Caroline Elkins: Why Malaya Is No Model for Iraq
[Caroline Elkins is the Hugo K. Foster associate professor of African studies at Harvard University and the author of Imperial Reckoning.]
Tham Yong remembers the events that took place in Batang Kali in early December 1948 with disturbing clarity. It was the early days of the communist insurgency in Malaya, and British soldiers had arrived in her village. They singled out scores of Chinese civilians, accusing them of supplying the communists with food. The women were loaded onto trucks and taken away, though not before they witnessed British troops leading off two dozen men and shooting them in the back. Two days later, when Tham returned to look for her fiancé, she found mutilated bodies with heads hacked off and genitals smashed. The surrounding village had been reduced to ashes.
Today, as the Bush administration searches for a counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq, several military thinkers are pointing to the British operations in Malaya as a model. Episodes like the Batang Kali massacre seem to have been forgotten. Instead, contemporary analysts argue that Great Britain effectively suppressed communist insurgents and won civilian support through a large-scale, "hearts-and-minds campaign." In his recent article in Foreign Affairs, Andrew Krepinevich, a former Pentagon official who now heads the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments--and whose views have had a major impact on the administration's thinking (see Lawrence F. Kaplan, "Clear and Fold,")--argues, "In the 1950s, the British used [hearts and minds] successfully in Malaya.... For the United States, the key ... is [also] winning 'hearts and minds.' The Iraqi people must believe that their government offers them a better life than the insurgents do, and they must think that the government will prevail." According to an August 28 New York Times column by David Brooks, this argument is "already a phenomenon among the people running this war, generating discussion in the Pentagon, the CIA, the American Embassy in Baghdad, and the office of the vice president."
To be sure, Britain's counterinsurgency operations in Malaya were a short-term success. British forces reestablished order and disengaged from imperial occupation. But the hearts-and-minds campaign, the theoretical backbone of Britain's counterinsurgency strategy, was more myth than reality. To seize civilian control, the British created a police state and invoked draconian powers ranging from movement-restriction and collective punishments to detention without trial. Winning the war against insurgents came at a high price for the local civilian population and for the independent state that picked up the mantle from its former colonizer. Rather than serving as a historical precedent for a successful hearts-and-minds campaign, the British campaign in Malaya illustrates the dangers of continuing our current strategy in Iraq. ...
Read entire article at New Republic
Tham Yong remembers the events that took place in Batang Kali in early December 1948 with disturbing clarity. It was the early days of the communist insurgency in Malaya, and British soldiers had arrived in her village. They singled out scores of Chinese civilians, accusing them of supplying the communists with food. The women were loaded onto trucks and taken away, though not before they witnessed British troops leading off two dozen men and shooting them in the back. Two days later, when Tham returned to look for her fiancé, she found mutilated bodies with heads hacked off and genitals smashed. The surrounding village had been reduced to ashes.
Today, as the Bush administration searches for a counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq, several military thinkers are pointing to the British operations in Malaya as a model. Episodes like the Batang Kali massacre seem to have been forgotten. Instead, contemporary analysts argue that Great Britain effectively suppressed communist insurgents and won civilian support through a large-scale, "hearts-and-minds campaign." In his recent article in Foreign Affairs, Andrew Krepinevich, a former Pentagon official who now heads the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments--and whose views have had a major impact on the administration's thinking (see Lawrence F. Kaplan, "Clear and Fold,")--argues, "In the 1950s, the British used [hearts and minds] successfully in Malaya.... For the United States, the key ... is [also] winning 'hearts and minds.' The Iraqi people must believe that their government offers them a better life than the insurgents do, and they must think that the government will prevail." According to an August 28 New York Times column by David Brooks, this argument is "already a phenomenon among the people running this war, generating discussion in the Pentagon, the CIA, the American Embassy in Baghdad, and the office of the vice president."
To be sure, Britain's counterinsurgency operations in Malaya were a short-term success. British forces reestablished order and disengaged from imperial occupation. But the hearts-and-minds campaign, the theoretical backbone of Britain's counterinsurgency strategy, was more myth than reality. To seize civilian control, the British created a police state and invoked draconian powers ranging from movement-restriction and collective punishments to detention without trial. Winning the war against insurgents came at a high price for the local civilian population and for the independent state that picked up the mantle from its former colonizer. Rather than serving as a historical precedent for a successful hearts-and-minds campaign, the British campaign in Malaya illustrates the dangers of continuing our current strategy in Iraq. ...