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Malayan Emergency

In 1948, the Malayan Communist Party, which had been the most effective organizer of anti-Japanese resistance in the British colonial possession Malaya during the World War II, started an anti-colonial guerrilla war, known as the "Malayan emergency". The insurgents, which were hastily assembled under the name of Malayan National Liberation Army started the campaign of violence in support of labor disputes, and eventually to seize a power in Malaya. The insurgents were labeled at first as "banditry" then later as "Communist terrorism" in British propaganda to deny the partisans' political legitimacy, to locate the Malayan Emergency in a broader context of the Cold War and to preserve a British business interests in Malaya, which would be heavily affected had the British administration conceded that they faced a full scale anti colonial insurgency. The British authorities started a 'counter-terror' campaign that, as a result of poor preparedness of the authorities for the Emergency, initially lead to casualties among innocent civilians, with destruction of whole villages, population transfers, detainment and mass deportations. After 1949, when the Communist attempts to seize power failed, the insurgents withdrew to jungles and prepared for a prolonged war, launching the campaign of widespread small-scale attacks and sabotage to disrupt Malaya’s rubber exports, thereby weakening the colony's value to Britain. The communist terrorist attacks reached their apex in 1951, although the attacks were described as a "wave of desperation". In 1949 over seven hundred people died from terrorist actions, and during 1950/51 casualty's were running at an estimated 100 law enforcement officers and 90 non-combatants a month being killed. By 1957, the British anti-insurgent measures (the "Briggs Plan"), which included a careful control of densely populated areas, breaking the Communist resistance in these areas, pushing them to jungles, separating them from the sources of food and information supply, and eventually forcing them to attack the British forces on their own territory, had been crowned to a success that the uprising was essentially suppressed.

1. ^ Karl Hack, The Malayan Emergency as Counter-Insurgency Paradigm, Journal of Strategic Studies, 2009, 32: 3, p. 383-414.
2. Phillip Deery. The Terminology of Terrorism: Malaya, 1948–52. Journal of Southeast Asia Studies, Vol. 34, No. 2 (June 2003), pp. 231–247.
3. L Yew. Managing plurality: the politics of the periphery in early cold war Singapore. International Journal of Asian Studies, 2010, p. 159-177
4. Anthony J. Stockwell, A widespread and long-concocted plot to overthrow government in Malaya? The origins of the Malayan Emergency. Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 21, 3 (1993): 79-80.
5. Nicholas J. White Capitalism and Counter-Insurgency? Business and Government in the Malayan Emergency, 1948-57 Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Feb., 1998), pp. 149-177
6. Randall D. Law page 192
7. Randall D. Law page 193