SLAMABAD, Pakistan — Last week, the founder of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program confessed on national television to having shared nuclear technology with North Korea, Iran and Libya. Investigators added that he had made millions in a scheme that spanned a decade and involved a global nuclear smuggling network.

If the news was chilling to many Americans, to Pakistanis it was heartbreaking.

"It's a shame for us," Mohammad Nafees, 51, a government employee in Islamabad lamented. "What will we tell our coming generations? A hero turns out to be a thief? This is so unfortunate for the country."

Here in Pakistan, the news was a body blow to the country's fragile sense of identity.

Pakistan's status as the one Islamic nuclear power, a country that could now deter its mammoth nuclear-armed rival, India, had become a source of unalloyed national pride. And the founder of the nuclear program had become a larger-than-life figure.

At the same time, the explanation offered by the country's powerful army - that the scientist had managed to ship top-secret nuclear components out of the country without the army knowing - seemed implausible. The sudden transformation of Abdul Qadeer Khan from a national hero to a rogue proliferator was difficult to accept.

Irfanul Haq, 29, a computer technician from Islamabad, expressed the skepticism this way: "Dr. A. Q. Khan could not have done it independently. Everyone at the top must have been involved and Dr. Khan sacrificed himself."

Before his fall from grace last week, Dr. Khan represented, according to popular perception, a man who had worked selflessly for his country and had succeeded spectacularly at his task. Indeed, successive governments were united in their efforts to build a heroic narrative around the founder of Pakistan's nuclear program.

In this narrative, the country's scientists didn't build a weapon that endangered the world's peace, as Americans tend to see it. They built a weapon that could counter an ever-present threat that Pakistanis feel exists from India.

To do this, Dr. Khan overcame American sanctions designed to prevent Pakistan from obtaining a nuclear bomb. In Pakistan, he was said to have a photographic memory; in the West, he was said to have stolen secret European designs for high-speed centrifuges. The machines produce enriched uranium, a key component in an atomic bomb.

When India tested nuclear weapons for a second time in 1998 and Pakistan was able to respond with tests of its own, Dr. Khan's already vaunted status soared. Outmaneuvering other scientists who experts say made more important technological contributions, Dr. Khan, a metallurgist, was declared the "father of the Islamic bomb."

Pakistani political experts say Dr. Khan filled a vacuum in Pakistan that has existed since it won independence from Britain, alongside India, in 1947. While its people are overwhelmingly Muslim, ethnic, class and political divisions exist.

In contrast to India, whose first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, held power for 17 years, Pakistan suffered the death of its founder, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, only 13 months after the country's creation - before he could firmly establish democracy and define how it would work.

Since Jinnah's death, military dictators have ruled the country for most of its history. Intervals of civilian rule have brought disappointments of their own. Prime Ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif left office in disgrace in the 1990's, accused of corruption and misrule.

Pakistan, in short, remains a nation in search of a clear national identity. While its Westernized elites say Jinnah wanted a secular, modern democracy based on Islamic principles, a coalition of hard-line Islamic political parties say he wanted a Pakistan based on Shariah, or strict Islamic law.

Dr. Khan became a classic national hero: one who stood above the political fray and who a struggling nation could take pride in.

Despite last week's televised confession and long-running rumors of corruption, many Pakistanis who were interviewed were skeptical about the news. They insisted that the military-led government had coerced the confession from Dr. Khan so that senior military officials could come out clean.

The United States, for its part, stood by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who is considered a critical ally in the campaign against terrorism. American officials publicly accepted the general's explanation that the army had played no role in the proliferation, apparently in return for the names of foreign suppliers and middlemen turned up by the Pakistani investigation.

So while the outcome furthered one of Washington's goals - its principal ally in the government remains in power - Pakistan emerged with the sense of yet another government cover-up.

Members of the country's Westernized elite warn of growing alienation. Ayesha Siddiqa, a defense analyst, said that Pakistanis in general, and especially the young, feel increasingly disconnected from their rulers.

"It's not my government," Ms. Siddiqa said, describing the attitude. "It's a hotel I come and stay in for a few nights."

But among working-class Pakistanis there was broad support for Dr. Khan and for General Musharraf's pardon of the scientist.

While Americans may see Dr. Khan as a nightmarish proliferator and the country's Westernized elite may see the episode as another blow to the country's psyche, average Pakistanis stood by their hero. They said Dr. Khan's singular accomplishment of helping give Pakistan a nuclear deterrent against India eclipsed his wrongdoing.

"In this country, who is honest?" said Mohammad Safaraz, a 40-year-old cab driver. "He will remain a hero because he gave us nuclear technology."