Features

Garuwa tells us how he lost his arm to a bear and more tales from Kumana

Published

4 years ago

2022/01/16

Sahan Weerasooriya

(Continued from last week)

by Walter R. Gooneratne

Now it was story-time. Unlike the garrulous Wasthua, Garuwa was a quiet and retiring person and a man of few words. However, under the influence of that extra quota of alcohol, his tongue loosened up and he related his adventure with the bear which ultimately ended with the amputation of his left arm.

One evening, while returning from the tank, a she bear had joined the track about a hundred yards ahead of him. Since the bear was up-wind of him, he did not bother very much as he knew the animal would leave the track sooner or later. Anyway, he was sufficiently in the lead to take evasive action should it decide to turn back. He had met many a bear before and had not much respect for its sagacity or intelligence. Suddenly, there was a loud growl behind him, when a huge male bear standing on its hind legs charged into him with mouth open and fangs bared. He had put up his forearm to defend his face and yelled at it as loud as he could. However, this had very little effect, for the bear had bitten his forearm. He remembered with a shudder the awful stench of its breath.

The bear had probably spotted the female which was in heat, and he had followed her scent. Perhaps he mistook Garuwa for a rival and attacked him, but when he realized his mistake he had left him alone and gone after his lover. Garuwa was now bleeding profusely. He had taken off his shirt and bandaged his injured forearm with it. By the time he reached the main track to the village, he had felt quite dizzy with the loss of blood and the throbbing pain, which made him sit down.

Fortunately, some people were returning to the village from Yakala Kalapuwa and they carried him home. He was delirious and semi-conscious throughout the night and was not aware of the damage to his arm. The next morning, his friends had made an improvised stretcher and carried him to Panama, from where he was transferred to the Batticaloa Hospital, where his arm was amputated. That part of the journey had been plain hell, specially the bumpy ride.

Early next morning we broke camp, and having rewarded our new-found friends, bade them adieu. While returning to Kandy, I was driving most of the day, and therefore shortly after passing Polonnaruwa, Ivor offered to take the wheel. Then a short while later, Ivor had dozed off and in consequence the jeep ran off the road. Fortunately, it was flat open country and Ivor managed to stop it in time. The ladies insisted that I drive the rest of the way. We landed in Kandy late at night without further incident.

Kumana again and again

Since then I have been to Kumana seven times more. As it would be too long to describe all of these journeys in detail, I shall describe only the highlights of each.

On the next trip our party consisted of Dr H R Wickremesinghe, Mr. and Mrs.Simon Gunewardene, my wife, Nirmalene and myself. We left Ragama (where I was stationed then) at 3 am in Simon’s jeep and reached the office of the Wildlife Department at Okanda at about 2 pm. There, for the first time I saw the neat cup-shaped nest of the fantailed flycatcher. Our old faithfuls, Garuwa and Wasthuwa were waiting for us and we did not waste any time, but drove on to the Kumbukan Oya camp-site.

It was dry season and the river was low. A lone elephant was quenching his thirst at this spot, but fortunately ran away at our approach. Late that night another elephant had come to drink, and being disturbed by our campfire, had created quite a rumpus, but had moved away due to Wasthua’s charms, as he claimed. Having driven the whole day, I was dead to the world and had slept through all the noise.

Leopard pugmarks were everywhere. That evening Simon shot a spotted deer stag near Yakala Kalapuwa. The two hind limbs were cut off and loaded into the jeep for our consumption. and the rest of the carcass was dragged to the spot where Ivor shot his leopard. It was tethered there as leopard bait. That evening. the leopard came to the bait and was shot by Simon. When I saw what we had done to such a graceful and beautiful creation of nature, just to bolster man’s pride, I decided never to shoot a leopard again.

The highlight of the trip took place that afternoon. We decided to have our evening bath at Galamuna, higher up the river. Here the water cascading down the mini-rapid was most soothing and relaxing. A short while later, a lone cow elephant came silently out of the jungle, just about twenty yards above where we were. She stood there for a while, testing the air for signs of danger, and as if by an invisible signal that all was well, a herd of elephants trooped down to the river. There were eighteen of them of various sizes and ages. All of them were females, except for two young males.

There were two little babies, one of which could not have been more than two or three years of age. The old matriarch, who first came to the river, was apparently its mother, as she nestled it between her legs and walked down to the river. Garuwa assured us that as we were downwind of them. there was no danger as long as we stayed quiet and did not move about too much. It was such a heartwarming and wonderful sight. The creatures soon lay down in the cool, rushing water and showered themselves with fountains of water, while the babies frolicked about under the watchful eye of their mothers and aunts.

Suddenly two of the teenagers decided to play “catch me if you can” and one of them made a dash in our direction, hotly pursued by her playmate. However, much to our relief, they soon wheeled around and dashed away in the opposite direction. Having had enough, they entwined their trunks, whispered a few sweet nothings in each other’s ears and again settled down to the mundane business of cleansing themselves. After about twenty minutes, the matriarch stood up, scented the wind and slowly re-entered the jungle, followed by the rest of the herd.

Angler’s dream

The next visit was about a year later in the company of Dr. Mackie Ratwatte, Dr. Anian Perera and his nephew, who later became a Catholic priest. Game Ranger Peter Jayawardene accompanied us as our guest in camp.

This trip was an angler’s dream. Peter being a keen and expert angler, we decided to go fishing in the estuary of Kumbukkan Oya. Peter made his own lures. It was mainly because he could not afford to buy commercial ones, but pretended his were superior. He was soon proved to be correct. Peter produced a handcrafted lure painted in red and white, which he called the” Red devil”.

Anian had no experience of angling, and when he saw our equipment, he laughed at us saying that we would be sadly mistaken if we thought fish would fall for our artificial lures. Soon he would think otherwise.

The sky was overcast and there was a slight blowing. I cast the “Red devil” and at the second cast had a strike. Anian scornfully said I had snagged a rock. However, the “rock” soon peeled off the line from my reel, an event which soon provoked a paean of delight. At the first pull, the fish had emptied a good part of my well-oiled reel before he stopped for a breather. Soon the line was being stripped off again in brief runs. I dared not put too much break as I was using light line. Expert Peter predicted that I had something very big, and by the initial run, it should be a paraw or travelly. The duel continued for some time with me retrieving some line, interrupted by short bursts of activity by my adversary. Then we saw him framed against a breaker, a huge tholbari paraw swaying his broad shoulders in order to dislodge the lure. After further fights, he came in gamely, being finally carried ashore by a low wave. It was massive and weighed forty four pounds!

Since the fish were still feeding, we continued to cast. With almost every cast we had a strike. The final catch was an eight pound koduwa or estuary perch and seven of kalava or threadfin, each weighing between four and eight pounds.

Anian, who scoffed at us at the beginning, wanted me to allow him a few casts. I warned him that bait-casting needed a lot of skill and practice, but he assured me that having watched me, he knew the technique. I knew that he would end up in a backlash, but to humour him I gave him the rod and reel. Anyway, Peter was an expert at unraveling the toughest backlashes. With the first cast, he ended up with the mother of all backlashes. Even Peter’s expertise was to no avail. Anian was most apologetic.

However, as we had enough fish we called it a day. Back in camp, we had to dismantle the reel to untangle the mess. Garuwa and Wasthua were gifted a kalai each to take to their families. That night we had a delicious curry of the paraw and koduwa heads turned out by Kadisara. The rest of the fish was with Peter’s expertise, either dried or made into jadi, which was a preparation cured with salt. The rest of the trip was uneventful.

Kumana in the rain

The next foray was in 1966. It was a huge party consisting of Simon Gunewardene and wife, my dear friends, Dr. and Mrs Chandra Amerasinghe and their children, Pervey Lawrence, my nephew Mohan Gooneratne, my brother Lionel and my family. There was torrential rain all the way and we were benighted at Lahugala. Fortunately, Peter had been transferred as game ranger there and he managed to find accommodation for us in the village school.

Next morning the road to Kumana was a quagmire. Bagura Ara, the stream that runs across Bagura plains, was in spate and we managed to cross it with some difficulty. Fortunately, Dr. K.G. Jayasekera and his party were camping at Bagura and they lent a hand to get the vehicles across. That night the rain came down again in sheets, accompanied by lightning and thunder. The water came through the camp in roaring torrents. Sleep was impossible. My wife carried the children into our jeep, while most of the others just shivered till dawn, by which time the rain had ceased.

Most of the next day was spent drying up the camp. Fortunately there was no further rain for the rest of our stay. In the evening we went down to the villu for bird watching. We met a large leopard close to the villu, but it took fright and bolted away. That evening, Lyn de Alwis and his party arrived and camped at the site higher up on the banks of Kumbukkan Oya. He very kindly invited us to his camp for cocktails.

Next morning Garuwa suggested that we go to Lenama in search of rathu walasu or red bears. On the way, Wasthua suggested that we inspect a water-hole called Kiri Pokuna, as it was a favourite watering place for many wild animals. The track was narrow, and having alighted from the vehicles, we walked along it in single file. Pervey went ahead with the trackers, while the others trailed behind. Chandra and I brought up the rear. Suddenly there was pandemonium and the whole crowd came running back, followed shortly after by the report from Pervey’s rifle. It transpired that as the crowd approached the bund of the water-hole, a huge wild buffalo had come crashing down over the bund along the path they were on.

At Pervy’s shot (fired into the air), the animal had veered to the left and crashed into the jungle. What probably had happened was that on hearing of our approach, the animal had tried to escape along the path he was familiar with and almost collided with us, but was turned away by the noise of Pervy’s rifle fire. Further progress to Lenama was impossible due to the state of the track after the recent rains.

That evening we went fishing to the estuary of Kumbukan Oya. Dr. Jayasekera and his party were also there, but none of us had any luck, due mainly to the river being in spate. However, we were rewarded with the spectacle of a brilliantly coloured sunset.

Further trips to Kumana

Some time later my cousin Lyn de Alwis very kindly invited me to join him on an expedition to Kumana in order to capture animals for the zoo. The team included some staff of the zoo, as well as Lyn’s brother Gerald, and my son Naomal. We camped again by Kumbukkan Oya, but our old trackers, Garuwa and Wasthua had by that time passed away and we sorely missed them.

It was nesting season in the villu and most of the time was spent capturing viable, but fledgling birds. They were mostly painted stork, spoonbills, openbills, spot-billed pelicans, cormorants and whistling teal. A large number of serpents, including pythons, Russell’s vipers and cobras, was also taken with amazing ease and dexterity by the staff of the zoo.

In the next two visits, we occupied the bungalow, which was on a most beautiful location overlooking a small lake. On the first occasion, we had booked the Okanda bungalow, but the trees around it were alive with numerous hairy caterpillars. However Lyn de Alwis, who was occupying the Thunmulla bungalow, very kindly offered it to us, and decided to camp out on the bank of Kumbukkan Oya.

The highlight of this trip was a furious elephant charge. At the time my wife, after collecting driftwood on the beach for her flower arrangements near Iticala Kalapuwa, had just got into the jeep, when a huge lone elephant made a furious charge from a nearby thicket. My son Romesh, who was at the wheel, was about to start off, but hearing the charge, he had the presence of mind to switch off the engine. The three of us, namely Romesh, the tracker and myself yelled at it in unison. The charge was so determined that I thought he would not be able to stop in time. However, he skidded to a stop within a few feet of us and walked away, grumbling all the while. Had we delayed a few more minutes in switching off the engine, he would have been on us with disastrous results.

However we were rewarded that evening with the sight of a large healthy leopard traversing the road behind the bungalow. It looked contemptuously at us over its shoulder and continued to walk along the track till it was out of sight round the bend of the road. We let it go its way in peace.

The next trip was in 1983, shortly after the riots. Our party consisted of Mr. John Guyer of the Asia Foundation and his wife, Mr. Fred Malvenna, my son Romesh and myself. We left Colombo at midnight in Fred’s jeep and arrived at Pottuvil at early dawn. On this occasion too we occupied the Thummulla bungalow. The villu was completely dry with crazy zigzag cracks on its surface. A lone elephant was in it, knee deep in mud, feeding on the dried up lotus leaves and yams.

In this trip none was interested in hunting, but we made many forays into the jungle to watch and observe animals. Though no leopards were seen, their tracks were everywhere. Several elephants, in singles, twos and threes, were seen. Large herds of spotted deer were a common sight. While bathing in Kumbukkan Oya at Galamuna one morning, we saw two saw-toothed sharks, each about three feet long, cruising in the river above the rocky dam.

On December 27, 2002, we made a trip again to Kumana. It was a large party traveling in four vehicles. To Chris Uragoda and a few of us who had seen Kumana in its heyday, the desolation and destruction were saddening indeed. There were hardly any tracks. Bagura plain was bare and devoid of its once famous herds of deer. Gone were all the life-giving mangroves in the villu, which was a naked sheet of water without a bird to adorn its shining surface. There was evidence of felling of trees at many places. It is imperative that the Department of Wildlife Conservation should take immediate steps to bring it back to its former splendour before it is lost forever.

(Concluded)

(Excerpted from Jungle Journeys in Sri Lanka edited by CG Uragoda)

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Features

The NPP Government is more than a JVP offspring:

Published

2 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

2 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

2 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