Malaya: A Successful Counterinsurgency Operation. ACSC Quick-Look 05-14

Abstract

Abstract : Fundamentally the insurgency in Malaya was an ideological Communist insurrection modeled initially on Russian strategies and later on the Maoist model. There are similarities between the Malayan Communist true believers and the Islamists currently operating in Iraq. Both trust that they have the perfect Weltanschauung by which to interpret the foundations and events of history, prioritize resources, and order society. In both situations, it is a battle for ideals. There is a historical context that is slightly different too. As in Iraq, the Malaya Emergency followed a time of great persecution, dictatorship, and a recent war. Like Iraq, Malaya was once a prosperous British colony. It fell to the Japanese in WW II and then, like Iraq, was crippled under tremendous oppression and state-sponsored terror for many years. The Japanese occupation of Malaya saw tremendous degradation and damage to the infrastructure, the economy, and Western credibility much like in Iraq. Malaya was a country with a single valuable and dominant resource rubber. The parallels to Iraqi oil are striking. Malayan rubber was a strategic commodity that represented the lynch-pin of the national economy. Unlike Iraq, however, the Malayan insurgency emerged initially as an anti-Japanese movement. The Allies backed the insurgents during the war in the fight against an outside aggressor. Later, the military arm of the MCP the Malayan Race Liberation Army (MRLA) co-opted the original movement and secured significant caches of arms from the war as a logistical foundation for the post-war domestic political insurrection.