Managing COIN: Lessons from Malaya

[davidbfpo]

Thanks to a "lurker" for this. The obituary's sub-title says it all:

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.

[John T. Fishel]

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

[Madhu]

Chapter 17 is titled: "The Briggs Plan Bites".

http://books.google.com/books?id=Ual...#search_anchor

PS: Not really an auto, but recollections.

[Madhu]

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.

[davidbfpo]

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:

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

[davidbfpo]

Thread reopened after a catalyst landed.

There is a SWJ article which may be of value: 'Algeria and Malaya: A Tale of Two Distinct and Dramatically Different Counterinsurgency Campaigns':https://smallwarsjournal.com/index.p...nsurgency-camp
Searching SWJ with Malayan found numerous articles, only a few are here. The best may be those with numerous comments.

[davidbfpo]

A 2015 PhD thesis from Brunel University (near London) found today: ‘Our Achilles’ Heel’ – Interagency Intelligence during the Malayan Emergency. From the Abstract:

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:

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:

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:

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/