Features

More on Premadasa years: pro-poor policies, garment factories, Janasaviya and housing

Published

8 months ago

2025/08/24

Thilina Walpola

President Premadasa with Ranjan Wijeratne

Good friend, bad enemy, feud with Ariyaratne

(Excerpted from vol. 3 of the Sarath Amunugama autobiography)

Premadasa then unleashed his prodigious energy to make dramatic changes in the country’s economy. He looked on economic development as a part of his bigger vision to ensure “growth with equity”. While the JRJ administration followed a classical pattern of investment fueled by urbanization which made the GDP of Western province much higher than that of the outlier provinces, Premadasa was a proponent of the concept of all round growth as a way of catering to the poorer segments of society.

I remember studying some World Bank reports with Wickreme Weerasooria, who was the Secretary of the Planning Ministry, which drew attention to the abysmal poverty of the estate population and the people of Hambantota, Monaragala and Mannar in relation to the poverty levels prevalent in the other districts. Accordingly rural development projects were launched with Norwegian aid in the Hambantota, Monaragala and Mannar districts, but that was insufficient to make a dent on the problems there. It was Premadasa who had the vision to undertake poverty alleviation urgently and devote his proverbial energy to obtain dramatic results. His approach was three pronged; Janasaviya, the 300 garment factory programme and meaningful administrative reforms at village level. All three have stood the test of time and marks a change in the rural landscape.

Garment factories

JRJ pioneered the setting up of investment zones under the Greater Colombo Economic Commission (GCEC which later became the Board of Investments or BOI) on the basis of “plug and play” manufacturing, beginning with the Katunayake Free Trade Zone [FTZ]. He introduced the concept of value addition to an economy which was based on export of unprocessed agricultural commodities namely tea, coconut, rubber and cinnamon.

The global economy was undergoing change with production being outsourced to select developing countries. That was much cheaper than producing them at home in the west. Hong Kong and Singapore were the trendsetters of this transformation by manufacturing light industrial products with their easy credit, reliable freight business, cheap labour, work ethic and good links to the markets of rich countries.

Among these products was garments which saw increasing demand in the west with its growing prosperity and emergence of a large middle class within a consumer society. Premadasa deserves credit for immediately recognizing the potential of this trend to further his target of “growth with equity”. As regards the genesis of this all important industry in Sri Lanka, I was told that Premadasa on a visit to Hong Kong was entertained by a Muslim gem merchant who lived there coordinating the sales of gems from his family company. This gem merchant had given Premadasa a tour of the business district and the manufacturing zone of sweated trades, especially the garment factories in Kowloon.

Premadasa immediately saw the potential of this industry and persuaded some of his friends in the local tailoring establishment to enter the garment manufacturing business. Another fortuitous circumstance helped in making this move an instant success. The garment industry worked on the basis of “quotas” allocated by the buyers. The Hong Kong quotas were already full and it took little to persuade some big foreign manufacturers to relocate in Sri Lanka and utilize the quotas that were granted to us.

In fact it is said that at first many foreign exporters only changed their labels to say “Made in Sri Lanka” and shipped their products from their Hong Kong factories to Europe and the US. But this could not go on for long and they soon relocated here and set up factories in our FTZs and outside. This project was personally driven by the President and the facilities like allocation of land, electricity, water and banking facilities were provided in record time which led to favourable responses from large scale buyers like Marks and Spencer and Walmart. This in turn led to the ambitious 300 garment factory program which revolutionized garment manufacturing in South Asia.

The President insisted on locating factories in the hinterland and employing rural .women. This was probably the best attempt to develop our rural areas and also empower women in a practical attempt at poverty alleviation. After decades of”handouts”, which were crippling rural initiatives, new garment industries brought prosperity to distant villages. “The quota system” was adjusted to give more orders to factories in the periphery as against lower allocations for the big cities. Even critics were constrained to admit that standards of living among rural women had improved.

The President gleefully spoke of the jewelry shops that were springing up near the factories and the small gold chains on the necks of working girls who had never before possessed anything of value. These developments drew the envy of rival politicians who wished that they, had first thought of this idea. Lalith Athulathmudali said sarcastically that “our girls are forced to stitch “Jangi” [underwear] for white women” forgetting the fact that his own electorate Ratmalana was the centre of the countries “rag trade” and that this trade was, for the first time, providing employment to a large swathe of semi urban women who had earlier been helpless, unemployed and brutalized.

Janasaviya

Like the garment factories another innovation of the President was the poverty amelioration program named Janasaviya. Conceptualized by a group of his officials, Janasaviya was aimed at providing basic food support to families below the poverty line. Recipients were selected at public sittings and time was given for objections since the local bureaucracy was notoriously corrupt and could be influenced to leave out the deserving and include those with power. Even so the criticism was made that selections were biased in favour of the party in power.

It was one of the earliest attempts at poverty reduction and was taken as a model by many developing countries. Janasaviya, unlike its heavily politicized successors under the SLFP, envisaged the recipients donating their labour for community development projects in the relevant villages. The construction and maintenance of public works was entrusted to Janasaviya recipients because many studies had shown that a village labour force was capable of generating productivity as a basic input in rural development.

Recipients were expected to donate their labour on village works for three days a week in exchange for a basket of goods. During this period the utility of “Shramadana” as a practical economic resource in developing countries was promoted by Gandhian development theorists, including the Sarvodaya Movement in Sri Lanka. However Premadasa engaged himself in an epic confrontation with AT Ariyaratne, the leader of the local Sarvodaya movement. Since I was a friend of Ariyaratne, having helped him to overcome the hostility of Felix Bandaranaike during the Sirimavo regime, I became privy to the reasons for the enemity of these two stalwarts of village development.

Partly due to the link up with the Friedrich Neumann Foundation of Germany that I facilitated, Sarvodaya became rich and began to branch out to ventures designed to ensure its sustainability. Among these ventures was the setting up of a well equipped printing press which was located in Ratmalana. It boasted of the latest German printing technology and Ariyaratne’s rather permissive management style was replaced by a profit oriented trained printer who oversaw this venture. One far reaching decision was to undertake the printing of the “Ravaya” newspaper which had transformed itself from a tabloid to a broadsheet in keeping with its growing popularity.

Ravaya was a progressive newspaper usually critical of the government and was edited by Victor Ivan – a former JVP leader who had been imprisoned after the failure of the 1971 insurrection. He had joined the LSSP after his release but was better known as a lucid writer, defender of human rights and generally an anti-establishment figure. When he began to criticize the Premadasa administration and its leader he put himself on the cross-hairs of the new President’s ire. He blamed Ariyaratne for printing Ravaya in his press and broke off the friendship he had enjoyed with the Sarvodaya chief when he was in the opposition.

To make matters worse Ravaya promoted Lalith and Gamini in their conflict with Premadasa and encouraged internal criticism of the Presidents authoritarian ways. But the main reason for the Premadasa-Ariyaratne conflict was the “inside information” that was leaked to the former during the Presidential election. The secret was that the Sarvodaya Press was printing posters for Mrs. B – which her rival Premadasa took to be a great betrayal by his erstwhile friend. Ari told me that indeed the poster was printed as alleged but that it was a commercial transaction which had been undertaken by his printing manager without consulting him.

A characteristic of Premadasa was that while he had deep friendships any betrayal by a friend resulted in an unending vendetta. He did not believe in “forgive and forget”. The full force of the President’s fury was then visited on Ariyaratne. Ari told me that he had been earmarked for assassination by the Premadasa mafia and that he had a narrow shave when he was targeted at a meeting in Kegalle. Whether this was true or whether it was only a symptom of a paranoia which seemed to afflict the Sarvodaya chief, I had no way of knowing.

I had read that President Richard Nixon too had a similar unforgiving nature. Nixon maintained an “enemies list” and spent time in harassing them ultimately leading to a “break in” to their offices which set in train a set of events which finally led to his resignation. Premadasa too was alleged to have established the “Lawrence mafia” (Lawrence was a retired DIG loyal to Premadasa) which “tailed” his enemies with a view to eliminating them.

Later on I will narrate the famous “Buultjens abduction” case which was used by Premadasa, ably assisted by Ravi Jayewardene, JRJs son, to engineer the arrest of Gamini Dissanayake on charges of kidnapping as a part of his vendetta with his erstwhile colleague. In an attempt to implicate Lalith and Gamini he set up a Commission of Inquiry on their relations with Israel. On public platforms he subtly suggested that Lalith was an Israeli agent because he had taught law at a University in Jerusalem. The Commission found no evidence of such a complicity though it highlighted the purchase of large caches of Israeli weapons for the Sri Lankan armed forces.

Housing

Even as a member of Dudley Senanayake’s cabinet, Premadasa had paid special attention to the problem of housing. As a MP for Colombo Central, where housing is a major problem, he had set about tackling this problem with his usual gusto. In a sense he was competing with his political rival Pieter Keuneman who also, under the Sirimavo administration, concentrated on urban housing. Pieter however, in keeping with his communist ideology, brought legislation to change ownership from urban landlords to long time residents. He also restricted the space of new houses to 2,500 square feet each leading to the construction of smaller houses on smaller extents of land [a minimum of six perches per house] by local architects.

However laudable these objectives may have been it led to a virtual halt to housing construction. Premadasa on the other hand was more realistic and attempted to increase the housing stock. His signature achievement was the development of the Maligawatte housing scheme for which I, and a team from the then Information department undertook the publicity programme under the heading of “a city within a city”. It was hailed by Dudley Senanayake and the UNP, which thanks to Premadasa, earned plaudits as the party of low cost housing.

He also encouraged rural housing under Janasaviya and the new local government structures that he created. Bradman Weerakoon has described how the PM had the “chutzpah” to get housing as a priority of the UN by promoting a resolution calling for a “Year of Housing”. As Bradman says no one could stop him once Premadasa made up his mind.

Local government

From the time he became a municipal councilor R. Premadasa was very interested in local government. In his first assignment as a deputy minister he chose the portfolio of local government under minister Tiruchelvam. He once told me that SWRD Bandaranaike could form his own party because he had an island wide network of Mayors, Urban Council Chairmen and local government representatives who could not be bought over by DS Senanayake. This was long before Premadasa himself set up his “Purawesi Peramuna” which could be transformed into a political party if the UNP did not give him his due place.

One reason why he was not enamored of the Indo-Lanka agreement was its emphasis on establishing Provincial Councils. He did not welcome the establishment of a second tier between the centre and the village council or the “Pradeshiya Sabha”. He proposed wide ranging reforms to the existing Gam Sabhawa or Village Council system of local government. He amalgamated the Village Councils in an electorate so that the boundaries of the newly established “Pradeshiya Sabha”would coincide with that of the electorate. This made it possible for greater financial resources to be allocated to that entity.

The management structure was also changed to bring in public officials as administrative secretaries of the Pradeshiya Sabhas. These changes were welcomed as forward looking and capable of promoting rapid growth at village level. Premadasa believed that decentralization of key state powers to the periphery would also defuse the call for more powers to a new entity like Provincial Councils. He feared that some PCs would encourage the “homelands” concept of the TULF.

Today this three tier administrative structure has been criticized as leading to a dysfunctional bureaucratization which is top heavy. It has produced a large number of ignorant local government representatives who are a drain on national resources. The best example of this anarchy is that the Janasaviya programme which was meant to contribute to cheap labour for village works have been superseded by village level councilors who have become small time contractors swallowing up the funds for roads, culverts, bridges etc., with no quality and financial control. Such project funding has led to the corruption which marks local government administration today.

Hubris

The first few years of the Premadasa regime were a security nightmare. The JVP and its military arm shut down the country at will. However the government fought back amidst many complaints of human rights violations. The security forces employed brutal means to attack the JVP, especially after purported threats to the families of army officers. The JVP politbureau went into hiding but the Ops Combine systematically tracked them down and by 1990 Wijeweera himself was arrested and killed.

But civil society led by journalists associations – many of centre leftist persuasion – carried out a campaign asking for the observation of human rights standards and punishment for those who had blatantly violated them. Many innocent people who were caught in the cross fire between the JVP and the security forces paid with their lives. Left wing tabloids like Yukthiya – which was funded by international NGOs and Ravaya, both edited by ex-JVP combatants, were highly critical of Premadasa and the state apparatus.

While senior SLFPers flirted with the President, younger members like Mangala Samaraweera and Mahinda Rajapaksa spearheaded the formation of a “Mothers Front”. The Opposition preferred to take cover under these organizations rather than confront Premadasa because they themselves were victims of the JVP’s extermination machine. It was an exceptionally trying time and the President whose trait was not to brook any challenge was criticized by the international media and civil society for his intransigence.

Some of his own party members who had lost out in his energetic reorganization of the UNP, were not averse to leaking information to embarrass him. There was, as a result, a siege mentality in the country. The opposition to him among the urban elite grew while the majority of the populace was still in a state of shock due to the unceasing violence and disruptions unleashed by the LTTE and the JVP. The best indication of this transformation of the personality of President Premadasa came in the form of a statement by his secretary Wijedasa who said that “his temperament was much better as Prime Minister than President” [Lankadeepa of August 22, 2023]

All this was to come to a head in an unprecedented Impeachment motion in Parliament and its political consequences which we will describe in the next chapter.

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Features

The NPP Government is more than a JVP offspring:

Published

3 days ago

2026/04/12

Thilina Walpola

Rohana Wijeweera

It is also different from all past governments as it faces new and different challenges

No one knows whether the already broken ceasefire between the US and Iran, with Israel as a reluctant adjunct, will last the full 10 days, or what will come thereafter. The world’s economic woes are not over and the markets are yo-yoing in response to Trump’s twitches and Iran’s gate keeping at the Strait of Hormuz. The gloomy expert foretelling is that full economic normalcy will not return until the year is over even if the war were to end with the ceasefire. That means continuing challenges for Sri Lanka and more of the tough learning in the art of governing for the NPP.

The NPP government has been doing what most governments in Asia have been doing to cope with the current global crisis, which is also an Asian crisis insofar as oil supplies and other supply chains are concerned. What the government can and must do additionally is to be totally candid with the people and keep them informed of everything that it is doing – from monitoring import prices to the timely arranging of supplies, all the details of tender, the tracking of arrivals, and keeping the distribution flow through the market without bottlenecks. That way the government can eliminate upstream tender rackets and downstream hoarding swindles. People do not expect miracles from their government, only honest, sincere and serious effort in difficult circumstances. Backed up by clear communication and constant public engagement.

But nothing is going to stop the flow of criticisms against the NPP government. That is a fact of Sri Lankan politics. Even though the opposition forces are weak and have little traction and even less credibility, there has not been any drought in the criticisms levelled against the still fledgling government. These criticisms can be categorized as ideological, institutional and oppositional criticisms, with each category having its own constituency and/or commentators. The three categories invariably overlap and there are instances of criticisms that excite only the pundits but have no political resonance.

April 5 anniversary nostalgia

There is also a new line of criticism that might be inspired by the April 5 anniversary nostalgia for the 1971 JVP insurrection. This new line traces the NPP government to the distant roots of the JVP – its April 1965 founding “in a working-class home in Akmeemana, Galle” by a 22-year old Rohana Wijeweera and seven others; the short lived 1971 insurrection that was easily defeated; and the much longer and more devastating second (1987 to 1989) insurrection that led to the elimination of the JVP’s frontline leaders including Wijeweera, and brought about a change in the JVP’s political direction with commitment to parliamentary democracy. So far, so good, as history goes.

But where the nostalgic narrative starts to bend is in attempting a straight line connection from the 1965 Akmeemana origins of the JVP to the national electoral victories of the NPP in 2024. And the bend gets broken in trying to bridge the gap between the “founding anti-imperialist economics” of the JVP and the practical imperatives of the NPP government in “governing a debt-laden small open economy.” Yet this line of criticism differs from the other lines of criticism that I have alluded to, but more so for its moral purpose than for its analytical clarity. The search for clarity could begin with question – why is the NPP government more than a JVP offspring? The answer is not so simple, but it is also not too complicated.

For starters, the JVP was a political response to the national and global conditions of the 1960s and 1970s, piggybacking socialism on the bandwagon of ethno-nationalism in a bi-polar world that was ideologically split between status quo capitalism and the alternative of socialism. The NPP government, on the other hand, is not only a response to, but is also a product of the conditions of the 2010s and 2020s. The twain cannot be more different. Nothing is the same between then and now, locally and globally.

A pragmatic way to look at the differences between the origins of the JVP and the circumstances of the NPP government is to look at the very range of criticisms that are levelled against the NPP government. What I categorize as ideological criticisms include criticisms of the government’s pro-IMF and allegedly neo-liberal economic policies, as well as the government’s foreign policy stances – on Israel, on the current US-Israel war against Iran, the geopolitics of the Indian Ocean, and the apparent closeness to the Modi government in India. These criticisms emanate from the non-JVP left and Sinhala Buddhist nationalists.

Strands of nationalism

To digress briefly, there are several strands in the overall bundle of Sri Lankan nationalism. There is the liberal inclusive strand, the left-progressive strand, the exclusive Sinhala Buddhist Nationalist (SBN) strand, and the defensive strands of minority nationalisms. Given Sri Lanka’s historical political formations and alliances, much overlapping goes on between the different strands. The overlapping gets selective on an issue by issue basis, which in itself is not unwelcome insofar as it promotes plurality in place of exclusivity.

Historically as well, and certainly after 1956, the SBN strand has been the dominant strand of nationalism in Sri Lanka and has had the most influential say in every government until now. Past versions of the JVP frequently straddled the dominant SBN space. Currently, however, the dominant SBN strand is in one of its more dormant phases and the NPP government could be a reason for the current dormancy. This is an obvious difference between the old JVP and the new NPP.

A second set of criticisms, or institutional criticisms, emanate from political liberals and human rights activists and these are about the NPP government’s actions or non-actions in regard to constitutional changes, the future of the elected executive presidency, the status of provincial devolution and the timing of provincial council elections, progress on human rights issues, the resolution of unfinished postwar businesses including the amnesia over mass graves. These criticisms and the issues they represent are also in varying ways the primary concerns of the island’s Tamils, Muslims and the Malaiyaka (planntationn) Tamils. As with the overlapping between the left and the non-minority nationalists, there is also overlapping between the liberal activists and minority representatives.

A third category includes what might be called oppositional criticisms and they counterpose the JVP’s past against the NPP’s present, call into question the JVP’s commitment to multi-party democracy and raise alarms about a creeping constitutional dictatorship. This category also includes criticisms of the NPP government’s lack of governmental experience and competence; alleged instances of abuse of power, mismanagement and even corruption; alleged harassment of past politicians; and the failure to find the alleged mastermind behind the 2019 Easter bombings. At a policy and implementational level, there have been criticisms of the government’s educational reforms and electricity reforms, the responses to cyclone Ditwah, and the current global oil and economic crises. The purveyors of oppositional criticisms are drawn from the general political class which includes political parties, current and past parliamentarians, as well as media pundits.

Criticisms as expectations

What is common to all three categories of criticisms is that they collectively represent what were understood to be promises by the NPP before the elections, and have become expectations of the NPP government after the elections. It is the range and nature of these criticisms and the corresponding expectations that make the NPP government a lot more than a mere JVP offspring, and significantly differentiate it from every previous government.

The deliverables that are expected of the NPP government were never a part of the vocabulary of the original JVP platform and programs. The very mode of parliamentary politics was ideologically anathema to the JVP of Akmeemana. And there was no mention of or concern for minority rights, or constitutional reforms. On foreign policy, it was all India phobia without Anglo mania – a halfway variation of Sri Lanka’s mainstream foreign policy of Anglo mania and India phobia. For a party of the rural proletariat, the JVP was virulently opposed to the plantation proletariat. The JVP’s version of anti-imperialist economics would hardly have excited the Sri Lankan electorate at any time, and certainly not at the present time.

At the same time, the NPP government is also the only government that has genealogical antecedents to a political movement or organization like the JVP. That in itself makes the NPP government unique among Sri Lanka’s other governments. The formation of the NPP is the culmination of the evolution of the JVP that began after the second insurrection with the shedding of political violence, acceptance of political plurality and commitment to electoral democracy.

But the evolution was not entirely a process of internal transformation. It was also a response to a rapidly and radically changing circumstances both within Sri Lanka and beyond. This evolution has not been a rejection of the founding socialist purposes of the JVP in 1968, but their adaptation in the endless political search, under constantly changing conditions, for a non-violent, socialist and democratic framework that would facilitate the full development of the human potential of all Sri Lankans.

The burden of expectations is unmistakable, but what is also remarkable is their comprehensiveness and the NPP’s formal commitment to all of them at the same time. No previous government shouldered such an extensive burden or showed such a willing commitment to each and every one of the expectations. In the brewing global economic crisis, the criticisms, expectations and the priorities of the government will invariably be focussed on keeping the economy alive and alleviating the day-to-day difficulties of millions of Sri Lankan families. While what the NPP government can and must do may not differ much from what other Asian governments – from Pakistan to Vietnam – are doing, it could and should do better than what any and all past Sri Lankan governments did when facing economic challenges.

by Rajan Philips

Features

A Fragile Ceasefire: Pakistan’s Glory and Israel’s Sabotage

Published

3 days ago

2026/04/12

Thilina Walpola

Smokes over Beirut: Israel’s Ceasefire Attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon

After threatening to annihilate one of the planet’s oldest civilizations, TACO* Trump chickened out again by grasping the ceasefire lifeline that Pakistan had assiduously prepared. Trump needed the ceasefire badly to stem the mounting opposition to the war in America. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu wanted the war to continue because he needed it badly for his political survival. So, he contrived a fiction and convinced Trump that Lebanon is not included in the ceasefire. Trump as usual may not have noticed that Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Shariff had clearly indicated Lebanon’s inclusion in his announcement of the ceasefire at 7:50 PM, Tuesday, on X. Ten minutes before Donald Trump’s fake deadline.

True to form on Wednesday, Israel unleashed the heaviest assault by far on Lebanon, reportedly killing over 300 people, the highest single-day death toll in the current war. Iran responded by re-closing the Strait of Hormuz and questioning the need for talks in Islamabad over the weekend. There were other incidents as well, with an oil refinery attacked in Iran, and Iranian drones and missiles slamming oil and gas infrastructure in UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Qatar.

The US tried to insist that Lebanon is not part of the ceasefire, with the argumentative US Vice President JD Vance, who was in Budapest, Hungary, campaigning for Viktor Orban, calling the whole thing a matter of “bad faith negotiation” as well as “legitimate misunderstanding” on the part of Iran, and warning Iran that “it would be dumb to jeopardise its ceasefire with Washington over Israel’s attacks in Lebanon.”

But as the attack in Lebanon drew international condemnation – from Pope Leo to UN Secretary General António Guterres, and several world leaders, and amidst fears of Lebanon becoming another Gaza with 1,500 people including 130 children killed and more than a million people displaced, Washington got Israel to stop its “lawn mowing” in southern Lebanon.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to “open direct negotiations with Lebanon as soon as possible,”. Lebanese President Joeseph Aoun has also called for “a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon, followed by direct negotiations between them.” Israel’s involvement in Lebanon remains a wild card that threatens the ceasefire and could scuttle the talks between the US and Iran scheduled for Saturday in Islamabad.

Losers and Winners

After the ceasefire, both the Trump Administration and Iran have claimed total victories while the Israeli government wants the war to continue. The truth is that after more than a month into nonstop bombing of Iran, America and Israel have won nothing. Only Iran has won something it did not have when Trump and Netanyahu started their war. Iran now has not only a say over but control of the Strait of Hormuz. The ceasefire acknowledges this. Both Trump and Netanyahu are under fire in their respective countries and have no allies in the world except one another.

The real diplomatic winner is Pakistan. Salman Rushdie’s palimpsest-country has emerged as a key player in global politics and an influential mediator in a volatile region. Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Chief of Defence Field Marshal Asim Munir have both been praised by President Trump and credited for achieving the current ceasefire. The Iranian regime has also been effusive in its praise of Pakistan’s efforts.

It is Pakistan that persisted with the effort after initial attempts at backdoor diplomacy by Egypt, Pakistan and Türkiye started floundering. Sharing a 900 km border and deep cultural history with Iran, and having a skirmish of its own on the eastern front with Afghanistan, Pakistan has all the reason to contain and potentially resolve the current conflict in Iran. Although a majority Sunni Muslim country, Pakistan is home to the second largest Shia Muslim population after Iran, and is the easterly terminus of the Shia Arc that stretches from Lebanon. The country also has a mutual defense pact with Saudi Arabia that includes Pakistan’s nuclear cover for the Kingdom. An open conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia would have put Pakistan in a dangerously awkward position.

It is now known and Trump has acknowledged that China had a hand in helping Iran get to the diplomatic table. Pakistan used its connections well to get Chinese diplomatic reinforcement. Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar flew to Beijing to brief his Chinese counterpart and secured China’s public support for the diplomatic efforts. The visit produced a Five-Point Plan that became a sequel to America’s 15-point proposal and the eventual ten-point offer by Iran.

There is no consensus between parties as to which points are where and who is agreeing to what. The chaos is par for the course the way Donald Trumps conducts global affairs. So, all kudos to Pakistan for quietly persisting with old school toing and froing and producing a semblance of an agreement on a tweet without a parchment.

It is also noteworthy that Israel has been excluded from all the diplomatic efforts so far. And it is remarkable, but should not be surprising, the way Trump has sidelined Isreal from the talks. Prime Minister Netanyahu has been enjoying overwhelming support of Israelis for starting the war of his life against Iran and getting the US to spearhead it. But now the country is getting confused and is exposed to Iranian missiles and drones far more than ever before. The Israeli opposition is finally coming alive realizing what little has Netanyahu’s wars have achieved and at what cost. Israel has alienated a majority of Americans and has no ally anywhere else.

It will be a busy Saturday in Islamabad, where the US and Iranian delegations are set to meet. Iran would seem to have insisted and secured the assurance that the US delegation will be led by Vice President Vance, while including Trump’s personal diplomats – Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner. Iran has not announced its team but it is expected to be led, for protocol parity, by Iran’s Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, and will likely include its suave Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. Vice President Vance’s attendance will be the most senior US engagement with Iran since Secretary of State John Kerry negotiated the 2015 nuclear deal under President Obama.

The physical arrangements for the talks are still not public although Islamabad has been turned into a security fortress given the stakes and risks involved. The talks are expected to be ‘indirect’, with the two delegations in separate rooms and Pakistani officials shuttling between them. The status of Iran’s enriched uranium and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz will be the major points of contention. After Netanyahu’s overreach on Wednesday, Lebanon is also on the short list

The 2015 nuclear deal (the Joint Comprehensive Action Plan) took months of negotiations and involved multiple parties besides the US and Iran, including China, France, Germany, UK, Russia and the EU. That served the cause of regional and world peace well until Trump tore up the deal to spite Obama. It would be too much to expect anything similar after a weekend encounter in Islamabad. But if the talks could lead to at least a permanent ceasefire and the return to diplomacy that would be a huge achievement.

(*As of 2025–2026, Donald Trump is nicknamed “TACO Trump” by Wall Street traders and investors as an acronym for “”. This term highlights a perceived pattern of him making strong tariff threats that cause market panic, only to later retreat or weaken them, causing a rebound.)

by Rajan Philips

Features

CIA’s hidden weapon in Iran

Published

3 days ago

2026/04/12

Thilina Walpola

We are passing through the ten-day interregnum called a ceasefire over the War on Iran. The world may breathe briefly, but this pause is not reassurance—it is a deliberate interlude, a vacuum in which every actor positions for the next escalation. Iran is far from secure. Behind the veneer of calm, external powers and local forces are preparing, arming, and coordinating. The United States is unlikely to deploy conventional ground troops; the next moves will be executed through proxies whose behaviour will defy expectation. These insurgents are shaped, guided, and amplified by intelligence and technology, capable of moving silently, striking precisely, and vanishing before retaliation. The ceasefire is not peace—it is the prelude to disruption.

The Kurds, historically instruments of Tehran against Baghdad, are now vectors for the next insurgency inside Iran. This movement is neither organic nor local. It is externally orchestrated, with the CIA as the principal architect. History provides the blueprint: under Mohammad-Reza Shah Pahlavi, Kurdish uprisings were manipulated, never supported out of sympathy. They were instruments of leverage against Iraq, a way to weaken a rival while projecting influence beyond Iran’s borders. Colonel Isa Pejman, Iranian military intelligence officer who played a role in Kurdish affairs, recalled proposing support for a military insurgency in Iraq, only for the Shah to respond coldly: “[Mustafa] Barzani killed my Army soldiers… please forget it. The zeitgeist and regional context have been completely transformed.” The Kurds were pawns, but pawns with strategic weight. Pejman later noted: “When the Shah wrote on the back of the letter ‘Accepted’ to General Pakravan, I felt I was the true leader of the Kurdish movement.” The seeds planted then are now being activated under new, technologically empowered auspices.

Iran’s geographic vulnerabilities make this possible. The Shah understood the trap: a vast territory with porous borders, squeezed by Soviet pressure from the north and radical Arab states from the west. “We are in a really terrible situation since Moscow’s twin pincers coming down through Kabul and Baghdad surround us,” he warned Asadollah Alam. From Soviet support for the Mahabad Republic to Barzani’s dream of a unified Kurdistan, Tehran knew an autonomous Kurdish bloc could destabilize both Iraq and Iran. “Since the formation of the Soviet-backed Mahabad Republic, the Shah had been considerably worried about the Kurdish threat,” a US assessment concluded.

Today, the Kurds’ significance is operational, not symbolic. The CIA’s recent rescue of a downed F-15 airman using Ghost Murmur, a quantum magnetometry system, demonstrated the reach of technology in intelligence operations. The airman survived two days on Iranian soil before extraction. This was not a simple rescue; it was proof that highly mobile, technologically augmented operations can penetrate Iranian territory with surgical precision. The same logic applies to insurgency preparation: when individuals can be tracked through electromagnetic signatures, AI-enhanced surveillance, and drones, proxy forces can be armed, guided, and coordinated with unprecedented efficiency. The Kurds are no longer pawns—they are a living network capable of fracturing Iranian cohesion while providing deniability to foreign powers.

Iran’s engagement with Iraqi Kurds was always containment, not empowerment. The Shah’s goal was never Kurdish independence. “We do not approve an independent [Iraqi] Kurdistan,” he stated explicitly. Yet their utility as instruments of regional strategy was undeniable. The CIA’s revival of these networks continues a long-standing pattern: insurgent groups integrated into the wider calculus of international power. Israel, Iran, and the Kurds formed a triangular strategic relationship that terrified Baghdad. “For Baghdad, an Iranian-Israeli-Kurdish triangular alliance was an existential threat,” contemporary reports noted. This is the template for modern manipulation: a networked insurgency, externally supported, capable of destabilizing regimes from within while giving foreign powers plausible deniability.

Iran today faces fragility. Years of sanctions, repression, and targeted strikes have weakened educational and scientific hubs; Sharif University in Tehran, one of the country’s leading scientific centres, was bombed. Leaders, scholars, and innovators have been eliminated. Military readiness is compromised. Generations-long setbacks leave Iran exposed. Against this backdrop, a Kurdish insurgency armed with drones, AI-supported surveillance, and precision munitions could do more than disrupt—it could fracture the state internally. The current ten-day ceasefire is a mirage; the next wave of revolt is already being orchestrated.

CIA involvement is deliberate. Operations are coordinated with allied intelligence agencies, leveraging Kurdish grievances, mobility, and ethnolinguistic networks. The Kurds’ spread across Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Syria provides operational depth—allowing insurgents to strike, vanish, and regroup with impunity. Barzani understood leverage decades ago: “We could be useful to the United States… Look at our strategic location on the flank of any possible Soviet advance into the Middle East.” Today, the calculation is inverted: Kurds are no longer instruments against Baghdad; they are potential disruptors inside Tehran itself.

Technology is central. Ghost Murmur’s ability to detect a single heartbeat remotely exemplifies how intelligence can underpin insurgent networks. Drones, satellite communications, AI predictive modeling, and battlefield sensors create an infrastructure that can transform a dispersed Kurdish insurgency into a high-precision operation. Iran can no longer rely on fortifications or loyalty alone; the external environment has been recalibrated by technology.

History provides the roadmap. The Shah’s betrayal of Barzani after the 1975 Algiers Agreement demonstrated that external actors can manipulate both Iranian ambitions and Kurdish loyalties. “The Shah sold out the Kurds,” Yitzhak Rabin told Kissinger. “We could not station our troops there and keep fighting forever,” the Shah explained to Alam. The Kurds are a pivot, not a cause. Networks once acting under Tehran’s influence are now being repurposed against it.

The insurgency exploits societal fissures. Kurdish discontent in Iran, suppressed for decades, provides fertile ground. Historical betrayal fuels modern narratives: “Barzani claimed that ‘Isa Pejman sold us out to the Shah and the Shah sold us out to the US.’” Intelligence agencies weaponize these grievances, pairing them with training, technological augmentation, and covert support.

Geopolitically, the stakes are immense. The Shah’s defensive-offensive doctrine projected Iranian influence outward to neutralize threats. Today, the logic is inverted: the same networks used to contain Iraq are being readied to contain Iran. A technologically augmented Kurdish insurgency, covertly backed, could achieve in months what decades of sanctions, diplomacy, or repression have failed to accomplish.

The operation will be asymmetric, high-tech, and dispersed. UAVs, quantum-enhanced surveillance, encrypted communications, and AI-directed logistics will dominate. Conventional Iranian forces are vulnerable to this type of warfare. As Pejman reflected decades ago, “Our Army was fighting there, rather than the Kurds who were harshly defeated… How could we keep such a place?” Today, the challenge is magnified by intelligence superiority on the insurgents’ side.

This is not a temporary flare-up. The CIA and its allies are constructing a generational network of influence. Experience from Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon proves these networks endure once operationalised. The Shah recognized this: “Iran’s non-state foreign policy under the Shah’s reign left a lasting legacy for the post-Revolution era.” Today, those instruments are being remade as vectors of foreign influence inside Iran.

The future is stark. Iran faces not simply external threats, but a carefully engineered insurgency exploiting historical grievances, technological superiority, and precise intelligence. The Kurds are central. History, technology, and geopolitical calculation converge to create a transformative threat. Tehran’s miscalculations, betrayals, and suppressed grievances now form the lattice for this insurgency. The Kurds are positioned not just as an ethnic minority, but as a vector of international strategy—Tehran may be powerless to stop it.

Iran’s containment strategies have been weaponized, fused with technology, and inverted against it. The ghosts of Barzani’s Peshmerga, the shadows of Algiers, and the Shah’s strategic vision now converge with Ghost Murmur, drones, and AI. Tehran faces a paradox: the instruments it once controlled are now calibrated to undermine its authority. The next Kurdish revolt will not only fight in the mountains but in the electromagnetic shadows where intelligence operates, consequences are lethal, and visibility is scarce.

by Nilantha Ilangamuwa