Features

Ridi Vihare: A temple and a book

Published

4 years ago

2021/12/25

Ridi Vihare: The Flowering of Kandyan Art
Dr. SinhaRaja Tammita-Delgoda
Stamford Lake Publications, 2006, pp. 210, Rs 3,750

Reviewed

by Uditha Devapriya

This is a fascinating study of one of the more fascinating Buddhist temples of Sri Lanka, authored by one of our foremost historians. The Ridi Vihare, or the ‘Silver Temple’, traces its history to the second century BC. It occupied a prominent place until the 14th century AD, when it disappeared from view. Three hundred years later, during the time of the Nayakkar kings of Kandy, it regained that position. What Dr. SinhaRaja Tammita-Delgoda attempts in his book is to explore its history and its art, viewing them not in isolation but in unison. The result is a superb work of scholarship, at once edifying and accessible.

Though written 15 years ago, before even the civil war ended, the scope and breadth of ‘Ridi Vihare: The Flowering of Kandyan Art’ resonates well even today. Partly, that is because Sri Lanka’s Buddhist temples have never become the object of study that religious institutions elsewhere have. This is certainly an unfortunate omission, a glaring one.

While the Sangha has been studied as an institution, most discernibly by Leslie Gunawardana, very few have tried to understand the social history of Buddhist temples. It is to the likes of Senake Bandaranayake that we owe our understanding of this aspect of our culture. The finest historian of art to come out of the country, Dr. Bandaranayake authored the finest work of scholarship on Buddhist art. Yet while ‘The Rock and Wall Paintings of Sri Lanka’ remains essential reading, it is a testament to where we are now and how we regard our past that since its publication, no comparable effort has come out.

Sinhala historians frequently do write monographs on these institutions, and many of them are available for cheap and even free, often at the very places their monographs are about. Yet while such efforts are laudable, they are hardly enough. To highlight the uniqueness of these places, it is necessary to dig deeper, to go beyond essays, to put the Buddhist temple of Sri Lanka in its proper historical context. Such an undertaking requires time and money, a sense of purpose, an overwhelming desire to probe.

It is that purpose and desire which colours Dr. Tammita-Delgoda’s outstanding work. It stands out not so much as a scholarly foray as a labour of love, an exploration into our past, who we are, and what we make of ourselves. Interspersed with photographs, diagrams, and illustrations, all painstakingly taken and meticulously captioned, the book doesn’t just focus on the temple, it uses it as the base from which to explore everything around it. As Dr. Siran Deraniyagala informs us in the introduction, Ridi Vihare offers no less than “a microcosm of Sri Lanka’s turbulent past.” This is a point the author engages with constantly.

How the book came about is as interesting as what it contains. Due to the high position it occupied in late mediaeval Sri Lanka, Ridi Vihare forged ties with Malwathu Maha Viharaya, one of the two Buddhist monastic chapters within the Siam Nikaya. Over the last 250 years, three of the Chief Incumbents of Ridi Vihare have wound up as Chief Prelates of Malwatta.

It was one of these Chief Prelates, Thibbotuwawe Sri Siddhartha Sumangala Thera, who took over the task of teaching “the religion, the philosophy and the customs of the Sinhalese” to the author. After his stint ended, Sumangala Thera requested his erstwhile student to write about the temple he was serving and officiating at the time. It was as a result of his request, and the author’s only too eager response, that this book came about.

Writing the book was not easy. Having begun in 1998, Dr. Tammita-Delgoda had to stop mid-way. The main problem was funding; not so much for travel or research as for photography. Desperately in need of money, and with no one to get it from, the entire project had to be stalled for several years. It was picked up again only through the intervention of a much loved icon: Sri Lanka’s most celebrated photographer, Nihal Fernando, who agreed to undertake its photography through his outfit, Studio Times, at no cost.

Thanks to Fernando’s support and the assistance of friends, patrons, and well-wishers, Dr. Tammita-Delgoda found himself digging deep into the history of the land. Having planned it as the story of a temple, his project soon became so much more.

The history of Ridi Vihare begins with “the greatest king of Anuradhapura”, Dutugemunu, in the second century BC. The Mahavamsa records Dutugemunu as the first of the Sinhalese kings who unified the country. Having achieved this task, he embarked on the construction of stupas, the last of which, the Mahathupa, became a huge undertaking. It was in reply to his prayer, that money be found for the Mahathupa, that silver was found at a cave called Ambattakola in Kurunegala. As a token of gratitude, Dutugemunu had a temple built by a jackfruit tree near that cave. It is here that the Varaka Velandhu Vihare, the oldest and perhaps most important establishment at Ridi Vihare, stands today.

As with all such institutions, the temple amply reflected its times. By the time of the Polonnaruwa kingdom, South Indian influences began making their way to the Ridi Vihare. We are told that a Hindu devale was constructed within the courtyard somewhere after the 12^th Century. Though popular writers portray this as a period of decay and destruction, it was also a period of cultural fusion. Ridi Vihare did not escape such influences, in spite of the impoverished conditions of these years. It remained a centrepiece of the kingdom well into the 14^th Century, though once the capital of the Sinhalese polity shifted from Wayamba to Kotte to Kanda Uda Rata it fell into much decay, decline, and disrepair.

The next chapter of Ridi Vihare unfolds at the time of the Kandyan kings, specifically the Nayakkars and particularly the reign of the second of them, Kirti Sri Rajasinghe. An ardent, passionate patron of Buddhism, Rajasinghe oversaw a period of renaissance marked by the resumption of the ordination of monks, a practice that had fallen into neglect for centuries. We are told of the political conditions prevalent at the time, the ambiguities that dotted the Nayakkars’ rule over an eminently Buddhist realm, and the rebellions against them aided by none less than the leading revivalist of his time, Weliwita Sri Saranankara Thera.

In the course of his reign Kirti Sri Rajasinghe brought Buddhist monasteries under the sway of Malwatta and Asgiriya. This had a profound impact on not just Ridi Vihare, but also the Sangha. It had much to do with the personality of the king himself.

As an outsider looking in, Rajasinghe had to show that he was the true heir to his Sinhalese predecessors. Though Leslie Gunawardana and Gananath Obeyesekere have suggested that opposition to Nayakkar rule was not as prevalent as popular writers make it out to be, there was opposition, and it was considerable. His motives were constantly under scrutiny by the radala aristocracy and clergy, and he needed to prove himself worthy in their eyes. To let go and belittle their concerns was to invite disenchantment and dissent.

It was against this backdrop that Kirti Sri Rajasinghe pursued a policy of detente and then confrontation with Dutch governors, while sponsoring efforts at purifying the Sangha and expelling foreign elements within his kingdom who had been indulged by his predecessors. Spilling over to the religious institutions of his realm, these efforts transformed Ridi Vihare into a leading centre of learning and study, in particular under Thibbotuwawe Sri Siddhartha Buddharakkitha Thera, the closest disciple of Weliwita Sri Saranankara Thera.

Partly due to his upcountry ancestry, Dr. Tammita-Delgoda is at his best in these chapters, when he is charting the social and artistic history of the last Sinhalese kingdom. Having read and researched his sources well, he goes beyond them, conjecturing about the reputation Ridi Vihare would have enjoyed under Buddharakkitha. He takes pains to emphasise that though Kandy was at war with the Dutch, this did not preclude contact between officials and Buddhist monks, a point that shows well in the Delft tiles at the Maha Vihara of Ridi Vihare. Long thought to be a gift from the Dutch Governor to the Vihare’s Chief Incumbent, these objects shed light on the nature of relations between Kandy and Holland.

From historicising Ridi Vihare, Dr. Tammita-Delgoda goes on to deconstruct its topography, periodising its construction from the pre-Christian era to the 20^th Century. He then delves into the paintings and sculptures at the temple. With more than a connoisseur’s eye for the elegant and the sublime, he expresses much distaste for contemporary efforts at repairing the site, particularly the “hideous” restored vahalkada at its entrance. In exploring the inner courtyards and sanctums, he also attempts to reconstruct life as it would have been back in the day, especially through the use of archive images and illustrations.

There is clearly an art historian lurking beneath the historian, and in the chapters on the art and sculpture of Ridi Vihare Dr. Tammita-Delgoda lets him out. Not surprisingly, these make up some of the best forays into Kandyan art and architecture I have read.

Colonial officials and scholars often painted Kandy as a period of cultural decay, a pale reflection of the classical art that once prevailed in Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa. Such generalisations were questioned, rightly, by the likes of Dr. Senake Bandaranayake and Siri Gunasinghe. Dr. Tammita-Delgoda continues their line of critique, unearthing Kandyan art for what it is and not for what it is often imagined to be. Its aim, he observes, was to appeal to devotees, not conform to European rules of perspective and representation.

Because of these insights, the sections on the paintings and sculptures of Ridi Vihare are the most edifying in the book. Even more edifying is the final chapter, a personal meditation on the nature of Sinhalese art. Dr. Tammita-Delgoda provocatively calls it the “art of the poor people”, as it indeed was. Reflecting on Ananda Coomaraswamy’s Mediaeval Sinhalese Art, he contends that the world around these temples shaped their architecture, differentiating them from the much larger monuments of Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa.

Scholars may consider that a defect in Kandyan architecture, but it was a form shaped by the society around it and the privations imposed by colonialism. Hemmed in from all sides, Kandyan temples could not aspire to the gigantism of earlier periods. That they managed to attract devotion and patronage despite this is, in that sense, truly remarkable.

A book like this contains few flaws, indeed almost none at all. Its only limitation is its lack of focus on the material conditions of Kandyan society, the contributions of the people to the construction of these edifices, and the point that such institutions were as much the work of kings and monks as of the citizenry. Dr. Tammita-Delgoda does identify the painters of Ridi Vihare and their backgrounds, but all too often he implies that kings, aristocrats, and monks were all that mattered in 18^th Century Kandy. What were the conjunctions of class and caste that produced these magnificent edifices? We clearly need to know more.

Nevertheless, as a labour of love and a token of gratitude to the monks who tutored the author, ‘Ridi Vihare: The Flowering of Kandyan Art’ remains a first-rate work, the first of many that would follow. What it shows us is a pathway to the past, a way of life which modernity has eroded. Seeing it, one can only quote Ananda Coomaraswamy.

“In the words of Blake,

‘When nations grow old,

The Arts grow cold,

And commerce settles on every tree’.

In such a grim fashion has commerce settled in the East.”

If we don’t make sense of our past, we are doomed to forget it. The result can only be a hideous reconfiguration and reconstruction of our identity, a distortion that bears little to no resemblance to who we once were. It is this point that Dr. SinhaRaja Tammita-Delgoda brings up, a point we would do well to acknowledge and to heed.

The writer can be reached at udakdev1@gmail.com

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Features

The NPP Government is more than a JVP offspring:

Published

19 hours ago

2026/04/12

Thilina Walpola

Rohana Wijeweera

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

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

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

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

April 5 anniversary nostalgia

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

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

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

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

Strands of nationalism

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

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

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

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

Criticisms as expectations

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

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

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

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

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

by Rajan Philips

Features

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

Published

20 hours ago

2026/04/12

Thilina Walpola

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

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

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

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

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

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

Losers and Winners

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Rajan Philips

Features

CIA’s hidden weapon in Iran

Published

20 hours ago

2026/04/12

Thilina Walpola

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Nilantha Ilangamuwa