Editing Malayan Emergency (section)

== British and Commonwealth strategies ==
[[File:SC protection team.jpg|thumb|left|Workers on a rubber plantation in Malaya travel to work under the protection of [[Special Constable]]s, whose function was to guard them throughout the working day against attack by communist forces, 1950.]]

During the first two years of the Emergency, British forces conducted a 'counter-terror,' characterised by high levels of state coercion against civilian populations; including sweeps, cordons, large-scale deportation, and capital charges against suspected guerrillas.<ref name=":3">{{Cite journal |last=Hack |first=Karl |date=28 September 2012 |title=Everyone Lived in fear: Malaya and the British way of counter-insurgency |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09592318.2012.709764 |journal=Small Wars & Counterinsurgencies |volume=23 |issue=4–5 |pages=682–684 |doi=10.1080/09592318.2012.709764 |via=Taylor & Francis Online |s2cid=143847349}}</ref> Police corruption and the British military's widespread destruction of farmland and burning of homes belonging to villagers rumoured to be helping communists, led to a sharp increase in civilians joining the MNLA and communist movement. However, these tactics also prevented the communists from establishing liberated areas (the MCPs first, and foremost objective), successfully broke up larger guerrilla formations, and shifted the MNLA's plan of securing territory, to one of widespread sabotage.<ref name=":3" />

Commonwealth forces struggled to fight guerrillas who moved freely in the jungle and enjoyed support from rural Chinese populations. British planters and miners, who bore the brunt of the communist attacks, began to talk about government incompetence and being betrayed by Whitehall.<ref>Souchou Yao. 2016. The Malayan Emergency A Small Distant War. Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Monograph series, no. 133. p. 43.</ref>

The initial government strategy was primarily to guard important economic targets, such as mines and plantation estates. In April 1950, General Sir [[Harold Rawdon Briggs|Harold Briggs]], most famous for implementing the [[Briggs Plan]], was appointed to Malaya. The central tenet of the Briggs Plan was to segregate MNLA guerrillas from their supporters among the population. A major component of the Briggs Plan involved targeting the MNLA's food supplies, which were supplied from three main sources: food grown by the MNLA in the jungle, food supplied by the Orang Asli aboriginal people living in the deep jungle, and MNLA supporters within the 'squatter' communities on the jungle fringes.<ref name="O. Tilman 1966 407–419" />

[[File:Terrorist in Malaya.jpg|thumb|A wounded suspected MNLA supporter being held and questioned after his capture in 1952]]

The Briggs Plan also included the forced relocation of some one million rural civilians into [[concentration camp]]s referred to as "[[new village]]s". These concentration camps were surrounded by barbed wire, police posts, and floodlit areas, all designed to stop the inmates from contacting and supplying MNLA guerrillas in the jungles, segregating the communists from their civilian supporters.<ref name=Keo19/><ref name=Sa64/><ref name=Mann13>{{cite book |last1=Mann |first1=Michael |title=The Sources of Social Power. Volume 4: Globalizations, 1945–2011|url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/sources-of-social-power/CE8493644C4615FD156312944E725F02 |date=2013 |quote=A bloody ten-year civil war, the Malayan Emergency was finally won by British forces using scorched earth tactics, including the invention of forcible relocation of villages into areas controlled by British forces.|publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |location=Cambridge |isbn=9781107028678 |page=16}}</ref>

In 1948, the British had 13 infantry battalions in Malaya, including seven partly formed [[Gurkha]] battalions, three British battalions, two battalions of the [[Royal Malay Regiment]] and a [[Royal Artillery]] Regiment being used as infantry.<ref name="Hack:113">Karl Hack, ''Defense & Decolonisation in South-East Asia'', p. 113.</ref>

The Permanent Secretary of Defence for [[Federation of Malaya|Malaya]], Sir [[Robert Grainger Ker Thompson]], had served in the [[Chindits]] in Burma during World War II. Thompson's in-depth experience of [[jungle warfare]] proved invaluable during this period as he was able to build effective civil-military relations and was one of the chief architects of the counter-insurgency plan in Malaya.<ref>Joel E. Hamby. [https://web.archive.org/web/20070219203036/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0KNN/is_32/ai_105853016 "Civil-military operations: joint doctrine and the Malayan Emergency"], ''Joint Force Quarterly'', Autumn 2002, Paragraph 3,4</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Peoples |first=Curtis |url=http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/vietnamcenter/events/2002_Symposium/2002Papers_files/peoples.htm |title=The Use of the British Village Resettlement Model in Malaya and Vietnam, 4th Triennial Symposium (April 11–13, 2002), The Vietnam Center and Archive, Texas Tech University |url-status=dead |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20071226023950/http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/vietnamcenter/events/2002_Symposium/2002Papers_files/peoples.htm |archive-date=26 December 2007}}</ref>

In 1951, the British High Commissioner in Malaya, Sir [[Henry Gurney]], was killed near [[Fraser's Hill]] during an MNLA ambush. General [[Gerald Templer]] was chosen to become the new High Commissioner in January 1952. During Templer's two-year command, "two-thirds of the guerrillas were wiped out and lost over half their strength, the incident rate fell from 500 to less than 100 per month and the civilian and security force casualties from 200 to less than 40."<ref>{{cite book | last=Clutterbuck | first=Richard | title=Conflict and violence in Singapore and Malaysia 1945–83 | year=1985 | publisher=Graham Brash | location=Singapore}}</ref> Orthodox historiography suggests that Templer changed the situation in the Emergency and his [[The Templer Plan|actions and policies]] were a major part of British success during his period in command. Revisionist historians have challenged this view and frequently support the ideas of [[Victor Purcell]], a Sinologist who as early as 1954 claimed that Templer merely continued policies begun by his predecessors.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Ramakrishna |first=Kumar |date=February 2001 |title='Transmogrifying' Malaya: The Impact of Sir Gerald Templer (1952–54) |journal=Journal of Southeast Asian Studies |publisher=Cambridge University Press |volume=32 |issue=1 |pages=79–92  |doi=10.1017/S0022463401000030  |jstor=20072300|s2cid=159660378 }}</ref>

===Control of anti-guerrilla operations===
[[File:Police in Malayan Emergency.jpg|thumb|Police officers question a civilian during the Malayan Emergency.]]

At all levels of the Malayan government (national, state, and district levels), the military and civil authority was assumed by a committee of military, police and civilian administration officials. This allowed intelligence from all sources to be rapidly evaluated and disseminated and also allowed all anti-guerrilla measures to be co-ordinated.<ref name="conduct_1958_chap_3">Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya, Director of Operations, Malaya, 1958, Chapter III: Own Forces</ref>{{Better source needed|reason=This appears to be a primary document written during the war. Need to find a secondary source for this in the near future|date=June 2023}}

Each of the Malay states had a State War Executive Committee which included the State Chief Minister as chairman, the Chief Police Officer, the senior military commander, state home guard officer, state financial officer, state information officer, executive secretary, and up to six selected community leaders. The Police, Military, and Home Guard representatives and the Secretary formed the operations sub-committee responsible for the day-to-day direction of emergency operations. The operations subcommittees as a whole made joint decisions.<ref name="conduct_1958_chap_3" />{{Better source needed|reason=This appears to be a primary document written during the war. Need to find a secondary source for this in the near future|date=June 2023}}

====Agent Orange====
{{Further|Agent Orange}}

During the Malayan Emergency, Britain became the first nation in history to make use of [[herbicides]] and [[defoliants]] as a military weapon. It was used to destroy bushes, food crops, and trees to deprive the guerrillas of both food and cover, playing a role in Britain's food denial campaign during the early 1950s.<ref name=Hay82>{{cite book |last1=Hay |first1=Alastair |url=https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4899-0339-6 |title=The Chemical Scythe: Lessons of 2, 4, 5-T, and dioxin |date=1982 |publisher=[[Springer Nature|Plenum Press / Springer Nature]] |isbn=9780306409738 |location=New York |pages=149–150 |doi=10.1007/978-1-4899-0339-6 |quote=It was the British who were actually the first to use herbicides in the Malayan 'Emergency'...To circumvent surprise attacks on their troops the British Military Authorities used 2,4,5-T to increase visibility in the mixed vegetation |author-link=Alastair Hay |s2cid=29278382}}</ref><ref name=JaWa21>{{cite book |last1=Jacob |first1=Claus |url=https://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/12189 |title=Ethics of Chemistry: From Poison Gas to Climate Engineering |last2=Walters |first2=Adam |date=2021 |publisher=[[World Scientific]] |isbn=978-981-123-353-1 |editor-last1=Schummer |editor-first1=Joachim |location=Singapore |pages=169–194 |chapter=Risk and Responsibility in Chemical Research: The Case of Agent Orange |doi=10.1142/12189 |editor-last2=Børsen |editor-first2=Tom |s2cid=233837382}}</ref> A variety of herbicides were used to clear [[lines of communication]] and destroy food crops as part of this strategy. One of the herbicides, was a 50:50 mixture of butyl esters of [[2,4,5-T]] and [[2,4-D]] with the brand name Trioxone. This mixture was virtually identical to the later Agent Orange, though Trioxone likely had a heavier contamination of the health-damaging dioxin impurity.<ref name="NewScientist">{{cite magazine |date=19 January 1984 |title=How Britain Sprayed Malaya with Dioxin |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=I_lWnBp1GUMC |magazine=New Scientist |volume=101 |pages=6–7 |issn=0262-4079 |number=1393}}</ref>

In 1952, Trioxone and mixtures of the aforementioned herbicides, were sprayed along a number of key roads. From June to October 1952, {{convert|1,250|acre|abbr=off|order=flip}} of roadside vegetation at possible ambush points were sprayed with defoliant, described as a policy of "national importance".{{citation needed|date=June 2023}} The experts advised that the use of herbicides and defoliants for clearing the roadside could be effectively replaced by removing vegetation by hand and the spraying was stopped.<ref name="NewScientist" /> However, after that strategy failed,{{citation needed|date=June 2023}} the use of herbicides and defoliants in effort to fight the guerrillas was restarted under the command of  [[Gerald Templer]] in February 1953 as a means of destroying food crops grown by communist forces in jungle clearings. [[Helicopters]] and [[fixed-wing aircraft]] despatched [[sodium trichloroacetate]] and Trioxone, along with pellets of [[(2-Chlorophenyl)thiourea|chlorophenyl]] [[N,N-Dimethyl-1-naphthylamine|N,N-dimethyl-1-naphthylamine]] onto crops such as [[sweet potatoes]] and [[maize]]. Many Commonwealth personnel who handled and/or used Trioxone during the conflict suffered from serious exposure to dioxin and Trioxone. An estimated 10,000 civilians and guerrilla in Malaya also suffered from the effects of the defoliant, but many historians think that the number is much larger since Trioxone was used on a large scale in the Malayan conflict and, unlike the US, the British government limited information about its use to avoid negative global public opinion. The prolonged absence of vegetation caused by defoliation also resulted in major [[soil erosion]].<ref>{{cite book |title=Pesticide Dilemma in the Third World: A Case Study of Malaysia |publisher=Phoenix Press |year=1984 |page=23}}</ref>

Following the end of the Emergency, [[US Secretary of State]] [[Dean Rusk]] advised [[US President]] [[John F. Kennedy]] that the precedent of using herbicide in warfare had been established by the British through their use of aircraft to spray herbicide and thus destroy enemy crops and thin the thick jungle of northern Malaya.<ref name="USE">{{cite book |author=Bruce Cumings |title=The Global Politics of Pesticides: Forging Consensus from Conflicting Interests |publisher=[[Earthscan]] |year=1998 |page=61}}</ref><ref name="Pamela Sodhy 1991 284–290" />

===Nature of warfare===
[[File:The Malayan Emergency 1948-1960 MAL35.jpg|thumb|Malayan Police conducting a patrol around the [[Belum-Temengor|Temenggor]], 1953]]

The British Army soon realised that clumsy sweeps by large formations were unproductive.{{sfnp|Nagl|2002|pp=67–70}} Instead, platoons or sections carried out patrols and laid ambushes, based on intelligence from various sources, including informers, surrendered MNLA personnel, aerial reconnaissance and so on. An operation named "Nassau", carried out in the [[Kuala Langat]] swamp is described in ''The Guerrilla – and how to Fight Him'':{{Efn|Fleet Marine Force Reference Publication (FMFRP) 12-25,'The Guerrilla - And How To Fight Him'}} <!-- This is an absolutely massive colossal block of text to describe conditions which could be explained in a single paragraph. --> {{blockquote|On 7 July, two additional companies were assigned to the area; patrolling and harassing fires were intensified. Three terrorists surrendered and one of them led a platoon patrol to the terrorist leader's camp. The patrol attacked the camp, killing four, including the leader. Other patrols accounted for four more; by the end of July, twenty-three terrorists remained in the swamp with no food or communications with the outside world.

This was the nature of operations: 60,000 artillery shells, 30,000 rounds of mortar ammunition, and 2,000 aircraft bombs for 35 terrorists killed or captured. Each one represented 1,500 man-days of patrolling or waiting in ambushes. "Nassau" was considered a success for the end of the emergency was one step nearer.<ref>Taber, ''The War of the Flea'', pp.140–141. Quote from Marine Corps Schools, "Small Unit Operations" in ''The Guerrilla – and how to Fight Him''</ref>}}MNLA guerrillas had numerous advantages over Commonwealth forces since they lived in closer proximity to villagers, they sometimes had relatives or close friends in the village, and they were not afraid to threaten violence or torture and murder village leaders as an example to the others, which forced them to assist them with food and information. British forces thus faced a dual threat: the MNLA guerrillas and the silent network in villages who supported them. British troops often described the terror of jungle patrols. In addition to watching out for MNLA guerrillas, they had to navigate difficult terrain and avoid dangerous animals and insects. Many patrols would stay in the jungle for days, even weeks, without encountering the MNLA guerrillas. That strategy led to the infamous [[Batang Kali massacre]] in which 24 unarmed villagers were executed by British troops.<ref name="MAY" /><ref name="MAL" />

Royal Air Force activities, grouped under "Operation Firedog" included ground attacks in support of troops and the transport of supplies. The RAF used a wide mixture of aircraft to attack MNLA positions: from the new [[Avro Lincoln]] heavy bomber to [[Short Sunderland]] flying boats. Jets were used in the conflict when [[de Havilland Vampire]]s replaced Spitfires of [[No. 60 Squadron RAF]] in 1950 and were used for ground attack.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.raf.mod.uk/organisation/60squadron.cfm |title=60(R) Squadron |work=Royal Air Force |year=2016 |access-date=9 June 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160306151633/http://www.raf.mod.uk/organisation/60Squadron.cfm |archive-date=6 March 2016 }}</ref> Jet bombers came with the [[English Electric Canberra]] in 1955. The [[No. 194 Squadron RAF|Casualty Evacuation Flight]] was formed in early 1953 to bring the wounded out of the jungles; it used early helicopters such as the [[Westland Dragonfly]], landing in small clearings.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/operation-firedog-the-raf.html | title=Operation Firedog: The RAF in Malaya -1948-1960 | date=31 October 2018 |website=War History Online |first1=Dean |last1=Smith |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230811154813/https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/operation-firedog-the-raf.html |archive-date= Aug 11, 2023 }}</ref> The RAF progressed to using [[Westland Whirlwind (helicopter)|Westland Whirlwind]] helicopters to deploy troops in the jungle.

The MNLA was vastly outnumbered by the British forces and their Commonwealth and colonial allies in terms of regular full-time soldiers. Siding with the British occupation were a maximum of 40,000 British and other Commonwealth troops, 250,000 Home Guard members, and 66,000 police agents. Supporting the communists were 7,000+ communist guerrillas (1951 peak), an estimated 1,000,000 sympathisers, and an unknown number of civilian [[Min Yuen]] supporters and [[Orang Asli]] sympathisers.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Hack|first=Karl|date=2012|title=Everyone lived in fear: Malaya and the British way of counter-insurgency|url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09592318.2012.709764|journal=Small Wars and Insurgencies|volume=23|issue=4–5|pages=671–699|doi=10.1080/09592318.2012.709764|s2cid=143847349|via=Taylor & Francis Online}}</ref>