Features

Forty-year saga that can never be forgotten

Published

4 years ago

2021/11/16

By Rohan Abeywardena

For the 35th anniversary of The Island five years ago, when our editor Prabath Sahabandu asked me to pen a piece for that issue, I took the opportunity to write about all the hilarious things we did to keep ourselves entertained, while we worked through all types of storms as during much of that period the country was in turmoil with LTTE terror attacks taking place regularly, mainly in the form of suicide bombings that snuffed out innocent lives by the dozens, the JVP’s bloody second uprising and the then government’s counter terror campaign to crush it. We ourselves came very close to peril on more than one occasion after our founder literally vanished into thin air; his newspapers were marked by some of those in power as threats to them. We managed to withstand all that not because we were some heroes, but it was simply a case of us just doing what we had to do in the line of duty.

Last week, when the editor asked me to contribute a column to the 40th anniversary issue, I literally underwent a shock reawakening as to how long it has been since I was among the first few journalists to join this newspaper just about two weeks before it started and a few weeks after the Sunday Island began. In fact, if my now 65-year-old memory serves me right, my first English editorial identity card here bore the legend EE12, indicating that I was the 12th employee to join it. By the time Mr. Upali Wijewardene disappeared with few others who were accompanying him while returning to Colombo on his Learjet from Malaysia in early 1983, our editorial had a formidable team with more than 60 permanent employees, including many veterans and many provincial correspondents, freelancers and even foreign contributors. Of that original lot, I believe only myself, Zanita Careem and Norman Palihawadana still remain here, while many have been claimed by father time and others migrated or are working elsewhere. Both Zanita and Norman have been working throughout at The Island, but I left the newspaper thrice and came back each time, but yet I have put in a total of more than 24 years with the newspaper.

At the time when I first joined The Island in the first week of November 1981, I had been working at the now defunct, staid Sun newspaper of the then powerful Independent Newspaper Group as a sub-editor with Zanita and she followed me to The Island a month or two after me as did many others thereafter. When I joined that former newspaper, I had very high hopes of contributing to combatting wrongs in the society in general, because the newspaper literally shouted from its roof top how independent it was with regular ‘exposures’ with banner headlines. But I soon realised that it was nothing but a charade and started questioning my inner-self as to whose independence that they practised.

Some of those at the helm there could have even made Joseph Goebbels blush, for most of their exposures were nothing more than recycled formula type stories as in the celluloid world. Those regularly repeated topics were ‘child labour’, ‘pornography’, illicit abortions, boy prostitution, etc. While the so-called national newspapers kept the country’s intelligentsia generally hoodwinked, the Sinhala language organ of the Communist Party Aththa edited by legendary B.A. Siriwardena (fondly known as Sira) literally went to town, daily exposing corruption and intrigues that were widespread especially among those wielding power and Sira easily wrote the best biting editorial each day among all Sinhala language newspapers. That paper often only had one broad sheet comprising four pages. Even some of those haughty Colombo 07 types who would not want to be seen dead with a Sinhala Commie newspaper, was known to at least read Sira’s blunt down-to-earth editorials, like pinstriped British Bankers reading or ogling at the racy tabloid London SUN hidden inside the broadsheet Financial Times or the Guardian. Of course, unlike the London SUN there was nothing obscene in Sira’s Aththa. It also had formidable cartoonist Jiffrey Yoonoos, who was once slashed with a knife because someone could not stomach his drawings.

The Sun that I worked in and its weekly Weekend were not all about bumming the government in power. There were naturally exceptions like when they took on the then national carrier Air Lanka and its powerful Chairman and Managing Director, the late Capt. Rakhitha Wickramanayake. It was also a treat to read the weekly political column under the pen name Migara written by present Editor of The Sunday Times Sinha Ratnatunga, at a time when the country was starved of inside authentic news.

It was a very good training school for beginners. And I am eternally grateful that I received a good foundation there, especially under the tutelage of Louis Benedict. And many top journalists of today cut their teeth at the old Sun/Weekend.

The straw that broke the camel’s back for me was how The Sun covered the way the UNP storm troopers of the JSS wielding cycle chains and what not broke up the July ’80 general strike. I clearly remember staff photographers coming with photos of battered blood-soaked strikers, who were attacked near Lake House, but the newspaper was more worried about publishing those and antagonising JRJ than reporting the dastardly act. The strikers were simply asking for a Rs 300 salary increase from that regime which came to power with a five-sixths landslide victory in 1977 after making all sorts of promises, including eight pounds of cereals per person per week on top of the existing free rice ration. But after assuming power everything was forgotten and even the existing free rice ration was scrapped. Atop that the self-proclaimed Dharmishta (righteous) regime rolled out the red carpet to capitalist Robber Barons by devaluing the rupee by as much as 43 per cent, eliminated all food subsidies, reduced workers’ rights etc. etc.

I must however state that why I left The Sun and joined a yet to start private newspaper was not because I then had any special illusions about its founder Mr. Upali Wijewardene, except maybe I was attracted to the challenge of working for a man, who was drawing venomous fire from some among the ruling clique, who, I knew, were no angels. However, once the newspaper was started, we all realised that he was a hands-off boss, who gave a free hand to his editor with no interference whatsoever, not even from some of his close relatives. And the editor too was game for a free media culture. In that way, Wijewardene literally opened the floodgates for a truly liberal media culture in this country among national media, which clearly later paved the way for the independent and competitive TV and radio which we enjoy today along with the newspapers and an abusive social media.

When I was called for the sole interview with newpaper’s Editor Vijitha Yapa and Englishman Peter Harland, both had been handpicked by Wijewardene to launch his English newspapers; what really hooked me was the salary that was offered. The interview was not about my competency, but how quickly I could come. One question thatYapa asked me was how much I was drawing at The Sun, when I said I was getting little over Rs 1,200 per month, which was a good salary for a journalist at the time he quickly said: “We’ll give you 1800 a month”. I said I would take it, though I’m sure had I asked for 2000 they would have agreed to it.

What hurt me the most when I left The Sun was the type of departure given to me. Since I felt I was considered just a mediocre, I thought they would be glad to see the back of me, but when I went to give my letter of resignation to editor Rex de Silva, he asked me to give it to the Chairman. But when I went up to the Chairman’s office, I was asked to take a seat and wait and I waited and waited for I believe was well over an hour. Finally, in disgust when I got up to dump my resignation letter with the reception and vanish from there for good, the receptionist said “You can now see the Chairman”. And when I walked into his room and gave the letter all he said was you can go. And that was the treatment meted out to an employee who had taken hardly a day’s leave in the nearly two years he had worked there. But that must be because I must have been the first to join a new rival.

So much happened in those early years of this newspaper that someone should write a book on its history. But I will leave the reader with some interesting personal experiences that must be told. After the sudden disappearance of Wijewardene, it dawned on everyone that we could no longer go on the way it was and we had to sue for peace especially with Finance Minister Ronnie de Mel and our main nemesis, Ranasinghe Premadasa, the then Prime Minister and Minister of Local Government, Housing and Construction and designated successor of JRJ. But Premadasa was paranoid about being usurped by not only Wijewardene, but even by others like Lalith Athulathmudali, Gamini Dissanayake, and he even clashed with Ronnie de Mel. While de Mel was willing to kiss and forget as long as he got good coverage in return from us,Premadasa was not the forgiving or forgetting type.

However, once we got into a fresh scrape with de Mel. It all started with him bashing us in parliament in the worst possible way, most probably after someone provoked him. At the time the late Ajith Samaranayake, probably one of the most talented journalists this country has hitherto produced, acted as editor as Gamini (Gamma to most of us) Weerakoon was abroad. So not to be outdone, Ajith wrote one of the most devastating editorials in reply headlined ‘Barbarians at the gate’ and carried it prominently on page one from top to bottom on left side, not on the usual editorial page. The immediate result was fireworks and I will not go into details except to say banks could have throttled us at the time at the behest of the powerful FM.

Around this time, I had started doing a series of interviews with important political personalities of the day called FIRING LINE. But in order to make peace with Mr. de Mel once again I was ordered to do a weekly interview with him.

Similarly, I learned the hard way why Junius Richard Jayewardene was called the 20th Century Fox. He was a person who never gave any official interviews to any local journalist as long as he was in power. So, when in retirement I thought I could cajole him into speaking out as there was so much blood letting since the signing of the controversial Indo-Lanka Accord of July 1987, for political expediency and there seemed to be no let up with his own party divided and in tatters. Well, I finally did manage to get an appointment for an interview through his Secretary Mr. Mapitigama. At the appointed day and time, I went to his private residence at Ward Place, ‘Braemar’. After a short chat with the head of his security detail SSP Sumith de Silva and Mr. Mapitigama I was ushered into old JRJ’s office and after the initial handshake and my taking a seat opposite him, he at once asked me something like so young man what do you want to talk about? I quickly pulled out my cassette tape recorder and the list of questions.

Now, I must say the secret of my success with the Firing Line series was that I literally ambushed my subjects usually with a below the belt question at the opening bell itself as that almost always resulted in my ‘victim’ virtually eating humble pie after being stunned. With the 20th Century Fox I did not however plan any such stunts but the intention was to soften him up first by pandering to his tastes before trying hard stuff. But lo and behold what I finally got from him was the shock of my career.

The minute I moved to switch on the tape he said stop and to put it away. Then he said, “We’ll first discuss what you want to ask me”. I skipped all formalities and started asking about most of the problems facing the country caused by the UNP often changing the goal post because it wanted to control everything through the imperial presidency of his. But each time I tried to raise an issue from the past he simply shut me up by asking whether I was there and he would say, “You can’t say that because you were not there”.

Most interestingly and ironically the old man was not worried about what was happening to the country, but was repeatedly griping about how much they had suffered by being deprived of their estates by the Land Reforms of the previous United Front government of Bandaranaike. In a way, it explained why he wanted to take revenge from her soon after coming to power.

One thing on which he did make his opinion known to me during that one-sided exchange was that it was wrong of Lalith and Gamini to break away from the party to fight Premadasa. His line of thinking was that they should have worked for change from within.

And finally he said something to the effect “now you got what you came for”, but when I protested that I came there after informing the editor that I am going to interview President Jayewardene and I couldn’t go back and tell him I had no interview. Then he thought for a few seconds and asked me to leave the questions with his secretary.

A few days later, Mapitigama called me and said the President’s answers were ready. I quickly drove to ‘Braemar’, collected it without even bothering to look at what was inside the closed envelope and rushed back to the office thinking I was on top of the world with an exclusive interview with the ex-President.

But when I went through it, I found that what he had answered were not the questions I had given; they were either reworded or totally new questions to fit JRJ’s agenda. When I suggested to then editor Gamini Weerakoon we throw it away and forget about it, the boss however laughed and asked me to carry it.

Another interesting experience I had was when I went to do a Firing Line interview with the late Anura Bandaranaike at his Rosmead Place residence when he was the Leader of the Opposition during President Premadasa’s tenure. Bandaranaike being a formidable debater with the gift of the gab I had no intention of giving him any kid glove treatment even though I then literally worked for his uncle Dr. Seevali Ratwatte, who was our Chairman at the time.

Now, I had been battling Premadasa for a long time in my own way, so at the opening bell I asked Bandaranaike how he hoped to defeat Premadasa when the latter got up as early as 3:00 am and began attending to his work at 4:00 am, whereas the Leader of the Opposition usually got up long past noon after enjoying the good life into the early hours of the morning. The question blew a fuse inside him and the burly giant got up, shoving the coffee table that was there between us, at me. Luckily, I was able to jump back. But soon he realised his blunder and recovered his composure and said he didn’t have to work so hard or something to that effect. But I am sure I had the better of him in the ensuing interview.

Over the particular interview I had no problem back at UNL. In fact, the late Dr. Ratwatte was a gem of a boss when dealing with journalists like me. There was a real incident later on when I wrote a story about some local consultants hired by the World Bank to prepare feasibility studies to help start various business ventures, and took it for a ride. Having spent a couple of million dollars or more on the project, the WB found most of those feasibility studies were either frivolous or redundant. For they were about how to start a successful bakery business, a laundry, beauty salon, etc.

When the newspaper hit the market with that story one of the consultants concerned immediately phoned and demanded a correction, but point blank I refused. The result was that this highly qualified guy, being a Bandaranaike, came to teach me a lesson after telling me so by rushing to our Chairman. The minute he arrived in Dr Ratwatte’s office I got a call from the head office saying the Chairman wanted to see me. In fact, I saw this guy driving into the UNL compound in an Alfa Romeo. I immediately armed myself with something that I was able to surprise him with. So, when Dr Ratwatte asked me ‘Rohan what is all this’? I showed everyone a copy of the internal World Bank critical assessment. But before I could even open it the Chairman just said, ‘Okay, okay you can go back’.

Then there was also a Firing Line Interview that didn’t go beyond a few questions with Bulathsinhalage Sirisena Cooray, one-time strongman under Premadasa. So, some time after the latter’s assassination and after he was distanced by both the UNP and the Premadasa family I asked Cooray for an interview to tell his side of the story as he was being maligned by many. When he agreed for an interview, I got myself dropped at his then residence at Lake Drive close to McDonald’s, Rajagiriya, and asked the driver to pick me up later on his way back after dropping several others.

One of my planned line of attacks was to nail him about his dealings with the underworld characters, like Soththi Upali. So, when I came to the subject of how he came to know Soththi Upali, and no sooner had Cooray told me ‘oya lamaya’ [Soththi Upali] used to drop into see him in connection with Gam Udawa work, than he realised the trap was being laid to corner him; he immediately told me to leave. By that time, I believe Soththi Upali had already been killed by his enemies. But since there was no sign of my vehicle and though the distance from his residence to MacDonald’s Junction wouldn’t have been more than 150 metres, but it felt as if it was the longest walk I had ever undertaken and unlike today Lake Drive was then generally deserted.

My luck with ‘Firing Line’ however, was soon running out with my potential subjects/victims soon getting wise to my shock therapy and some of them even pitched into me on flimsy excuses even before I could open my mouth at an interview.

I believe one of the first to try that counter shock strategy on me was the late TULF Leader M. Sivasithamparam, who succeeded as the TULF Leader after the Tiger hit team assassinated A. Amirthalingam. So, when I went to interview him for ‘Firing Line’, I knew he was no spring chicken as he was a veteran politician and a formidable lawyer. When I got to his place, close to Thimbirigasyaya Junction, I got a shelling from the man accusing me of keeping him waiting for about two hours. That lecture of his about being punctual and not wasting other people’s time would have taken a good 15 minutes. But I was quite sure the appointment I made was for around 10:30, but he insisted it was two hours earlier, or something to that effect.

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Features

The NPP Government is more than a JVP offspring:

Published

14 hours 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

14 hours 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

14 hours 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