Features

My early days in Parliament and the buildup to my quitting the UNP

Published

4 months ago

2025/12/28

Greeting Aung San Suu Kyi in Beijing

Another area in which I intervened was in debates regarding communications, particularly about new technologies. Leftists, especially Vasudeva Nanayakkara, constantly complained about the presence of transmitters of Voice of America and Deutsche Welle-the German radio station. I knew that with the coming of Geo-stationary satellites land based transmitters were out of date and that all the denunciations made by leftists were based on out of date information. Sure enough these transmitters are now obsolete and with their disuse have deprived the SLBC of much needed rental income.

There is an advantage that accrues to the Opposition speaker which is not usually captured in text books on Parliamentary procedure. He is free to criticize by hitting all around the wicket since he is not responsible to implement the ideas that he advocates on the floor of the House. On the other hand a government spokesman is bound by the need to be practical as he is really addressing the executive which is represented by the relevant Minister.

If he is really keen he can even take the matter up in the inner councils of his party at group meetings. Thus often he has to stick to the party playbook while he is on his feet in the House. My speeches were welcomed by even the opposite side and I had notes sent to me [a parliamentary practice] by Deputy Speaker Anil Moonesinghe at the conclusion of a speech. Neelan Tiruchelvam would invariably meet me after my speech with an encouraging comment. He and I jointly sponsored a motion calling for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi who was at that time languishing under house arrest in Myanmar. Several “nationalist” MPs asked me to withdraw my sponsorship of the motion saying that she was a “Christian” plant of the west, but I refused.

The best compliment I received was from Priyanganie Wijesekere, the Secretary General of Parliament, who in a newspaper interview stated that I was one of the best speakers in Parliament of her time. For a Parliamentary newcomer who had to fight hard to get speaking time this was a rare compliment indeed.

Another episode which deserves to be recorded is the clash I had with Hameed at a group meeting regarding proposals for the devolution of power. CBK had set up a committee to examine this issue and Ranil had appointed Hameed to represent the UNP.

These meetings were dragging on but we as MPs were not aware of what was going on between the two parties. Information was leaked to us that important issues such as demarcation of seats on an ethnic basis was advocated without any reference to us MPs. I was concerned since Harispattuwa was a two member constituency and gerrymandering in favour of a minority would badly affect the interests of the majority of voters there.

At the previous delimitation, electorates had been carved out giving a greater weightage to a minority community. I raised this matter in the group and a commotion resulted. My demand was that Hameed should brief us about his ongoing talks. The majority of the members were shocked by this challenge to the party Chairman (Hameed at that time) but WJM Lokubandara supported me strongly. At this stage Hameed threw a tantrum and threatened to resign from the committee. I stuck to my guns and finally it was decided that we should have a discussion on the party’s stance. The political columns in the weeklies reported this contretemps and Hameed stopped talking to me.

Fratricidal war

Whatever may have been the plans of CBK and her government the ethnic conflict became the major issue which had to be resolved before a new economic programme could be implemented in a coordinated way. It was the “elephant in the room” which was intruding into all the other actions of the new regime. It was also having a debilitating effect on the government because the otherwise united and victorious leadership of the PA came to be divided on the issue of how to deal with the LTTE. While Chandrika and her close followers were, as typified in the “Sudu Nelum” movement, looking for a negotiated settlement, hardliners like Ratnasiri (Wickremanayake) and several SLFP stalwarts were for a military response.

But the problem was that the resources necessary for a military response were not available. Consequently the security forces were subjected to a series of setbacks. The LTTE had used the space provided by President Premadasa’s dispatch of the IPKF back to India and the CBK truce to consolidate its position and especially extend its underground network. They launched murderous attacks on railway stations, public places, Buddhist centres, politicians of every race and finally even on the Central Bank in the heart of Colombo.

Every effort to reach out to the LTTE was thwarted and even the few credible Tamil leaders like Neelan Tiruchelvam were murdered in cold blood. Neelan’s death was a great blow to me because we had been friends for a long time and I had worked for a brief period at the International Cetre for Ethnic Studies (ICES) he founded. In his last telephone call to a friend he had referred to me as a possible interlocutor to bring the southern parties together for a negotiated settlement. Less than an hour afterwards he was dead – a victim of an LTTE suicide bomber.

This was particularly poignant for me since a few days before his death he, R. Sampanthan and I had been chatting in the Parliament lobby after they had been warned of a possible attempt on their lives. They were quite upset and Sam kept away from public view for some time. Neelan had arranged to be in Harvard for a few months and had been only a few days away from his departure to Boston. It was a depressing time and a brave group of friends assembled in Kanatte to bid him farewell in spite of bomb threats.

Savitri Goonesekere made an eloquent address which caught well the admiration we had for Neelan and our sense of loss at that time. Neelan’s death was another reason for me to think of the need for all of us to get together to address this vital issue. It was way too big for us to be playing Parliamentary games when the country was on the brink of disintegration. I made up my mind to respond to CBK’s call for a joint national effort superseding petty party politics. At the same time the UNP leadership was being very petty indeed in blocking every governmental initiative at achieving a consensus on the ethnic front.

Overtures

Thanks to our constant tours abroad many friendships had been forged between MPs from the two sides of the Parliamentary divide. Even in Parliament we could meet freely and go to the extent of grousing about our own party in confidence. In any Parliament there are so many issues – some important but mostly trivial – which leads to the formation of cliques, interest groups and friendships which are keenly watched by the respective whips and the party leaders. However they are usually restricted to one’s own party and do not cross cut party lines.

The lobbies are so designed that there is no free flow among all the MPs. The ruling party MPs hang out in the lobby on their side of the chamber while the Opposition occupies their own lobby with doors leading to the Opposition benches in the chamber. There is some interaction in the dining room but most MPs tend to sit with their friends for meals while MPs of splinter parties invariably sit together as if they would be compromised if they “dine with the enemy”.

In conversation with malwatte Mahanayake Rambukwelle Vipassi

I spoke to GL Peiris, Mangala Samaraweera and CV “Puggy” Gooneratne about my disenchantment with the leadership of the UNP and its obstructionist policies. They all had a direct line to CBK and were enthusiastic about a possible crossover especially because both sides were now preparing for the forthcoming Presidential election of December 2000 which promised to be a hard fought one. CBK whom I knew from my CCS days and also as a friend of her husband Vijaya Kumaratunga, gave the green light and a meeting with her was arranged at “Visumpaya” which at that time was the official residence of GL.

I knew that she had consulted my friend Anuruddha Ratwatte who had veto powers about party developments in Kandy district. He was always unsure about his position as a vote winner. He was at daggers drawn with Lakshman Kiriella and had only a joking relationship with DM Jayaratne who always deferred to him in party matters. Only in my case did he exceptionally agree to expand the number of SLFP MPs in the district by accepting me into the SLFP fold.

Even then he was wary about appointing me as the organizer for Galagedera since his acolyte and election agent named Samarakone had been appointed to that position to consolidate Ratwatte’s electoral chances. Instead he suggested that I accept the post of organizer of Kandy electorate. Kandy is the smallest electorate in Kandy district and was a UNP stronghold with its preponderance of minority votes. However I agreed knowing full well that my organisation in Galagedera and Harispattuwa was strong and capable enough to deliver sufficient votes under the PR system to send me to Parliament even if I could not win the Kandy seat which was a UNP “pocket borough”.

Rukman

But I had in the meanwhile to coordinate the group that was willing to cross over to the government. I can now reveal that our group was greatly encouraged by the support extended by Rukman Senanayake who had actually set the ball rolling in his discussions with us. Till the last moment when he unexpectedly decided to abandon us and remain in the UNP, he was virtually the leader of our group.

He had been sidelined by JRJ and had fared badly as the leader of his own political party which had challenged JRJ. He had rejoined the UNP but was cold shouldered by his kinsman Ranil. At this stage we received a shot in the arm when EIle Gunawansa Thero who had been a supporter of Gamini and a critic of Ranil, decided to join us and allow us the use of his temple in Colombo 7 as our base. He knew us “conspirators” well and had been busy earlier trying to promote Susil (Moonesinghe) as a candidate for the forthcoming Presidential election.

Once Susil threw in his lot with us Elle Gunawansa promoted the conspiracy and virtually became its “spiritual guide”. Clearly the bandwagon was rolling and many UNP dissidents promised to come over after the first wave of crossovers. Among them were Harold Herat, Mervyn Silva,Vincent Perera, Harindra Corea, Walgamage and Rohan Abeygunasekara. Later we persuaded Ronnie de Mel Also to leave the UNP and join CBK.

All this was conveyed to Mangala Samaraweera who kept CBK informed. He entertained our group for drinks at his house in Paget Road perhaps to assess for himself the depth of our commitment, for our group consisted of many “grandees” of the UNP. With a Presidential election looming shortly this was a good break for the incumbent President who then personally got involved with the nitty gritty of the “cross over”. She had to be sure because in politics there are many developments which seem promising but trend to fizzle out at the last minute thereby leaving the host wondering why he or she got into this mess in the first place. In the meanwhile we raised an issue I had taken up internally with the UNP leadership by publicly supporting a call for a joint effort to solve the national question by forming a “national government”. This cry which has I wen launched by CBK, received much attention from the media.

At the same time there were UNPers like Hameed and Tissa Attanayake, whose ambitions were thwarted by my entry to Kandy politics and who were egging on Ranil and Gamini Athukorale to take action against me. I had a “mole” close to Athukorale who informed me about his attempts as party secretary to sideline me. He was trying to take revenge on Gamini Dissanayake’s memory and on Wickreme Weerasooria by penalizing me.

It was a fluid situation and I believe that Ranil thought that he could some how placate me in view of the long standing friendship I had with him and his family. In fact he told me that his mother had inquired about this controversy thereby emphasizing the strong personal links that I had with him and his father Esmond. Ranil had been my guest in Paris as a Minister and at a party meeting he referred to the dinner I offered him in the posh Hotel Voltaire in the left Bank in Paris and a visit to a naughty night club “Deux Boule” with its cabaret which usually held Sri Lankan visitors spell bound.

He had instructed his close advisor and my friend Milinda Moragoda to meet me and iron out any differences. He fixed a luncheon meeting at the Japanese restaurant in the Hilton Hotel. Milinda was accompanied by Ranasinghe, his factotum who had been assigned to be an aide to Ranil. Earlier Ranasinghe had worked with the DUNF and knew me quite well. I realized that he had been brought along as a witness.

He told me that Ranil had no problem about the others leaving the party but was concerned about my decision to abandon him. He also told me that Ranil was aware of the machinations of Tissa Attanayake and Hameed and that he did not approve of it. I spoke candidly to Milinda about the shabby treatment meted out to me and the genuine need to have a national government to meet the fast deteriorating ethnic situation. In any case I was not alone in this attempt and we had gone too far to change our minds.

He must have reported all this because Ranil called me after a meeting at Sirikotha and said that he had to go by seniority and that he proposed to remedy the situation soon and that he had assigned me the portfolio of Power and Energy in his “shadow cabinet”. We parted amicably enough but that was my last visit to Sirikotha and the end of transactions with Ranil as my political leader. He made a last ditch attempt by drafting DB Wijetunga to urge me to remain. But I genuinely felt that I would be more at home with the culture of the PA than the UNP at that juncture.

I realized that the UNP propaganda machine would now be targeting our group after a pro UNP journalist who was close to Ranil told me that he had been pulled up for publishing an interview with me in his weekly review of political news. A contingent of journalists like Victor Ivan, Varuna Karunatilleke, Lasantha Wickrematunge and Upul Joseph Fernando who in their animosity to CBK were rooting for Ranil to win the forthcoming election, began to publish articles critical of the move to promote the concept of a national government.

Shan Wickremesinghe’s TNL station was constantly criticizing our move. At the same time Sirisena Cooray who was my friend met me several times and requested me to give up the idea of leaving the UNP and to join him in setting up a group which would fight internally for reform. I knew that this was an impossibility. All executive power had been vested in the party leader after the Kataragama convention of the UNP. Sirisena Cooray faded away from active politics after that though we did meet from time to time in his Lake Drive house to talk about the good old days. Since my daughter Varuni lived next door to him at Lake Drive we kept in touch till he sold his property and moved on to Australia.

It was not difficult for us to counter attack with our concept of a “national government”. The state media were all on our side. I met the Mahanayakas of Malwatta and Asgiriya who endorsed the idea of unity. The Mahanayake of Malwatte, Rambukwelle Vipassi was very close to me. He immediately endorsed my views in an interview which became the main headline of Sinhala newspapers. The influential Asgiriya priest Warakawe told the press that “Sarath Amunugama will never take a decision which is detrimental to national interests”. I then met the former President Wijetunga who also endorsed my stand leading to another banner headline.

We were winning the media war when members of the public began to write to the newspapers supporting us. Gamini Fonseka also gave an interview in support and UNP leaders then issued a directive that its members should not contact the media without permission from Sirikotha, which was a sure sign that they were getting worried about losing the media war. I gave a public lecture at the Fort YMBA advocating a national government. The impending split was front page political news. The “face off” in the UNP could no longer be hidden. It was time for action.

(Excerpted from Volume 3 of the Sarath Amunugama autobiography) ✍️

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Features

The NPP Government is more than a JVP offspring:

Published

5 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

5 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

5 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