Imam Ali Nazish alias Nazish Imrohvi was an underground rebel and poet who served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of Pakistan (CPP) from the late 1960s or early 1970s, until his death in 1999. He was born in Uttar Pradesh state of India on 4 August 1922 and moved to Karachi, Pakistan after the Partition of the Indian Subcontinent. He was initially a member and later Joint Secretary of the Progressive Writers' Association, before joining the CPP. He led the latter as General Secretary mostly in hiding.
The CPP went underground after the failed Rawalpindi Conspiracy (1951) to stage a military coup and the assassination of then Pakistani Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan. Several leaders of the CPP had been arrested, apart from military officers and other individuals. A National Intelligence Estimate on this matter prepared by the CIA (1951), derived from the Pakistani Intelligence Bureau’s source report, alleged that the coup conspirators wanted to overthrow the government so they could invite a trade mission from the USSR and also an “advisory group” that could draft a "Soviet-style constitution." Essentially, their purported agenda was to absorb Pakistan into the Soviet orbit.
As one US State Department Policy of the time noted:
"Since the establishment of the USSR Embassy in Karachi in March 1950, Communist activities have increased considerably in both West and East Pakistan. While the Pakistan Communist Party lacks widespread popular support, it has an organisation and leadership that has proved capable of increasingly disruptive activities [...]"
The CPP also supported the Awami Muslim League in erstwhile East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), armed revolt in Balochistan and militant trade unionism – which pitted them directly against different regimes in Islamabad.
It is unclear if Nazish was among those who conspired in the botched Rawalpindi coup, but we do know that he was underground since the 1950s. After the Sino-Soviet split and particularly following the 1965 India-Pakistan War, the CPP in Sindh was ideologically oriented as 'pro-Soviet' alongside their comrades in erstwhile East Pakistan. By contrast, communists in Punjab were almost exclusively pro-China. As a consequence, CPP Sindh replaced its pro-China leader Aziz Salam Bukhari with a staunchly pro-Soviet Nazish.
Nazish was also critical of atrocities being perpetrated against Bengalis by the martial law regime of General Agha Muhammad Yahya Khan, which invited the ire of authorities. Subsequently, he formally went into hiding in March 1971, with most historical accounts claiming he sought refuge in Afghanistan. Though not at home himself, several members of Nazish’s household had been reportedly picked up by state authorities.
For his endeavours, Nazish was actively supported by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and patronised by regimes in Kabul that were hostile to Pakistan, especially that of Babrak Karmal. In a 1982 interview to TIME, KGB defector Major Vladimir Anatolyevich Kuzichkin claimed that Karmal in Afghanistan was "a KGB agent of long standing" and was specifically brought-in by the CPSU to replace a non-compliant Hafizullah Amin; the latter having been viciously murdered by Soviet paramilitary troops.
Imam Ali Nazish remains the only Pakistani Communist to have been mentioned in declassified CPSU and KGB records
A note of the CPSU Central Committee's Secretariat dated 19 February 1980 provides insights on Nazish and the highest level of active support he enjoyed from the Soviet elite. It was among the trove of archives secretly scanned then smuggled out of post-Soviet Russia in 1992 by Vladimir Konstantinovich Bukovsky, a close aide of former Russian President Boris Yeltsin.
The note was a proposal put up to members of the CPSU Central Committee by Rostislav Alexandrovich Ulyanovsky, then Deputy Head of CPSU Central Committee's International Department, which included endorsements by the KGB Resident in Islamabad and his boss General Semyon Kuzmich Tsvigun, then Deputy Chairman of the KGB.
The proposal was apparently approved by General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, who marked it for implementation to:-
- Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov, then Chairman of the KGB.
- Boris Nikolayevich Ponimarev, then Head of CPSU Central Committee's International Department.
- AS Pavlov, then Chief of the CPSU Central Committee's State and Legal Department.
The following is a summary of key facts we come to know from the declassified note:-
- Nazish was in Moscow for "vacation" and "treatment"; such visits were apparently frequent.
- Among Nazish' points of discussion with CPSU leadership was the prospect of increased cooperation between the CPSU and China.
- CPSU Central Committee directed for a two month extension in Nazish' recent visit (1980) with all expenses covered so he could be trained in methods of secret communications by the KGB.
- The extended hosting for Nazish was sanctioned on an earlier request from KGB's Resident in Islamabad in a memo dated 26 December 1979 who considered him "expedient" as a point of contact with the CPP.
- It was acknowledged that the then military regime of General Zia-ul-Haq in Pakistan had made it extremely difficult to liaise with CPP (hence the proposal to have Nazish trained accordingly).
It remains unknown whether Nazish had completed the training desired for him by his patrons via the KGB. His continued retention of an active General Secretary designation by the CPP until his death almost two decades later would suggest that he may have been able to upkeep his influence through learned methods of discreet correspondence.
Nazish managed to come in and out of Pakistan during General Zia's rule without being detected. In the mid-1980s, he took refuge for some months in the home of a fellow CPP comrade Aslam Azhar who was previously the founding Chairman and first Managing Director of Pakistan Television (PTV). Azhar had been moved out of PTV by General Zia on account of his leftist leanings.
The CPP had multiple 'fronts' and affiliations active throughout Pakistan including:-
- Trade Unions: Peoples Democratic Workers Union of the Pakistan Steel Mills and Railway Workers Union.
- Universities: Democratic Students Federation and National Students Federation.
- Intellectuals: Progressive Writers Movement and Sindhi Adabi Sangat (Sindhi Literary Organisation).
- Women-led Movements: Anjuman-e-Jamhooriat Pasand Khawateen (Democratic Women's Association).
- Agrarian Movements: Mazdoor Kissan Party (Workers and Peasants Party) and Sindh Hari Committee (Sindh Peasants Committee).
- Children: Saathi Baar Sangat (Sindh).
Imam Ali Nazish remains the only Pakistani agitator and Communist to have been mentioned in declassified CPSU and KGB records. While this may not necessarily suggest that Nazish' contemporaries were out of KGB's utility, they may not have enjoyed a similar level of protocol from the CPSU.