Features

Nightmare in the sea off Kalpitiya and old-time resthouses

Published

3 years ago

2023/04/2

Thilina Walpola

The aluminium boat at Kollankanatta, Wilpattu West Sanctuary Coast (late 1950)

Excerpted from the authorized biography of Thilo Hoffmann
by Douglas B. Ranasinghe

In the 1950s and 60s Thilo kept a flat-bottomed aluminium boat fitted with an outboard motor at the Baurs Red Mill property on the banks of the Kelani Ganga.During the north-east monsoon, trips were made to Mount Lavinia or Negombo on weekends. With a rough sea it was often difficult to negotiate the transition from the river to the sea, taking the breakers in the proper way and avoiding sandbanks both in and out of the estuary. During the south-west monsoon Negombo was reached through the Hamilton Canal and Negombo Lagoon.

On one occasion the boat was transported by lorry to Kalpitiya. From there very early in the morning Thilo, Mae and David Whittaker, who had built the vessel, left for Kollankanatta. There, in Wilpattu, by Portugal Bay, on a flat stretch of seashore overgrown with iluk, Thilo had a lease of one acre of land where he had wanted to build a bungalow. He later gave this up when, chiefly on his own proposal, the area was added to the Wilpattu National Park.

At this place they spent the morning exploring archaeological sites, and befriending a Sinhalese fisherman by the name of Alfred, pronounced ‘Alpred’. He tried to warn them of the up-coming wind, and urged them to return early to Kalpitiya.

The visitors did not understand him properly, and left only at mid-afternoon. By now the south-west wind had thrown up heavy waves. These pounded the boat mercilessly and nearly drowned the occupants in constant heavy spray. After an hour or more of trying they had to give up the intention of returning that day. Eventually, the night was spent, cold and uncomfortable, on a rocky shelf of the shore between Karuwalakuda and Vellamundel, about halfway back to Kalpitiya.

At dawn, on a mirror-smooth surface and in no time, they reached Kalpitiya. There the lorry and driver awaited their return. But the delay had caused a major alarm situation at Baurs and at Palugaswewa Estate, minutes short of a request for a police and aerial search operation.

In those days the islands and shores north of Kalpitiya, in Dutch and Portugal Bays, were uninhabited. (Thilo had proposed to extend the Wilpattu National Park westward to include this marine area and its two main islands.)

Only during the north-east monsoon would some coastal fishing camps be in use there, the catch being dried for easy transport to Kalpitiya at the end of the season. There were a few Catholic churches, at Pallugaturai for example. During the south-west monsoon the area is difficult, and was abandoned, the shallow water being rough and muddy. Today it is populated throughout, and both bays are astir with hundreds of noisy fishing boats.

Years later, in the 1970s, Kalpitiya was again the starting point of an adventure. Mr de Livera who owned Titus Stores, and whose father Thilo had known, maintained a fleet of small fishing trawlers there. He phoned to say that his captains had reported a mass movement of turtles in the sea west of the Kalpitiya Peninsula, and invited Thilo to join one of the ships. Thilo could not resist such an opportunity, and he drove up with his friend Guido Baumann.

They joined the boat which left around 4 p.m. that Saturday. It was a pleasant trip up Dutch Bay and out to sea south of Karaitivu Island. Pods of dolphins were basking in the setting sun.But as the evening and then night progressed a strong north-east wind came up and waves began to rock the small vessel. Thilo and Guido are bad sailors. The expedition turned into a nightmare for both. This was made worse by offers of food or a drink of arrack from time to time by the captain. Wireless phone calls from their host in Colombo who inquired about their well-being did not improve it!

At about 10 p.m. the engine was stopped, the crew had released a very large drift net, and the boat rode at one end of it until morning, pitching and tossing in the heavy waves in a screw-like motion. It was, says Thilo, probably the worst night either of them had ever spent. Guido lay on deck vomiting in the bitter cold. Thilo lay on a bench in the stinking, cockroach-infested hold, braced with his feet and elbows against being tossed into the bilge, his innermost parts seeming to erupt at each upward jolt.

At daybreak the net was hauled in. There were less than a dozen fish. The waves had abated and the boat peacefully chugged back to Kalpitiya. Not one turtle had been sighted.

Farther north on the West coast, Thilo explored the area which includes Devil’s Point, and the uninhabited twin islands of Iranativu, on the coast south of Pooneryn. The only building on the islands is a Catholic church, as on some other remote coasts and islands used by seasonal fishermen.

He was able to visit the Great and Little Basses off the South-West coast on two occasions, with Basil Gunasekera, the Navy chief. Thilo spent one night in each of the historic lighthouses, which are equipped and maintained like ships.

To get to these was itself an adventure: first by rowing boat from the beach at Kirinda to a Navy ship anchored in the bay, then in that vessel close to the Basses, again by rowing boat to the lighthouse, and then finally hauled up by a swivelling wooden crane, hand-operated by the two-man resident crew, to its base.

The transit can be quite tricky when the sea is rough, as it was both times. In the past it was possible to approach the lighthouses only during the short calm season in March-April, and the crews were then marooned for the best part of the year.

Resthouses

The government `resthouses’, set up by the British, formed a network throughout the island during Thilo’s early years, and generally provided good service to the traveling public. He remarks:They were usually run by a local authority, often the GA of the province, and were mostly pleasant buildings with clean and ample rooms. They often stood in fine locations, on a hill or a riverbank or the seashore.

Meals were varied and prescribed in detail by the authority. Prices were very moderate, less than Rs 10/- per day with meals. Generally the resthouse keepers were friendly, genial men, quite a few of them famous for food and service.

“I used resthouses freely, seldom staying in one of the few hotels, except at Kandy and Nuwara Eliya. Advance booking was then not necessary; when, rarely, one place was full you just drove to the next.

This happy state of affairs changed first gradually, then with increasing pace since the 1960s.

“Resthouses disappeared or became shabby and noisy pubs, even dens of vice. Buildings were put to other uses. Later some were rescued and re-appeared as cheap (not price-wise) and tastelessly over-decorated ‘hotels’ with surly personnel. The disappearance of the resthouse system as it still existed in the post-war period is regrettable.

“Among well known and frequented resthouses were those of Bentota, Belihuloya, Hambantota, Arugam Bay, Kalkudah, Vakarai, KKS, Jaffna, Polonnaruwa, Sigiriya, Pelmadulla and Negombo. Famous for seafood, especially fresh – not frozen –crab were the old resthouses at Negombo, Mannar and Jaffna.

“Some were romantic and picturesque beyond measure. The Kalkudah resthouse, covered with a thick thatch of cadjan over beautiful palmyra rafters, was situated beneath massive trees on the shore of a blue bay. Particularly charming was the resthouse at Elephant Pass. Built into the old Dutch fort, and with its large trees, it truly embellished, and stood out in, the bleak flatness of the shallow wetlands between the Chundikkulam and the Jaffna lagoons, through which runs the causeway connecting the Jaffna peninsula with the mainland.”

One late evening in the early 1950s Thilo and Mae arrived there and were assigned the last available room. During the night Mae was disturbed by a mysterious noise and movement in the room. Eventually Thilo closed the window and quiet returned. At breakfast Dr and Mrs H. A. Dirckze of Anuradhapura, who were also guests, casually informed them that the particular room was known to be haunted and thus shunned by visitors! Thilo thinks it was a bat.

The Elephant Pass fort and resthouse were severely damaged in 2000 during the battle with the LTTE. When they seized it they razed the structure to the ground. Not a trace remains of it today. The Portuguese fort at Pooneryn, too, had been badly damaged in the previous decade. Thilo, continues:

“These resthouses, just like the old temples, churches, villages and towns with their public buildings, fitted into the landscape like the key into a lock, exemplifying and accentuating the structure and atmosphere of the land. Today, unfortunately, most buildings, by themselves or collectively, are just blots on the landscape.

“Of course, not all resthouses were excellent. I remember the time at Kalpitiya when we had to flee from our rooms and spend the night in the car as the beds were teeming with bedbugs. At Matara and Weligama the beds were defective and the matresses bumpy, comparable to a potholed road. But on the whole resthouses were just right, and gave good value for money, which you can say for few hotels today.

“An unusual place was the resthouse on the Horton Plains, a very remote and lonely area in those days, especially in bad weather. It was accessible only on foot or horseback. The building had been put up in the late 19th century by Thomas Farr of North Cove Estate, Bogawantalawa as a hunting lodge. Farr was a famous ‘elk’ (sambhur) hunter. A fine stag would be chased over the plains by a pack of dogs, cornered and surrounded, then despatched by the hunter with a knife. This sport, called ‘running to hounds,’ was continued until the middle of the last century.

“The building then became a resthouse under the GA of Nuwara Eliya, and was mainly used by trout fishermen. In the 1970s Harold Peiris acquired it and named it Farr Inn. Still later the Ceylon Hotels Corporation took it over. Today it is a visitor centre of the Department of Wildlife Conservation. As a resthouse it never was a comfortable place. The beds were bumpy and damp, in an all-pervading cold and musty atmosphere.”

We might note here that in the early 20th century the open patanas of Uva formed the background of another peculiar British tradition: fox hunting. Not far from Gurutalawa the Erabedda Hunt had its clubhouse, stables and kennels. On horseback ladies and gentlemen in full dress, with topee (solar helmet), would chase ‘foxes’ (jackals), riding behind large packs of dogs. Today the old clubhouse is the bungalow of Mickelfield Farm, and the patanas are settled and cultivated. The jackals disappeared from the area long ago.

On and off road

Thilo has always been a fast driver, but he has never had a serious accident. In 1947 his first long drive with the new MG was a trip to Jaffna, around the Peninsula and back to Elephant Pass via Nakarkovil. A thrown-up stone had damaged the oil pipe of the car and it just managed to get to Anuradhapura at nightfall. There one of those tinkering jobs for which Ceylon was rightly famous was carried out, and made the return to Colombo possible.

After the MG TC and a Chevrolet cabriolet, Thilo owned an “uncomfortable” early Volkswagen Beetle, and subsequently various models of Peugeot cars. The first was a 403. He fitted this with a Swiss Motosacoche supercharger, which was engaged by pressing a button, and produced “a satisfying whine”. Many drivers of faster models of cars were surprised when it overtook them. Thereafter, he stuck to Peugeots, finding them eminently suitable for the rough conditions of use in Sri Lanka, with small adjustments, such as Koni shock-absorbers and protection against knocks from below. The last such car was a 504, which he bought in 1972, and drove till very recently.

Thilo also had a Land Rover Series I, maintained in fine condition like his other vehicles. It was specially outfitted for exploring in tough situations. There was a snorkel to the exhaust for deep water and, most important, a powerful winch. Axe, mammoties, strong 100-foot nylon ropes, katties, other tools, and spare parts were always on board.

Many times he found himself so immobilized in deep mud or sand that the chassis had to be dug out, and materials for the wheels to grip found and laid, before the jeep could be moved forward or back.Worst were the tracks created by the tall-wheeled bullock carts used in Eastern jungles and plains. In dry weather the ridge in the middle of the track became stone-hard. One had to drive with two wheels on this and the other two up across one of the ruts on either side. Sometimes the vehicle would slip sideways and lie on the ridge with all four wheels off the ground. There were only two options. If a strong tree was within reach of the rope the winch could be used. If not the middle and sides of the track had to be cut away in hours of dirty, hot, uncomfortable work.

When all else failed help had to be found, sometimes from great distances away. It needed up to 20 men or a tractor to get a truly struck jeep on to safe ground. Thilo recalls an incident where in the absence of men from the village a dozen strong women cheerfully came to the rescue. They were, of course, recompensed for their labour.In the late 1960s and 70s the villagers along the road to Wilpattu National Park used to flood the untarred road during the rainy season. This made it impossible to reach the Park in any kind of vehicle without their help, for which (from the few Park visitors) they collected a kind of toll!

Yet possibly the wildest drive Thilo undertook was in 1994 when he managed to coax his 18-year-old Peugeot 504 up from Arawa to the Uva Estate tea factory. Now demolished, this was one of the country’s most prominently visible buildings, at the abrupt northern end of the Madulsima mountain range, overlooking the wide valley of the Mahaweli.

The ascent is more than 3,000 feet over a distance of barely three miles. Had he got stuck on this incline, which he risked throughout, he would have had to abandon the car, as there was no turning back. His friend Guido Baumann preferred to walk – and was overtaken by a sturdy woman carrying a calf on her shoulders up that slope! Thilo embarked on this seemingly foolhardy adventure because, for decades, the official road map showed a motorable road there. (Reports about this and other errors brought no response from the Survey Department.)

During the insurgency of 1972 Thilo undertook some extensive trips. Never before or after was driving in the country so easy. Due to fear the roads were empty not only of vehicles, but also of people, and even cattle and dogs. He drove to Monaragala and explored the mountain range there. He also paid several visits to Palugaswewa Estate to support the Superintendent and staff during that difficult period.

In other countries

The Hoffmanns travelled mostly in Asia, apart from spending regular leave in Switzerland, at first once in four years, later two. The destinations preferred by them were India and Nepal, also Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Thailand. In Africa, they visited Egypt several times, and Namibia and Botswana once. On two occasions they flew to the Maldives, well before, in Thilo’s words, “an overbearing tourist industry destroyed its unique charms.”

Mae was greatly attracted by Bombay, with its bustling life and the shopping opportunities not only of Indian textiles and handmade articles, but also of antiques, jewellery, books and artifacts of copper, iron, brass and silver, which were often museum pieces. She was especially fascinated by the original ‘Chor Bazaar’ (‘Thieves’ Market’), with its hundreds of stalls in small by-roads and ancient buildings where second-hand goods of all kinds were heaped up for sale. Later, says Thilo, the stalls were turned into shops that became fashionable and air-conditioned, with prices going up accordingly, and the bazaar lost the genuine aura of a `thieves’ market’.

Thilo is a life member of the Bombay Natural History Society, which he visited on several occasions. He knew Salim Ali, the famous ornithologist, quite well and joined several excursions led by him, and a seminar at Periyar in Tamil Nadu. He also knew Ali’s famous colleague S. Dillon Ripley, from the USA.

For the centenary celebrations of the BNHS in 1976 the Hoffmanns arrived at Bombay airport around midnight. As a result of the stringent exchange control in Sri Lanka at the time they did not have a cent in their pockets! The Taj Mahal Hotel failed to send a car for them though they had ordered one. They were stranded at the airport, not even able to use a telephone. Someone took pity on them, advanced them the cost of a taxi, and they had a bed for the night.

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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