Features

Susil in Politics: Some inside stories

Published

4 years ago

2022/04/3

Sahan Weerasooriya

Susil in his office at the Ceylon Broadcasting Corporation in 1970 when he was Chairman and Director General

Remarkable astrological predictions

by Sumi Moonesinghe narrated to Savithri Rodrigo

Having built up one of the biggest businesses in the country from scratch with the help of Maha and Killi (Maharaja), and of course Susil, and then selling it for a substantial price sealed the end of a very eventful chapter for me. Susil was my rock, always there to guide and advise me and to comfort me when things went wrong. But his strong political ambitions were not far from the surface and it was just a matter of time before we all became enmeshed in politics.

I was introduced to politics by Susil, whose wide network of political friends and alliances also meant that we were always engaged in long political discussions. He was a great guru and I a good student. Susil absorbed politics into his very being. From our early days in Singapore, I would listen, discuss and debate politics with him. I remember how he studied the successful transformation of Singapore under the leadership of Lee Kuan Yew incessantly, while we were in that country and even after, very enamoured with Lee’s brand of politics.

Lee was Prime Minister of Singapore for 31 years and his political pragmatism was hailed globally. He was credited with transforming Singapore from a third world to a first world country but was an outspoken critic of the western ideal of democracy. Susil’s leftist ideas resonated well with Lee’s ideology but I have always been a great believer that a good left and right balance is the key to good governance. Eventually, Susil began thinking on these lines and I like to think it was I who converted him!

As the 1977 elections drew near, Susil, who had worked hard for the SLFP government in earlier years, was fully involved with the opposition UNP. Having seen Mrs. Bandaranaike’s socialist policies reduce the country to depths unimaginable, there was renewed vigour to work towards electing a more pragmatic, open economy-oriented UNP government. Prior to the elections therefore, our home became ‘election central’. Susil was working closely with the UNP top guns J R Jayewardene, Ranasinghe Premadasa, Lalith Athulathmudali and Gamini Dissanayake, who all became close friends and would end up at our home, discussing issues and strategies well into the night.

Often there were times when J R would invite us for coffee to his home at Ward Place for some nocturnal discussions. He was 70 years old and had amassed a wealth of political experience and knowledge. Wickrama Weerasooria, who would eventually become Anarkali’s father-in-law, and Gamini Dissanayake would most often be at these little informal chats, and quite a young Ranil Wickremesinghe too.

It was at our home over dinner one day that I remember J R casually mentioning he would be removing Mrs. Bandaranaike’s civic rights. We were utterly and truly shocked. This was unheard of and could be construed as vengeful and manipulative. This would also mean Mrs. Bandaranaike, who would be the Leader of the Opposition if J R won, would be expelled from parliament. This wouldn’t augur well for Sri Lanka’s democracy and I remember each of us at the table, Gamini, Susil and I, vociferously voicing our opposition to the removal of her civic rights. Elina, J R’s wife who was also at the dinner, looked at J R very sternly and said, “Dicky, don’t ever do that!”

But J R wouldn’t listen and went ahead. It was not just Mrs. Bandaranaike who lost her civic rights. He extended that diktat to two of her most powerful acolytes as well –former Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Justice Nihal Jayawickrama and former Cabinet Minister Felix Dias Bandaranaike who were both eminent lawyers. J R impounded their passports and appointed a Special Presidential Commission of Inquiry to investigate alleged abuse and/or misuse of power by the Bandaranaike Government.

The proceedings and findings seemed one-sided and almost vindictive, and with the imposition of civic disabilities, Sirimavo, Nihal and Felix were prohibited from seeking election to parliament, holding any public office or engaging in any political work including making political speeches. They were thus banned from politics for a total of seven years. This was so wrong and went against the fundamental principles of democracy. It is the voters who decide on their elected officials, and permanent secretaries like Nihal, carry out orders given by the elected minister.

It was in 1974, a few years prior to the 1977 elections that I met Gamini Dissanayake, while Mrs. Bandaranaike was yet in power and the country was going through some upheavals. Susil and I had friends in both major political parties – there was Sivali Ratwatte and Upali Wijewardene who strongly supported Mrs. B (as she was called), and J R, Gamini, Lalith and Premadasa who were movers and shakers in the UNP.

Mrs. B had already extended her term by two years and was becoming quite dictatorial. Mrs. B’s son Anura was also among our circle of friends, but he remained non-partisan, although J R was constantly enticing Anura to cross over to the UNP. During the Kalawewa by-election in 1974, J R and Premadasa wanted Anura to get into Parliament. Multiple meetings were held at our home and J R assured Anura that the UNP would not put forward a candidate if Anura contested.

However, the procedure wasn’t that simple. First, the SLFP, which was Anura’s mother’s party, had to nominate Anura as their candidate. Given the relationship, we figured this would be merely procedure; after all, Anura was of Bandaranaike lineage and the Prime Minister’s son. When the SLFP nomination committee sat to make a decision, we assembled at Anuruddha Ratwatte’s home near the Army Headquarters waiting for the results from the nomination board.

But, to our complete surprise, the nomination committee selected an unknown entity to represent the SLFP at the by-elections. The Committee comprised S W R D Bandaranaike’s stalwarts. It was clear that Mrs. B had made it known to them that Anura may become J R’s pawn if he won the election. Anura was inconsolable when he heard the news, quite unable to comprehend being let down by his own mother so publicly.

No sooner had the news been communicated, Sivali’s wife Cuckoo promptly took Anura and his sister Chandrika’s horoscopes and went to visit Mr. Arulpragasam, the astrologer who lived at Station Road, Nugegoda. Having studied the horoscopes for a few minutes, Mr. Arulpragasam looked at Anura’s horoscope and said, “This one will never become anything more than a minister,” but pointed to Chandrika’s and said, “Now, this one will go right to the top!” His words were prophetic. While Anura did eventually get into Parliament but only as Speaker of the House, twenty years after the prediction in 1994, Chandrika was sworn in as Sri Lanka’s fifth President.

Susil was a pragmatist and being a voracious reader, a fount of information and knowledge. This helped him immensely in carving out a successful political career which was well matched with his language capabilities and I should say, handsome looks too. He was elected Chief Minister of the Western Province in 1988, a post he held until 1993. He was Leader of the Opposition of the Provincial Council in 1994, and then went on to become a Member of Parliament for the Colombo District from 2000 to 2002.

Sri Lanka was continuing to grapple with the murderous deeds of the LTTE. Realizing the futility of reasoning with a terrorist organisation, J R decided to enlist the help of the Indian government to quell the LTTE. It was widely believed that Tamil Nadu was quite a hotbed for LTTE supporters and J R needed to get the support of the Indian government to help regain peace in the country. Thus began the discussions for the Indo-Sri Lanka Peace Accord which was signed on July 29. 1987, between Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and J R, enabling the 13th Amendment to Sri Lanka’s Constitution.

The Amendment included the devolution of power to the provinces, a withdrawal of troops and the LTTE to surrender arms. India sent in a Peace Keeping Force to help literally, with keeping the peace. However, the LTTE had not been involved in the talks and before long, the uneasy truce flared into active confrontation. In retaliation, Rajiv Gandhi would eventually be assassinated by a female LTTE suicide bomber, four years after the signing of that accord.

In fact, J R handed me the 13,h Amendment and asked me to read it prior to it being passed. This Amendment was a result of the 1987 Indo-Sri Lanka Accord which was brokered by Rajiv Gandhi, with the diktat for full devolution of power to north and east. J R decided to expand the devolution of power to all nine provinces, creating the provincial councils in Sri Lanka. As a result, parliamentarians’ work was reduced drastically, which meant that the number of MPs could easily be reduced to no more than 100.

When I pointed out this fact to him, he replied, “I agree, but I have to keep everybody happy.” Also the provincial council structure introduced a whole new type of politician and with each successive government, “keeping everyone happy,” became the norm. The trend of large cabinets of useless people crept in. We now have a 225-member Parliament.

Gamini, who played a pivotal role in the Indo-Lanka Peace Accord had become very powerful, with the Indians holding him in high esteem due to the role he played. One of the perks of this recognition was being given the full ‘red carpet’ treatment to see Indian guru Satya Sai Baba, who had built up an impressive following of millions around the world. These followers would throng his residence in Puttaparthi in Andra Pradesh in the hope of getting an audience with the great teacher. So when Gamini was invited to see Baba, we joined him on that trip and when we sat in the same room as Baba, it was quite otherworldly.

Baba’s ‘acts of divinity’ are argued by some to be a sleight of hand, but nevertheless they were impressive. He would magically bring out gifts, presenting various items to those he deemed special. Susil was summoned as well and given a photograph. Tiny, Wickrama’s son was asked to join Baba in another room and came out a few minutes later, smiling. But he refused to tell us anything at the time. Many years later, Tiny divulged that Baba said, “Your future wife is in this room with you!” Now I’m not sure if Tiny concocted that story —that’s what he says Baba told him. Nevertheless as a result of this trip, Gamini’s family and ours are intertwined for life. Rohini, who is Gamini’s eldest sister is Tiny’s mother.

During this period, Susil was Chief Minister of the Western Province and Sri Lanka was battling a war on two fronts —the LTTE and the JVP — Tamil Tiger rebels in the north and the Marxist student rebels in the south. At the height of the JVP insurrection in 1988, parliamentary elections were announced and Susil began campaigning from the Colombo District for the Avissawella seat. Our home was filled with party supporters and security detail because the violence in the country was unrelenting. Not a day went by without an innocent person being senselessly and viciously killed by the JVP, or a bomb or assassination by the LTTE. The JVP’s quest was to kill Government officials or those who were supportive of the Government in order to bring the Government to its knees. But none deserved to die. These were all people who were simply doing their job.

As a result, Susil’s life was also under threat which meant we had security details — men walking around with guns — in our house 24×7. I hated it. This exacerbated the fact that we were living in fear and that is when we decided to move the girls to Singapore as they were missing out on school as well. Schools in Colombo had been shut down due to the continuing violence.

With Susil campaigning with gusto, our house once again turned into Grand Central Station, with endless cups of tea, lunches and dinners being served to hundreds of supporters and party activists. I was juggling multiple roles as my business too was at its peak; thank goodness for my domestic staff who kept the wheels turning in my home very efficiently.

Just as Susil had given me unstinted support in building up my business, I reciprocated when it came to his political work. I dived straight into his campaign, accompanying him to his rallies, helping with his speeches and giving him as much support as I could. I walked around the villages he went to, chatting with the people, finding out about their lives and families.

On one occasion, I struck up a conversation with a rubber tapper, a woman whose work day began at dawn. This meant her daughter had to wait at home for her return later in the day for a meal. “How can your daughter stay hungry until you get back home?” I asked. Having no inkling of who I was, she said, “I buy Anchor milk. When I give her that, the child is not hungry and doesn’t cry until I return. I have tried other types of milk powder but they don’t work the same way.”

On hearing this, when I got back to office I telephoned NZDB and shared the information I heard from the rubber tapper. “How can Anchor milk keep her daughter from hunger, when other milks don’t?” Their reply was, “Most milk powder in your market has 26% fat. But Anchor has 28.5% fat. So when the fat content is higher, it is richer and more filling.” Realising the power of our differentiation, I called my Anchor A team and gave them this titbit of information. The result was this slogan: “All we do is remove the water. All you do is add the water.”

Of all Sri Lanka’s leaders I’ve engaged with, it was President Ranasinghe Premadasa who was my hero. He never forgot what it was like to be poor and would always judge a person on the depth of that knowledge. If any consultant came to him with a theory, the first questions he would ask were, “Have you walked barefoot? Have you ever slept on the ground? Have you ever gone without a meal? If you haven’t done any of those things, you can’t work for me.” His method of management was to let the bureaucracy run the country while he envisioned the future. “Ministers should not be involved in day-to-day operations,” was his wise counsel. He was a man of action and a son of the soil.

One of the projects on which I worked closely with him was his Gam Udawa (village reawakening) housing development project, which he launched in 1983 when the United Nations declared 1987 as the International Year of Shelter for the Homeless. He gave himself four years – from 1983 to 1987 –to meet his target of constructing 100,000 houses for the poor. This was an ambitious undertaking but Premadasa was never deterred by the expanse of his vision.

This vision for giving shelter to the poor went beyond simply giving houses. He added a participatory approach, increasing dynamism and vigour to village development with the people deciding on the size and shape of their abodes and contributing material and labour when feasible, with the government providing land and financial assistance. He believed strongly in the Maslow theory of the hierarchy of needs, and felt that fundamental needs had to be met for human beings to get to the next rung. His switched to a state-aided housing development philosophy – ‘of the people, for the people, by the people’ – which was an instant success.

His beginnings were in poverty and he understood the poor man and the way their minds worked. And he was a problem solver. When he first made his declaration of constructing the 100,000 houses, his fellow ministers scoffed at the idea and were reluctant to give him support. In fact, Ronnie de Mel, who was Finance Minister at the time, didn’t allocate money from the budget for the housing programme. Undeterred, Premadasa launched the Sevana Lottery – his solution to giving poor people a roof over their heads. The income from the lottery would fund his project.

Susil and I were very supportive of President Premadasa’s projects because these appealed to our ‘giving’ conscience, strengthening the belief that the giving had to be sustainable and have the buy-in of the recipient. We worked very closely with him, never missing his Gam Udawa launches and even taking J R with us in some instances.

On April 30, 1993 having attended a meeting, Susil and President Premadasa were driving back in the same car. Premadasa turned to Susil and asked, “Susil, are you afraid to die right now?” Susil said, “No,” although he thought it was a rather strange question. It almost seemed as if the President had a premonition of what was to come. That was the last conversation Susil had with him.

The next morning – May Day 1993 – my astrologer, who was in Melbourne, made a desperate telephone call to me asking me to not allow Susil to leave the house. I knew Susil was joining President Premadasa at the May Day Rally and while not telling him about what the astrologer said, I tried my best to make excuses and finally pleaded with him not to leave home.

I kept delaying his departure but he wasn’t listening to my pleas. To placate me he said, “I’ll go to the meeting and be back soon.” He left the house around 12.45 pm and was near the Eye Hospital in Borella when he was informed about the blast which killed President Premadasa. A suicide bomber, who was later identified as an LTTE suicide cadre named Babu had detonated the bomb, killing the President, 17 others and himself. It was that call from my astrologer that saved Susil’s life that day.

Sometime earlier, Premadasa had made D B Wijetunge his Prime Minister. This was quite shocking as it was very apparent that he was side-lining the party strongmen Lalith Athulathmudali and Gamini Dissanayake. Hence, when Premadasa was killed, it was D B Wijetunge who was sworn in as President. Ranil Wickremesinghe was appointed Prime Minister.

The wheels of politics continued to turn in this country despite bombs and assassinations. When Gamini became the presidential candidate for the UNP in the 1994 election, I predicted he wouldn’t win. The country had gone through 17 years of UNP rule and was ripe for change. Nevertheless, both Susil and I put our heart and soul into Gamini’s campaign. Susil was at every single one of Gamini’s campaign rallies.

One day, I wanted Susil to return early from one of those rallies as I had a function to attend. He acquiesced, went to the meeting, delivered his speech and returned home, a little before Gamini arrived at the meeting. Normally, Susil would greet Gamini and stay on with him until Gamini left the meeting.

Just as Gamini got to the rally at Thotalanga, he telephoned our home and asked me where Susil was. I explained that Susil had delivered his speech and since I had to go out, he was on his way home.

A short while later, the phone rang again. I don’t remember who was on the other end but I remember going limp. “A bomb has gone off and Gamini is in hospital.” A suicide bomber had detonated herself at the meeting in retaliation for Gamini’s involvement in the bombing of the Jaffna Library. Susil had just returned and we rushed to the hospital. Not long after, Gamini was pronounced dead.

Meanwhile, Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga had ousted the UNP in the Provincial Council Elections and become Chief Minister of the Western Province. From then on, her stars were lined up and she became unstoppable. She would eventually become Prime Minister and then the first female President of Sri Lanka, just as Mr. Arulpragasam had predicted two decades ago.

Our dear friends – Lalith Athulathmudali in April 1993, Ranasinghe Premadasa in May 1993 and Gamini Dissanayake in October 1994 – were all dead, just one-and-a-half years of each other. We had by now lost all those leaders who were capable of taking the country forward – either the JVP or the LTTE had killed them. When Gamini died, I felt like life couldn’t get any worse. But then, I told myself that the cycle of life must go on. We who survive do so for some purpose.

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Features

The NPP Government is more than a JVP offspring:

Published

5 days ago

2026/04/12

Thilina Walpola

Rohana Wijeweera

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

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

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

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

April 5 anniversary nostalgia

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

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

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

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

Strands of nationalism

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

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

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

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

Criticisms as expectations

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

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

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

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

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

by Rajan Philips

Features

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

Published

5 days ago

2026/04/12

Thilina Walpola

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

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

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

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

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

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

Losers and Winners

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Rajan Philips

Features

CIA’s hidden weapon in Iran

Published

5 days ago

2026/04/12

Thilina Walpola

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Nilantha Ilangamuwa