{"id":243772,"date":"2025-10-08T17:26:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T11:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=243772"},"modified":"2025-10-18T02:20:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T20:50:13","slug":"de-colonizing-global-south-history-operation-colombo-to-the-jakarta-method","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/de-colonizing-global-south-history-operation-colombo-to-the-jakarta-method\/","title":{"rendered":"De-Colonizing Global South History: Operation Colombo To The Jakarta Method"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake<\/a>\u00a0\u2013<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

Dr. Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake<\/p><\/div>\n

\u2018Operation Colombo\u2019 in Santiago de Chile in 1972, reverberated with the same Disinformation that unfolded across Indonesia during the 1965 coup against President Sukarno, who was like Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike, a leader of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in the Global South, then called the Third World. President Sukarno had hosted the famous Afro-Asian Bandung Summit with the heads of state of 29 newly independent countries near the Indonesian capital Jakarta.<\/p>\n

Ten years after the Bandung Conference the CIA\u2019s \u201cJakarta Method\u201d Operation unfolded across Indonesia against Sukarno in 1965, and a decade later across Chile and Brazil during the Dirty wars escalating in South America. These events are brilliantly detailed in the award-winning book by Vincent Bevins, \u2018The Jakarta Method: Washington\u2019s Anti-Communist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped our world\u201d published in 2020. What later came to be termed the \u201cJakarta Method\u201d or \u2018Jakarta Operation\u2019 to destroy the world\u2019s largest Communist Party outside of China, in Indonesia, was also unleashed in Brazil and Chile.<\/p>\n

As Bevins wrote \u201cOperation Jakarta was the name of a secret part of an extermination plan\u2026 which was aimed at destroying the structure of the Brazilian Communist Party.. the goal was the physical elimination of communists. Operation Jakarta was a hidden plan to extend state terror to communist party members operating openly with civil society groups or the media (pg. 194). The Brazilian Public would not hear the words Operation Jakarta for another three years. But in Chile the word \u201cJakarta\u201d made a very public arrival\u201d. The graffiti scrawled on walls in Santiago was a warning that Allende\u2019s days were numbered.<\/p>\n

Clearly, whoever code named the campaign against Chile\u2019s Leftists in the wake of the Jakarta Operation leading to the death of President Allende, \u201cOperation Colombo\u201d, was fully updated not just about Socialist Prime Minister Bandaranaike\u2019s assassination in Colombo, Ceylon half way across the world in 1959.\u00a0 <\/span>Those who code named the Chilean Secret Police DINA\u2019s \u2018Operation Colombo\u2019 to decimate the Left in Chile 1973 in the wake of the coup (until Operation Condor superseded Operation Colombo), were clearly fully cognisant of more recent developments in Ceylon. That is, the attempted 1971 Leftist youth insurrection by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna<\/i> (JVP), against Bandaranaike\u2019s wife and successor, Sirimavo, to divide and de-legitimize the Left.<\/p>\n

The code name \u201cOperation Colombo\u201d in Santiago de Chile clearly referenced the more recent failed, so-called Marxist insurrection by the JVP in 1971, which resulted in numbers of youth killed and the Left delegitimized. It was another Gladio style false flag operation. The JVP uprising of 1971 ended with the quashing of leftist youth.\u00a0 <\/span>Colombo fought off the rebels with the help of neighbouring India, close to the Moscow, while it was widely rumoured that the CIA was involved in destabilizing the county to sabotage Ceylon\u2019s push to full independence from British Dominion status.<\/p>\n

Was the JVP youth uprising in early 1971 staged to disrupt and stymie the Socialist Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranike\u2019s move to deliver on the promise to make Ceylon fully independent? At the time, Sirimavo in Colombo was close friend of Indira Gandhi in New Delhi. Both ladies were allies of Moscow.<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, the JVP was virulently anti-Indian, projecting India as a neocolonial power during the Cold War. However, it has shifted its anti-India stance over time along with its principle foreign patron\u2019s stance against India softening at the end of the Cold War. Indeed, in recent times the US and India have drawn closer in an apparent collaboration to contain the Chinese dragon and Belt and Road initiative (BRI) in the Indian Ocean region.<\/p>\n

In any evert, in the following year, on May 22. 1972, the fully independent and Sovereign state of Sri Lanka came into existence under the First Republican Constitution. The county\u2019s name changed from the British Dominion of Ceylon to the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka. The island\u2019s courts became independent of London\u2019s Privy Council.<\/p>\n

At the time of the JVP uprising in 1971 a Minister expressed strong suspicion that the CIA was involved in the Bandaranaike assassination and the subsequent 1971 JVP insurrection to destabilize the Socialist Government of the world\u2019s first woman head of state, a staunch leader of the Non-Aligned Movement. But so great was the disinformation campaign against Sirimavo Bandaranaike and the left amid the State-JVP Dirty war and the smear campaign of \u201cracism\u201d against the Senior Bandaranaikes that Sri Lanka today barely recognizes May 22 or celebrates Republican Day unlike India where Republican Day celebrates Independence.<\/p>\n

Decolonizing History: A Global South Historical Methodology of the Present<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

History repeats as Marx rightly said. Sri Lanka became a fully independent Sovereign State on May 22, 1972, officially rid of the British Monarchy, the JVP insurrection to derail and delay the push to full independence notwithstanding.<\/p>\n

However, the county was precipitated into its first ever staged Sovereign Default in 2022 amid another regime change operation. This was another leaderless chaos operation against a no doubt unpopular regime by youth tired of two years of brutal Covid-19 Lockdowns and militarized mass injections. It was also a GAFAM social media remote platform-operated Gen-Z Aragalaya<\/i> protest against local corruption that did not mention the global financial supply chain of corruption. The country has since effectively lost economic sovereignty to the Washington Twins (IMF and World Bank), BlackRock and other colonial Club de Paris Vulture Funds, and International Sovereign Bond or Eurobond holders whose names are secret, being caught in a neocolonial US dollar debt trap.<\/p>\n

Clearly, British and US interference in the county\u2019s domestic affairs and political outcomes remain in place, much as in Chile, which speaks to the importance of de-colonizing history with comparative global South studies across continents, Cold War Area Studies disciplinary partitions, and beyond the modern national state. Clearly, we need to rescue global south history from Orientalist tropes and Euro-centric grand narratives of the violence of \u2018dark natives\u2019 and disinformation campaigns like \u2018Operation Colombo\u2019[1]<\/span><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Increasingly patterns in Cold War history and related dirty war violence are visible across continents, Asia, Africa South America and the Global South. This despite layers of accumulated disinformation, and years and decades of cover up investigations with deep penetration of investigation and law and order institutions of many countries in the Global South by neocolonial powers, often under the guise of Development Aid, expertise sharing and technical training. Increasingly, it makes sense for social scientists and historians to triangulate events across continents — to see patterns in a shared Global South Past.<\/p>\n

As new scholarship and research based on recently de-classified US State Department documents and British Home office sources by brave scholars and journalists like Vincent Bevins and Phil Miller of Declassified UK circulates through open source channels, the space exists for countries in the Global South \u201cto brush history against the grain\u201d and understand how apparently \u2018internal\u2019 conflicts and violence were often substantially contoured in Cold War regional proxy wars which roiled much of Asia, Africa and South America with a great deal of Operation Colombo-style disinformation.<\/p>\n

Thus, events like the Bandaranaike assassination or the JVP insurrections of 1971 and 1989-91, read through a \u2018hermeneutics of suspicion\u201d may be better understood via \u201cOperation Colombo\u201d in Santiago de Chile, or the \u2018Jakarta Method\u2019 in Brasilia\u2019s favelas<\/i> and elite neighbor hoods. Such reinterpretation of the historical record in Asia, Africa and South America is especially needed as decoding history and recovering what Walter Benjamin called the \u201cOppressed Past\u201d in the Global South from \u2018history\u2019s apparent victors\u2019 (Euro-centric history), is further complicated by Artificial Intelligence (AI), algorithms designed to game our national history, archives and local memory, and divide us from ourselves.<\/p>\n

De-colonizing History amid Distracting Culture Wars<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Having failed to de-colonize history and pivot to the BRICS and Global South, Sri Lanka today continues to witness barely concealed regime change operations, system shocks, ethno-religious, gender LGBTQ.. xyz Culture Wars, that may be weaponized for social media remote platform coordinated Araglaya p<\/i>rotest and regime change operations. The country\u2019s intelligentsia, civil society and funded NGOs remain caught in Disinformation games as seen in the Woke film Alborada<\/i>.\u00a0 <\/span>Thus the vast majority in,South Asia\u2019s wealthiest country by all metrics bar the exorbitantly privileged US dollar believes the county to be \u2018Bankrupt\u2019 at this time!<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, so-called anti-corruption, levelling crowds unleashed via social media for regime change chaos operations predominantly constitute by deluded youth now fashionable recast as Gen-Z protesters sabotaging their own futures, burning down courts and parliament seeking regime change as recently happened in Nepal and Bangladesh appears to be the new normal. All this of course advances the program to \u201cMake the Economy Scream\u201d (as Nixon famously instructed the CIA to do to stymie and eventually take down President Salvador Allende in Chile in early 1970).<\/p>\n

Simultaneously, woke disinformation amid endless Culture Wars helps the re-cycling and circulation of the same politicians like the Ranil Rajapakses and\/ or Political Parties like the JVP, albeit with a puppet show of democratic elections. Meanwhile, the elected representatives of the people whether Right wing, Green or Left, all push the same Washington Consensus designed neoliberal policies. Such is the case of the current re-branded faux Leftist JVP National People\u2019s Party (NPP), regime that implements with alacrity the dictate of the Washington Consensus! The rebranded JVP in the form of the NPP government having benefited from the Araglaya<\/i> chaos operation for regime change and staged Default in 2022, thus rushed to sign the IMF\u2019s International Sovereign Bond debt restructure once it came to power in December 2024. This was arguably, the biggest Central Bank bond scam yet!<\/p>\n

Having turned its back on the BRICS, Shanghai Corporation Organization, greater integration with Asia and the Global South, the JVP-NPP regime in Colombo continues to dance to the tunes of Sri Lanka\u2019s Anglo-European neo-colonizers.<\/p>\n

The NPP is now in a rush to implement the IMF\u2019s call to \u201cunbundle\u201d, fragment and eventually privatize the Ceylon Electricity Board\u2019s (CEB) national electricity grid system and supply chain. This under the guise of \u2018reform\u2019 and restructuring the CEB\u2019s so-called \u201clegacy debt\u201d concocted by IMF\u2019s accountants. This in lieu of outright Debt Cancellation by the State of the state owned CEB\u2019s debt– as national experts have recommended. Breaking up the CEB into 5 entities, under the jargon of \u201cunbundling\u2019 would hollow out the CEB while restructuring dubious \u2018legacy debt\u2019 with private banks as a prelude to privatizing the national electricity system presents a clear and present danger to Sri Lanka\u2019s energy and economic security.<\/p>\n

Indeed, fragmenting and privatizing the electricity grid may presents a National Security threat in the context of planned Big Data Centers to benefit GAFAM data mining corporations that require huge amounts of electricity and water for cooling systems in an era of Digital Colonialism, which will see local electricity bills skyrocket[2]<\/span><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The JVP\u2019s newest face mask however seems to be slipping along with its IMF designed neo-liberal policies, despite a faux Left (red T-shirt?) veneer labelled \u201cpragmatism\u201d in the legacy press and related social media echo chamber. We live in complex times in an apparently upside down world where social analysis has been rendered Woke memes.<\/p>\n

But clearly, those who do not know their history like those who chose to forget it, are doomed to repeat it.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/strong><\/span> https:\/\/indepthnews.net\/literary-prize-poliWcs-cold-war-and-the-disinformaWon-game\/<\/p>\n

[2]<\/span><\/strong> https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Kkre0dQCJRw<\/p>\n

Part -1: \u2018Operation Colombo\u2019 & The Disinformation Game<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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