The Malayan Emergency as Counter-Insurgency Paradigm

Abstract

The Malayan Emergency of 1948–60 has been repeatedly cited as a source of counter-insurgency lessons, with debate over the relative importance of coercion, ‘winning hearts and minds’, and achieving unified and dynamic control. This paper argues that all these techniques and more were important, but that their weight varied dramatically across quite distinct campaign phases. The conclusions include that effective counter-insurgency analysis must integrate cognition of such phases (there must be different ‘lessons’ for different phases); and that in the Malayan case rapid build-up of barely trained local as well as extraneous forces, and the achievement of area and population security, were key to turning around the campaign in the most intense phase. While persuasive techniques were always present, ‘winning hearts’ came to the fore more in the later optimisation phase.

Key Words:

• Counter-insurgency
• Malaya
• Lessons

Acknowledgements

The preparation of this article was assisted by British Academy funding for travel to and research in Malaysia and Singapore, for a project on New Documentation and Approaches to the Cold War in Southeast Asia.

Notes

¹C.C. Chin and Karl Hack (eds.), Dialogues with Chin Peng: New Perspectives on the Malayan Communist Party (Singapore: Singapore UP 2004), 116–43. Henceforth Dialogues.

²Older sources use Malayan Races Liberation Army (MRLA). MCP Secretary-General Chin Peng insists on ‘National’. Chin Peng and Leon Comber (Malayan Special Branch 1950s) blame Special Branch mistranslation of min tsu (nation) as race. Dialogues, 29 fn2, 148–9.

³Karl Hack, ‘The long march to peace of the Malayan Communist Party in southern Thailand’, in Michael Montesanto and Patrick Jory (eds.), Thai South and Malay North: Ethnic Interactions on a Plural Peninsula (Singapore: NUS Press 2008), 173–99.

⁴For debate about when and how, see Karl Hack, ‘“Iron Claws on Malaya”: The Historiography of the Malayan Emergency’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 30/1 (March 1999), 99–125. For 1955 see Dialogues, 17–18, 171–85, and summary at 306–16.

⁵Rupert Smith's The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World (London: Penguin 2006) emphasises ‘war amongst the people’ superseding industrial war as the main form of modern conflict, with Malaya as an example where victory came from winning ‘the will of the people’ through promising independence for all and land for squatters. See 202–6. Nagl's emphasis on ‘learning organisations’, and Petraeus's 2006 counter-insurgency paper, are discussed below.

⁶By the back being broken, I mean counter-insurgency achieved a trend of improvement which the insurgents were no longer able to reverse, not that the latter's activity levels were at a low level.

⁷The National Archives, Kew, London (henceforth TNA): Air20/10377, ‘Review of the Emergency’, Director of Operations (DOO), Sept. 1957, 19–21, Appendix B. The 67,025 police of Jan. 1952 broke down into 22,187 regulars and 44,785 special constabulary.

⁸‘Malay’ was a civilisational not a racial category, and the 46 per cent included ‘Malaysians’, meaning immigrants from the region who like the Malays could speak Malay, and professed Islam.

⁹ Annual Report on the Malayan Union for 1946 (Kuala Lumpur: Government Printing Press 1946).

¹⁰The first striking forces were concentrated in Johore from 1 June 1950. But the ‘roll-up’ failed. Johore and Perak, states with the strongest MNLA presence, were among the last cleared. Later the emphasis changed to targeting areas where intelligence or insurgent weakness presented opportunities.

¹¹TNA: Cab21/1681, MAL C(50)23, Appendix, ‘Federation plan for the elimination of the communist armed forces in Malaya’ (Briggs Plan), report COS for the Cabinet Malaya Committee, 24 May 1950. The plan was considered by the committee in July, see Anthony Stockwell, Malaya, II (London: HMSO 1995), 217–21.

¹²John Coe, ‘Beautiful Flowers and Poisonous Weeds’ (Unpublished D.Phil., Univ. of Queensland 1993), 167ff.

¹³Rhodes House, Mss British Empire s486/2/1, Misc., 53, paras. 33–5, ‘Short History of the Emergency’, by Operations Branch, Federal Police Headquarters, 21 Oct. 1952, paras. 33–4; and (F), ‘Aim and Strategy of the MCP’. These are filed in the Young Papers for 1952–53 as lecture notes.

¹⁴Adapted from TNA: Air20/10377, ‘Review of the Emergency’, DOO, 12 Sept. 1957.

¹⁵For a survey of the literature up to 1999, see Hack, ‘Iron Claws on Malaya’.

¹⁶Simon Smith, ‘General Templer and Counter-Insurgency in Malaya: Hearts and Minds, Intelligence, and Propaganda’, Intelligence and National Security 16/3 (Autumn 2001), 64.

¹⁷Ibid.

¹⁸Anthony Short, In Pursuit of the Mountain Rats: The Communist Insurrection in Malaya (Singapore: Cultured Lotus 2000), 301–3; Smith, ‘General Templer’, 66. The ‘Sinophobic’ argument is wrong because: the key 4 Oct. 1951 Gurney document supposedly showing Sinophobia ends with a call from Gurney for increased Malayan Chinese Association (MCA) cooperation in areas such as fund-raising (seldom has a document been more blatantly misinterpreted); MCA leader Tan Cheng Lock regarded Gurney as working closely with him to improve the MCA political efficacy in Sept.–Oct. 1951; and Nov. 1951 Federal Executive War Committee papers planned increased Chinese citizenship and more armed Chinese Home Guard. Tan told Lyttelton in Dec. that Gurney's death was a great personal loss. Hack, ‘Iron Claws’, 110–12 (see 111 fn 43 for extended references to the Tan and MacDonald Papers). Cab 128/C(51)26, 20 Nov. 1951, ‘The Situation in Malaya’, Annex 1, … ‘The crux of the problem is winning the loyalty and confidence of the Chinese population’. Subsequent works such as Smith, ‘General Templer’, have failed to address the now widely known evidence to the contrary in, for instance, the Tan Cheng Lock papers.

¹⁹This is ironic, since even the term ‘winning hearts and minds’, usually attributed to Templer's period, was prefigured by Gurney's 1951 Legislative Assembly statement that ‘this war is not to be won only with guns or the ballot-box or any other material instrument which does not touch the hearts of men’, Straits Times Annual 1952 (Singapore: Straits Times 1952), preface.

²⁰Hack, ‘Iron Claws’, 100 fn 5. See also Anthony Short, The Communist Insurrection in Malaya (London: Frederick Muller 1975). Reprinted as In Pursuit of the Mountain Rats.

²¹Smith, ‘General Templer’, 60–78; Kumar Ramakrishna, ‘“Transmogrifying” Malaya: The Impact of Sir Gerald Templer (1952–1954)', Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 32/1 (2001), 79–92.

²²Sunderland can now be supplemented by Leon Comber's Malaya's Secret Police 1945–60: The Role of the Special Branch in the Malayan Emergency (Singapore: ISEAS 2008); Ramakrishna's Emergency Propaganda; and Lucien Pye, Guerrilla Communism in Malaya (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP 1956).

²³Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, US Army and Lt. Gen. James A. Amos, US Marine Corps, FM3-24/MCWP 3-33.5, Counterinsurgency (Dec. 2006), accessed online on 12 June 2008 at <www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3–24.pdf>. Hereafter FM3–24.

²⁴FM3–24, x.

²⁵Short, In Pursuit of the Mountain Rats, 288.

²⁶Chin Peng , Alias Chin Peng: My Side of the Story (Singapore: Media Masters 2003), henceforth Alias Chin Peng. Dialogues, where 392–4 lists new Chinese works, which continue to proliferate, e.g. Fong Chong Pi, Fong Chong Pik (Petaling Jaya: SIRD 2008).

²⁷ Dialogues, 144.

²⁸ Dialogues, 150, 155–6, 159–60.

²⁹ Alias Chin Peng, 295.

³⁰ Dialogues, 162.

³¹ Alias Chin Peng, 323–9.

³²TNA: CO1022/187, 62–158, enclosed with High Commissioner (Malaya) to Colonial Secretary (from J.P. Morton, Director of Intelligence), 31 Dec. 1952.

³³Short, In Pursuit of the Mountain Rats, 321, and Smith, ‘General Templer’, ignore the British Combined Intelligence Staff, Chin Peng and others in continuing to argue that the military parts of the directives were ‘derivative’.

³⁴ Alias Chin Peng, 315.

³⁵Karl Hack, ‘British Intelligence and Counter-Insurgency in the Era of Decolonisation: The Example of Malaya’, Intelligence and National Security 14/2 (Summer 1999), 134–45.

³⁶Smith argues the orders cannot have driven 1952 statistics, since they would take a year to reach units. But see Rhodes House, Young Papers, reports on the Malayan Emergency, 1952–53. State Committees had the documents by May 1952, and they were being acted upon. The assumption was that it would take a year to reach all, that is the last, units. See also Hack, ‘British Intelligence and Counter-Insurgency’, 137–8.

³⁷Rhodes House, Young Papers, ‘Notes for the Commissioner of Police Lecture: Review of the Security Situation in Malaya’.

³⁸See Smith, ‘General Templer’, 60–78. Smith cites a statistical blip (Feb.–March 1952 figures, see 65), but ignores the trend. The blip was partly attributed to the ending of floods and anniversaries. TNA: 1022/14.

³⁹Rhodes House, Mss British Empire s486/2/1, Misc., p. 53, paras. 33–35, ‘Short History of the Emergency’, by Operations Branch, Federal Police Headquarters, 21 Oct. 1952, paras. 33–4; and (F), ‘Aim and Strategy of the MCP’. Filed in the Young Papers for 1952–53 as lecture notes.

⁴⁰TNA, Air20/13077, ‘Review of Emergency Operations’, Director of Operations, Sept. 1957. Subsequent figures were 1953 (4,373), 1954 (3,402), 1955 (2,798), 1956 (2,231).

⁴¹Rhodes House, Young Papers, CIS (52) (7) (Final), ‘Review of the Security Situation as at 30 Sept. 1952’, 10 Oct. 1952.

⁴² Annual Report on the Federation of Malaya: 1951 (Kuala Lumpur: Federal Printers 1952).

⁴³See John Coates, Suppressing Insurgency: An Analysis of the Malayan Emergency, 1948–1955 (Boulder, CO: Westview 1992), 76 (note 76), for MCP strength; 190–202, for monthly figures; 202 for the ratio.

⁴⁴Smith, ‘General Templer’, tries to resurrect the debate as pro- or anti-Templer, but this is a 1950s squabble of little contemporary interest. Ironically, at the same time the CIS were privately ascribing 1952 changes to the Oct. 1951 Resolutions, London was telling commanders elsewhere it was due to Templer's energy and drive, consigning the MCP policy changes to tenth out of ten factors. In a sense, most historians have bought the government propaganda line of 1952. See TNA: WO216/561.

⁴⁵For intelligence improvements see Hack, ‘British Intelligence and Counterinsurgency in Malaya’, 129–33. Page 131 enumerates Templer's role. For amnesties see TNA: CO1022/27.

⁴⁶Nagl, Eating Soup with a Knife, 96.

⁴⁷Richard Clutterbuck, The Long, Long War: The Malayan Emergency 1948–1960 (London: Cassell 1966); and Karl Hack, ‘Corpses, Prisoners of War and Captured Documents: British and Communist Narratives of the Malayan Emergency’, Intelligence and National Security 14/4 (Winter 1999), 216, 228.

⁴⁸This fits the argument of Smith, The Utility of Force, that commanders are like scriptwriters, seeking to win people over to their narrative in a battle ‘amongst the people’.

⁴⁹Lim Hin Fui, ‘Poverty Among Chinese in Malaysia: with special reference to three new villages in Perak’, (Unpublished thesis: Univ. of Malaysia 1990), 119, and fn 22 at 149. Few villagers turned out to see Templer in Palawan in 1952, for fear of the MCP, and few took up temporary occupation licenses in 1953 for the same reason. The headman had to persuade an angry Templer, who accused them of being ‘communists’, not to have the village moved. Lim's picture is of poverty, threats from both sides, and voting for the MCA in the hope they could help.

⁵⁰See also Ramakrishna, ‘“Transmogrifying” Malaya’, 91–2.

⁵¹Kumar Ramakrishna, Emergency Propaganda: The Winning of Hearts and Minds, 1948–1958 (Richmond-upon-Thames, UK: Curzon 2002), esp. Ch. 5, ‘Propaganda Turning Point, Templer, February 1952–May 1954’, 120–59.

⁵²Ray Nyce, Chinese New Villages in Malaya (D.Phil. published by Hartford Seminary Foundation, CT, 1963), xxxvi–xxxvii.

⁵³TNA: WO216/901, DOO (Malaya) to Templer, 15 March 1956.

⁵⁴The leaflets discussed below are from King's College London, Liddell Hart Military Archives, Gen. Sir Hugh Stockwell Papers 7/6.

⁵⁵See this leaflet and others in Dialogues, 213.

⁵⁶See also Rhodes House Oxford, Young Papers, ‘Surrender of Communist Terrorists’, 1953, which lists the main factors for increased surrenders as (1) better police and Special Branch intelligence, including confidence due to Operation ‘Service’; (2) better security force-civil department cooperation; (3) effective food control helping to break CT morale; (4) informing people of the truth and; (5) communist ‘crimes’ and brutality.

⁵⁷Rhodes House, Young Papers, Radio Malaya transcript of 14 Feb. 1953 broadcast.

⁵⁸TNA: KV4/408.

⁵⁹Any attempt to contrast ‘coercive’ versus ‘winning hearts and minds’ approaches tends towards naive simplification. In Malaya the various approaches were all present in each phase: but their emphasis and inter-relationship in the overall matrix changed to suit changing circumstances.