Zahid Ali Akbar Khan

Who is Zahid Ali Akbar Khan?

Lieutenant-General Zahid Ali Akbar Khan, TKdt, was an engineering officer in the Pakistan Army who oversaw the construction of the General Headquarters, and is well known as the director of the Kahuta Project as part of the Pakistan's acquisition of integrated atomic bomb project. After graduating from the of Military College of Engineering, Akbar was commissioned in Corps of Engineers, and took participation in both the 1965 and the 1971 wars; and finally reached to a prestigious three-star assignment, the Engineer-in-Chief, while he also served as the military Science Adviser advising the military government of Zia-ul-Haq on important matters on science and technology, from 1977 until 1983.

In January 1976, he was delegated by then-Prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to the fledgling uranium-enrichment program under Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, spearheading the construction of science facilities at Kahuta as he also served its first director. On behalf of the military, he was involved in most aspects of the atomic bomb development project. Under the fruition of CMLA and President General Zia-ul-Haq, he was made the principle military director of the atomic bomb project's one side Kahuta Project. He took participation in site selections with Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission and directed the enormous construction of weapon-testing laboratories, made critical decisions on the various methods of gas-centrifuges on the acquired raw materials, directed the collection of military intelligence on Indian nuclear programme.