Malaya: the Practice
LEDERER, WILLIAM J.
Fighting Guerrilla Warfare—Two Articles South Vietnam: the Theory By Robert S. Elegant Saigon THE BLACK FIGURES slipped through the evening mist into the village just two miles from...
...The chief Malayan negotiator was Tenku Abdul Rahman, who recognized that Chin Peng was trying to turn an impending military defeat into a political victory...
...There was a flurry of activity, but Communist victories continued...
...The villages beheld an overwhelming contrast...
...Malaya: the Practice By William J. Lederer In Communist-threatened Southeast Asia there shines one bright spot...
...The guerrilla phase ends...
...William J. Lederer, author of A Nation of Sheep, recently returned from a tour of the Asian nations...
...Except for their leader's Czech sub-machine gun, they possessed only old rifles and ancient fowling pieces patched with wire...
...Initially, the methods are deliberately "soft," designed to win loyalty: Peasants are protected against the government's tax collectors...
...Then the irregulars, guerrillas no longer, can seize political power by force of conventional arms...
...Remote fishing communities were visited by motor boat units...
...We are generous in sending assistance...
...His doctrine prescribes that the guerrilla must exploit a stronger enemy's weakness—until power positions are reversed...
...When harsh steps had to be taken to beat the guerrillas (such as rigid curfews when strangers out at night would be shot after a brief challenge), these steps were explained so that citizens would be prepared and ready to cooperate...
...By 1955, after seven years of bloody war, Chin Peng, the Communist leader, called a peace talk...
...Mao's chief tenet is an indefinitely continuing fluid war...
...Nothing was safe...
...In 1956, in the middle of hostilities, Tenku Abdul Rahman went to England and negotiated for independence...
...The Communists are, therefore, less able to cope with a strategy of aggressive defense than they were in Indochina...
...This has turned the psychological tide against us throughout Southeast Asia...
...They looked happy and were back home with their families whom they had previously deserted for the Red cause...
...a half-million Chinese, together with their belongings, were piled into trucks, boats and trains and taken to distant new communities, whether they liked it or not...
...If we had told the police, the Communists would have come back in a few days and killed us, too...
...The South Vietnamese rode in American trucks and flourished American automatic weapons...
...The next morning an informer sidled into Corps Headquarters...
...One night the Communists came to our house and murdered my father because he didn't bring them rice as they had ordered...
...Western strategy, though not immediate tactics, must seek to prevent the external intervention essential to the guerrillas' success...
...Besides, the French were fighting amid a population which hated them, and, unfortunately, today Ngo Dinh Diem is contending against the growth of the same contemptuous hatred...
...Thousands of Chinese farmers and merchants also were intimidated, maimed or murdered...
...Assuming that the West will not recede from this battle, the defense of South Vietnam poses quite different problems from those the French faced...
...The American was a tall, strong man in rich clothing...
...The road system has been enlarged by one third, and in 1960 alone 651 new bridges were constructed...
...How did the government get the people—whose morale had been low and many of whom had thought the Communists to be invincible— to bravely risk their lives and homes to support the war effort...
...But these were no ordinary soldiers...
...Thus the next step was to cut the Reds' outside sources of supply...
...But in the case of Malaya the shoe may be on the other foot...
...It was cooked in a central kitchen...
...An ex-Communist, now a respectable electrician in Kuala Lumpur, told me, "After the broadcasts, the planes dropped leaflets with pictures of our friends who had surrendered...
...Moreover, Mao Tse-tung, who does not know Southeast Asia, tends to draw parallels with China which, if exploited, could prove fatal...
...Mao explicitly states that the "new-democratic state system" is followed by Communist rule...
...Armed trucks daily brought in exactly enough food for each community...
...And there is reason for confidence: Malayans know that theirs is one of the few countries in the world which have completely defeated a major effort of Communist aggression...
...Day after day, night after night, citizens were ambushed...
...In addition to fighting on almost alone, the fledgeling Malayan government, under excruciating circumstances, began to modernize the nation...
...Volunteers checked the roads, trains, busses, restaurants and stores...
...It made us doubt Communism...
...The soldiers fighting for Malaya finished the job...
...In the West, guerrilla revolutions would probably fail...
...During one stage of Malaya's Prang Communist (war against Communism), victorious Red leaders had their headquarters in the Batu Caves, just five miles outside the nation's capital...
...and 2) to organize the people into a complex of organizations—Farmers' Associations, Women's Leagues, Youth Societies and the like...
...When it did not come the terrorists failed in Malaya...
...The Communists already had 10 well-armed guerrilla regiments in nearby jungles who knew every trail of the tangled forests...
...Kuala Lumpur, the capital, has a refreshing air of strength and optimism these days...
...Soon after the Emergency started, the small Malayan Army was joined by units from the United Kingdom and the British Commonwealth...
...During the early evening when Malayans gathered to gossip, a responsible man made certain everyone listened to the Government broadcasts...
...The following year, with a war in progress, Malaya became a sovereign state and assumed full responsibility for her own defense...
...Guerrillas who had voluntarily surrendered often accompanied the information teams and described the inside workings of the Communist organization...
...Phase II: The hard core trains recruits...
...The West must assume that Mao Tse-tung and Ho Chi Minh have read the lessons of Dienbienphu correctly...
...The West has, up to now, failed to adopt this strategy, and has allowed Laos to be used as a corridor for reinforcements and supplies...
...The present increasing demoralization of antiCommunist Vietnamese could lead to neutralism and the feeling that it is better to try a coalition government than fight...
...Whenever there was an incident —from an atrocity to a full-scale battle—information trucks sped to the scene, telling everyone of the event...
...And it will take many grueling years of direct United States involvement before that war is won...
...Perhaps we should ask Malaya to teach us...
...Though their ardor remained high, their bodies and their equipment deteriorated...
...Even Dienbienphu, however, did not defeat the French militarily: It broke the French will to resist...
...We learned that this was happening all over and that if we didn't resist the Communists, we would lose everything...
...Faced with thousands of similar incidents, Malayan leaders decided that the nation's most immediate need was to develop an intelligence system, and a plan for protecting the people from reprisals...
...We gave the people more than the Communists could ever hope to give...
...They succeeded in Indochina because the Chinese were able to provide direct assistance across a common frontier...
...Then the Government radio said that the planes were Malayan—and would tell us exactly when they would come...
...All soldiers were put through a grueling course for survival under primitive conditions...
...Malaya had defeated militant Communism...
...Their tactics in the 194861 Emergency seemed based on the unconscious assumption that massive help would eventually come from the outside...
...Landless farmers can get 10 acres of Government land, plus assistance in clearing and planting high-yielding rubber seedlings...
...During the last two years of war their power rapidly disintegrated...
...Strategically it was the central point from which most of Southeast Asia, including Thailand, Burma, Indonesia and Indochina could be attacked...
...Their visitors were the Viet Cong, the Communist guerrillas who rule half of South Vietnam...
...And that decision, repeated thousands of times, is why the hungry guerrilla, not the well-armed Vietnamese soldier, holds the future of the country in his hands...
...Wong Peng, now a staunch patriot living in Jinjang, was recruited by the Reds when she was 17...
...There is nothing small, however, about the modern concept of guerrilla war created by Chinese Communist party Chairman Mao Tse-tung...
...The Chinese say, "The guerrilla moves among the people like the fish through the water...
...The Malayan average income is exceeded in Southeast Asia only by that of Singapore...
...Despite these techniques and the fanatical spirit which sustain him for years in the jungle, the guerrilla is not invincible...
...Like a swarm of poisonous insects, they tried to bleed a nation to death by a thousand tiny stings inflicted at night...
...Farmers worked with armed patrols nearby...
...But we couldn't have done it without the information supplied by a near-perfect intelligence system...
...An inspired government could win back the people's allegiance...
...During the last three years of the war," said Tenku Abdul Rahman, "there were more roads built, more jungle cleared, bridges and water systems constructed, schools and hospitals started, than had been done in the last three generations...
...They learned that frogs and a few wild fruits were the only edibles readily available to man—and these were insufficient for a sustained diet...
...The French failure and the more recent failures of South Vietnam may appear to disprove the contention that terrain can be vitally important...
...But most important, they were isolated from their primary target, the people, whose alliance alone could insure victory...
...Where were these thousands of Red soldiers who, like vampires, swooped in mysteriously at night and disappeared among the people and the jungles during the day...
...A Malayan training officer said, "We took 100,000 men of all ages and from all walks of life and turned them into the greatest jungle fighters of our time...
...We showed them that in a democracy what belongs to the government goes to the people...
...When the police came, we said we had seen nothing...
...An intelligence officer added, "The important thing is that once the people got behind us, the Communists could no longer travel with impunity...
...In South Vietnam, the "National Liberation Front" is temporarily taking the place of a coalition government...
...In describing the situation a Malayan Special Branch officer told me, "Our problems were similar to those in Laos and Vietnam today...
...Among their proposed victims was Malaya, a rich 500-mile-long peninsula and the world's most important producer of rubber and tin...
...This would force them out of their hiding places and into the direct firing lines of the Malayan troops...
...medical teams treat the sick...
...Within hours—sometimes minutes—investigators and guards rushed to the scene...
...The climate and the terrain, too, could be decisive...
...Frequently troops were ambushed and killed...
...When this happened, the "new citizens" made tape recordings urging their excomrades to surrender and enjoy a new life of freedom...
...No matter how rare the dialect of the community (there are about 15 dialects in languages used in Malaya), someone on the information team was a master of it...
...Mao himself consistently points out that guerrillas are highly vulnerable unless properly commanded...
...A vast fleet of trucks with loudspeakers and motion picture equipment pushed into every small village...
...Second, the Communists now possess neither really secure bases within South Vietnam nor the privileged sanctuary of China...
...He said the only thing the Reds were fighting for was independence for Malaya from Great Britain, and added that if the Malayan Communist party were given legal status, his troops would lay down their arms...
...Occasionally Malayan forces had to search for months in the jungle before they were able to find and wipe out a small enemy band...
...They were made tough and mobile, so that they could outlast the Communists in the kill-or-bekilled chase...
...Their battle began just 13 years ago when the Soviet Union and Communist China drew a new blueprint for conquering Asia...
...Despite the common frontier, Laos is not as useful as China was previously...
...In 1960, the Emergency was officially declared over...
...South Vietnam is now in this phase...
...In Mao's own language "guerrilla" means "roving attack band...
...They even had the identity and location of Communist couriers who seldom left the jungle...
...In Malaya, for example, a hard core of guerrillas remained in the deep jungle for years...
...Malaya's rural development program is phenomenal...
...their mission was to harrass the occupying power and to prepare the ground for an Allied landing...
...Professional trackers followed the meager trails through underbrush and swamps—observing broken ferns, a faint splattering of mud on the shore, perhaps a bit of kicked-up dust...
...Even if the present American build-up should result in aggressive tactics against the Viet Cong, the West cannot win in South Vietnam until the political situation becomes more favorable...
...But often the Malayan or British forces would capture a Red straggler, and from him learn the name of his leader and the location of the camp...
...A taxi driver near Kuala Lipis said: "The Communists had told us that the planes we saw flying over the jungles were from the guerrilla air force...
...This made us lonely because life in the jungle was hard...
...We thought that if the Communists had such a big force they would undoubtedly win...
...The Communists bring under their influence the intellectuals, workers, technicians and malcontents of the areas they have not yet occupied...
...The governments are powerless because o£ lack of efficient intelligence systems...
...Helicopters, flying at tree-top level, searched from above...
...It is the land of Malaya, a peaceful country populated by three races—Malays, Chinese and Indians...
...One of the most intimidated areas was in central Pahang Province...
...Fighting Guerrilla Warfare—Two Articles South Vietnam: the Theory By Robert S. Elegant Saigon THE BLACK FIGURES slipped through the evening mist into the village just two miles from II Corps Headquarters at Plekhu, on South Vietnam's High Plateau...
...Phase V: Heavily supplied with outside arms, the irregulars become conventional units...
...In Malaya the Communists were supplied with food, medicine, and equipment by several hundred thousand "squatters," Chinese who had drifted in over the years and settled in remote areas...
...Villages were supplied with a radio station or telephone...
...Calling in the shrewdest, toughest experts from throughout the British Empire, they forged what became probably the best anti-Communist intelligence system in the world...
...The squatters were so scattered that to patrol such an enormous "jungle coastline" would have required a force of a million men...
...Home Guardsmen watched everyone who entered or left...
...Later, a column of Vietnamese troops, accompanied by an American adviser, stormed into the village...
...In February 1948, it decided that the time had come for armed aggression...
...An alarm system was set up so that at the approach of danger at night the entire village was alerted and called to defense...
...The guerrilla defying the might of the West has become a new force in Asia...
...General Briggs therefore decided that the only solution was to move the Chinese squatters...
...He pointed out that the old concepts of war must be scrapped, and new combat methods developed...
...C. C. Too, Director of Psychological Warfare, said, "People who had never had any Government help or protection before, got it...
...For their part, the civilians provide food, labor, intelligence—and recruits...
...The "Briggs Plan" was daring, but the Malayan leaders enthusiastically agreed to it...
...The mobile information units instructed Malayans how to protect their homes, and gave details of the Government's plans for future war operations...
...He flourishes amid discontent and the absence of authority...
...Nonetheless, swift punishment is visited upon informers and hostile officials...
...The citizenry provided the support and muscle...
...The brutal conflict was resumed, and lasted for another five years...
...Bulletins told what was happening throughout the nation, accurately describing both successes and failures...
...But Mao insists that they can win power in Africa, Asia and Latin America— the underdeveloped world...
...The intelligence men and the information units did the preliminary work...
...After a decade of terrorism, the Malayan Communists no longer stood a chance...
...As one Asian general put it: "Guerrilla war is fought as much in the minds of men as on the battlefields...
...On leaving, the Viet Cong leader spoke in the tribal language: "Oh men of the mountains, the American-Diem clique oppresses you...
...But he is in the ascendant, largely because his will to endure —and to triumph—is sustained by a doctrine perfectly adapted to his circumstances...
...Each unit had a crew of three, one speaking Chinese, one Malayan and one Tamil (for the Indians...
...Robert S. Elegant, Newsweek's bureau chief in Southeast Asia, frequently contributes to these pages...
...This overwhelming response discredited the Communist lie that the Government did not have popular support...
...Civilian guards examined trains, automobiles and even the suitcases of travelers to make sure no food trickled out to the Reds...
...and motion pictures would show similar Communist crimes which had taken place elsewhere in Malaya...
...During 1947 alone, Red organizers fomented over 300 crippling strikes...
...The guerrillas wanted rice, venison, wild boar meat and bearers...
...Hundreds of villages were created from nothing...
...The Malayans also assigned some of their best scientists to do extensive research on jungle life...
...Shivering in their breechclouts and coarse blankets, a few mountain tribesmen came forward with smiles and offerings of rice, while others ran off to hide in thatched huts set high on stilts...
...In Coalition Government, Mao explained: "We propose to establish a new-democratic state system, as we call it, namely, a state of the united front or democratic alliance based on the overwhelming majority of the people under the leadership of the working class...
...What methods did they use...
...Then in 1950, Lieutenant General Sir Harold Briggs, the newly appointed British Director of Operations, called Malayan leaders together...
...Households received only enough for their own use, one meal at a time...
...We said we had no idea who the murderers were—even though we knew the Communists were hiding in a house nearby...
...Communities in the danger areas were surrounded by barbed wire barricades which had only one narrow entrance...
...Since the sparsely populated, inadequately mapped mountains and jungles of chaotic Southeast Asia appear to be the perfect milieu for guerrillas, the West has reason for despair...
...We were afraid...
...Already the country has transferred much of its vigor to reconstruction...
...But there is no easy way...
...During the early years of terrorism, 10 per cent of the rubber planters in Malaya were killed, and the Communists slashed and burned millions of rubber trees...
...First, the guerrillas' supply lines—through Laos and by sea—are both difficult and vulnerable...
...The basic principle of war," he wrote in Strategic Problems of the Anti-Japanese Guerrilla War, "is to preserve oneself and to annihilate the enemy...
...They interrogated victims and witnesses...
...Although I didn't understand it, it sounded good and my father and I joined...
...What can an army do under such circumstances...
...Staffed by experienced professionals, it also enlisted the assistance of the entire nation...
...A mythology has grown up around the decision to fight at Dienbienphu...
...Without outside assistance, neither the Viet Minh nor the Pathet Lao could have succeeded...
...Moving the squatters away from the guerrilla areas cut off the Reds' major source of supply...
...Ho's ultimate thrust, significantly, was a conventional battle against the French defensive outpost at Dienbienphu...
...The simile is plausible but inaccurate, for the fish does not attempt to convert the sea...
...They controlled the labor unions and influenced newspapers, schools and businesses...
...landlords are dispossessed and their land's distributed...
...and literacy classes are given which blend almost imperceptibly into political indoctrination...
...The Communists claimed to be fighting against colonialism, calling themselves the Malayan Races Liberation Army...
...The Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy sent large contingents...
...annual production of agricultural crops has tripled...
...Moreover, in Indochina Ho Chi Minh was supplied by a railway and road complex from Communist China, rushed to completion in 1952, just before his final campaign...
...The strategy also includes welltested techniques for mobilizing the civilian population...
...What was their speech like...
...To help win the hearts and minds of the people, Malaya's Information Service was enlarged...
...The global assertion may be incorrect, but geographical, political, economic and psychological circumstances in Southeast Asia today are undeniably ideal for guerrillas...
...The Communists had also made similar preparations in the cities...
...indeed, one of his chief handbooks for guerrillas is entitled On Protracted War...
...When a terrorist attack came, it was reported to local headquarters...
...in some areas rubber produced per acre has quadrupled...
...Furthermore, Malaya—then a British protectorate—appeared to be the easiest Asian nation to conquer...
...But after the initial resentment had subsided, most of them responded joyfully to a life where they could bring up their families in safety...
...The relentless Malayans pressed on...
...Whenever a terrorist garden was spotted, it was sprayed with poison to kill the crop...
...Some were tied to trees and machine-gunned...
...There were Gurkhas from Nepal, Dyak headhunters and Iban trackers from Borneo, Fiji warriors, Australians, New Zealanders, and crack regiments from England itself...
...Unfortunately, he has found the environment that suits him best in Southeast Asia...
...The recruitment of thousands of civilians provided the backbone of village self-protection...
...Some were hacked to death with axes, beheaded and disemboweled...
...We did a tough job well," said a Malayan Army captain, "and deserve much credit...
...Where such conditions do not exist, he can be destroyed—or at least frustrated—with little difficulty...
...The nation's economy was creaking dangerously close to a standstill...
...These recordings were broadcast over the jungles by low-flying planes...
...In this way the average man no longer could be a captive of Communist exaggerations...
...Phase IV: Larger units form and operate in coordination, carving out rear bases called "liberated areas...
...Phase III: Small groups begin to operate as units...
...In sparsely populated Southeast Asia such areas are exceedingly difficult to maintain if the defending force uses offensive tactics, rather than the defensive techniques employed by the French in Indochina...
...Farmers, housewives, policemen, merchants —the whole country gradually formed a great suction pump that collected information concerning the enemy...
...Their planes scouted the jungle...
...We went a long way to win the hearts and minds of our people...
...they have earned it with bravery, blood and wise leadership...
...Armed attacks are supplemented by front organizations, an underground party structure and veiled propaganda in the "nonliberated areas.' The political struggle now enters the United Front phase...
...But Moscow was impatient...
...For over 10 years they had been building a hidden complex of rest camps, Marxist schools and supply depots among the inaccessible mountains and swamps which cover three quarters of Malaya...
...An Indian rubber tapper there said, "When the sound trucks told us what was happening, we began to realize that the Communist murders were no local banditry...
...But neither the French nor the South Vietnamese ever effectively carried the war to the enemy's bases...
...But terror for terror's sake is no longer a primary technique, since it has a tendency to boomerang...
...Immediately, troops pursued the terrorists into the jungle...
...I was given lectures on Communism," she says, "and was told how it would help Malaya...
...Obviously well-fed, they carried machines with whip-like tails which could summon other machines that rose straight into the air like birds...
...As the people gained confidence, members of all races began working as a team with a single goal...
...In lune 1948 Malaya declared itself in a State of Emergency—the diplomatic way of announcing war...
...Obviously, to attack the guerrillas, it first would be necessary to find and identify them...
...The closer the Communists move to the final phase of guerrilla warfare, when they will need massive supplies to fight conventional battles, the more open to attack become their supply lines...
...We could learn a lot from these brave people...
...The present Communist strategy is clearly based upon the presumption that the West's will to resist can be broken in South Vietnam, though the Communists are prepared for protracted campaigns if necessary...
...In the combat areas, no one, neither families nor merchants, was allowed to stock up food or materials...
...Red successes were based on mobile guerrillas who struck at the civilian population and then hid...
...They don't know who the Communists are or where they hide out...
...He is plagued by disease, he is badly armed, he is perpetually foraging for food, and he possesses only a few spluttering radios against his opponent's vast technological arsenal...
...The Communists wrecked 81 trains in one year...
...The father of modern guerrilla warfare, Mao Tse-tung, is concerned with guerrillas as a means to the end of creating conventional armies...
...General Briggs proposed turning these classic guerrilla tactics against the Communists —only moving faster and better, attacking instead of defending...
...The present revolt in South Vietnam is in good part succeeding because of the common frontier with Laos...
...Today Malaya stands as a model of peace, democracy and prosperity...
...At this point, the guerrillas seek not only to extend the area under their control, but to loosen the government's grip over its remaining territories...
...Officials were assassinated within 15-minutes drive of the High Commissioner's office...
...News of atrocities would be given...
...Actually, like bacterium, the guerrilla requires a special environment...
...By late 1949, Malayans were afraid to walk about the streets even in daylight...
...We of the West are sympathetic with young struggling nations...
...As the Information Service pumped life into Malayan morale, the Psychological Branch convinced a surprisingly large percentage of captured and surrendered guerrillas that the Communist commissars had duped them...
...Coming on foot stealthily in the dark, the Viet Cong were lean, wore thin faded clothes, and carried their belongings in shiny black hammocks...
...Malayans deserve their peace and freedom...
...What did the attackers look like...
...And much of this encyclopaedic information originated from the citizens...
...After the "soft" phase, harsher measures enforce discipline...
...They killed him with a butcher knife in front of the whole family...
...The guerrillas in Malaya had previously been trained by the British to fight the Japanese...
...They were specialists, honed and sharpened for one dangerous mission: to destroy Communist guerrillas in tangled jungles...
...The development of guerrilla warfare generally follows five phases: Phase I: Cadres (usually from outside) build the hard core, marking out small "safe areas...
...Under Templer, the squatter resettlement program became one of the wonders of the war...
...Now they were eager to cooperate with us...
...Yet the Viet Cong, at once ruthless and persuasive, got what they wanted from the mountain people...
...In Vietnam hundreds of people are being assassinated every month by the Red guerrillas...
...A harsh system of rationing was initiated...
...Most of the revolts ordered in 1948, for example, failed because the guerrillas received insufficient outside support...
...We stand for freedom for all men...
...Women were abused and children were kidnapped...
...But how to do this...
...Sometimes the task seemed endless...
...Although many surrenders were maneuvered by psychological skill, it was armed attacks by Government troops which finally broke the Reds' back...
...When the planes flew overhead on time we knew that the Communists were lying...
...The question was how to start such a bold and radical campaign...
...Behind the guerrillas of Southeast Asia is a body of doctrine as extensive and sophisticated as that taught in the West's war colleges...
...When the Government appealed for 26,000 volunteers for active participation in the war, a half million men clamored to do their part...
...Transportation was choked to a slow crawl...
...Hungry Communists were forced to clear sections of the jungle and plant their own food...
...The Vietnamese and their American adviser, on the other hand, left the village with no more information than they had brought to it...
...Whenever someone was seen approaching a house at night, it was reported to us...
...The Chinese Communists could spend 30 years in the wilderness before seizing power, since they generally operated from secure "liberated areas" where men lived fairly normal lives...
...When the country is once more unified, you will be free to hunt and go about as you please—and to live by the laws of your ancestors...
...The Government had to make sure, however, that nothing at all got to the terrorists...
...iron ore output has doubled...
...Stores and home larders were kept empty...
...drama troupes entertain...
...Literally, "guerrilla" means "a little war...
...Whenever a stranger came into town, it was reported to us...
...In what direction did they go...
...But the Communists themselves have proved that while it is simple to disrupt a nation's normal life by guerrilla action, it is difficult to seize power unless all the proper conditions exist...
...A coalition government, such as they seek in Laos, is a convenient device...
...Of course, although military strategy is vital, the political atmosphere in a guerrilla struggle is equally important...
...A few statistics tell the story: Since 1957, the total industrial production has almost doubled...
...At full strength, the combined forces of Malaya and the British were 10 times that of the guerrilla Communists...
...Even if the political climate changes radically, the United States must be prepared to fight a protracted war...
...His triumph comes from his enemy's weaknesses and errors...
...He refused any terms but unconditional surrender...
...It was his successor, General Sir Gerald Templer, who executed the plan...
...In doing so, they were carrying out a basic principle of Lenin's—that by inflicting terror, a well-organized minority can conquer a nation...
...If the people are convinced we are going to lose, we will eventually lose, no matter how big our forces, nor how overwhelming our technological superiority...
...Approximately one quarter of the total population of Malaya is now in school...
...In an interview in the Parliament in Kuala Lumpur, Prime Minister Tenku Abdul Rahman explained, "It must be remembered that we were not fighting the Communist terrorists with arms alone...
...The tribesmen made their political decision in isolation from the great currents stirring South Vietnam, a country they hardly know exists...
...By 1952, the Malayan Intelligence Service had the names, descriptions and general whereabouts of almost all the thousands of terrorists in the country...
...But the guerrilla phase is merely a preparation for outside intervention or for a political crisis...
...In the spring of 1948—at Russia's instigation—11,000 wellarmed, uniformed guerrillas opened the shooting war...
...An example of how this happened in Malaya in 1950 was given me by a Chinese housewife: "We lived near Marang...
...Through these efforts the guerrillas seek 1) to alienate the peasants from the government, thus making them outlaws...
Vol. 45 • April 1962 • No. 8
