Insurgency And Non State Security Challenges

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Eight characteristics of insurgencies were identified in the pre-recorded lecture for Week One. These were: Purpose and Motivation; Popular Support; Leaders and Recruits; Organisation and Unity of Command; Weapons; Sanctuary and External Support; The Use of Terror; and, Strategy and Tactics. Select any three of these characteristics and critically analyse them against an insurgency of your choice.

"What the peasant wants to know is: does the government mean to win the

war? Because if not, he will have to support the insurgent."

Sir Robert Thompson

Defeating Communist Insurgency:

The Lessons of Malaya and Vietnam

Introduction

This Introductory Essay will critically analyse three characteristics of insurgencies; Purpose and Motivation; Popular Support; and Sanctuary and External Support, against the Malay Insurgency of 1948-1960. This brief essay will show that the inability to successfully achieve any of this three characteristics lead to the failure of the Malay Insurgency.

Purpose and Motivation

The purpose of Malayan Communist Party (MCP) was articulated in the MCP’s 1934 Constitution which according to Kheng, called for the, "overthrow of British colonialism, abolish Malay feudalism and set up a Malay’s Peoples Republic". [1] Ucko argues that the main purpose was to create, "the Soviet Republic of Malaya and also sponsor Communism in Thailand and the Dutch East Indies." [2] Which ever view one takes it was going to be a communist state.

After the end of World War Two, MCP formed the Malayan Races Liberation Army (MRLA) equipped with British and captured Japanese weapons. [3] The MCP emerged from the ashes of WW2 with a large following, mostly from ethnic Chinese and was recognised as a legitimate political party in Malaya. [4] 

1948 saw the ascendancy of world militant communism such as Moa Zing Dong and the primacy of the Chinese Communist Party, and a growing Soviet influence in the Balkans and Eastern Europe. The MCP sort to take advantage of the momentum in world wide communism and established itself as the legitimate anti-colonial force, both in political and military terms. The MCP saw the colonial rulers as the real enemy of the Malay Peninsular and discrimination against the Chinese as the backbone of their insurgency. [5] 

The British set the paradigm of counterinsurgency by eroding the foundation of the being of the MCP. The British Administration gave more electoral rights to ethnic Chinese and fixed a date for independence, two key grievances. They also included the Chinese in local and federal political arenas. [6] The Malayan economy was also doing well [7] providing little motivation to join an insurgency when citizen were having their grievances attended to peacefully.

These innovative actions by the British during what was called the Braggs Plan essentially made the MCP impotent removing the original motivations and purpose of the MCP.

Popular Support

Ethnic Chinese labour was imported to assist in tin mining and to work on the rubber plantation and by 1941 constituted 37% of the Malayan Federation’s population. [8] 

During the war MCP received support from the ethic Chinese while under Japanese occupation and championing the rights of the Chinese against the British Administration. Support base was mainly from the Chinese Diasporas. [9] 

The CMP decided in 1948 adopt the militant communist path and began a guerrilla campaign to advance their ideology. They establishing the military wing of the CMP, [10] the MRLA. The use of the word Race in their title was an attempt to entice Indian and Malaya to join the group [11] but acts of terror carried out by the MRLA alienated some Chinese and most Malays and Indians. This practice was eventually stopped.

Mallette supports this proposition by stating that the main support for the MCP/MRLA came from a group of half a million Chinese, mainly squatters. [12] During the guerrilla phase the MRLA received support in terms of food supplies and intelligence from the Min Yuen (Mass Organisation). The Min Yuen was made up of ethnic Chinese squatting on Sultan lands near the jungle fringes. [13] 

Unfortunately for the MRLA, the Min Yuen and other rural Chinese were easily identified, and in classic counterinsurgency operation known as the Briggs Plan, over 500,000 were moved into what was called "New Villages". This was a pivotal moment for the insurgency according to Ucko the, "MRLA campaign lost its remaining momentum and raison d’etre." [14] 

The strategy of providing better living conditions in the New Villages; the inclusion of the Chinese in the political landscape; scheduling the date for independence of Malaya, and together with a prosperous economy, the British successfully won the ‘Hearts and Minds’ [15] of the populace. This conversely eroded popular support from the MCP to the point where the MRLA withdraw even further into the jungle, closer to the Thai border. [16] 

It seems that the British adopted the Kilcullen’s Three Pillars paradigm [17] in counter insurgency, where equal amounts of pressure were applied to the insurgency. Athough Hack argues that this multi pronged approach varied in strength and timing during different phases of the Malay insurgency and therefore it can be argued the Kilcullen’s model is not truly representative of the British counterinsurgency approach in Malaya. [18] 

Hacks observations appear fixated in semantics. He claimed that only after the population controls were in effect did the strategy of ‘Hearts and Minds’ take hold and divert support away from the insurgency.

Empirical data indicated that once the New Villages were established there was instantaneous effect on insurgency operations. [19] As Yadi acknowledges, anthropological differences dictate the measures that necessary to adopt to be successful in counterinsurgency operations. [20] So it only seems logical to adapt varying intensities and strengths of the Kilcullen’s paradigm to achieve a successful outcome.

Sanctuary and External Support

Sanctuary

Although the Malay peninsular has no common border with a communist state the inaccessible northern jungle region on the Thai-Malay border was ideal for the MCP to withdraw into to recoup, reorganise and replenish. According to Hack, there were, "plans to set up at least eleven deep jungle bases." [21] 

Initial British response was to attempt interdiction of insurgents at their sanctuaries in with large unit formation operations which of course were noisy and cumbersome manoeuvres which gave the insurgency adequate time to avoid contact with these formations. [22] These type of operations provided minimal results, so the British changed tact and adopted, what is now regarded as standard counterinsurgency operations, small unit tactics using Special Forces units and local trackers such as Senoi Pra’aq (fighting aboriginal) [23] to disrupt MRLA units and pursue them deeper into their dense jungles bases.

Innovative responses by the British through the deployment of arms and restrictions on supplies denied the use of these jungle sanctuaries and forced the MCP to withdraw even deeper into the jungle near the Thai border thereby restricting them from serious operations.

External Support

The ability to call on a support for logistic, morale and physical support from a third party is a force multiplier. As stated earlier, the Communist movement was on the march in 1948 and it would be expected that the CMP would receive support in their own struggle. But this didn’t seem to have been the case. There were suspicions that during the Calcutta Youth Conference for international communist parties in February 1948 [24] , the MCP was given the green light by, what Kheng called a, "Communist International (Comintern) agent for South East Asia, Ho Chi Minh (of Vietnam)", [25] to instigate an armed insurgency. These observations of tacit Chinese support were, according to Mumford, "based on circumstantial evidence." [26] He goes further to state that in 1949, US Central Intelligence Agency concluded that there was, "no evidence of material support from the Chinese Communist." [27] 

In that case, it would be logical, in an atmosphere of rising communist successes, for the Soviet Union to fill the void in supporting the MCP. If there was Soviet support it was in morale only and not material. Komer reports that the MCP used mostly British supplied weapons and stolen Japanese weapons during the insurgency. [28] 

It appears that at a time of world communist ascendancy the MCP was not regarded highly by international comrades and therefore failed in establishing any kind of meaningful external network. Mumford arguably concludes that the lack of an external support network, "is perhaps the most critical disabler of the insurgency." [29] 

Conclusion

Although the MCP had the basic characteristics of an insurgency in place, the British showed innovation, daring, and a willing to change and adapt to defeat the MCP both politically and militarily. The British also won the ‘Hearts and Minds’ of the population and set the standard at which counterinsurgencies have been measured against since.