The Battle for Malaya

...Each Sultan has a British adviser, whose advice is generally accepted, but Malaya is a federation and a lot of matters are left to the member states to deal with...

...And one of my keenest and happiest recollections of the country is of the children—Chinese, Malays, Indians and Pakistanis—going off in their neat blue-and-white uniforms to the village schools...

...He recently returned from Malaya...

...They, at any rate, are learning to "think Malayan...

...Not yet, at any rate...

...A Malay, I learned, is a member of a large race of whom there are about three million in Malaya and more than 70 million in Indonesia...

...Once he has done so, he is at their mercy...

...It was not until after the Japanese invasion that its leaders, driven into the deep jungle to escape arrest, began to acquire some importance by the courage of their underground campaign and with the help of arms brought to them by the famous British Force 136, which was helping anybody in Malaya who was hampering the Japanese...

...700 hours of patrolling are necessary before one of the bandits is killed...

...They began to organize labor unrest, especially in Singapore, and in 1948 the World Youth Conference held in Calcutta decided the time had come for more violent action...

...Some—probably quite a small minority—are the convinced Communists who want the overthrow of the British for ideological reasons...

...The Communists fighting in the Malayan jungle are nearly all Chinese, and they would become much more dangerous if the Chinese community as a whole felt that it was getting a raw deal...

...Then he may graduate to more responsible work...

...The Chinese, on the other hand, must be about the most hard-working people on earth, and there are plenty of people out East who take it for granted that the country would be Chinese within twenty years if the British left Malaya before stable self-government had been established...

...Here and there, in very remote areas, they managed to occupy a few police stations for a day or two—notably in Kelantan, where there was a pitched battle, with upwards of thirty dead on either side...

...The police have had more than 1,200 men killed and 1,400 wounded, and the military casualties are roughly half those of the police...

...The so-called CTs or "Communist Terrorists," as they are officially called, do not represent any kind of national movement...

...second, the occupation of police stations and so on in order to give them certain "liberated areas...

...The sentries guarding the rough trails would hear them coming...

...When General Gerald Templer was appointed High Commissioner of the Federation in 1952, the directive given him stated that "Malaya should in due course become a fully self-governing state...

...There are no decent roads and no street lighting...

...Malaya, which is not even as large as England and Wales but is the Commonwealth's largest dollar earner, has probably the largest variety of rulers of any country in the world...

...It is an exceptionally young nation...

...Why this gap between effort and result...

...A Malayan, on the other hand, is an inhabitant of Malaya...

...In 1951, casualties among the security forces were more than half those of the Communists...

...In many places, the jungle comes right down to the roads...

...The views of the Malays have to be considered...

...There are also the Indians and Pakistanis, many of whom are Moslems and therefore intermarry with the Malays...

...that union would also lessen the influence of the Singapore Chinese, so they are not keen on it either...

...But the mass support they had expected did not develop...

...One of the terrorists' favorite activities was to slash rubber trees in order to lessen the flow of latex, from which rubber is made...

...A handful of Communists and the inexorable jungle keep Britain busy The Battle for Malaya By Vernon Bartlett (First of two articles) Until I went to Malaya, I was not even sure of the difference between a Malayan and a Malay...

...The police force costs more than ten times as much to run today as it did just before the emergency began...

...It is always possible to find some lie with which to frighten ignorant people out of collaborating with the Government...

...They planned the conquest of Malaya in three phases: first, the creation of a mass movement in favor of Communism, coupled with the murder of as many Europeans as possible...

...Malaya is, I believe, unique in the world in that half its people are under the age of 21...

...When identity cards were introduced, the same motive was alleged...

...It is a dark, sunless place with trees so thick and tall that each British soldier dropped by parachute carries with him a hundred-foot length of webbing in case he is caught in the branches and has to let himself down to the ground below...

...Communist propaganda contends that this tenants' registration is a step toward mass arrests...

...Despite this immense and expensive effort, fewer than 5,000 CTs have been killed, roughly 1,100 have been captured, and roughly 1,300 have surrendered...

...With the two main communities so nearly equal in numbers, it is not surprising that there is a good deal of racial suspicion, especially since so many of the Chinese have immigrated during the present century...

...Others are recruited as useful workers...

...Even that is not quite accurate, for in those days Singapore itself was one of the three Straits Settlements, the others being Penang and Malacca...

...But it is not so easy to give that community the position its wealth and numbers would seem to justify...

...One of the chief aims of British policy has been to make it possible, both politically and psychologically, for the Chinese to become good Malayans...

...Their plan failed...

...But the chances are that troops or police who forced their way into that area would discover no more than an empty camp...

...Vernon Bartlett, a leading British correspondent for more than three decades, has been the BBC's expert on foreign affairs for six years and a Member of Parliament for twelve...

...This helps explain why there are two separate governments...

...The total population of the Malayan Federation is under 6 million, but the police force has become larger than that in the United Kingdom...

...There are 200 volunteers engaged in this tenants' registration—which, by the way, is an essential preliminary to the elections which Malayan political leaders demand with such insistence...

...They did agree, in September 1952, to new regulations which automatically give Malayan nationality to nearly half the Chinese, and which make it possible for thousands of others to acquire it if they want to...

...The danger of race riots, such as those after the British left India, would be too great...

...But the names of these volunteers are reported to the jungle...

...in 1953, they had dropped to roughly 180...

...Except in Singapore, which is now a Crown Colony, very little can be done against the will of the Sultans, especially since the Malays, who are Moslems, look to their Sultans for spiritual as well as temporal leadership...

...The Government is encouraging so many interracial organizations and societies that the ordinary citizen must be rather confused...

...It has taken a long time to convince the Sultans, and their Prime Ministers in the Federal Legislative Council, that the Chinese who have made Malaya their home must be given Malayan nationality...

...Furthermore, the Malays are a very charming and easy-going people...

...The worst month was June 1951, when there were over 600 incidents...

...One couldn't expect the Malays to enjoy this prospect, and until 1952 it was extremely difficult for a Chinese to acquire Malayan nationality...

...then, is the principal reason why so many soldiers and policemen have to be employed to deal with so few bandits, and why...

...It is more or less by a geographical accident that they are operating in Malaya...

...In the Annual Report on the Federation for 1952, I read that 400 tons of bombs and 12 million leaflets were dropped, that 2 million rounds of ammunition were expended, and that nearly 250.000 men were kept under arms to deal with the emergency...

...What sort of people are these Communist Terrorists...

...in the second half of last year, the monthly average of incidents had been reduced to 93...

...There he may be put to work growing food in jungle clearings and, at the same time, attend indoctrination classes...

...The so-called deep jungle does not have much undergrowth...

...More than thirty years ago, the Chinese Communist party opened an office in Singapore to encourage Communism in Southeast Asia, but it made little progress...

...The Malays in the Federation know they would be outnumbered by the Chinese if there were a union with Singapore...

...But let me give you an example: There is a slum area in Georgetown, on Penang Island, where some 30,000 people live...

...It may be a long time before the members of these communities learn to think of themselves primarily as Malayans, but the fault most certainly does not lie with the British...

...They cannot all be protected all the time, and the Communist program is said to be to murder two of them each month— which, to say the least, is discouraging to voluntary effort...

...Should they want him, they have only to threaten to let the police know of his misdemeanor and the chances are he will take refuge with them in the jungle...

...When the Korean War began, people were assured by the Communists that the Government was planning to send them to Korea...

...I found no trace of a "divide and rule" spirit...

...Undoubtedly, some manage to drift back unnoticed into civilian life or are sent back on missions, and it is utterly impossible for the police to keep track of them all...

...A young Chinese peasant will be persuaded or frightened into supplying the Communists with a little food...

...That...

...First, it is important to realize that more than 90 per cent of them are Chinese, and the hard core of Communists were almost all born in China...

...third, the linking up of these liberated areas and the organization of a real army...

...I had rather thought they were the same thing, or that perhaps one was a more courteous form...

...The British are doing the same today...

...In 1948, the Communists obtained recruits by spreading a rumor that all members of trade unions were to be arrested...

...One thing the police cannot tell you is the amount of what one might call "unseen wastage"—how many CTs have died in the jungle, have deserted or have been purged...

...And yet the jungle war has been in progress for nearly six years and there are probably as many of these bandits today as there were in the beginning...

...Nor is it that the terrorists are supermen, for many of them are in the jungle against their will...

...When the war ended, these arms were supposedly handed in, but many Communists kept theirs against a rainy day...

...in Singapore, there are roughly six times more Chinese than Malays...

...It certainly is not that the police or the soldiers are not up to their job...

...In the Federation, there are more Malays than Chinese...

...Quite the contrary...

...There are two types of jungle...

...But all around this deep jungle there is an outer fringe where the trees have been cut back at some time or other, giving the undergrowth a chance...

...There are two distinct types of CTs in the jungle...

...They can show you his photograph...

...They are therefore not yet very important politically, though they may become so in the future...

...The Federation comprises those territories on the peninsula stretching down from Thailand to Singapore which were known before the war as the Straits Settlements, the Federated Malay States and the Unfederated Malay States...

...There is a High Commissioner of the Federation, a Governor in Singapore, eight Sultans, one Rajah, and two Resident Commissioners in the British Settlements of Penang and Malacca...

...Quite probably, they can tell you, to within a mile or so, just where in the jungle he is operating...

...Yet, one has the feeling that the leaders of the various communities, though they may demand self-government, do not really want it...

...The police have details of almost every Communist Terrorist in the jungle...

...In Malaya as a whole, there are nearly 3 million Malays and nearly 3 million Chinese, as well as 750,-000 Indians or Pakistanis and 30,-000 Europeans...

...The Japanese found they could not control it...

...Troops who patrol in this sort of undergrowth—who go "jungle-bashing" — sometimes can advance no more than a hundred yards in an hour, and quite obviously they can't advance quietly enough in country of that kind to surprise anyone...

...He may be a Malay, a Chinese, an Indian, a Pakistani or a European...

...Attacks on trains and buses lost them a great deal of public sympathy, and various counter-measures have gradually destroyed their links with the outside world...

...And there is also Malcolm MacDonald, Commissioner-General for the United Kingdom in Southeast Asia, who has the task of coordinating activities throughout this part of the world...

...Malaya itself consists of two separate territories, the Malayan Federation and Singapore, joined by a long causeway but divided by a lot of misunderstanding...

...His postwar tour of Africa for the London News Chronicle produced his book, The Struggle for Africa...

...on an average...

...They are trying to register all the tenants in it, but some Chinese have as many as six variants of their names, there are six main dialects, and a Communist in hiding may have six different aliases...

...In February 1952, some 70,000 trees were damaged in this way, but by December the number had been reduced to only 600...

...the toughness and ingenuity of these men in their green uniforms and high, canvas-topped boots (to protect them from leeches and other unpleasant features of the jungle) are terrific...

...And if these efforts fail, then education will succeed...

...When the Japanese were in Malaya, they had the undergrowth cut back on either side of the highway to lessen the danger of ambushes...

...This has, of course, become still more important since the Communist victory in China...

...But, in that hot, rainy climate, things grow so rapidly that wild bananas are four feet high again in a month...

...The reason is, of course, the jungle itself, which covers four-fifths of the Federation...

...Malaya has probably the best labor code of any country in Southeast Asia, and many of these people work as rubber-tappers, live with their families on the big rubber estates, and scarcely get as far as a main road in the space of a year...

...The odds are almost unbelievably in favor of the Communist Terrorists and against the police...

...In any case, once he is in the deep jungle he has few chances of escape...

...The British are trying to do so...