Book Review: Hearts and Minds in Guerrilla Warfare: The Malayan Emergency 1948-1960
ISBN: 0195889428 by Richard Stubbs (from my Amazon.com review)
Books that cover the military history of irregular warfare campaigns are plentiful. Most will provide great insight or not so great insight into tactics and military strategies for counterinsurgency. Very few seem to take a more holistic approach to discuss the grand strategy of a campaign at the political, social, and military level combined. This broader view is more helpful to citizens and political leadership than are the microcosm of only the military aspects.
Counterinsurgency is more often a political and social problem fed by political or social injustices that serve to promote insurgent support in the form of material supply and fresh recruits. The absence of good texts providing case studies has doomed us to repeat the same learning process in each new conflict. Hearts and Minds in Guerrilla Warfare is a classic case study of the 1948-1960 Malayan Emergency which provides the broader view needed in all aspects of a counterinsurgency grand strategy. We would do well to return to it as a study in one success story and what was learned from that experience. It would also serve well as a model for more studies of its kind.
Hearts and Minds begins with a study of how the communist insurgency sprang from the insecurities and uncertainties of a near anarchy at the sudden end of Japanese dominance in the area after the second world war. It demonstrates how lawlessness creates a vacuum that charismatic guerrilla leaders can fill with their own brand of security. The book covers various phases in the conflict from the inception and growth of the insurgent forces through outside influences out of the control of the local authorities such as the economic boom of the Korean war period. It also covers the policies that led to failures and even fed the rebellion in the early stages then picks up on key points of the philosophy that led to the eventual defeat of the guerrilla forces. It is a study of the conflict that gave rise to the "hearts and minds" philosophy talked about so often with regard to counterinsurgency and provides us with a success we can study for key elements that provided that success.
This is a very well-written work that provides the political and social backgrounds to the conflict without overpowering the reader with the multitude of acronyms and abbreviations of the political movements and parties involved. Other books have focused on the military aspects or political aspects of this and other conflicts. This book covers a wider, more meaningful view of the political, social, and military aspects that can be considered in how we approach similar conflicts. It is an important work that can provide great insight to political and military leadership in current and future conflicts. Very highly recommended.
The Real Cause of the Malayan Emergency
Sitting in coffee house in Chinatown in singapore I had a wonderful discussion with a former Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army insurgent who later became a police official via being a 'Communist Insurgent'. It turns out that the British told many of the members of the MPAJA that if they joined that after the war, when the British returned they would get five acres of land, a hut and a few pigs. He decided he didn't really like being an insurgent and handed himself in as many did during one of the many amnestys was declared. Perhaps even the first one.
Many were Chinese born, or first generation Straits Chinese, so had family in China and hated the Japanese. After the war they went and asked for ther 'pay' for fighting the Japanese. The Colonial Administration said that was not possible so after fruitless negotiations that dragged on for two years many took up arms again 'to fight for their rights' and not as Communist sympathisers. Funnily enough the British later offered a deal where if they handed in their weapon, and swore allegiance to the government, they were rewarded with five acres of land, a hut and a few pugs.
If the British had given the Chinese ex-MPAJA what had been promised to them in the frist place, the Emergency may never had happened. Many years later (1984) in the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia my wife and I picked up a farmer who was returning home from the fields loaded down with vegetables. The Cameron Hilighland still had 'black areas' where ex-Communist Terrorists farmed the land as per the agreement. he was one of them although I did not know this at the time. My wife, who speaks fluent Hokkien, had a great chat with him.
Off the subject the farmers grew fantastic pontiac potatoes and I still remember the fried chips (steak fries to you Yanks) my wife made from them. We are still together - never lose a good cook as a wife and Asian wives, like good wine, get better with age.
Setting the Record Straight on Malayan Counterinsurgency Strategy
Entry Excerpt:
Setting the Record Straight on Malayan Counterinsurgency Strategy:
Interview with Karl Hack
by Octavian Manea
Download the Full Article: Setting the Record Straight on Malayan Counterinsurgency Strategy
You are a long time researcher and observer of the Malayan Emergency. What were the core key ingredients that broke the back of the communist insurgents in the Malayan Emergency? The primary cause for putting the campaign on a firmly winning path? The game changer that helped at the end of the day to regain the initiative?
That is a bit like asking, ‘In making a cup of tea, which action is the game-changer: the heating of the water, the addition of the tea bag, or the correct amount of steeping? If you don’t heat the water, or don’t add the teabag, or under or over-steep, you don’t get a drinkable cup of tea. In addition, if you do things in the wrong order, it may turn out disgusting. You can’t just skip a stage and go to the one and single ‘really important’ bit of tea-making.
The same goes for counterinsurgency. You cannot, for instance, go straight to a comprehensive approach for ‘winning hearts and minds’ and expect it to work, if you have not first broken up the larger insurgent groups, disrupted their main bases, and achieved a modicum of spatial dominance and of security for the population in the area concerned. Local fence-sitters are, quite rightly in terms of family survival needs, likely to regard personal safety and avoiding ‘collaboration’ with you as overriding concerns, especially after contractors and officials who help you are assassinated or tortured.
Yet for counterinsurgency, people do sometimes ask ‘what is the one key ingredient’? The answer is, menus do not work like that, and neither did the Malayan Emergency. There were distinct phases or stages. I would argue that many other insurgencies are also likely to have distinct stages, and indeed that within a single insurgency different provinces or regions may be at different stages at any one time. It is quite possible that Helmand and Herat, Kandahar and Nangarhar, could simultaneously be at very different stages, requiring very different policies.
The question above, therefore, encompasses what I would like to dub the ‘temporal fallacy’ (that policies abstracted from one defining moment might be equally valid in qualitatively different phases), and the spatial fallacy (that different geographic regions will be in the same phase, so allowing a single strategy for a country no matter how fractured and diverse).
Download the Full Article: Setting the Record Straight on Malayan Counterinsurgency Strategy
Interview with Karl Hack conducted by Octavian Manea (Editor of FP Romania, the Romanian edition of Foreign Policy).
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No more soup: Chin Peng obituary
Thanks to a "lurker" for this. The obituary's sub-title says it all:
Quote:
Chin Peng, who has died aged about 88, was decorated for his bravery fighting alongside British forces in the Second World War then afterwards took up arms against them in the Malayan Emergency.
Link:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obit...Chin-Peng.html
There is no single thread on Malaya, although many references - many I expect a result of John Nagl's book.
Before Nagl there was Thompson
Sir Robert Thompson, who was a senior civil servant during the Emergency, wrote a number of serious works on COIN which greatly influenced American COIN doctrine, including FM 3-24. His 1966 Defeating Communist Insurgency is a classic. Easily derived from his book is a model for the conduct of COIN which Manwaring tested against the SWORD model (see our "The SWORD Model of Counterinsurgency" in the Journal Dec 2008. Although Thompson was influential among COIN thinkers and with President Diem (in the early days of the Vietnam War), his approach was largely rejected by MACV, in the end, both at the strategic and tactical levels.
Cheers
JohnT
From Reason (on Briggs Plan)
Quote:
That narrative is largely incorrect. "The primary historical record," Gentile writes, "shows that there was no discontinuity" between Briggs and Templer. Both were committed to implementing the Briggs Plan: a massive and often brutal resettlement program that relocated hundreds of thousands of people suspected of sympathizing with the insurgents (chiefly members of the ethnic Chinese minority in Malaya).
In retrospect, the British victory was never much in doubt. The Malayan Communist fighters never numbered more than 7,500. The ethnic Malays were generally supportive of the British counterinsurgency campaign because they opposed a communist takeover of their country. "It was a war," Gentile observes, "that would have been very difficult for the British to lose."
http://reason.com/archives/2013/07/3...the-better-war
I sometimes note that American policy makers have trouble with scale (I first noted this in medicine, lots of people have made that point actually) and translating policy that works for small European states to the US setting. This 'trouble with scale' might make for an interesting area of study in various policy discussions.
We missed The Second Emergency 1969-1989
Oddly there is little written on the 'Second Emergency' in Malaya / Malaysia, that ran from 1969 to 1989 and that includes this Form on a quick skim. So I was delighted to read a May 2015 RUSI Journal with a review of 'Malaysia's Defeat of Armed Communism: The Second Emergency 1969-1989' by Ong Weichang.
The review is not available online, but if you are interested PM me.
Big snag Amazon UK shows no reviews and it costs £150:https://www.amazon.co.uk/Malaysias-Defeat-Armed-Communism-Emergency/dp/B00XWXAEYY/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1477325422&sr =1-1-fkmr0&keywords=Malaysia%27s+Defeat+of+Armed+Commun ism
%3A+The+Second+Emergency+1969-1989
In the USA it is much cheaper! There is this review too:
Quote:
Ong Weichong illuminates a neglected chapter in the history of counterinsurgency (COIN) in Southeast Asia. Most studies end their assessment of the Malayan Emergency in 1960, and from this a number of COIN lessons and principles have been derived. As Ong argues, COIN campaigns may be longer and costlier then we have been led to believe. His peerless examination of the "Second Emergency" (1968-1981) is convincing in breadth of sources and depth of analysis. Malaysia's Defeat of Armed Communism is a must-read for serious scholars of COIN and irregular warfare.' – James D. Kiras, School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, USA
Link:https://www.amazon.com/Malaysias-Def...s=Ong+Weichong
Two new sources discovered and one to wait for
A 2015 PhD thesis from Brunel University (near London) found today: ‘Our Achilles’ Heel’ – Interagency Intelligence during the Malayan Emergency. From the Abstract:
Quote:
Given that the British intelligence organisations had learnt to function in a joint manner during the Second World War, it is remarkable how much had apparently been forgotten in the three years preceding the outbreak of the Communist insurgency in Malaya and how long it took to create an effective method of coordinating intelligence during subsequent Emergency.
Link:https://bura.brunel.ac.uk/bitstream/...textThesis.pdf
The bibliography appears to cover more than intelligence matters - so worth a peek.
The late British diplomat and intelligence officer Brian Stewart edited a short book 'Memories of the Malayan Police', covering the period 1948-1958, which is available online anda review by Anthony Short includes:
Quote:
One knows that for every soldier who was killed, two policemen died. Not a lot of people, however, would know how fraught the situation was at the beginning and that police lieutenants could be killed within days of arrival without firing a shot. And there are few who have known the eventual, awful and terminal silence of ambush as well as the mayhem and fury when it begins. These are the unaffected and understated accounts of those who were at the sharp end. There is some very fine writing.
Taken from the author's preface:
Quote:
When I suggested this book, I captioned my proposal Operation Sharp End, a phrase chosen to emphasise that my central objective was to record memories of junior officers who bore the brunt of the fight on the ground.
Link:https://www.britishempire.co.uk/arti...onsharpend.htm
Coming soon hopefully a Kings War Studies PhD: Mark Baillie, ‘British Cabinet-Level Policy on the Malayan Emergency: An Enquiry into the Reasons for the Decisions’; described all too briefly:
Quote:
showing how an understanding of the ‘official mind’, as opposed to military tactics, is crucial to understanding the prosecution of the campaign
Link:https://defenceindepth.co/2018/06/18...23-april-2018/