How To Fight A Guerilla War (1966)

I'm kite and this is an almost forgotten War a gorilla War the Communists lost and the anti-communists won it was lost and won in the steamy jungles of Malaya it was fought by offensive rules laid down by an expert of China and by new rules discovered by The Defenders it history could be a military manual how to fight a gorilla War [Music] [Music] [Music] in 1945 the Malay Peninsula has nine separate states jungle clothes its Mountain backbone like the hair of a tiger only the Sea Coast and River bottoms are developed slightly less and a half million people are Mala easygoing Farmers civil servants the clannish original settlers of the land almost as many are Chinese Merchants laborers there are deep religious economic and language differences between Malay and Chinese Indians form a large minority and there's a small group of Europeans rubber largely grown by European and Chinese Planters helps give Malaya the second highest living standard in Asia the is a major source of the world's tin the British rule this Rich area not by Conquest but by request of the local Sultans Malay also dominates the main Pacific trade routes the British are just restoring order after World War II when out of the jungles comes a force of communist gorillas killing and burning the irony is that the British had trained and arm this Force mostly Chinese to fight Japan the first targets of the gorillas are European owned plantations and Tin mines workers Executives and their families move inside compounds for 12 years English Dutch and Chinese estate managers will live with guns in their hands and lights burning through the night 10% of All European managers will be murdered the terror has begun the British start with the advantage of strong administrative control and a loyal bureaucracy largely Malay they register the population and impose strict curfews Britain's labor government sends Sir Henry gurnie to Malay he comes he says not just to qu a vote but to win the hearts of the people and in fact Mala are rallying to a special constabulary force taking the queen shil a traditional British enlistment bonus thus although the gorillas try to use a pan Malay nationalism as a cover for their communism this propaganda is a failure [Music] Britain transfers troops from Hong Kong and sends The Men Who usually guard the Palaces of London the Cold Stream guards the Scots guards the Grenadier guards Australians are brought in in addition to these conventional forces the British organize a feret force of men with Guerilla experience from World War II they are to penetrate the jungle meet the enemy on his own ground the helicopter becomes a weapon according to mount sadun the gorillas are the fish in a sea a sea being the people and the land that support them in these terms the helicopter becomes a fishing boat hovering over the fishermen who hunt the gorillas the gorillas are hard to find although the jungle hides large camps in which a SoCal Malay races Liberation Army is training a few are hardcore Communists many are merely inspired by Chinese Malayan nationalism very many have simply been recruited by Terror [Music] [Music] the Royal Air Force has a grimly amusing handicap a planter his rubber trees blasted sues for damages so the RAF must avoid bombing rubber trees the gorillas learn this and every Plantation on the map becomes a potential bomb shelter for them build up in all the war is still going badly in 1950 when sir heral Briggs arrives to direct operations his plan will soon counter the Guerilla strategy that comes direct from Mount Sudan first Briggs moves the sea in which the gorillas have been swimming this sea is a half a million Chinese who have settled illegally between the jungles and the settled parts of Malaya they are poor and hungry for land in mixed Terror and Sympathy for the gorillas they reluctantly provide the Communists with food money and a flow of recruits Briggs establishes these people andly Villages largely by persuasion partly with threats among the people moved are countless menu literally in Chinese the helpers the secret communist fifth column a gap is thus open between the gorillas in the jungle and their sea the plan brings many to the villagers who help the guillas only through fear but it also offers Social Services education and legal ownership of life an alienated and unstable segment of the population is thus offered its first taste of citizenship in a modern state above all the plan promises safety but the security forces must prove to these people that they can protect them that the gorillas will not come back and murder them for [Music] defecting building new villes is more expensive than merely hunting down men and more than 500 new villages will be built people who once lay sick and better on the edge of the Jungle now get [Music] care Chinese Indians and Mala are coaxed into cooperating the races live together eat together food however is strictly controlled not because it is scar but to cut off the gorilla food supply each person gets what he needs to live on with nothing left over for the menu to smuggle to the Jungle yet the Communists still exact a secret tax sometimes just a cigarette package of rice per day per person pass through the barbed wire collected this is a substantial hord but it must be moved over roads controlled by the security forces steadily the gorillas get less and less rice on the military side Briggs orders his forces to press into the jungle hunting in small patrols inviting attack hard up for food and willing helpers the gorillas break up into small groups are more elusive but make more frequent attacks there are so many more incidents it appears that Briggs is losing his War but almost for the first time prisoners and defectors are coming from the gorilla bands [Music] the Assassins lay in wait 26 hours undetected and UNR the Ambush murder in October 1951 of Sir Henry gurnie who himself had come to win minds and hearts is the gorilla signal they have not yet lost this war the Force Hunting The Killers is called the largest ever gathered to unearth a tiny handful of Bandits but all it finds are a few illegal guns five bodies in the jungle and a notebook meticulously listing the traffic along the road that gurnie travel the security forces are growing but there has been no quick Victory only endless preparation for it BN out Briggs resigns the European Planters are demanding more action the Briggs plan has borne fruit but not fast enough nonetheless support from the malan people is steadily growing knowing that there are sick hungry and disgusted gorillas in the jungle the security forces coach them to surrender a voice plane cruises over the jungle playing in Chinese a recording by the new British Chief Sir Gerald temper pledging good treatment when murders food is cut off the people are given a chance to place secret information in SE your boxes leading to The Round Up of many terrorists freeing the people still further from Fear as confidence and control grow in The Villages Templar sends more of his army forces deep into the jungle almost literally the par troops hop onto the backs of the hiding terrorists and they will go not simply as Hit and Run guillas but to establish permanent forts accessible only by air the Reds never succeed in taking over a settled region in which they can show the people an ability to govern make a show of fulfilling propaganda promises or rest and feed their troop systematically to do this as the Viet Kon do in Vietnam is an essential of communist gorilla strategy in Malaya they have only the jungle and now the security forces are in the heart of their jungle [Music] what help the gorillas get comes from childlike Aborigines long neglected by their governments they have little understanding of the struggle but quickly see the value of government protection and services soon become valuable allies thus the struggle for alayia began with a communist drive to transform a colonial society by Violence by 1953 it is the British and their Malay hosts who are making the Revolution and winning the war but there are years struggle [Music] ahead the 20th century will continue after this message from your host the credential Insurance Company of America it is 1953 a former British military governor in Germany General Sir Gerald Templar is slowly bringing peace to Malaya temp travels offering protection and reforms to soften the control he places on the [Music] People by September 1953 temper declares a part of the state of Mala free of terrorism for the first time in five years nonetheless the Communists still have many supporters they are far from true in at that time was a man deeply involved in the successful new Villages program later he was involved in the less successful strategic Hamlet's program in Vietnam CBS News correspondent Dan Rather ask former Malaya defense secretary Sir Robert Thompson this question what was the Communist answer to the new Villages program the Communist answer to this is that um they try and retain their of The Villages uh and you have got to eliminate those agents and supporters from the village now when the people realize that they can be protected that the Protection Organization is working then they are prepared to give information on who these supporters are and the intelligence organization can eliminate them by either there's an operation as a result of which one or two of them may be killed or they are arrested it is absolutely vital because thiss went on to one of the other What I Call basic principles that it is this underground political subversive organization using the weapons of Terror and sabotage and so on which must be broken before you can ever hope to defeat Guerilla units if the political organization is not broken then Guerilla units I would almost say can never be defeated what about the race problem in Malaysia did this contri to your difficulties that was two-edged Malay nationalism came out very definitely on the side of the government and one of the reasons for that was that it was possible to identify the Communist gorilla movement in Mala uh as an alien Chinese movement the gorillas were primarily Chinese about 90% of them were Chinese do you have in mind any distinct ratio any superiority in numbers necessary to defeat gorillas I think probably the the critical ratio is somewhere in the 10:1 12:1 Mark I think that you need that uh during the critical period of uh the campaign we had a favorable government ratio during the critical period of about 10 to one after the Insurgency was broken during the long period of mopping up afterwards which took six or seven years the government ratio of course got better and better went right up to 50 to1 as you were able to recruit thousands and thousands of Home guards without any problem at all so there you've got that movement of from a government ratio of 5 to1 at the beginning of the emergency to 50 to1 at the end of the emergency the British of Promise Malaya self-ruled as long ago as 1947 the first general elections are held in the new Federation in 1954 the Communist Uprising is actually delayed the end of colonialism among the candidates Abdul Raman a hereditary tungu or Prince of the state of kada the emergency the British never called it a war still exists but Malay Indian and non-communist Chinese have come through common danger to find Common Ground the alliance is loose complex and shaky but it elects a legislative council with tungu Ramen as the ch chief minister of the new Federation of [Music] Malaya the government seeks reconciliation the Communists seem ready to negotiate in December 1955 chin Pang the Guerilla leader comes in from the jungle under amnesty chin trained during World War II by the British to fight Japan before emergency was scheduled to be decorated with the order of the British Empire the decoration was later revoked now the Empire is the British Commonwealth and Chen meets with tungu Ramen elected leader of a new Democratic State on the verge of Independence what Ramen wants is a happy Malaya he says but for chin there is no happy ending Ramen offers Rehabilitation to all gorillas willing to accept the new government repatriation to communist China for those who do not kin refuses to surrender his arms and demands the Communist Party be permitted unrestrained political activity turn down chin goes back to the Jungle to keep fighting by now authorities have photographs of almost every guilla and know where to find him this information comes largely from Communists who surrender British forces remain to continue the fight alongside Federation of Malay and police by 1956 almost half of the country is free of Terror [Music] [Music] [Music] J is never taken or known to be killed he and a small Force are presumed to be still in the jungle today and still waiting that he has failed and at the mount ofong strategy has failed this time is attributed to malaya's new Villages program with social and political reforms which steal the Communist Thunder and cut the Communist fish off from their sea the same strategy was later tried in Vietnam Sir Robert Thompson how are you able to do this in Malaysia in Vietnam well I think in Mal possibly we were fortunate in that we did not have the forces to undertake a policy of this nature too rapidly all over the country at the same time in Vietnam the government at the beginning of the Insurgency had a considerable superiority of force and there was a temptation as a result to try and do this much to to fast and to to to do it uh in too scattered a fashion all over the countryside uh in Mala we were forced as a result of our fairly limited resources to take the country sort of block by block you think it was a mistake in Vietnam trying to do too much too soon not moving one block at a time if you just do it Village by Village you'll end up with a situation like we did in Vietnam where each Village is still insecure it's still in the front line if you do them in a large block then the villages that are on the inside of the block are in a comparatively secure area and that releases forces for you to go uh to push on the Advance on your perimeter but you must do it sort of stage by stage and the other point that I would stress is that the hold aspect of the operation can take months it takes a long time to build up confidence within the village that you can protect it and also to build up confidence in people themselves uh that they can take part in that defense with comparative safety um and confidence too that the government is going to win in other words that the enemy is not going to retake the village in a few months and that as a result of what they have done they will then be killed uh there is another Point here uh which comes back to one of the main differences between uh Mal and Vietnam uh and and that is that as a result of the war in India China against the French the vmin war the vong captured the Nationalist movement uh and not enough was done on the sort of psychological front to try and sort of divorce communism and nationalism in Mala on the other hand we were fortunate in that the Malay nationalist movement came out strongly on the side of the government and supported the government right through the that was a very vital Factor well if the vetcon has captured the nationalistic label in South Vietnam what are the chances of reversing this and our capturing that label well I think the chance is basically a good because if you look at the situation in Vietnam as it has developed over these six years there is one thing that comes through all the time and that is that the peasant does not want to be taken over by the Communists um if the peasant had not been prepared to support the government Vietnam would have been lost four years ago during all this period the government has been able to maintain forces 500,000 strong of which only a very small percentage about 20% in the Army itself are consits the rest are volunteers mdea Independence becomes a full reality in Malaya in 1957 in 1960 the emergency is declared ended after 12 years tungu Ramen had the most telling footnote to how to fight a gorilla War he said during the last three years of the war more roads were built schools and hospitals started than in the last three generations we gave the people more than the Communists could ever hope to give [Music] [Music]