Dr. Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake

‘Operation Colombo’ in Santiago de Chile in 1973, reverberated with the same Disinformation that had 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

Ten years after the Bandung Conference the CIA’s Jakarta Method” 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, ‘The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anti-Communist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped our world” published in 2020.

As Bevins wrote Operation Jakarta was the name of a secret part of an extermination plan… 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 Jakarta” made a very public arrival”. The graffiti scrawled on walls in Santiago was a warning that Allende’s days were numbered.

What later came to be termed the Jakarta Method” or ‘Jakarta Operation’ to destroy the world’s largest Communist Party outside of China, in Indonesia, and bring to power US-backed General Suharto was also unleashed in Brazil and Chile. ‘Operation Colombo’ was the Code Name for the Disinformation game to conceal the real instigators of the coup against Chile’s President Allende.

Operation Colombo to Operation Aragalaya:  Disinformation and Woke Gen-Z Protests

A similar disinformation and protest playbook is today evident with the so-called Woke Gen-Z anti-corruption protests in South and Southeast Asia, in countries caught in post Covid-19 Lockdown debt traps and the International Monetary Fund bailout business of International Sovereign Bondholders. 

Woke Gen-Z protestors, who seek regime change with anti-corruption banners never mention international financial corruption, and the networks of secret bondholders and Vulture Funds like BlackRock that constitute the supply-side of corruption in debt trapped global south countries, or the fact that these networks of financial corruption are protected and promoted by the International Monetary Fund Debt restructure process.

Rather, some protestors in Sri Lanka’s Operation Aragalaya  which kicked off after the Visit of US Under-secretary of State Victoria Nurland were seen with posters and banners supporting the IMF and the staging of Sri Lanka’s first ever Sovereign Default that enabled the  IMF and Eurobond  USD debt colonization of the geostrategic Indian Ocean island amid regime change in Colombo in 2022. Recall that it was Nurland who famously said fuck the EU” on a leaked tape as the Maidan Square regime change protests in Kiev unfolded to eventually install  Acto Vlodimir Zelinskii in the Ukraine — to fight the NATO proxy war on Russia.

Operation Aragalaya in Sri Lanka was followed by similar so-called Gen-Z Chaos operations for regime change, destabilization and sabotage of economy and society in Bangladesh in 2024 and Nepal in 2025. Attempts have also been made in Indonesia and India to mobilize the ‘leaderless’ and headless deluded Gen-Z to sabotage its own future–  burning down Courts, Parliaments and the archival record.

Fundamental to the Cold War regime change Playbook as with Operation Aragalaya were Disinformation, character assassination, a theater of cruelty and terror, staged shortages of food and fuel shortages, FEAR, and Psychological Operations to Make the Economy Scream” and trigger protests as President Nixon instructed the CIA to do in order to remove Chile’s Allende back in the early 70s.

Clearly, whoever code named the campaign against Chile’s Leftists in the wake of the Jakarta Operation leading to the death of President Allende, Operation Colombo”, was fully updated not just about Socialist Prime Minister Bandaranaike’s assassination in Colombo shortly after US Special Ambassador Gufler’s visit in Ceylon half way across the world in 1959.  Those who code named the Chilean Secret Police DINA’s ‘Operation Colombo’ to decimate the Left as part of the US’ Cold War 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 (JVP), against Bandaranaike’s wife and successor, Sirimavo, to divide and de-legitimize the Left.

The code name Operation Colombo” 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.  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’s push to full independence from British Dominion status.

Was the JVP youth uprising in early 1971 staged to disrupt and stymie the Socialist Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranike’s 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.

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’s 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.

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’s name changed from the British Dominion of Ceylon to the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka. The island’s courts became independent of London’s Privy Council.

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’s 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 racism” against the Senior Bandaranaikes that Sri Lanka today barely recognizes May 22 or celebrates Republican Day unlike India where Republican Day celebrates Independence.

Woke Protests and Digital Colonialism

History repeats as tragedy and farce 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.

However, the county was precipitated into its first ever staged Sovereign Default in 2022 amid another regime change operation – Operation Aragalaya. 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 (Goocle, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft), social media remote platform-operated Gen-Z Aragalaya 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.

Clearly, British and US interference in the county’s 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 ‘dark natives’ and disinformation campaigns like ‘Operation Colombo’[1].

A Global South Historical Methodology of the Present and Ethnography of the Past

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.

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 to brush history against the grain” and understand how apparently ‘internal’ 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.

Thus, events like the Bandaranaike assassination or the JVP insurrections of 1971 and 1989-91, read through a ‘hermeneutics of suspicion” may be better understood via Operation Colombo” in Santiago de Chile, or the ‘Jakarta Method’ in Brasilia’s favelas 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 Oppressed Past” in the Global South from ‘history’s apparent victors’ (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.

De-colonizing History amid Distracting Culture Wars

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 protest and regime change operations. The country’s intelligentsia, civil society and funded NGOs remain caught in Disinformation games as seen in the Woke film Alborada.  Thus the vast majority in South Asia’s wealthiest country by all metrics bar the exorbitantly privileged US dollar believes the county to be ‘Bankrupt’ at this time!

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 Make the Economy Scream” (as Nixon famously instructed the CIA to do to stymie and eventually take down President Salvador Allende in Chile in early 1970).

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’s 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 chaos operation for regime change and staged Default in 2022, thus rushed to sign the IMF’s International Sovereign Bond debt restructure once it came to power in December 2024. This was arguably, the biggest Central Bank bond scam yet!

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’s Anglo-European neo-colonizers.

The NPP is now in a rush to implement the IMF’s call to unbundle”, fragment and eventually privatize the Ceylon Electricity Board’s (CEB) national electricity grid system and supply chain. This under the guise of ‘reform’ and restructuring the CEB’s so-called legacy debt” concocted by IMF’s accountants. This in lieu of outright Debt Cancellation by the State of the state owned CEB’s debt– as national experts have recommended. Breaking up the CEB into 5 entities, under the jargon of unbundling’ would hollow out the CEB while restructuring dubious ‘legacy debt’ with private banks as a prelude to privatizing the national electricity system presents a clear and present danger to Sri Lanka’s energy and economic security.

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].

The JVP’s 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 pragmatism” 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.

But clearly, those who do not know their history like those who chose to forget it, are doomed to repeat it.

[1] https://indepthnews.net/literary-prize-poliWcs-cold-war-and-the-disinformaWon-game/

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kkre0dQCJRw

Part -1: ‘Operation Colombo’ & The Disinformation Game