Jungle of Snakes (21 page)
Authors: James R. Arnold
Back in 1953, a large-scale British sweep to locate the MCP Politburo had failed. Nonetheless, Chin Peng and the senior Communist
leadership made the decision to follow Mao’s dictate to retreat when the enemy pressed too hard. They slipped over the Thai
border. This border described a very irregular line some 370 miles long. Most of it ran through thick jungle. A substantial
Chinese population lived along the Thai side of the border and provided succor for the MCP Politburo for the remainder of
the war. However, from this remote sanctuary they could not coordinate strategy with the armed detachments to the south. Thereafter
insurgent remnants trekked north to join the headquarters inside the Thai sanctuary, and security forces found it almost impossible
to locate them.
A break came when the third-ranking member of the politburo, Hor Lung, decided that further resistance was futile and surrendered
at a remote police post. The British head of the provincial Special Branch took Hor Lung and his two bodyguards to a secure
place while the British pondered how to proceed. The temptation to trumpet this important capture was almost irresistible.
Instead, with the defector’s consent, the Special Branch returned Hor Lung to the jungle with instructions to persuade his
comrades to surrender. To avoid the real possibility that security forces might encounter and kill him, the military considered
suspending local operations. Upon further reflection they decided this would arouse suspicions, so instead they deliberately
routed patrols to adjacent areas near enough to preserve the appearance of normality but not so close as to threaten Hor Lung.
Most impressively, the British managed to keep the entire thing a secret. The reward for this restrained, well-conceived effort
came over the next four months as 160 Communists surrendered, including 28 whom the government ranked as “hard-core.”
By the end of 1958 only four known guerrillas remained in all of Johore and just two in Negri Sambilan. Major guerrilla actions
averaged a mere one per month. By October 1959 the British estimated total insurgent strength at 700, most of whom were in
Thailand. The handful of holdouts still in Malaya lived in the most inaccessible parts of the jungle, where they found conditions
changed and survival even harder because the jungle-dwelling aborigines had concluded that there was no future in supporting
the guerrillas. In the last two years of the Emergency, one 300-man aboriginal force killed more guerrillas than all the other
security forces combined, apparently using their traditional blowpipes to deadly effect.
On July 31, 1960, the government declared an end to the twelve-yearlong State of Emergency.
Why the British Won
The final human reckoning showed that the security forces lost 519 soldiers and 1,346 police killed. Official government statistics
showed that the Communist terrorists murdered 2,473 civilians and abducted another 810 during the Emergency. The insurgents
lost 6,711 killed, 1,289 captured, and 2,704 surrendered. In other words, during the entire Emergency, security forces killed
or captured about six guerrillas for every soldier or policeman lost. As had been the case during the Philippine Insurrection,
the security forces enjoyed a tremendous tactical edge whenever combat occurred. The problem in Malaya, as in the Philippines,
was finding the insurgents so they could be engaged.
Certain special circumstances contributed immensely to the British victory. The Malaya Communist Party almost exclusively
comprised ethnic Chinese who were alien in creed and race to the majority Malay population. Historically, the Chinese and
Malays had been at odds with one another. Had the Communists been able to use the rallying cry of nationalism they might have
partially overcome this divide. However, the British explicitly promised independence and could point to the examples of India,
Pakistan, and Burma as proof of their ability to fulfill their promise.
Party leaders proved inept strategists. They ignored basic precepts of revolutionary warfare by failing to mobilize the masses
and neglecting to establish secure base areas. Instead of relying on patient propaganda efforts and sympathetic treatment
to persuade the people to conform to their goals, the impatient insurgent leaders took shortcuts. They notably failed to heed
Mao’s cautionary dictum that indiscriminate terror against the masses was counterproductive.
The British, on the other hand, did many things right. Although the military’s initial emphasis on conventional operations
was misguided, the government’s first set of political decisions had enormous, positive influence on the war’s outcome. Crucially,
at no time did the government concede its authority to the insurgents by abandoning inhabited areas. Consequently, the insurgents
were unable to rest, refit, and build inside Malaya.
The decision to maintain a civil government presence in the face of terror derived from the insight of a handful of enlightened
British officials who understood that political stability was a major component of victory. The symbol of this stability was
the presence of a normal, workaday government that both performed its routine tasks and, of critical importance, was seen
by the public to be doing this. Thus, the government urged its officials, the police, and the Europe an elite to remain steadfast
and continue with their routines even in their isolated outposts. Not only was there no mass exodus of panic-stricken people
fleeing from the terror, but local government officials, virtually 100 percent Malay outside of the New Villages, maintained
routine administration in spite of Communist terror. They recorded births, deaths, and marriages, and this atmosphere of apparent
normality informed people that the government had the will to endure.
The government was able to function throughout the country because of the security provided by local police posts. The police,
in turn, survived because British military forces compelled the Malayan Communists to abandon large-unit operations. This
meant they lacked the strength to overrun the police posts.
THE BRITISH RESISTED the temptation to respond to acts of terror by extralegal means. Instead, the government functioned within
the boundaries of the law. It enacted some very tough laws including the imposition of strict curfews, a mandatory death sentence
for carrying arms, and life imprisonment for those caught supporting the terrorists. But legislators passed these laws in
a transparent, legal manner, and they were subject to the concurrence of the courts and applied even-handedly to all citizens.
For example, the police could detain a suspect for up to two years without trial. However, the suspect enjoyed a right of
review by a High Court judge and a panel of local assessors. This helped mitigate the impact of holding some 10,000 suspects
in detention. There was very little local protest. Undoubtedly the efforts to maintain legal and fair administrative approaches
contributed to the muted response. However, it must be noted that the Malay majority thoroughly approved the mass roundup
of Chinese.
The British appreciated and benefitted from the antipathy most Malays felt toward the Chinese. It would have been easy for
the British to ram through what ever measures the high commissioner and his staff desired. It would also have been strictly
legal, since the treaties between the Malay sultans and the British Crown stipulated that British advice had to be accepted.
Instead, the British used persuasion. They treated the Malay sultans as equal partners in the struggle against the insurgents.
Because of this treatment, they enjoyed excellent cooperation both during the Emergency and afterward.
The British also benefitted from a robust demand for tin and natural rubber created by the Korean War. This demand both created
jobs and filled government coffers, allowing the British to pay for social programs that ameliorated the impact of Emergency
regulations. A daily reality of full employment at a decent wage looked more appealing than the Communist promise of struggle
leading to a better life at some indefinite future time.
The leadership of some very able officers, most notably Briggs and Tem-pler, contributed to victory. The British counterinsurgency
expert Robert Thompson called the adroit Templer “the last of the great British proconsuls,” and he lived up to this claim.
6
Within one year of arriving in country, Templer reached a crucial insight that influenced all that came after: “the shooting
side of the business is only twenty-five percent of the trouble and the other seventy-five percent lies in getting the people
of this country behind us.”
7
Regardless of the ebb and flow on the battlefield, the British successfully convinced the people of Malaya that they intended
to remain until they won. Next they provided security from the terrorists. Then they provided social and economic benefits
that gave all the people regardless of race a promise of future progress and prosperity. Templer particularly showed a keen
appreciation of the need for racial reconciliation. He encouraged the formation of the Alliance Party and promised early elections
leading to independence.
On the military front, the British rejected large unit sweeps and indiscriminate use of firepower. The security forces had
official sanction to kill anyone found in the jungle on the basis that they were terrorists or terrorist sympathizers. Yet
there were few systematic abuses of this mandate. Instead, the emphasis was on capturing terrorists rather than killing them.
Key to success was coordinating military, police, and civil activities. Unlike in Indochina, where the Viet Minh conducted
devastating large ambushes against battalion-sized and bigger targets, the Malay Communists lacked the numbers and firepower
to fight such actions. Consequently, except for the most remote police posts, security forces did not have to fear being overrun.
Although the British could call upon artillery and bombers, they accepted that the war would be a struggle of small arms.
By limiting the use of heavy weapons the British limited the harm done to civilians. To fight effectively a war with small
arms the British emphasized individual marksmanship and jungle craft as taught in the handbook “The Conduct of Anti-Terrorist
Operations in Malaya.”
Another component of victory was the fact that security forces did not commit routine outrages against the people. There were
always instances of corruption when soldiers or officials accepted bribes to ignore Emergency regulations. There were incidents
of police brutality, particularly during the early years of the Emergency. Police recruits, especially those who had worked
in Palestine, were used to conducting interrogations with the butt end of a rifle. In the field, army patrols that could not
find the insurgents and could not communicate with a sullen, Chinese-speaking population vented their frustrations by indiscriminately
burning Chinese homes. Since a rubber tapper working in the jungle and a guerrilla looked exactly the same, soldiers shot
and killed innocent people. The practice of dropping a few rounds of ammunition or a weapon around the body of a civilian
to avoid having to explain why the person was killed was not unknown. Nonetheless, in contrast to behavior in so many other
counterinsurgencies such as Algeria, Cyprus, and Palestine, security forces did not systematically brutalize the civilian
population.
Lastly, British leaders understood that winning the war in Malaya would take time and they fully committed to what one general
called “the long, long war.”
8
In turn, a solid majority of the British public patiently supported the war. Such strategic patience was necessary, particularly
in the effort to dismantle the Communist infrastructure that undergirded the insurgency. One combat officer likened the difficultly
of contending with this infrastructure to a skin disease that causes a face rash: “Temporary relief for the rash can be obtained
by local treatment. For a time it may even disappear, but unless the cause of it is found and removed the rash will assuredly
break out again.” The British understood that if they eased up, the Communist leaders would recruit replacements and within
six months “be back in the same dominant position.”
9
Consequently, instead of making a show of force and then moving on, instead of sporadic efforts that condemned them to capturing
the same objective repeatedly, the British employed a methodical but ultimately relentless approach to pacification.
Superficially, the British experience in Malaya resembled the situation in Vietnam in the 1960s. Both the physical environment
(a seemingly all-concealing tropical jungle) and the nature of the opponents (a Western conventional army versus a Communist,
Asian guerrilla army) suggested that the Malayan experience was highly relevant to Vietnam. However, the American military
studied the Emergency with the same narrow focus that it applied to Algeria, confining itself to specific military subjects.
Consequently, according to Sir Robert Thompson, their conclusions were “largely superficial” and most notably the Americans
“never comprehended” the social and political dimensions of the conflict.”
10
Nonetheless, the successful campaign in Malaya, as interpreted by Thompson, influenced both South Vietnamese and American
strategy in Vietnam. When trying to transfer the lessons of Malaya to Vietnam, counterinsurgency experts overlooked several
factors. First and foremost, in Malaya, Great Britain had complete control of the police, civil service, and military services.
Instead of these entities resisting reform, they could spearhead reform. As opposed to South Vietnam, Malaya had no common
border with another Communist country. Also, the insurgent movement was concentrated within the Chinese population. popular
grievances among the Malay majority were insufficient to make a Chinese Communist guerrilla look like a liberator to a Malayan
peasant.
Moreover, even among the Chinese population of Malaya the insurgent cause enjoyed only halfhearted support. Dedicated support
only came from squatters who had nothing to lose except their illegally acquired homesteads. The squatters lived in defined
areas along the jungle edge, which greatly eased the problem of bringing them under tight control. They did not have a long-standing
connection with the land from which they were moved. Consequently, when the British introduced the New Village program, the
squatters complained but there was no extreme reaction associated with a people experiencing change to their traditional way
of life.