Managing COIN: Lessons from Malaya

[Steve Blair]

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.

[sullygoarmy]

Personally, I found the way the British handled their psychological operations to be an interesting case study with some transferrable lessons to today's fight. The brits focused more on turning the insurgents, versus killing them. Just like in Iraq today, the lower level insurgents are not the die-hard fanatics, those you just have to kill. By turning the lower-level insurgents, the British not only were able to gain valuable intelligence, but also did specific, by name, targeting against the insurgents still in the fight. Utilizing voice aircrafts, the Brits would have the former insurgents record specific messages to their comrades still fighting out in the jungle. Can you imagine the psychological shock if one of the former-Baath party insurgents in Iraq heard a message coming from one of his best friends telling him that his family was doing well, the Americans were taking good care of him and to come over to our side? The voice aircrafts seemed to be very effective with over 95% of captured CTs (communist-terrorists) admitting to hearing them by 1957.

Additionally, I personally like how the Brits conducted their COIN training of not only the military, but of the police as well. The Conduct of Anti-terrorist Operations in Malaya (ATOM) went through several iterations being updated as tactics, techniques and procedures changed. The Brits also made a huge effort to ensure the growing police organizations went through their COIN training and was issued the latest ATOM manuals. As we see today and is highlighted in the CALL Special Study 07-16, From Zero to Blue, often the police graduating from Iraqi Police Academies do NOT have the COIN survival skills to stay alive in their areas. Not only do Iraqi police need to understand the law enforcement aspect of their jobs, but also have a deep understanding of COIN tactics and individual survival skills to defeat the insurgents. The Brits understood this and focused on getting well trained police out front.

Finally, the different leadership examples found by the British command is very interesting. It wasn't until you had ONE head of all efforts appointed did you finally see unity of effort in the COIN fight. When GEN Templar took command, he immediately left for a two week, on the ground, assessment of the situation to guage where to go as the new leadership in Malaya.

Of course there are alot of lessons which are simply not applicable to today's fight...but that doesn't mean we won't need them again in a future fight!

[Tom Odom]

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.

I am burning through John Nagl's book and I just entered the section on Vietnam after finishing the part on Malaya. John's writings on the Brits resonated with me as a guy very interested in Queen Victoria's military and a graduate of the Sudanese Junior CGSC (CAS3) team taught by Brits and Sudanese.

Where John's book is strongest (so far) is its contrasting study of the British and American militaries' willingness to learn. Simply put the British approach to issues of doctrine is dramatically different than our own. We approach doctrine as a stone tablet found on a mountain called Fort Leavenworth. The British approach is much more individualistic and area focused than our own.

Don't get me wrong here; I am not saying the Brits get it right everytime because clearly they don't. But they do adapt more quickly than we do where we tend to fall back on the core "values" of technology, firepower, and annihilation of the enemy when we stumble.

Best

Tom

[Steve Blair]

We approach doctrine as a stone tablet found on a mountain called Fort Leavenworth. The British approach is much more individualistic and area focused than our own.

Don't get me wrong here; I am not saying the Brits get it right everytime because clearly they don't. But they do adapt more quickly than we do where we tend to fall back on the core "values" of technology, firepower, and annihilation of the enemy when we stumble.

Best

Tom

I agree, Tom. I think much of this dates back to our ramping up for World War II and before that the need to train up large numbers of volunteer units quickly (Civil War, World War I, and a few others). The breaking of the regimental system IMO did more harm than good in the U.S. Army, as did many of the personnel system "reforms" from this same period. But that's just my $.02 or so.

[Jedburgh]

RSIS, 29 Aug 07: War As They Knew It: Revolutionary War and Counterinsurgency in Southeast Asia

Since the end of the Second World War, Maoist-inspired revolutions based on the People's War model have swept through Southeast Asian like a raging prarie fire. The two most carefully studied of all the Southeast Asian revolutionary struggles are those of the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) against the British in Malaya, and that of the Vietminh, Vietcong and Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DVRN) in Vietnam. With good reason, these two case studies have become "meta-models" in the art of revolutionary war and counter-insurgency (COIN). The successful containment of the Malayan Emergency spelt the only victory won by a Western democracy against practitioners of revolutionary warfare, while Vietnam stood out as the first case of the success of the People's War model when it defeated two major Western powers in succession. This paper thus relies on the above two paradigms to explain the COIN approaches of the Americans (dominated by military annihilation) and the British (shaped by decades of imperial policing) in Southeast Asia. By examining the British experience in the Malayan Emergency and that of the Americans in the Vietnam War, this paper explores the two distinctly different trajectories that British and American military cultures took, which ultimately determined their respective response to revolutionary war in Southeast Asia. The focus is on the British and American approaches in the following four key components of COIN strategy - utility of military force, civil-military relations, population security and propaganda - for it is in these four crucial areas that the battle for hearts and minds takes place. The state's performance within this interconnected quadrant ultimately dictates the success or failure in countering revolutionary war, simply because it is through them that the power of the word and deed is most keenly felt by the population and the revolutionary. Many students of COIN have acknowledged the importance of the credibility factor, but none have addressed its pertinence within an integrated approach to COIN and counter-revolution. This paper thus demonstrates that insurgencies and revolutionary wars are, by their ontological nature, "credibility wars" and, as such, credibility is the cornerstone - the sine qua non - in any COIN campaign.

Complete 48 page paper at the link.

[John T. Fishel]

Malaya was, as several posts point out, a relatively "easy" case in which nearly everything favored COIN. So, why did it take 12 long years to end the thing favorably? (3 years after inedpendence).
Lesson: COIN ain't easy

Malaya had not only unity of effort but unity of command. Most COIN will not permit unity of command but all would permit it among USG elements.
Lesson: USG needs to have unity of command among all USG components even if this means putting the Ambassador in command of the military commander (or vice versa).

Cheers

JohnT

[goesh]

ROE is defined by the Constitution/UCMJ/Geneva Conventions when it should be defined by culture and environment and in that respect, COIN can never be very well managed, except at the theoretical level. ROE is static and results in what I call the uniform code of adaptability, which assumes there are a set of common cultural dynamics that are uniform across the 3rd world spectrum and can be similarly manipulated culture-to-culture. Add to this inductive generalization the problems military traditionalists pose for COIN and it remains a concept that cannot be well managed in real time in real field conditions. Small unit autonomy is the answer but the more you have small unit autonomy, the more you perforate the parameters set by current ROE - a vicious circle.