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Sri Lanka

A collection of 21 posts

Evening horseback ride across open countryside at Vonfidel Ranch, a private equestrian estate in Sri Lanka known for welfare-focused riding holidays and quiet, landscape-led journeys.

Horse Riding Holidays

The Quiet Return of Meaningful Riding Journeys

Across a quieter corner of Sri Lanka, riding holidays at Vonfidel Ranch are shaped by welfare, terrain, and the partnership between horse and rider rather than spectacle or volume. A reflection on the quiet return of meaningful riding journeys.

What Makes a Riding Holiday Ethical

Riding Holidays

What Makes a Riding Holiday Ethical

A riding holiday is not a leisure product but an operational system. Ethics are determined by horse welfare, logistics, rider management, and restraint, not scenery. In environments like Sri Lanka, weak systems fail quickly. Responsible riding demands discipline, not volume.

A calm horse is groomed in natural light at a private equestrian estate in Sri Lanka.

A Private Equestrian Estate, Quietly

A private equestrian estate in Sri Lanka, built on restraint, standards, and quiet competence — by intention, not invitation.

Horse grazing calmly beside a lake at Vonfidel Ranch in Sri Lanka, surrounded by tropical trees, reflecting a welfare-first, quiet horsemanship environment.

Not Everyone Should Ride: Why Access Matters More Than Experience

Not all riding should be automatic. This editorial explores why ethical horsemanship depends on restraint, alignment, and the discipline of saying no.

Sri Lanka Parliament building at dusk reflected in the waters of Diyawanna Oya under a dramatic evening sky.

institutional memory

The Memory of a State: What Sri Lanka Keeps Forgetting

Sri Lanka’s deepest crisis is not economic, political, or even security-driven — it is structural forgetting. From insurrections and war to tsunami, terror, and collapse, this essay examines why institutions fail to retain memory, protect competence, and reform by design.

Sri Lankan security forces clearing a landslide and debris from a transport route after Cyclone Ditwa.

After Ditwa: What a Cyclone Quietly Revealed About Governance, Trust, and Sri Lanka’s Changing State

Cyclone Ditwa tested more than Sri Lanka’s infrastructure. It tested the State itself. From international confidence to calm military deployment and rapid institutional correction, the response revealed early, tangible signs of functional good governance under real pressure.

Independence Memorial Hall at dusk in Colombo with the Lotus Tower and modern high-rise buildings in the background.

The Silence Between Signals: A Counterintelligence Reading of Sri Lanka’s Easter Attacks

A counterintelligence reading of Sri Lanka’s Easter attacks that moves beyond failure and conspiracy to examine how signals moved, where authority collapsed, and how state architecture itself became the silent vulnerability.

Abstract neural network visualization depicting how narratives, memory, and information ecosystems shape national security, intelligence analysis, and post-war stability in Sri Lanka.

national security

The Battle for Meaning: Narratives, Intelligence, and the Security Psychology of Sri Lanka’s Post-War Future

Narratives are not merely stories — they are cognitive infrastructure. This essay explores why narrative power remains the most misunderstood yet strategically decisive domain in Sri Lanka’s national-security environment, from the Eelam War to today’s information battles.

Minimalist map of Sri Lanka overlaid with data-like signal lines, representing modern intelligence and political narrative flows.

Memory, Messaging, and the Modern Intelligence Burden in Sri Lanka

An analysis of how Sri Lanka must evolve from threat-based security to narrative intelligence, recognising memory and identity as the real modern battlegrounds.

Horses being ridden together at Vonfidel Ranch with water spray in the background, showing herd movement and heat regulation in a tropical equestrian environment.

equestrian engineering

Designing High-Reliability Water Systems for Equestrian Estates in Tropical Climates

In tropical equestrian environments, water is not an amenity but a control system. When designed for reliability under the hottest, driest, and most demanding conditions, it becomes the foundation that protects the land, the horses, and the work.

Bronze statue and memorial plaque honoring Colonel Fazly Laphir of the Sri Lanka Army Special Forces, displayed with floral tributes during a remembrance event.

They Leave the Field the Same Way They Fought

A generation of Sri Lankan soldiers is retiring quietly — with the same dignity, discipline, and silence with which they once fought. This is their farewell.

Aerial view of Colombo at sunrise, symbolizing Sri Lanka’s national security institutions and intelligence framework.

The Intelligence After-Action Gap: Why Sri Lanka Does Not Learn From Crises

Sri Lanka does not lack intelligence capacity. It lacks a system of institutional learning. The intelligence after-action gap continues to repeat crises because lessons remain personal, not structural.

Front façade of St. Anthony’s Shrine in Colombo, Sri Lanka, photographed in soft morning light, symbolizing remembrance and the ongoing need for national security reform.

Security Culture

Beyond Blame: What Easter Sunday Reveals About Sri Lanka’s Security Culture — and What Must Change Now

The Easter Sunday investigation reveals systemic weaknesses in intelligence coordination, institutional accountability, and cultural trust.

alfie ameer riding horse at vonfidel ranch sri lanka demonstrating trust-based horsemanship and leadership psychology by cognisive consultants and vonfidel group

The Geometry of Obedience: Why Structure Creates Freedom

True freedom isn’t the absence of rules — it’s the presence of rhythm. The Geometry of Obedience explores how structure transforms control into trust and why every disciplined system — from the saddle to the institution — finds its freedom through design.

Colombo street scene showing colonial-era buildings alongside modern billboards and traffic, symbolising Sri Lanka’s layered identity and inherited hierarchies.

Entitlement by Design: Colonial Pipelines and the Psychology of Precedence in Sri Lanka

Entitlement in Sri Lanka is a colonial inheritance — a system designed to reward proximity to power over merit. This essay explores how those hierarchies still shape behaviour and why true reform begins with psychological decolonisation.

Alfie Ameer rides in calm, collected rhythm—conscious leadership where feel precedes thought and action; a study in fieldcraft from saddle to strategy.

fieldcraft leadership

Fieldcraft Leadership: Lessons from War, Wind, and the Willing Animal

Leadership that begins with awareness—not orders. How fieldcraft turns instinct into discipline and trust across war rooms, kennels, and the saddle.

A calm rider leading a horse through golden morning light, symbolizing balance, trust, and quiet leadership.

behavioral science Featured

From Saddle to Strategy: Leadership Lessons from the Riding Arena

Why rhythm, balance, and connection — the core principles of horsemanship — hold the key to national renewal and institutional integrity. Executive Summary Across centuries, great horsemen have known a truth that many modern leaders forget: control is not command, and obedience is not trust. In both the saddle and the state,

General Deshamanya Denis Perera, former Commander of the Sri Lanka Army, noted for modernizing the Army and founding the Sri Lanka Military Academy.

ethical leadership

76 Years of Honor — An Army That Shapes a Nation

Marking 76 years of the Sri Lanka Army — a tribute to discipline, character, and sacrifice. Beyond defense, the Army stands as a forge of citizens, leaders, and men and women of honor who carry integrity and courage into every field of national life.

Portrait of Lt. Gen. Denzil Kobbekaduwa, Sri Lankan military leader known for ethical leadership, discipline, and service — a tribute to integrity in command.

morale Featured

Discipline, Dignity & Due Process: When a War Hero Is Accused

A call for ethical discipline, institutional accountability, and balanced justice — inspired by the wrongful arrest of a Sri Lankan war hero, and informed by lessons from Justice Ameer Ismail, SSP Tassie Seneviratne, Zerny Wijesuriya, and Gen. Cyril Ranatunga.

An intelligence analyst reviews field reports in a dimly lit room, symbolizing ethical intelligence, calm authority, and Sri Lanka’s evolving security culture.

Between Banners and Shadows: Lessons from The Black Banners for Sri Lanka’s Intelligence Future

Originally published in The Sunday Times (Sri Lanka). Republished here with permission as part of the Insights by Cognisive Consultants initiative on leadership, intelligence, and behavioral science. By Alfie Ameer Executive Summary In the aftermath of the Easter Sunday attacks and amid continuing regional volatility, Sri Lanka stands at a

The Science of Calm Authority: Lessons on Leadership from the Field

The Science of Calm Authority: Lessons on Leadership from the Field

In every arena of leadership, the quietest voice often commands the greatest respect. This is the science of calm authority—where strength is refined by control and trust replaces tension. Leadership, at its highest form, begins with calm.