Features

My continuing battle against the Tea Hub proposal that would have debased pure Ceylon Tea

Published

2 years ago

2023/12/31

Thilina Walpola

Multinationals have long reduced the content of Ceylon tea in packs branded as such

(Excerpted from the autobiography of Merrill J. Fernando)

The ruthless philosophy of the multinational packer and retail supplier is to buy low and sell high in mass markets in which the consumer, through relentless advertising and promotion, has been compelled to accept a well-packaged mediocrity masquerading as excellence. The intrinsic value of a product such as Pure Ceylon Tea and its inherent value proposition is subordinated to profit. Concepts such as genuine product purity and uniqueness of origin have no place in such a world. Such values do not belong in the base culture of mass-marketing of bland, homogeneous products.

The importation of cheap tea from multiple origins would immediately result in the discounting, at the Colombo Auction, of equivalent grades produced in this country, which would invariably be of a higher value than the import. In fact, the cost of any cheap imported tea would be well below our national cost of production, which, for a number of well known reasons, is the highest in the world.

A glut of such low-priced imported tea would depress auction prices overall and adversely impact the grower and producer, who are already burdened by high production costs and diminishing land and worker productivity. In the meantime, the cheap blend, with its desirability enhanced by the legend ‘packed in Sri Lanka/Ceylon,’ will be perceived as genuine Ceylon Tea by the overseas consumer. That perception will cause irreparable damage to the image of Pure Ceylon Tea and, also, to the exporter of the genuine product.

Despite the many abuses it has been subject to over the years, at the hands of multinationals and other traders, who have no respect for either purity or origins, Ceylon Tea is not a commodity as other teas are. Pure Ceylon Tea, of itself and in itself, is a brand and a specialty in the eyes of the consumer. There is no other tea in the world which is recognized internationally by the country of its origin like Ceylon Tea; nor is any other country globally identified by the tea it produces like Sri Lanka/Ceylon.

Up to about 20 years ago, Ceylon Tea was promoted and marketed on that unique value proposition and that memory still lingers in the minds of the older, middle-aged consumer. It was that memory of quality which ensured the success of Dilmah in Australia, despite it being priced well above its competing brands produced by the big multinationals.

Historically, though, commoditization has been the strategy of the trader, the promotion of the brand on the strength of the quality image of Ceylon Tea and then gradually reducing the latter component, thus deluding the overseas consumer and impoverishing the local farmer. Consumers who purchase blindly on brand loyalty do not perceive the gradual erosion in the quality of the cup of tea they drink every day. They will continue to patronize the debased product as a conditioned reflex to compelling advertising and promotion.

A recent example of the strategy described above is the fate of the Russian market, first serviced by our own traders, who, instead of developing own labels when the opportunity arose, chose the easy path and became servitors of the foreign label. The end result was an ignominious exit from the market when the Russian buyer, having established market share on the strength of Ceylon Tea, took his business elsewhere or established his own packing plants in Russia itself.

Value addition, branding, and marketing have, for long, been the weakest features in our export field. Despite all their arguments to the contrary, increasing the total value of our exports using cheap imported tea is not practically possible. The immediate result would be the decline of the export price of Pure Ceylon Tea.

Value-added tea is already being exported at prices ranging from Rs. 600 per kg to Rs. 1,100 per kg. The availability of Ceylon Tea at those prices, automatically weakens the argument for importation of cheap tea, unless the purpose is simply to devalue the export price.

It is also most unlikely that global players in the tea trade, packing in-market, using cheap, multi-origin tea, would rush to Sri Lanka to establish packing centres with the establishment of a Tea Hub. We are far removed from the main markets of the global packers and the only inducements for them to set up operations in Sri Lanka would be the availability of low-cost labour and cheap tea, at rock-bottom prices, the margin savings overriding other disadvantages, such as additional shipping and distribution costs. Such operators will not buy the high-priced Ceylon Tea, unless the proposed massive influx of imported tea drives the local auction prices down to the floor! Is it necessary to emphasize that such a scenario would be the death knell for the local producer?

Unacceptable comparisons, Garment Sector vs. Tea Export Industry

Blending hubs such as Dubai and Rotterdam, examples frequently used by the Tea Hub proponents as ideal models for replication, cannot be equated with Sri Lanka, which is a major producer. Such hubs are commercial centers which facilitate the recycling of products from multiple origins and owe no allegiance to producing countries.

As for the much-touted increase in employment generated by a Tea Hub, it is a myth, as any new blending or packing plant would be fully automated and designed specifically to minimize manual labour. In an industrialized world relentlessly driving towards robotization of processes, manpower is the first designated casualty in any new venture.

The loss of traditional markets for our tea has not been due to price concerns, but largely due to our inadequacies in value addition, marketing, and promotion. The emergence of ‘Dilmah’ as a premier product in Australia and New Zealand, despite being much higher in price than the corresponding products from large multinationals, is proof of the effectiveness of product promotion on the intrinsic strengths of the product itself. It completely negates the argument that multi-origin, cheap blends will override the uniqueness of Pure Ceylon Tea on cost alone.

Our tea has for long been acclaimed as the ‘cleanest tea in the world,’ meeting the Minimum Residue Levels (MRL) stipulated by some of the most demanding markets in the world, such as Japan. The importation of cheap tea from multiple origins, of unregulated hygiene and cleanliness standards, would immediately defile that image irrevocably.

The garment sector in Sri Lanka and the establishment of special Free Trade Zones (FTZs) have been quoted by the TEA (Tea Export Association) as successful examples of special manufacturing enclaves, equivalent to the proposed Tea Hub. In my view those are most inappropriate comparisons, as unacceptable as a ‘chalk and cheese’ equivalent.

The apparel industry exists almost entirely for the servicing of foreign labels, with 95% of the components being imported, whilst, locally, we simply supply the labor. It is. essentially, a massive labor- intensive operation, dedicated to the concept of maximum production at the lowest cost, but embellished with attractive labels, supported by cutting-edge technology, best manufacturing practices, and compliance with international standards, process hygiene and worker safety.

I am not, even for one moment, belittling the success of the garment industry in Sri Lanka, but those are the realities. Sri Lankans do not own the garment industry and are almost entirely dependent on foreign label patronage for continued existence. In that respect alone, the garment industry in Sri Lanka is very similar to the foreign label service provided by Sri Lankan traders to multi-national tea packers. The establishment of a Tea Hub will relegate our tea industry to that unattractive niche. As long as we are in control of the production of the raw material, we have the power to strategize how and where we sell it and at what price.

The establishment of FTZs was to ensure that the finished product, or the raw material, is not leaked out to local markets. As opposed to that, in the plantation industry, possibly over 95% of the raw material and other components are generated locally. It is a totally home-grown industry where the raw material, in its totality, is produced within.

There are only two sustainable ways of increasing the export value of our tea. One is to improve our land and labour productivity and increase annual production and, thus, send more tea to the auction annually. Another is to increase value addition at source to locally-owned brands, thus enhancing the export price. In fact, simply increasing production without a parallel strategy for adding value is also counterproductive.

Auction prices are determined by supply/ demand dynamics which are outside the producers’ area of control and a combination of both volume and quality will not ensure a sustainable revenue increase. Finally, value addition at source to a good quality finished product, namely ‘Pure Ceylon Tea,’ is the surest method of increasing earnings.

Every kilo of tea produced in Ceylon sells at premium prices and, irrespective of other market dynamics, is still considered as a benchmark for overall quality. In such a scenario, the only objective of devaluing it would be for personal gain, in order to compete with the mass-selling, low-priced, multinational trader.

Example of exploitation

The multinational traders’ exploitative strategy in regard to third world products is best illustrated by coffee, grown in countries such as Brazil, Vietnam, Colombia, Ethiopia, Uganda, and many other countries in Africa. In all the countries where coffee is grown in volume, the per capita income of the farmer is a fraction of that of an average farmer in a developed country and miniscule in comparison to the earnings of the average coffee consumer in the West.

Colvin R. de Silva, as Minister of Plantations, was one of the first politicians to publicly and unequivocally articulate this unacceptable disparity. For every plastic cup of coffee sold for USD 3-4 in affluent societies, the farmer in Africa gets five cents. From a kilogramme of coffee sold at USD 2.75, 110 cups can be brewed, translating to a profit margin of over USD 300 for those in between the poor farmer and the rich consumer.

The story of the tea trade in the hands of the multinational tea trader is no different and the cheapening of Ceylon Tea by importing, blending, and re-exporting will contribute further to that unacceptable social and economic disequilibrium.

It is a cardinal rule of all major packers – multinationals – never to purchase their material from one source or origin. Invariably they operate through two or more suppliers. However, because of the excellent and longstanding quality proposition of Ceylon Tea and the confidence we inspired in all the buyers of the major retailers, for many decades Ceylon Tea used to be, if not the major component, the most important ingredient of multinational packs.

Disappointing indications

During a previous Government’s term, the then Finance Minister, Ravi Karunanayake, deluded by the facile arguments of the Tea Hub proponents, facilitated the importation of tea in one of his budgets.

However, my protests against this provision, supported by the then Minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, resulted in its removal.

I must also admit to being disappointed by the stance of the Planters’ Association, in regard to the issue of the Tea Hub. I recall a strongly-worded press statement (Daily FT, May 17, 2012), in which the PA declared its opposition to the concept. However, as the umbrella body which primarily represents producer interests, I would have expected it to come out far more strongly, vocally, and actively, against an initiative with the very obvious potential to cause serious damage producer.

Sometime in March 2012, immediately after a meeting of the anvil, chaired by me, certain members of the Tea Council met then Plantations Minister, Mahinda Samarasinghe, and advised him that they would boycott future meetings of the Council chaired by me if I continued to oppose the TEA proposals regarding importation of tea. However, they did not breathe a word about this matter at the meeting itself, though that was the most obvious forum for the issue to have been discussed.

Frankly, I was disgusted by the base conduct of those exporters and, by my letter of March 30, 2012, addressed to Minister Samarasinghe, I resigned from the chairmanship of the Council. In my letter I also clearly stated the reasons for my resignation. The Minister accepted it and appointed Tyeab Akberally, Vice Chairman, to the position I relinquished.

The Tea Council was set up in 1989, under the direction of the then Minister of Plantations, Gamini Dissanayake. Its core purpose was resolving the many problems of the entire industry, in a manner that would benefit the industry in its totality; the plantation worker, the producer, the broker, and the exporter, all included. The very submission of a proposal which only addressed the interests of the exporter, to the obvious detriment of all other stakeholders, was in conflict with the remit of the Council.

Dr. P. B. Jayasundera, then Secretary to the Treasury, has always been a strong opponent of the Tea Hub concept. Addressing the CTTA’s 118th Annual General Meeting in late 2012, ironically flanked at the head table by a couple of ardent proponents of the Tea Hub concept, Dr. Jayasundera stated quite unequivocally that the only manner in which the export earnings from tea could be increased was by “creating a new development framework and promoting Ceylon Tea at a premium, setting aside the idea of making the country a Tea Hub”.

Basically, what Dr. Jayasundera supported was to position Sri Lanka as an exclusive centre for value addition to Pure Ceylon Tea and not to convert it to a trading platform for tea from any and every origin.

Bleak certainties

To any impartial observer, it would be clear that the TEA call for liberalization of imports was driven by the sense of insecurity, generated by the rapidly-diminishing profit margins of the proponents. It is a proposal which reflects, with embarrassing clarity, the mindset of the timid exporter and his submission to foreign label pressure. In my many arguments against the Hub, I have frequently requested its supporters to take a moment to consider why a few exporters from Sri Lanka sell comfortably at USD 10 FOB per kilo, whilst others scramble at the bottom, selling at USD 3 per kilo.

All the multinationals operating in Sri Lanka are now manned entirely by Sri Lankans and the industry’s reliance on the former to market our tea should be minimal. However, I am both baffled and saddened by the still very evident orientation and adherence within the industry to archaic multinational thinking and strategy.

In their hunger for short-term gain, the proponents of the Tea Hub are prepared to sacrifice the long-term potential of Pure Ceylon Tea, as well as consign the hundreds of thousands of low-income earners at the producers’ end to permanent impoverishment. In their pursuit of immediate and short term survival, they are prepared to surrender every natural advantage in ‘Pure Ceylon Tea’. The reality is that it is the locally-owned brands exporting exclusively ‘Pure Ceylon Tea,’ which are the flag bearers of the national product on the global stage.

In total, about 12% of this country’s population is dependent, either directly or indirectly, on the plantation economy. Of that proportion, about 90% toil at the producers’ end; plantation workers and residents, small-holders, their dependents, ancillary service suppliers, bought leaf manufacturers, and so on. A decline in the Colombo tea prices, arising from cheap imports, would result in a permanent adverse impact on the lives of this multitude, whilst temporarily enriching a minuscule proportion at the exporters’ end.

Pure Ceylon Tea was, and still is, this country’s greatest asset. It’s a primary home-grown product and identifies Ceylon/Sri Lanka globally. Its real value and significance have either been misinterpreted by successive governments, and many of our local traders, but fully exploited by the multinational who understood its actual worth. Through Ceylon Tea, the country has a product which can stand alone and compete successfully against any tea grown or manufactured in any other country. The maximization of its inherent value proposition simply requires vision, dedication, and integrity of purpose.

For over a century we have permitted Ceylon Tea, a valuable and attractive ‘finished product’ with enormous potential to this country, to be exported by multinational companies to other countries as a ‘raw material’. The importing countries debase its natural quality by blending with inferior tea from other origins, whilst reducing its cost and, with pretty packaging, claim to add value to a less-than-mediocre mix, but still sell it on its intrinsic value as Ceylon Tea. In the process, the tea that is grown by the farmer in our country enriches a chain which has no real link to his country, at the expense of our producer, our farmer, and our plantation worker.

What the proponents of the Tea Hub are advocating so strongly is the replication of the same odious process, in the country of the orign of Ceylon Tea, though they have clothed the proposal in noble rhetoric, as a panacea for all the ills of the tea industry.

Pure Ceylon Tea is still synonymous with quality in the many countries in which it has been a traditional brew, despite the debasement it has suffered at the hands of multinationals who, whilst devaluing its intrinsic goodness, still leveraged the original quality perception in their marketing. Thus, packers determine the quality that they offer the consumer, as the purchasing choice of the latter is limited to what is available on the supermarket shelf.

This compulsion created by the multi-national marketer appears to have created an illusory perception in the minds of certain exporters, especially the Tea Hub proponents, that the cheap, debased tea is actually a consumer demand or preference. Dilmah, however, convincingly exploded this myth with its success in the marketing of quality ‘Pure Ceylon Tea’ in Australia and New Zealand.

Marshalling the opposition

At the beginning of this chapter I referred to the proposal by the then Trade Minister, Lalith Athulathmudali, in 1979, which, to the best of my knowledge, was the first instance when a leading politician presented tea importation as a strategy with potential for economic benefit to the country. To the best of my recollection, there had been no serious discussion about it before, although I am certain that the idea would have been tossed around in tea trading circles. It is really in the 1980s that wider discussion around the concept commenced, eventually gathering momentum until, within a couple of decades, it became an existential threat to the tea industry in its totality.

When I first opposed Athulathmudali’s proposal, I was, essentially, a bulk tea exporter. Dilmah arrived almost 10 years later. Thus, it must be clear to all readers that my opposition to the concept of a Tea Hub, contrary to the arguments of my opponents, was not to protect my interests or my personal brand, but entirely in the larger interests of the tea industry of Sri Lanka. It is for that reason that in this writing I have explained in considerable detail the likely impact of the implementation of such a proposal.

In the years since 2010, during which the Tea Hub proposal has been canvassed by its advocates at all relevant forums, I have used all the resources that I was able to muster to oppose it. My views have been expressed publicly, via newspapers and the electronic media, whilst concurrently being made known at the highest levels of government. I was also able to enlist the support of the Tea Small Holders’ Association and the assistance of the Private Tea Factory Owners’ Association, whilst the Planters’ Association also endorsed my view. However, as I have said earlier in this writing, from the latter I would have welcomed a far more involved engagement in opposition given that, in the event of unrestricted importation, the producer stood to lose more than any other industry group.

Independent journalists of several newspapers, both Sinhala and English, also published articles in support. My friend Herman Gunaratne, plantation owner and specialty tea producer-exporter from Galle, with his passion for Pure Ceylon Tea and his wide contacts within the smallholder segment and private factory owners of the south, was of immense help to me in marshalling support in resistance of the Tea Hub proposal.

The combined strength of the opposition groups, representing about 12% of the country’s population, eventually succeeded in temporarily suppressing a scheme which would have briefly benefited a few thousand people at most. However, the industry needs to be always aware of and be constantly on guard against a resurgence of the Tea Hub movement. If implemented, it will be, for a short while, very profitable for the proponents who are only interested in short-term gain. Since there is money in it, albeit for a handful of profiteers, I suspect that the idea will never be abandoned altogether, irrespective of opposition.

The Tea Hub proposition is a delusional attempt to bridge the chasm between the supplier of tea and the marketer of tea. It is a futile exercise to conflate these two mutually-exclusive concepts. The supplier furnishes a featureless commodity whilst the marketer markets a branded product with a specific identity. There can never connection between these two extremes. Finally, despite all opposition, if the Hub eventually becomes a dismal reality, and the local tea industry collapses as a result – as it surely will – there will not be one expert at that time to acknowledge responsibility and openly say, “Yes, I supported the importation of Orthodox Tea!”

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Features

The NPP Government is more than a JVP offspring:

Published

1 day 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

1 day 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

1 day 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