inventing a scientific instrument, the 'SBM probe', to detect leaks in steam pipes, a problem that was affecting nuclear plants all over the world and is still used worldwide. After witnessing the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, Mahmood attended the winter seminar at Multan and delivered a speech on atomic science. On 20 January 1972, the President of Pakistan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, approved a crash atomic weapon programme, under Munir Ahmad Khan, for the sake of "national survival." Nevertheless, Mahmood continued his work at the KANUPP I engineering division. In the aftermath of 'Smiling Buddha', a surprise nuclear test conducted by India in May 1974, Munir Ahmad appointed Mahmood as the director of the enrichment division at PAEC, where the majority of calculations were conducted by Dr. Khalil Qureshi– a physical chemist. Mahmood analysed the gaseous diffusion, gas centrifuge, jet-nozzle and molecular laser isotope separation method for uranium-enrichment; recommending the gas centrifuge method as economical. After submitting the report, Mahmood was asked to depart to the Netherlands to interview Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan on behalf of President Bhutto in 1974. In 1975, his proposal was approved and the work on uranium enrichment started with Mahmood as its director, a move that irked the more qualified but more difficult to manage Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, who had coveted the job for himself. His relations with Dr. Khan remained extremely tense and the pairs disagreed with each other and developed great differences. In private meetings with Munir Ahmad, Mahmood often complained and pictured him as "egomaniac". In 1976, Mahmood was removed from the enrichment division, Project-706, by Abdul Qadeer Khan, and Khan moved the enrichment division at the Engineering Research Laboratories (ERL) under military control. Eventually, Munir Ahmad removed Mahmood from other classified works and posted him back to the Karachi Nuclear Power Plant (KANUPP-I) with no reason given as a principal engineer. In the 1980s, Munir Ahmad secured Mahmood a job as project manager for the construction of the Khushab Reactor (Khushab-I) where he served as chief engineer and aided with designing the coolant systems. In 1998, he was promoted as a director of the nuclear power division and held that position until 1999. After the reactor went critical in April 1998, Mahmood said in an interview: "This reactor (can produce enough plutonium for two to three nuclear weapons per year) Pakistan had "acquired the capability to produce.... boosted thermonuclear weapons and hydrogen bombs." In 1998, Mahmood was honoured with the Sitara-e-Imtiaz award in a ceremony by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. In 1998, he was promoted as a director of the nuclear power division and held that position until 1999.
Politics
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
