Dr. Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake
Fair is foul and foul is fair”— William Shakespeare, Macbeth
Why are there no Booker Prize-winning novels about mundane multicultural families that inter-married for generations, shared religion/s, language/s, histories, and co-existed for centuries, while living in relative harmony in Ceylon/ Sri Lanka?
Is the trope of ‘dark natives’ engaged in endless, chaotic violence an international literature prize-winning bestseller that masks white mischief, including sanitized, techno-scientific AI guided hybrid warfare in a post-Truth world awash in distracting Culture Wars?
Susan William’s brilliant and brave book White Malice” is subtitled The CIA and the Covert Recolonization of Africa’. Her analysis may well apply to Eurobond debt trapped Sri Lanka, Pakistan and other Afro-Asian post/colonies, where National Endowment for Democracy (NED), funded protests and regime change operations have unfolded recently. NED is known as the second Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Conversely, why are there very few prizes, literary or otherwise, for brilliant cross-over social science researchers and journalists like Phil Miller, author of the book Keenie Meenie:The British Mercenaries who got away with war crimes” in Sri Lanka, Oman, Afghanistan, and other parts of the post/colony. Or, perhaps we should call it the post-Covid-19 Eurobond and International Monetary Fund (IMF) debt-trapped, Afro-Asian neo-colony.
Located at the center of the Indian Ocean World, a tropical monsoon paradise isle, long deemed an unsinkable aircraft carrier” and hence perpetually in the cross-hairs of great power rivalry, Serendip, Taprobane, Ceylon, Sri Lanka, has so many stories to tell beside tired and trite narratives of ‘ethno-religious violence’ — a grand narrative that launched 41 years ago with the staging of ‘Black July’ 1983 as Cold War turned hot in the Global South.
Beyond Literary Prize Politics and Raj Nostalgia Festivals
Literary prize politics and the merits of Shehan Karunatilleke or V.V. Ganashanathan’s novels aside, why not invite the brilliant and brave American journalist, Vincent Bevins to speak at the Galle Literary festival? Or ask Phil Miller in place of rose-tinted British Raj Nostalgia favourites -the flip side of the dark natives’ violence and corruption stereotype?
Bevins is the award winning author of The Jakarta Method”, about the US Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA), and British secret service MI-6’s Cold War killing sprees across Asia, Africa and Latin America against communists, socialists and the Red left that helps contextualize some of the armed conflict evident in de-colonizing Ceylon/ Sri Lanka, and elsewhere in the Afro/Asian post/colony.
Phil Miller and Vincent Bevin’s brave books, both published in 2020, read better than a lot of fiction, and are based on recently de-classified documents, including the US State Department, Asia Foundation, the Foreign Office and British Archives. Most important and fascinating in both Bevin’s (and Miller’s) books are the interviews with people who lived through GLADIO-style Cold War clandestine violence and purges against Communists, Socialists the Left and Trade Unions in the de-colonizing Global South – a subject to which we shall return.
While Keenie Meenie” is based on Miller’s Doctoral research at the University of London, Bevin’s he Jakarta Method’ details the 1965 anti-Communist violence and regime change in Indonesia, and helps contextualize patterns of violence evident in de-colonizing Ceylon/Sri Lanka and other Afro/Asian and South American post/colonies, subjected to Cold War Proxy Wars– given Washington’s Domino Theory” that Communism would sweep through Asia after the fall of Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia.
They help us connect the dots of apparently local and internal’ ‘Leftist terrorists’, ethnic, religious and nationalist violence to the wider global Cold War strategy of fanning proxy wars to ensure continued colonial divide and rule policies, while weaponizing religious, linguistic and cultural differences in the Afro-Asian post/colony, by the US-led war machine which maintains a surveillance network of more than 800 military bases around the world at this time to safeguard Euro-American and allied corporate financial, economic and security interests including in off-shore tax havens.
Millers ’s book helps locate the South Asian Cold War proxy war that certainly unfolded in Sri Lanka — between India, regional hegemon, and the Capitalist West backed and penetrated United National Party’s (UNP), President J.R Jayawardena regime in Colombo after 1977– when ‘Yankie Dickie’ as JR was nick-named), came to power. The proxy war between the neocolonial West and India escalated after the staging of the 1983 pogrom/riots in Colombo that opened the door to British, US/Israeli intelligence agencies and mercenaries who also provided protection to the President.
Thus too, we may read Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict’ as another South Asian Regional Cold War proxy war: India, allied then as now with then Communist Russia/ the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), had already fought a war with US-proxy Pakistan’s ‘Garrison State’ on its western border and assisted the creation of Bangladesh in 1971, (formally, East Pakistan). India was hence fearful of another US military base being set up in her Southern backyard- the coveted Trincomalee deep sea habour, over which The British and French had once fought a bloody battle seeking to extend surveillance and control over Indian Ocean trade routes. Hence, Indian intelligence agencies through the Research and Analysis wing (RAW), funded and trained Tamil militant groups including the Liberation Tigers (LTTE), in the northeast– to deter the pro-US Colombo regime from any such adventure.
Lifting the Veil of Islanded Ignorance
Along with Yale University historian, Eugen Ford’s Cold War Monks: Buddhism and America’s Secret Strategy in South Asia”, Miller and Bevins help lift the veil off long-cultivated islanded ignorance among Colombo’s academic, political, and business intelligentsia about the wider geopolitical Cold War dynamics that contextualize Sri Lanka’s spasms of conflict among Leftists, ethno-nationalists and the State, as well as, the pogrom/riots of 1983 and the war that followed. This includes the weaponization of linguistic and religious identity politics in collusion with and funding for politicians in the geostrategic post/colony –still struggling for real independence from the UK-US Raj.
Cold War Monks: Buddhism and America’s Secret Strategy in Southeast Asia” (Yale University Press; 2017)’ based on analysis of de-classified Asia Foundation and State Department documents tells the story of the use and abuse of religion/s and religious networks of influence to stave off ‘God-less” Communist, socialist and left movements. Ford traces the weaponization of Buddhism by the CIA via the Asia Foundation in order to contain Communism, as well as, de-colonization struggles in Southeast Asia, including Burma, now Myanmar and Sri Lanka– emanating from Theravada Thailand, where SEATO the Southeast Asian NATO was set up head-quartered. This work parallels work by historians who have traced a similar weaponization of Islam in West and Central Asia against Communist and Socialist national liberation movements.
Jakarta Method-style ‘lists’ of homes and business to be targeted were used in the Pogrom of 1983 in Sri Lanka. Likewise, the forms and aesthetics of violence associated with the killings in university campuses during the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), uprising in 1971, and 1988-89 echo patterns of violence in Universities across Indonesia during the CIA-backed anti-communist purges of 1965.The pogrom/ riots of 1983 and subsequent bouts of armed conflict in Sri Lanka attenuated close ties among the Sinhala and Tamil speaking communities that had live in proximity for centuries and inter-married for generations in urban areas and coastal regions.
Based on impeccable research these excellent books by Bevins’, Ford and Millar help us connect the dots of apparently local and internal’ Leftist terrorists, ethnic, religious and nationalist conflicts in Sri Lanka to the wider Cold War strategy of fanning regional proxy wars in the post/colony, to ensure neo-colonial divide and rule policies, while weaponizing religious, linguistic and cultural differences. This to protect the economic and security interest of a retreating UK Empire and the rising US empire at the end of World War 2 in the Global South.
GLADIO style ‘stay behind’ operations ensured continued colonial divide and rule proxy war in the decolonizing third world. After, all the US-led war machine maintains a network of more than 800 military bases around the world at this time to safeguard Euro-American and allied corporate financial, economic and security interests including in off-shore tax havens. And they were not growing roses and waterlilies in these military bases. ‘
White Mercenaries and whiter Malice: Grenades in Cocktail Glasses
Phil Miller book which exposes the role of the British secret services in the post/colony. lifts the veil of secrecy about the role of British mercenaries and Special Operations Forces that structured 30 year of armed conflict in the geostrategic island. It reveals another dimension of how the global geopolitical arena of Cold War in South Asia structured an apparently internal conflict in Sri Lanka
Phil Miller’s book opens with the arrival of Britain’s Keenie Meenie Mercenaries, ex-SAS officers in the island in 1983. The Keenie Meenie or KMS mercenaries (now Saladin London) were in the country to help set up and train the Sri Lankan Special Task Force (STF), later accused of war crimes, also with Israeli intelligence MOSSAD agents.
Miller describes how villagers in Batticaloa, Eastern Province who were bombed from the air called the Keenie Meenie white mercenaries, who flew the military helicopters- Mossadu”. Ironically some of the same villages from the highly multicultural Eastern Province later became refugees in Britain. The STF training Camps were overseen by Ravi Jayawardena, son of the US-backed President J.R. Jayawardena. Ravi who was a marksman, remarkably, later became a Buddhist Monk in Thailand and dawned Robes for a short time, before migrating to Australia, and then returning to Sri Lanka. Was he the agent of his own destiny or ‘caught in webs of belief’ and structures of power that others had spun?
Mossadu was the local name for the foreign (white) mercenaries a la Israel’s intelligence agency, The British Mossadu’ also participated in dropping grenades in cocktail glasses taken from the Officer’s Mess in Trincomalee Harbour on innocent civilians according to a British Diplomat.
Although the role of Indian Intelligence agencies in Sri Lanka’s ethnic war’ is well known, also given the ‘Indian Peace Keeping Forces’ intervention 1987-90, the role of British agents was a well-kept secret. So too, the shadowy role of Israel’s Mossad, which had leaked out in a book by an Israel Intelligence officer that led to the ‘The Mossad Report.
Western Special Forces and mercenaries entered Sri Lanka as part of a proxy war on India in the geostrategic island nation, given India’s alignment with Communist Russia/USSR. India’s intelligence agency, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), operations had included setting up of Tamil militant groups in northeast Sri Lanka—in order to ward off any US military base in Trincomalee in a geostrategic theater called Sri Lanka. The setting up of the Voice of America Station in Iranavilla after JRJ came to power clearly set off alarm bell in Delhi.The Weaponization of linguistic tensions among Sinhalas and Tamils began after the US-backed President J.R. Jayawardena came to power, unseating the Socialist Delhi-aligned Sirimavo Bandaranaike regime in 1977.
Mossadu” Weaponizing Religion? Staging a Buddhist-Islam Clash of Civilizations?
Long sustaining ties among Tamils and Muslim communities in the Eastern Province were systematically targeted and damaged during counter-terrorism” operations in the second decade of armed conflict when Israel’s Mossad ran riot. The STF training camps were located in the highly multicultural Eastern Province, where Mossad agents, highly experienced in Israeli State counter-terrorism’ operations against Muslim and Christian populations in Palestine weaponized religious differences.
Inter-and intra-religious conflicts proliferated. Staged massacres such as the Kathankudi Mosque and retaliations led to the mass expulsion of Muslims who had once fought alongside the LTTE against the State, in 1991, from Jaffna and the northern province. The counter-terrorism operations run by white mercenaries and Special Operations Forces also aimed to divided and weakened the LTTE”s Eastern and Northern command.
Miller provides a detailed account about the sundering of close ties between Muslims and Tamils in the East. Mossad continues to this day to be present in Batticaloa operating among Muslim communities where Saudi slush funds circulate among politicians. A characteristic of Mossad attacks is targeting Christian communities and then blaming Muslims, in order to create ‘cascades of violence’ as also happened recently in the occupied Golan Heights when a children’s playground in Majdal Shams, a Druze (Christian), area was targeted.
During the mysterious ISIS-claimed Easter Sunday attacks in 2019 the even more mysterious Zion Church in Batticaloe was targeted, seemingly, an own goal mission. Four Chinese marine scientists were also killed in the attacks at Kingsbury Hotel and a joint research expedition with the National Aquatic agency (NARA), on a Chinese research vessel Shi Yan-3 was then aborted. The incoming US ambassador, Elizabeth Horst, is on record stating at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee earlier this year that it is the highest priority of the US government to prevent Chinese research expeditions in Sri Lanka! The CIA and Mossad work closely together.
Mossad agents were and are also present in many coastal areas and the Surfing Zones of Arugam Bay along Sri Lanka’s strategic Indian Ocean coastline that was also hit by undersea nuclear explosions that triggered the Indian Ocean Tsunami Disaster in 2004 off the Coast of Aceh, Indonesia as Cold War on China heated up the Indian Ocean region.
Hence, too the local refrain among multicultural border communities in Sri Lanka where I did ethnographic research in the late nineties, that the armed conflict was Someone Else’s War”, and the UTHR book of the same name.
Connecting the Dots: From Gladio to SEATO, Cold War Economic Shocks in the Post/colony
It is remarkable that the worst ‘ethno-religious’ violence, such as the Pogrom of 1983 happened in Ceylon/ Sri Lanka when liberal pro-Western, United National Party (UNP) governments were in power. Hybrid shocks like July 1983 debilitated the economy, triggered out-migration and brain drain, and enabled deep penetration of government institutions by external intelligence and other economic experts’ also for neoliberal economic reform. This included penetration of the security and legal systems, NED-funded civil society and research organizations in the post/colony, as well as, cover up ‘investigations’ to conceal the external Masterminds” or mahamolakaru” of hybrid-war style Disasters like the 2019 Easter Sunday Carnage, also to enable Disaster Capitalism as Naomi Klein termed it in The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”.
Global-local networks of crime and intelligence game the narrative ex-post a System-Shock and effectively conceal the Mastermind, increasingly AI driven complex systems analysis. At this time Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has set up an office in the Office of the President of Sri Lanka to game the Data and the Narrative — in the wake of the staged Default and IMF takeover of Sri Lanka’s Economic Sovereignty and Policy Autonomy in April 2022, claiming that the country was ‘bankrupt’ simply because it lacked ‘exorbitantly privileged US dollars”.
The Gladio ‘stay behind” model used in Europe were certainly used in Ceylon / Sri Lanka which remained a British Dominion until 1972, as elsewhere in the Afro-Asian post/colony where Assassinations, Coups, protests for regime change and other Shock to Make the Economy Scream” were carried out as part of Cold War proxy wars by retreating Western imperial powers anxious to retain their influence, economic and security interest in the post/colony.
Gladio was the code name for a multi-country, anti-Communist operation that ran in Europe after World War 2, when the UK and the US decided to create “stay-behind” paramilitary organizations with the official aim of countering and containing Communist Russia/ Soviet Union also through sabotage and guerrilla warfare ‘behind enemy lines’. Gladio’s clandestine “cells” were stay-behind (SB) units, created with the experience and involvement of former Special Operations Forces Officers. Operation Gladio is detailed in the important work of Swiss Historian, Daniele Ganser titled Gladio: NATO’s Stay Behind Army”.
Along with Gladio operations, Partition and or ethnic conflict to Divide and Rule was the other tried and tested exit-strategy of the British Empire to ensure continued influence in the post/colony to imperial economic and security interests. This pattern is particularly evident in South Asia and Palestine which were partitioned ensuring Britain’s continued sway beyond putative Independence in 1947. Ceylon of course remained a British Dominion” albeit with the façade of ‘Independence’ until 1972 when the country really achieved Independence with the adoption of the First Republican constitution under a Socialist Government.
Institutions like the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO), similar to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Europe, as well as, ASIO were also set up to contain Communism during the Cold War. As well, they served to stem de-colonization, self-determination and Independence movements, and sustain Euro-American interests in the post/colony. SEATO was set up in 1954 by US President Eisenhower and headquartered in Bangkok, Thailand, to run internal proxy wars in South and Southeast Asia, including Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Burma, even as Buddhism and Islam were weaponized.
Eisenhower would later warn the American people and incoming president John. F. Kennedy who was assassinated in what is widely believe to be a Secret Service inside job in September 1963, about the US military business industrial complex being the greatest threat to Democracy in America (rather than Communist Russia or China).
According to the CIA authorized Story of SEATO[i]
Freedom must be defended in every quarter. Each collective security organization has its own character. SEATO, NATO, CENTRO, and other groups have been designed to meet particular situations in various parts of the world for the threat of Communism is worldwide.”
In September of 1954, the United States, France, Britain, New Zealand, Australia, the Philippines, Thailand and Pakistan had formed the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, or SEATO. The purpose of the organization was to prevent communism from gaining ground in the region given the ‘Domino Theory’ regading the spread of Soviet influence. So too, the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO), formerly known as the Middle East Treaty Organization (METO) and also known as the Baghdad Pact, was a US led military alliance of the Cold War in West Asia. It was formed on 24 February 1955 with Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. The alliance was dissolved on 16 March 1979. ASIO was set up in Australia.
In such a context, the JVP and LTTE conflicts with the de-colonizing State in Sri Lanka ensured the socio-economic under- and de-development of the strategic Indian Ocean island. What emerged was an economic development model of and for colonial dependency on the Imperial West, for markets and products, sans technology transfers. The ‘economic reforms” inaugurated when J.R. Jayawardena came to power with the riots of 1977 to ‘Make the Economy Scream’, like the ISIS-claimed terror which hit the country in 2019 .in the form of hybrid economic war attacks on hotels and tourism also laid the ground work for the current IMF USD-Eurobond Default and purported ‘bankruptcy” of Sri Lanka.
They are not growing roses and waterlilies in those 800 US military bases around the world!
TO BE CONTINUED: Operation Colombo in Santiago de Chile: Cold War Disinformation and Economic Gas lighting
[i] The Story of SEATO 2002 https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP83-00036R001100170006-5.pdf
