I think there are some lessons to be learned from Malaya, but most of them center on necessary police/military interaction and the potential value of local forces.

One mistake that is often made is the thought that either ALL lessons from an area can be shifted to another or that NONE of them can be used. I think the real value lies in sifting through the cases for specific techniques that worked (or didn't work) and examining them in light of your current situation. For example, elements of Malaya would have worked in Vietnam (since you did have ethnic minorities to work with...and in some cases the South Vietnamese thought of the Northerners as something of a foreign element), but they may gain less traction in Iraq or Afghanistan where tribal factors can play a bigger role. That said, you could possibly modify some Malay techniques to work with tribal cultures.

It's an interesting problem, and one of the things that keeps drawing me to history.