September saw anniversaries in the chilling deaths of two democratically elected Socialist heads of state during the United States’ led Cold War anti-communist crusade that unfolded across the world between 1948-91:
The first assassination of concern here happened in Colombo, the capital of the geostrategic Indian Ocean island of Ceylon on September 25, 1959. The second death happened half way across the world fourteen years after the assassination of South Asia’s first Socialist Prime Minister S.W.R.D Bandaranaike.
On September 11, 1973, President Salvador Allende, South America’s first Socialist head of state died during a US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), backed coup as military helicopters strafed the Presidential Palace in Santiago de Chile. The campaign of murder, suppression and disinformation against the Left that followed Allende’s death was Code Named “Operation Colombo”.
Both deaths of democratically elected Socialist heads of State were Cold War operations, which sent shock waves around the world at the time.
Both Bandaranaike and Allende, had promised to fully de-colonize and nationalize their countries’ plantations, ports, minerals and mines to benefit their native peoples, rather than foreign corporations drawing profits from the resource wealth of Global South countries. Both Bandaranaike and Allende died three years into their terms in office before they were able to deliver on the promise of full Economic independence for their citizens.
Remarkably, Prime Minister Bandaranaike was killed minutes after the US Ambassador, Bernard Gufler, had visited him in Colombo. Details of Gufler’s brief visit to Bandaranaike and departure from the scene of the crime just minutes before the assassination were revealed in de-classified US State department documents, some published on Wikileaks and corroborated by British intelligence source reports.
The narrative that a Buddhist monk had shot the Prime Minister compounded the shock, horror and grief that engulfed the British Dominion of Ceylon which had received faux independence just 9 years earlier in February 1948.
US Ambassador Guffler’s profile is of interest here. He was a Special Ambassador and a veteran of GLADIO, the clandestine NATO and CIA ‘stay behind’ secret operations network in Europe, established after World War 2 in partnership with British intelligence.
Hellbound and Down 