Features

Phillipus Baldaeus:the Dutch Missionary who wrote of Ceylon

Published

2 years ago

2023/11/26

By Avishka Mario Senewiratne and Dr. Srilal Fernando

A recent reading of the life and works of the Dutch Minister, Rev. Phillipus Baldaeus reveals a man who fits the phrase “je ne sais quoi”, a quality that cannot be described or named easily. His Magnum Opus, “A True and Exact Description of the Most Celebrated East India Coasts of Malabar and Coromandel. As also the Great Island of Ceylon and the religion of the heathens.” Published in 1672, this work is the first of three great descriptions of Ceylon. The second one by the more famous Robert Knox deals with the interior of the island close to Kandy where he was incarcerated after being taken captive. A third book by Captain Ribeiro called Ceilao was an account of a soldier, of mainly the maritime areas under the Portuguese.

Baldaeus served as a Minister of the Dutch Reformed Church and accompanied the Dutch troops when they captured Jaffna from the Portuguese. He was there from 1658 to 1665 and recorded life in Jaffna, secular and religious buildings. The land, the inhabitants, and their customs are replete with many drawings and maps. A detailed account of the capture and the ensuing military activity, as events prior to and after are included in his book. This brief essay is an attempt to illustrate the life of Baldaeus.

Early Life

Baldaeus was born in 1632 in Delft, Holland. At the age of four, he lost both of his parents to the plague, within the span of just four days. His grandfather cared for Baldaeus till he too died four years later. The care passed onto a relative Robertus Junius, who had served in the overseas missions. It is possible that young Baldaeus was influenced by Robertus to serve in the Ministry. After completing his studies at the Universities of Groningen and Leiden, Baldaeus was appointed Minister of the Dutch Reformed Church at age 21. He married his cousin and embarked for Batavia as a Dutch East India Company employee. (VOC). Unfortunately, his wife died three months after his arrival in Batavia in July 1655.

Missionary in Ceylon

After the capitulation of Colombo to the Dutch in May 1656, Baldaeus was ordered to serve in Ceylon. He married Elizabeth Tribolet on board the ship and arrived in Galle later that year. In both marriages, Baldaeus was childless. He stayed in Galle for one year mainly serving the needs of the Dutch troops and the community.

In January 1658, the Dutch launched a campaign to oust the Portuguese from South India and Northern Ceylon, under the leadership of Ryckloff van Goens (Snr). Baldaeus accompanied the troops as Chaplain. The Sinhalese force led by Mudliyar Don Manoel Andrado and his brother Don Louis Andrado joined the Dutch troops. They captured Tuticorin, and Mannar easily. On the June 21, 1658, Jaffna capitulated. The fleet sailed to Negapatam which surrendered without fighting.

Baldaeus was now appointed Predikant (Minister of the Dutch Reformed Church) of Jaffna. He had the difficult task of converting the Hindus and the many Catholics to the Dutch Reformed Church and managing the church’s affairs. This task was challenging as the Portuguese had ruled the North for over 40 years and Roman Catholicism was widespread. Dutch possessions were owned by the Dutch East India Company, the VOC. Unlike the Catholic Church under the Padroado, the Dutch Reformed Church had to function under the VOC. Baldaeus, like the other predikants were appointed by the VOC. So was another grade of clergy lower than the predikants who had to work in the parish and minister to the sick. Baldaeus had to deal with a large number of Catholics who had at one time had nearly forty priests ministering to them. All the Catholic churches and schools were vested in the Dutch Reformed Church.

Work in Jaffna

The predikant had a strong influence on the population. He could appoint schoolmasters. They could impose fines for non-attendance. The locals were required to attend. These fines were a source of income for the schools. They performed other functions such as recording births and marriages and keeping records of the Thômbos. Baldaeus was astute and a hard worker. He acquired a knowledge of Tamil and Portuguese so that he could listen to and speak with locals in their own tongue. He also preached in these languages. Later, he compiled books in these languages so that native proponents and schoolmasters could address the masses widely.

The first such book was “The Principal Precepts of our Religion”. Upon being approved by the Governor-General and Council of India as well as the Governor of Ceylon in 1659, this book was widely used in the Churches of Jaffna, Mannar, Galle, Negombo, Galle and Matara. He toiled by himself in these tasks for three years with only local assistants. Then two aides, Joannes A’ Breyl and Joannes Donker were appointed to assist him. Even with this help, the tasks were overwhelming as he had to preach three times on Sunday and once on weekdays, apart from his frequent visitations.

In 1661, Baldaeus again accompanied Ryckloff van Goens Sr. and his troops to take over Portuguese possessions on the Malabar coast. Wouter Schouten, a surgeon attached to the Dutch fleet, in his book “Oost Indische Voyagin”, records the presence of Baldaeus whom he refers to as “the pious predikant, a man faithful, zealous and unwearied in the work of the Lord”. Schouten also states that he visited and gave great comfort to the wounded. Hearing about the work of Baldaeus, Johan Maatsuycker, the Governor General of Netherlands India, wrote him a congratulatory letter. It is said that Baldaeus carried out his duties with extreme diligence.

After this brief interruption, he successfully continued his work in Jaffna. He reports the presence of over 15,000 children attending schools in Jaffna, over 62,000 Christians with many baptisms and marriages taking place. Nevertheless, these efforts were not totally fruitful as many would re-convert to their native faith of Hinduism or Catholicism. Seventy years later, the German traveller Johan Wolfgang Heydt commented the following on Baldaeus:

“I for my part have never seen any such great zeal among the local folk… In truth, Herr Baldaeus would wonder greatly should come today to these parts.”

By 1662, Baldaeus had learnt Sanskrit as well as studied Hinduism. All this he did to fathom the culture and traditions of the land he worked. Baldaeus truly loved the East, especially Ceylon. Baldaeus, though anti-Catholic, admired the methods of faith propagation by the Portuguese Catholic missionaries. He emulated them as much as he could. However, with the lack of predikants and the lack of enthusiasm, the faith of the Dutch Reformed Church did not make a sound impact in Ceylon as the Catholics. However, Baldaeus’ translation of the Lord’s Prayer to the Tamil language, although guilty of a few errors, was remarkable as the first treatise printed in Europe of any Indian language.

Challenges with the VOC

With the passing of time, he was increasingly dissatisfied with the VOC for their miserly attitude to dispensing funds, and the failure to obtain more clergy to maintain and expand the work he was doing. Unlike the Catholic missionaries who considered the Portuguese regime a separate entity, working independently yet with their protection, the Dutch missionaries were under the VOC; and employed by them. Thus, their hands were tied. Baldaeus clamoured for change. The final straw was when the authority to inspect schools was removed from the predikants and handed over to lay officials. Thus, in 1665 Baldaeus applied to Batavia for release from his duties.

As the Government of Ceylon was short of predikants, they requested Baldaeus to stay for another two years. However, he refused this request. As a result, Governor Ryckloff Van Goens Sr. was angered. He considered this refusal as an affront to the dignity and authority of the government and nearly alleged Baldaeus of financial misdeeds baselessly. Accordingly, Van Goens sent Baldaeus off in haste on the next ship to Europe. This was the inglorious end of the glorious mission in the East, of the zealous missionary, Philipus Baldaeus. He served over 10 years in the East, of which nine were in Ceylon.

Back in Europe – the final phase

After spending three months in the Cape of Good Hope Baldaeus reached Holland in 1666. Little is known about his activities in the next two years, and it can be presumed that he was working on his book on the subject of his experience of the East. He may have settled in the Hague in the late 1660s. However, through the dedication of his book, it is known that he took part in a Thanksgiving service at the Hague to celebrate the victory of Admiral de Ruyter at Chatham.

In 1669 he was appointed predikant in a small town in Holland and remained there until his death three years later. The cause or date of the death of Baldaeus is not known for sure. It is predicted that he passed away either in 1671 or 1672.

Baldaeus’ Tree

Baldaeus claims that the Church of Pariture was the finest in Point Pedro. The Dutch built a fort there which encompassed the Church and a certain tamarind tree. Baldaeus commented on it as follows: “The church was much decayed, but has been repaired of late. Just before the church stands a tall tamarind tree, under which, as it affords a very agreeable shadow in the heat of the day…”. Nearly a century after Baldaeus left Ceylon, Fredrick Schwartz a Danish missionary, made an effort to track this tree, under which the late revered preacher had preached his sermons. Later in 1906, a stone slab was set to commemorate this occasion.

Baldaeus Tree
1658
Visited by Schwartz
5^th September 1760

Though the slab still remains, the celebrated tree which had a circumference of approximately 15m at the base of the trunk and 22m at the crown, was blown over by a cyclone in 1952. The church there was demolished much earlier. However, a few fragments of the fort still linger.

The book

It is widely believed that Baldaeus spent his last few years writing this monumental work on the East, with a special emphasis on Ceylon. He was able to see this work being printed in 1671, a few months before his death at 39. The book printed in folio form is divided into three sections:

· Detailed description of the East Indian coast or of Lagoon areas of Malabar and Coromandel (includes: “short guide to the time sophisticated language arts”)

· Description of the great and famous island of Ceylon

· Abgotterey of the East Indian heathen. A truthful and detailed description of the worship of the Hindus and Hindu idols.

Each of these sections had a separate title page and pagination. The section on Ceylon counts to 240 pages, with eight unnumbered pages (These pages were printed after the main section was printed but before the publishing). This section also includes 57 illustrated engravings and 11 double-page prints containing maps and views of the main cities of Ceylon. The book also contains the portraits of Baldaeus and General Gerard Hulft, engraved by the well-known artist Blooteling, based on portraits drawn by Syldervelt and Govaart Flinck.

S.D. Saparamadu

With regard to the section on Ceylon, the first forty chapters are details of the events before 1656, which Baldaeus referred to from the Portuguese authors before his day. The first Chapter is a general description of the island, whereas chapters two to seven speak of the events of the arrival of the Portuguese to the Dutch visits in the early 17^th century. The next 32 chapters speak of the arrival of the Dutch till its capture of the Coastal region in 1656. Many scholars have considered this section as important though it is guilty of certain inaccuracies. It is a great book of reference to the scholar and student of history as well as the general reader interested in the affairs of Ceylon for it is all too important in every aspect it has been written.

The last ten chapters illustrate Baldaeus’ own observation and experience as a visitor of the island. His work as a Predikant is highlighted in this aspect. These ten chapters are useful for understanding the workings of the common men and women in Jaffna, which are not recorded in other sources. Baldaeus however is faulty of his biases like any other author. Firstly, he is a Dutch Imperialist. Secondly, after all, he is a Minister of the Dutch Reformed Church and is highly biased toward his own faith and is in antipathy with the indigenous faiths. These facts are not ambiguous in his writings and even the average reader can notice them. Dr. P. J. Veth comments on Baldaeus as follows:

“The style of Baldaeus is not free from faults; his construction of sentences is often faulty, and his mode of expression is not always exact. But nevertheless, that style is deserving of high praise, when we contrast it with the manner of most of the writers of his time, at which our language even by the most able men, as a rule so badly written and disfigured by the use of so many useless foreign words.”

Nearly 250 years later, the eminent historian, Donald Ferguson critically analyzed this work in the Ceylon Literary Register of 1936. In order to understand the era of Baldaeus in a much more comprehensive way, Prof. K.W. Goonewardena’s The Foundation of Dutch Power in Ceylon 1638-1658 (1958) and Prof. Sinnappah Arasaratnam’s The Dutch Power in Ceylon 1658-1687 (1958) are essential reading material. Reading these monologues along with Baldaeus gives a better perspective on the period in question.

The Translations

The 1672 first version of Baldaeus’ work was written and printed in Dutch. The publishers of this monumental work were Johannes Janssonius Van Waasberge and Johannes Van Someren in Amsterdam. The ‘privilegie’ or copyright was signed by Johann de Witt and Herbert Van Beaumont dated March 18, 1669. The book was dedicated to Cornelius de Witt, a Dutch political and Naval commander. After the book was printed in Holland, a German version was printed by the same publishers in 1672 as well. On the title page of this version, it is stated that it was “Carefully translated”. However, despite the assurance of the publishers, the translation was not a very accurate one as the translator was ignorant of many oriental terms.

It was using this German version that the first English translation by Churchill’s in England was translated. It went under one section of Churchill’s Collection of Voyages and Travels. However, as expected this translation made the obvious mistakes the German one made. In the later 19^th century, Pieter Brohier translated certain portions of Baldaeus’ work and published it in the form of a pamphlet. Later his great-grandson, Dr. R.L. Brohier republished this in the Dutch Burgher Union Journal from 1956 to 1959 as well abridged version.

When S.D. Saparamadu of Tisara Prakasakayo and Ceylon Historical Journal fame contemplated publishing a sound translation of Baldaeus’ text, Lyn Fonseka of the Colombo Museum Library informed him of another unpublished full translation by Pieter Brohier. Fortunately, the once-misplaced manuscript had been identified among several anonymously written papers in the library of the Royal Asiatic Society.

These letters were donated to the RAS by Advocate Weinman in 1897. Pieter Brohier who was born in 1792 and lived most of his life under the British had a sound knowledge of “High Dutch” as well as English. This paved the way for an excellent translation. However, Fr. S.G. Perera SJ, upon referring to the manuscript pointed out a few shortcomings.

He recommended changing the style of the language as well as maintaining the original Dutch names of various places. Realizing the importance of this unpublished manuscript, Saparamadu printed and published it for the first time in 1960. He made several changes as recommended by Fr. Perera and thus a new glossary was introduced by C.W. Nicholas pointing out the names and what they meant. This publication mooted under the able workmanship of S.D. Saparamadu is a phenomenal contribution to Sri Lankan history. Baldaeus’ legacy was sealed!

References

Ferguson, D.,
Prof. K.W. Goonewardena’s The Foundation of Dutch Power in Ceylon 1638-1658 (1958) and Prof. Sinnappah Arasaratnam’s The Dutch Power in Ceylon 1658-1687 (1958)
Saparamadu, S.D.,
Pierersz, S., (1908)

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The NPP Government is more than a JVP offspring:

Published

2 days ago

2026/04/12

Thilina Walpola

Rohana Wijeweera

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

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

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

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

April 5 anniversary nostalgia

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

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

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

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

Strands of nationalism

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

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

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

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

Criticisms as expectations

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

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

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

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

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

by Rajan Philips

Features

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

Published

2 days ago

2026/04/12

Thilina Walpola

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

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

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

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

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

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

Losers and Winners

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Rajan Philips

Features

CIA’s hidden weapon in Iran

Published

2 days ago

2026/04/12

Thilina Walpola

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Nilantha Ilangamuwa