Small, Forgotten Small Wars

[TDB]

A colonial era COIN war 1952-1960 that the UK would probably prefer to overlook and due to a current legal case has re-appeared. What is astonishing is that the civil disclosure requirements led to the discovery of colonial records "lost" in a store. This short BBC report is summary:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13044974

The use of torture in the 'Emergency' was well known at the time, there was a public airing of one case of abuse and killings at the Hola Camp.

A "taster" on the 'Emergency':http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mau_Mau_Uprising

Looks like Cameron will have to issue another apology on behalf of the British people. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012...sation-torture

I think it'll be his third.

[davidbfpo]

The Mau-Mau Emergency in pre-independence Kenya appears on a few threads and has not been forgotten by academics. The journal 'Intelligence and National Security' has a review by Professor Richard English, of St Andrews University, which is complimentary and written in light of the revelations about treatment of civilians - as shown here in a couple of posts.

The book was published in 2013 and is 'Fighting the Mau Mau: The British Army and Counter-Insurgency in the Kenya Emergency' by Huw Bennett. The publisher's summary:

British Army counterinsurgency campaigns were supposedly waged within the bounds of international law, overcoming insurgents with the minimum force necessary. This revealing study questions what this meant for the civilian population during the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya in the 1950s, one of Britain's most violent decolonisation wars. For the first time Huw Bennett examines the conduct of soldiers in detail, uncovering the uneasy relationship between notions of minimum force and the colonial tradition of exemplary force where harsh repression was frequently employed as a valid means of quickly crushing rebellion. Although a range of restrained policies such as special forces methods, restrictive rules of engagement and surrender schemes prevented the campaign from degenerating into genocide, the army simultaneously coerced the population to drop their support for the rebels, imposing collective fines, mass detentions and frequent interrogations, often tolerating rape, indiscriminate killing and torture to terrorise the population into submission.

Link:http://www.cambridge.org/bo/academic...enya-emergency

Link to Amazon:http://www.amazon.com/Fighting-Mau-C...ds=huw+bennett

[davidbfpo]

Hat tip to WoTR for an excellent article today, combining history and its application today - not just for Finland, the Baltic States come to mind. Added here as there is no thread for the Winter War:http://warontherocks.com/2016/07/les...abian-defense/

[davidbfpo]

A WoTR riposte to the article posted last week; which ends with:

So yes, this conflict does have some excellent lessons for thinking about future war, but let us not call it was something it was not. Perhaps we could learn from the Finns often-excellent unit cohesion and their ability quickly to adapt on the fly and how that enabled them to resist for far longer than even they had though possible. That really would be worth thinking about.

Link:http://warontherocks.com/2016/07/the...e-looking-for/

[davidbfpo]

More of an update on this campaign, which rarely gets attention here. There are three previous posts in this thread: 17,21 & 22. Kenya does appear in nine threads in this arena; whereas other campaigns have their own threads sch as Malaya, Palestine, Iraq and Dhofar.

This linked article reviews recent books on the use of force - away from the frontline; including torture, which has its own thread:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ad.php?t=17110

It ends with:

The saga of the Hanslope files provides a suitable shabby and disreputable coda to a brutal counter-insurgency campaign which was surrounded by lies and cover-ups. But the new mythology surrounding them distorts our understanding of the affair as well as misrepresenting the essentially collaborative nature of historical enquiry and wildly exaggerating the degree to which the archives were successfully sanitised.

Link:https://theconversation.com/it-makes-a-good-story-but-the-cover-up-of-britains-savage-treatment-of-the-mau-mau-was-exaggerated-65583?

[davidbfpo]

The online, free British Journal of Military History has two book reviews in the latest edition:

1) David French's 'Fighting EOKA: The British Counter-Insurgency Campaign on Cyprus, 1955-1959' and the author concludes:

In short, this is an authoritative and exhaustive resource for anyone who needs to understand the Cyprus emergency in its domestic and international aspects or is interested in issues surrounding the control of force and reactions to excessive force and losses of control.

Link:http://bjmh.org.uk/index.php/bjmh/article/view/125/97

2) Huw Bennett's 'Fighting the Mau Mau, The British Army and Counter-Insurgency in the Kenya Emergency':

This is a superbly researched book, based a tremendous amount of archival research including the secret Colonial Office archive, which has only just been released to the National Archives in Kew. It is vital reading for anyone seeking to understand the British Army's role in modern counter-insurgency actions, whether in Kenya or in Afghanistan and this book cannot be recommended too highly.

Link:http://bjmh.org.uk/index.php/bjmh/article/view/128/100

[davidbfpo]

The civil war / insurgency in Mozambique between the FRELIMO government and RENAMO an opposition (originally a spin-off from the Rhodesian War and funded by Rhodesia) rarely gets attention.

Although the article's title shows the focus, it does provide insight into the war and numerous sources. The title then: 'Auxiliary Armed Forces and Innovations in Security Governance in Mozambique’s Civil War' by a Dutch academic.
Link, currently free from the journal 'Civil Wars':http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/...9.2017.1412752

[davidbfpo]

Hat tip to WoTR for this fascinating article on joint action against pirates along the Chinese and Korean coastline, between 1854-1855 when the Royal Navy was distracted by the Crimean War.

Link:https://warontherocks.com/2018/01/pr...inese-pirates/

The catalyst for the article is the discovery of a set of captured flags, thought to have been lost for over a hundred years.

Adam G. may note this as evidence it's not just the UK that loses historical items.

[AdamG]

The Cuban Army Abroad – Fidel Castro’s Foreign Cold Warriors
http://militaryhistorynow.com/2016/0...-foreign-wars/

[davidbfpo]

A rare article on the war between Ethiopia and Somalia over the Ogaden - a region of Ethiopia with a Somali majority and desired by Somalia, way back in 1977-1978. A war with three Cuban brigades deployed, a switch of Soviet support to Ethiopia; an 'all-arms' war which Somalia lost.
Link:https://defenceindepth.co/2019/02/19...retrospective/

Curiously of the key players on the Ethiopian side only one remains alive, Mengistu remains in exile in Zimbabwe. The Cuban general was purged and shot dead.