Features

Some Vignettes of Italy

Published

1 year ago

2024/12/22

Thilina Walpola

Bracciano Lake, Trevignano

(Excerpted from Falling Leaves, an anthology of memoirs by LC Arulpragasam)

I need now to recount my sailing adventures, or shall we say, misadventures. Although I had never sailed before, I did not think twice before I shoved off on my own. On my first effort, with the wind at my back, I unfurled my sails in goose-wing style and was soon hurtling along at a whistling pace. I cannot describe the exhilaration of being one with the water and the wind, with the wind at my back and the gurgle of water in my wake. After about two hours, I reached the other side of the lake near Trevignano, just as the sun was setting.

It was quite an achievement and quite a view. So I sat in the boat, smoking a triumphant cigarette, while watching the beautiful sunset. It was only then that I realized that the wind that had helped me to cross the lake would now prevent me from returning. How I managed to return home– is the stuff of story books. It was a dark night – and I could not make out which was land and which was deeper water! I had to spend the night, partly in my boat and partly in the freezing water! Needless to say, I returned home only in the morning.

I had other sailing mishaps too. I had promised my daughter to take her to the airport in time to catch her flight. This was the first time that she was leaving home – to go to College far away in another continent: it as a big day for the family. I thought that there was time enough to go to the lake and return. At the lake, I could not resist the temptation of taking the boat out for a small spin on the lake. But I had not bargained with the prospect of capsizing! In the end, I just made it in time to catch the flight (fortunately the plane was a few minutes late), but not without raising the anxiety levels of my family, and especially of my daughter!

My happiest days in Italy were spent by this lake; and our most treasured memories are buried there. First, it cast a spell over me: even when we approached it over its surrounding hills: its sight alone overpowered me. Second, the surrounding villages, with their old cobbled streets and quaint houses takes us back to a long-gone age, bringing the past alive before our eyes. Here, we were able to enjoy the company of the old paisani of the village, the baker, the cobbler, the blacksmith, as well as the owners of the small trattorias by the water.

Thirdly and sadly, it was the only place where we spoke Italian, because we otherwise interacted only with FAO’s English-speaking families, whereas the lake gave us the chance to speak Italian. Fourthly, for the same reason, the only Italian friends we made in Italy were by virtue of our weekends spent there. Fifthly, I learned quite a bit about horticulture and viticulture through the fruit trees and vines that I planted, pruned and nurtured there with my own hands. Lastly, and most preciously, I have memories of the lake itself in all its moods: its calmness in the morning, its brisk (sailing) winds rising around noon, its tranquil sunsets and the lulling lap of its waves at night. In fact when I think of the lake, a great sense of calmness overcomes me, followed by an acute sense of loss, for that part of my life which I lost with it. It is what I miss most when I think of our 30 years in Italy.

Italian Greatness

We lived in Rome, Italy, for 30 years from 1966 to 1997. We bow in appreciation of its great people. The Italians have a long history of greatness, from Roman times through to the Renaissance and beyond.

Mussolini in his grandiose manner built a new city, just outside Rome. Among others, he built a monument to the Italian people in grand fascist style. On the façade of the building, he inscribed in bold letters a paean of praise to the greatness of the Italian people. It claimed that the Italian people were a people of writers, of painters, of sculptors, of thinkers, of navigators, of scientists, etc. When I first read it, I dismissed it as more of Mussolini’s bombast. But later, thinking about it, I realized that it was all true. Of writers there was Dante Alighieri; of painters, Rafael, da Vincil and many others; of sculptors, Michelangelo and Donatello; of navigators, Cristoforo Colombo and Amerigo Vespucci; of astronomers, Galileo; of scientists, da Vinci and Enrico Fermi, etc. This is a real tribute to the Italian people. As individuals, they are unmatched. It is only that their institutions do not work!

Colour Conscious?

As far back as Roman times, there was no colour bar. In Caesar’s time, the Romans were more worried about the length of Cleopatra’s nose rather than about her colour. Besides, some of the last Roman Emperors were from the Middle East. In the ‘sixties and ‘seventies the Italians did not share the colour restrictions that characterized the northern imperial powers, such as Britain, the Netherlands and Germany. This was because the Mediterranean countries shared the mixture of ethnicities and cultures of their region. While the northern European colonizers frowned on miscegenation, making it a dirty word, the southern European colonizers even encouraged it, as the Spanish did in Latin America.

In the early days (1970s), when I had capsized (my boat) in a lake near Rome, I made my way to the road, clad only in my swimsuit. Competing cars screeched to a halt in order to give me a ride: they did not seem to mind my colour. After I reached my own car, I sped home on the autostrada, clad only in my swimsuit, with no money or clothes since they were all at the bottom of the lake, leaving me with only my dark skin. When I came up to the payment booth in the autostrada, I had no money to pay the toll. The uniformed guards who manned the gate, seeing my plight, contributed their own money to let my car through the automated gates. My colour proved to be a plus factor, not a minus one.

It all changed with unbridled immigration. One has only to go to the Termini now, the main railway station in Rome, to see the number of migrants from all regions of the world, hanging around until they could find a job. An Italian colleague, who was a communist and very pro-immigration, got fed up when she was accosted at so many traffic lights (12 times each way, to the office and back) by immigrants offering to clean her car windscreen. After months of encouraging this, she cried ‘Basta’ (enough!). A dramatic increase in the number of coloured immigrants without employment had morphed into a ‘colour problem’.

After a time, some newspapers carried lurid stories associating immigrants with crime. This brings me to my own story. Much later (in the 1990s), when returning from a supermarket, I saw a little old lady returning from the same store, staggering under the weight of two heavy bags in each hand. Since I was walking in the same direction, I went up to the old lady and asked: “Signora, can I help you to carry those bags?” Even I was not ready for her reaction: “No, no”, she shrieked shrilly, physically recoiling, as if I were a thief! I made off hastily like a real thief, since everyone was looking at me as if I was one! This is what unchecked immigration can do: it can easily change another problem into a colour problem!

Argumentative

In 1967, when we had just arrived in Rome, we were trying to reach some place in town. Having gone through the warren of old streets in Rome, we were completely lost. So we drew up to an ‘island’ between tramlines. We asked two gentlemen who were waiting there, directions to the street that we were seeking. One said: go straight to the next traffic light and turn right. The other contradicted him, exclaiming, gesturing with his hands: ‘No, no: go straight and then turn left’. They went on arguing hotly whether we should turn left or right, while we looked on impatiently, with cars honking loudly behind us. In the end, we had to move on because of the wild honking. Looking back in the rear-view mirror, I found to my amusement and amazement that the two had moved from verbal argumentation to physical assault! All this in order to help a stranger!

I was also to witness their arguments in the 1970s and early 1980s. At that time, the Italians had no third-party insurance for their cars. When there was an accident, it mattered most who shouted the most, arguing loudly in order to prove that the other party was at fault and should pay for the repairs. Once, I saw a lady with an infant in her arms, rocking it violently to the rhythm of her shouting. As she got more worked up, she put the infant on the ground, so as to better use her hands in the argument! All the shouting matches ceased when third-party motor insurance was made compulsory by law! Their institutions had failed them: so they had to shout at each other!

How to Talk: My Hands were Tied, No?

Once when walking, I saw a woman talking in a public telephone on the pavement. The woman was holding the phone in one hand, with a large handbag hanging over her shoulder and cigarette in her mouth. Soon she started using her free hand, while continuing to puff wildly on the cigarette. Seeing that it was not enough, she put the phone under her chin, so as to gesticulate with both hands. Since her handbag was slipping from her shoulder, she threw it on the ground, and also threw away her cigarette, so that she could use both hands better. The spectacle of her doing all this, sticks in my mind’s eye, even after 40 years!

You may have heard this joke before; but I repeat it as a caricature of Italians speaking with their hands. Three Allied soldiers were captured by the Germans in WWII: one British, one French, and one Italian. Each was tortured to extract information on where the Allied formations were camped. First, the British soldier was severely tortured, so that despite his renowned stiff upper lip, he broke down and spilled the beans. Second, the French soldier was treated to the same, and after repeated torture, he too broke down and spilled the beans. The Italian soldier was severely tortured repeatedly, but he would not speak. When he returned to the prison, the British and French soldiers asked him how he could have withstood such torture without divulging any information. To which the Italian replied: “How to talk: my hands were tied, no?”

Bella Figura!

In the 1960s and 1970s, it was ‘the done thing’ for Italians to go to the beach in summer. Some families who could not afford it also went on borrowed money, while others only pretended to do so. The latter would tell their neighbours and people living down their street that they were going to the sea. They could be seen packing for the beach, even loading their beach-chairs on top of their cars. They would leave at 5 a.m., as advertised. They would then smartly drive to their mother-in-law’s house at the other end of town, where they would lie low for the duration of their fabulous trip to the sea. At the appointed time they would return, full of stories of their fantastic time at the beach, cutting indeed a bella figura! (This happened in the 1960s. I do not think that it is happening now).

Italian Drivers

The Italians are the most skilled drivers in the world, flashing their headlights to signal that they are going through, avoiding accidents by a hair’s-breadth. However, this almost caused the death of my friend Reggie Arnolda, who was working in Rome at that time (about 1975). Reggie was driving his Peugot 404 Station-Wagon on a main avenue in Rome with many traffic lights. As he came to a traffic light, it was turning from amber to red. Naturally, Reggie came to a complete stop. The Italian driver just behind him, assuming that Reggie would speed through the traffic light, as Italians did in those days, stamped on his accelerator to speed through the light. This resulted in a big crash, with Reggie’s station wagon accordioning, so that the back number plate coming to rest on his neck. One inch more – and Reggie would be dead!

After many years in Italy, I too came to drive like the Italians – just in order to survive! Once, when my wife was driving, we came to a traffic light where the light was turning from amber to red. I shouted excitedly to her to speed through. But she came to a complete stop, with Italian horns blaring, throwing the whole piazza into confusion! I asked her reproachfully, why she didn’t shoot through the red light. She replied, “but the light was red, no?” She added with irrefutable logic: “Then what should I do when the light turns green?” I was stumped!

Cloak and Dagger!

One night, my wife and I were walking from the opera with an Italian couple. The man was an old-world Italian gentleman, who when introduced to a lady would bring his heels together, bow and kiss her hand. We were walking in the shadow of the ancient buildings of Rome, while cars and scooters were zipping past us. While my Italian friend was walking ahead with my wife, I noticed that he was walking on the inner side of the street, leaving my wife on the outer side, unprotected from the roaring traffic. Finally, my curiosity overcame me and I asked him why he was not following the usual practice of walking on the outer side of the lady.

He explained that he was following the practice of old Italy. When assassins or robbers wanted to attack someone, they hid in the shadows of the old buildings. So the gallant gentlemen of yore guarded their fair ladies by walking on the inner side, nearer the dark buildings, rather than on the outer side. My friend was just following the practice of old Italy.

Immigrant Tales

It is interesting to note the different levels and types of migration from poor countries to the more developed. Qualified professionals, like doctors, engineers and accountants migrated to English-speaking countries (like England, Australia and the USA) because they were already proficient in the language for jobs in their own professions. On the other hand, unskilled workers were prepared to go to any country (France, Germany or Italy), because knowledge of the language was not required for unskilled work. This was the reason for the great migration of unskilled youth to Italy. Sociological studies also show that the first migrants to unknown shores tend to be the adventurers or ‘ne’er-do-wells’, since persons with stable jobs would not risk a leap into the unknown.

My first story is in regard to an unattached man, who got a job as a domestic ‘do-all’ in a single-member family. In order to impress his family and friends back home, he sent a photo of himself. But first, he pulled his employer’s TV set, his employer’s music console and all the telephones in the house around his employer’s bed, to show how important he had become. He then wore his employer’s posh shirt and got into his employer’s posh bed. Then, while appearing to speak importantly on the phone, he had his friend take a photo. When the photo was sent home and did the rounds in the village, every young man was jumping to go to Italy!

In the ‘eighties and ‘nineties, middlemen had got into the act. The cost of getting into Italy had grown significantly. Migrants had to mortgage or sell their properties to pay the middlemen, while bearing all the risk and cost of failure themselves. One story sums it all. Three families decided to take the risk. They mortgaged/sold their properties so as to pay the middleman upfront. They were then taken to Hambantota, where the boat (probably a fishing trawler) was awaiting them. They embarked with much trepidation, because they knew that they had burned their boats back home.

After traveling for about seven days at sea, one night the captain showed them the lights of Italy. It was night when the boat reached the shore. When telling them to disembark, he warned them to hide in the bushes till daybreak. They should then walk cautiously in twos and threes into the nearby town. They followed his instructions to the letter. At dawn, they cautiously entered the town: only to find that they were back in Hambantota in Sri Lanka, the place where they had embarked! You can imagine their chagrin and dismay – to find that they were not in Italy but back in Sri Lanka! They had been literally taken for a ride! They now had to return to their villages – to face humiliation, indebtedness and despair.

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Features

The NPP Government is more than a JVP offspring:

Published

3 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

3 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

3 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