Iqbal Athas: The Reluctant Exile Who Rewrote South Asia’s Defence Journalism
By Political Columnist
In South Asian journalism, courage is often romanticised but rarely practised without consequence. Fewer still are those who pay the price repeatedly—and continue to write with discipline, restraint, and factual ferocity. Iqbal Athas belonged to that vanishing breed: the defence correspondent who became a political columnist not by ambition, but by historical necessity.
The time I heard his voice clearly was not from Colombo, nor from the familiar corridors of power that he navigated with professional ease, but from Thailand. The call was brief, careful, and heavy with subtext. He told me he would be staying there “for a while.” Safety, he said, required distance. A message had been conveyed—through a figure prominent enough to need no elaboration. The instruction was unmistakable: leave the country.
That moment encapsulated Athas’ life in journalism. When truth became inconvenient, he became expendable. When silence was expected, he chose exile.
Journalism in Exile, Not Silence
Athas did not stop writing when he left Sri Lanka. He simply adapted. Exile, for him, was not a retreat but a tactical repositioning. From abroad, he continued to work, file, verify, and publish—often with more precision than those safely ensconced in Colombo newsrooms. His dispatches carried the quiet authority of someone who understood that facts, once printed, acquire a life of their own.
What set Athas apart was not merely access, but comprehension. Defence journalism in South Asia is often reduced to stenography—press releases, unnamed sources, and patriotic noise. Athas treated it as a discipline. His writing dissected procurement decisions, intelligence failures, strategic miscalculations, and political duplicity with a clarity that unnerved both generals and ministers.
He was one of the very few journalists from the global South who managed to meet Velupillai Prabhakaran, the elusive leader of the LTTE. That encounter alone placed him in a rare category—but Athas never exploited it for mythmaking. He reported, analysed, contextualised. He resisted the temptation to dramatise terror or sanitise state violence. That restraint became his signature.
A Trilingual Mind in a Polarised Land
Athas’ greatest professional asset was also his quiet rebellion against Sri Lanka’s post-independence failures: he was fluent in Tamil, Sinhala, and English. In a country fractured by language and suspicion, this was not merely a skill—it was a political act.
He read Tamil sources without mediation, understood Sinhala political nuance instinctively, and wrote English with international credibility. This trilingual fluency allowed him to see through propaganda long before it hardened into accepted truth. His investigative paragraphs—often deceptively calm—became templates for a new generation of journalists across Asia.
Many young reporters learned from Athas not through classrooms, but through close reading. His phrasing, his sequencing of facts, his refusal to overstate—these became informal curricula in investigative journalism.
From the Battlefield to the Cabinet Table
Time moved, regimes changed, and Athas’ reporting evolved accordingly. Defence journalism in Sri Lanka could not remain static once the war ended; it had to interrogate peace, accountability, and power. Athas transitioned seamlessly into political commentary—not as a pundit, but as an informed observer of executive power.
I remember a call from Tehran, years later. The Yahapalana government had come into office, and Athas was travelling with President Maithripala Sirisena on a state visit to Iran. He spoke not as a court chronicler, but as a journalist absorbing detail—Iranian hospitality, diplomatic subtext, body language, informal conversations. It was evident that his weekly columns were being nourished not by leaks from Sirikotha or opposition gossip, but by proximity to the executive itself.
Yet, he never surrendered independence. Access did not soften his pen. It sharpened it.
A Journalist, Not a Regime Apologist
There were accusations, particularly during the Gotabaya Rajapaksa era, that Athas was sympathetic to the regime. They were lazy accusations, often made by those who confuse complexity with complicity.
Nothing demonstrated the falsity of that claim more clearly than Athas’ response to the policy of forced cremation during the COVID-19 pandemic. He was visibly angered—not rhetorically, but morally. Coming from Dargha Town in Beruwala, from the well-known Athas family of Darga Town, this was not an abstract policy debate. It was a violation of dignity, faith, and constitutional principle.
Athas actively sought to internationalise the issue. He asked colleagues and networks—including some of us—to help present the facts to global institutions, diplomats, and human rights mechanisms. He supplied detail from Colombo when many inside the country were paralysed by fear or convenience.
This was not activism. It was journalism performing its highest function: bearing witness.
Bravery Without Theatrics
Athas won multiple awards for bravery in journalism, but he wore them lightly. There was no performative martyrdom, no self-promotion. He understood that courage in journalism is not measured by how loudly one shouts, but by how consistently one publishes what others wish buried.
He was meticulous. Sources were triangulated. Claims were verified. Even adversaries trusted his accuracy, if not his conclusions. In an era of outrage journalism, Athas remained stubbornly old-fashioned—facts first, interpretation later.
A Personal Encounter
When I finally met him in person, so many occasions, we did not speak like interviewer and subject. We dined, we debated, we dissected Sri Lankan politics with the ease of men who knew its characters too well. He spoke with candour about politicians across the spectrum, never cruel, rarely sentimental.
What struck me most was his sense of proportion. He knew power intimately, but was never seduced by it. He understood exile, but refused to be defined by grievance. Above all, he believed journalism was a public trust, not a personal brand.
Legacy Beyond Borders
Iqbal Athas’ legacy cannot be confined to Sri Lanka. He belongs to a lineage of Asian journalists who proved that world-class investigative reporting does not require Western validation. His work was cited, studied, and quietly respected across the region.
His wife in Colombo and daughter now live in Europe, far from the turbulence that shaped his professional life. To them, and to his family, we extend our deepest condolences. Loss, in this case, is not merely personal—it is national.
Sri Lanka has lost not just a journalist, but an institutional memory. A man who understood war without glorifying it. Power without flattering it. Exile without surrendering to it.
In a time when journalism increasingly resembles activism or entertainment, Iqbal Athas remained what he always was: a reporter. And that, in the end, may be his greatest achievement.
May Almighty Allah grant him Jannatul Firdaus.