A letter by one Shakir Lakhani was published by Dawn in its March 23, 2023 issue. The letter is a tongue-in-cheek take on the term ‘London plan’ which, these days, former prime minister Imran Khan has been raging against.

According to Imran, the chief of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and some members of the military establishment had met in London to hatch a plan to banish him (Imran) from politics, return Nawaz to power, and install Gen Asim Munir as the new chief of army staff (COAS). Apparently, the sinister ‘plan’ was finalised last November, just before the retirement of former COAS Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa. 

In the letter published by Dawn, the writer, based in Karachi, complained that he was convinced there were people in London ‘making plans’ to make his life miserable. He concluded by writing, “I am considering asking the British premier to take action against these London plan people.”

The letter-writer was clearly satirising Khan’s constant utterances about a ‘London plan’. However, the letter may as well have been mocking the manner in which this diabolical-sounding term has been turning up in the country’s politics for decades. 

Imran Khan blaming his ouster from power on an alleged ‘London plan’ is not a new phenomenon. For decades, paranoid and Machiavellian politicians have used the phrase to peddle a variety of conspiracy theories

Its origins can be found in 1973, when the ZA Bhutto regime briefed the media about a ‘London plan’. According to the government, “In September 1972, Wali Khan, the chief of the National Awami Party (NAP), and his colleagues had hatched a conspiracy to break Pakistan into semi-independent units.” The government alleged that the plan was conceived when Wali travelled to London for medical treatment. 

Also, apparently, another NAP man, the then chief minister of Balochistan, Attaullah Mengal, had met Bangladesh’s prime minister at the time, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, in London to ‘finalise the plan’. These allegations were then used by the regime to justify the dismissal of the NAP-led provincial government in Balochistan. The dismissal triggered a self-fulfilling prophecy when, incensed by the government’s arbitrary action, Baloch nationalists did pick up arms to launch a separatist insurrection.

This gave Bhutto the opportunity to install his own governor in Balochistan and, since it was supposedly a ‘Marxist’ uprising, Bhutto also managed to gain military aid from Iran’s pro-US monarchy, and got the courts to ban NAP in 1975. But the truth is that the insurgency had absolutely nothing to do with a ‘plan’ hatched in London. In fact, the uprising was a reaction to a Machiavellian move, or maybe even an overtly paranoid manoeuvre, by the federal government. 

In an October 2012 article, the late veteran journalist Sheikh Aziz wrote that, from the day the term ‘London plan’ was first used in 1973, it has become synonymous with intrigues and sedition in Pakistan. It reappeared in 1984, when dozens of army officers were arrested by the military dictatorship of Gen Ziaul Haq (1977-88). The officers were accused of plotting Zia’s assassination and the overthrow of his reactionary regime. Mustafa Khar, a leading member of Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), too was implicated.

The Bhutto government was overthrown by Zia in July 1977. Khar escaped to London. Through trumped-up charges and a highly controversial trial, Bhutto was hanged in April 1979. 

In 1984, according to the Zia dictatorship, some junior officers had been led astray by Khar, who had devised a ‘plan’ in London to assassinate Zia with the help of the Indian intelligence agency, RAW. Some Urdu dailies promptly called it a ‘London plan’. In all, 30 to 40 officers were allegedly involved in planning the coup, but it was nipped in the bud. It was not funded by RAW (through Khar), but by the progressive lawyer Raza Kazim, who provided the plotters Rs 90,000 in instalments. 

In a September 2014 interview published in the now-defunct magazine Herald, Kazim said that even though the plotters were in contact with Khar, the plot was not planned in London but in Lahore. 

Thirty years later, the term ‘London plan’ was back in the news — twice. In August 2014, when Imran, chief of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), and Dr Tahirul Qadri of the Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) launched their respective sit-ins (dharnas) in Islamabad against the third Nawaz government, federal minister Saad Rafique alleged that the sit-ins were the result of a meeting between the leaders of PTI and PAT in London. The minister labelled this as a conspiracy to weaken state institutions and dubbed it a ‘London plan’. 

Just a month later, in September 2014, when Altaf Hussain, the London-based (and now erstwhile) chief of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), spoke in favour of creating more administrative units, the former Sindh home minister Zulfiqar Mirza accused him of trying to divide Sindh through a ‘London plan’. Mirza was, at the time, a member of the PPP, but he was expelled from the party in 2015. 

In Pakistani politics, the term ‘London plan’ is used in the manner in which the term ‘communist infiltration’ was in the United States in the 20th century. Between 1919 and 1921, when the intensity of labour unrest increased in the US, the popular media saw this as a result of ‘communist infiltration’.

Entirely unsubstantiated reports of European immigrants plotting to overthrow American democracy and replace it with a communist government were frequently published on the front pages, creating a moral panic and hysteria often referred to as the ‘red scare’. 

The language of the red scare was influenced by the conspiratorial literature of the early 20th century. This literature had first appeared in the shape of a 1905 book called The Coming of the Anti-Christ and the Rule of Satan on Earth. This then spawned another book, Protocols of the Elders of Zion. These popularised the conspiratorial imagery of powerful, shadowy men meeting in secret rooms diabolically hatching plots against religion, states and nations, and planning global domination. 

The US witnessed another red scare in the late-1940s and early 1950s, when a fiery senator began to investigate ‘communist infiltrators’ in state institutions and in Hollywood. Interestingly, this card is still played, despite the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991. For example, many right-wing politicians and groups often framed Barack Obama’s presidency (2008-2016) as being ‘controlled’ by secret socialist/communist elites.

However, in Pakistan, the ‘London plan’ ploy that seeks to feed conspiratorial narratives has increasingly lost its influence. Most people now take it with a pinch of salt. Today, it is mostly understood as something that is simply a vague allusion, deployed by cynical Machiavellian politicians and, at times, by some genuinely paranoid ones. Wonder which one Imran is.

Published in Dawn, EOS, April 16th, 2023