RIP.
Like all 'national heroes' around the world, including America's Founding Fathers some of whom owned slaves while talking about grand human visions, Dr. Qadeer was Khan was also someone with flaws. His biggest flaw I think has been a little too much self-aggrandisement. No doubt his role was crucial but he was not the only person who made Pakistan becoming a nuclear weapons power in a mere span of ten years (from 1974-1984) . And, no, it was not the Chinese help that made it possible: It was people like Dr. Qadeer and visionary leaders like Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, whom Dr. Q. Khan gives very high credits.
I remember India's Smiling Buddha nuclear explosion (of 1974?) in Pakistan's Jang newspaper. That India had just split Pakistan into two pieces in 1971 and was still pursuing nuclear weapons ran alarm bells in Pakistan. That Pakistan was then a devastated state--sort of America after the end of the Civil War in 1965-- didn't stop true leaders like Bhutto to defy the world and America and pursue the nuclear weapons. Pakistan was willing to eat the proverbial grass, per Bhutto, to make the weapons and Pakistan indeed did make the weapons, but without having to eat the grass--perhaps some lentils
RIP again. For all his faults--but I don't think Dr. Q. Khan had too many, honestly, he was instrumental in giving Pakistan the kind of deterrence, which, according to report, enabled Zia to tell the Indians in 1984: Don't cross a line otherwise...
In a mere span of ten years, that kind of deterrence from a country which was such broken up and had just had its new (and abiding) Constitution is some achievement.