by Ganesh Sahathevan
Writing in Newsweek Palestinian human rights activist Bassem Eid declared that Gaza could have been Singapore but HAMAS turned it into ISIS.
Given Israel's war on HAMAS Gaza may yet be turned into a Singapore by applying the methods employed by the Tiger Of Malaya, Sir Gerald Templer. . Templer used a network of "new villages" to ensure that Chinese villagers in then Malaya were prevented from providing supplies to Communist terrorists, and also gather information about their movements. His appreciation of intelligence, and in particular human intelligence is not a surprise , given his experience in army intelligence during World War II.
These two newspaper reports from the mid-1950s illustrate his methods, which history shows successfully turned Malaysia's Chinese away from the Communist Terrorists and into highly productive units of production and entrepreneurship for the Malaysian economy.
Some have attempted to reimagine Templer's methods as a hearts and minds approach to insurgency but the newspaper reports above show that that was not the case.While the situation faced by Israel is of course not precisely that which Templer faced in Malaya, his methods can probably be adapted and applied successfully with regard to the conditions and circumstances in Gaza to achieve the same if not better economic outcomes.
Saturday, October 14, 2023
Malaysians would be familiar with Israel's Gaza strategy -it is like that employed by Gerald Templer against Communist Terrorist during the Malayan Emergency
by Ganesh Sahathevan
At the heart of the Templar method was the deprivation of supplies . Some would later confuse that with a so-called "hearts and minds" strategy but as explained in this exceprt, tit was anything but:
General Templer had the misfortune to arrive shortly after his predecessor’s assassination, when British morale was at a low ebb and “a general feeling of hopelessness” had set in. Once installed in Kuala Lumpur, Templer quickly lit a fire under the ex-pat community and colonial administration. He “galvanized his subordinates.” He tried to get bureaucrats “out of their offices, and make them talk about the Emergency with the people on the ground, in whose head ultimately lies the solution.” He made it a point to get to know the population, shaking hands with his servants and eating durian, and at one point told the scandalized members of one exclusive British-only club in Kuala Lumpur that Chinese Communists “seldom go to the races. They seldom go to dinner parties or cocktail parties. And they don’t play golf!”
Even before Templer’s arrival, the British had switched from ineffective wide sweeps to more targeted efforts. Large sweeps did have their purpose: the MRLA admitted the sweeps prevented them from holding territory and setting up bases. But the rebels easily adapted, traveling in small groups to avoid the sweeps. And the British army then had to adapt as well. By 1949, they had some 250 “jungle companies” of 10 to 15 officers per squad, and a Jungle Warfare School was set up at Kota Tinggi in 1953. Templer would additionally put a stop to the burning of villages and mass arrests.
Templer, shortly after arriving, stressed that Emergency and normal civil government were “completely and utterly interrelated,” and that “the shooting side of this business is only 25 per cent of the trouble”—Galula would put it at 20%—“and the other 75 per cent lies in getting the people of this country behind us.” Unlike his predecessors, Templer would be given both the top civilian and military position, allow him to coordinate all phases of the campaign.Winning the population meant demonstrating both the government’s capacity and its legitimacy. What it did not mean, however, was playing nice, andindeed British historian Piers Brendon calls the “hearts and minds” idea “something of a myth.” Templer’s Malaya was “a police state” where the prisons were reputed to be worse than those of the Japanese. The campaign “involve[d] high levels of force, was not fought within the law and led to abuses of human rights.” The British used collective punishment and linked food distribution to cooperation. When one village would not name the attackers involved in a nearby ambush, Templer “imposed a twenty-two hour curfew and cut the rice ration in half.” Later, a scandal erupted when photos emerged of a smiling Marine Commando holding two severed Chinese heads. Templer brushed it off, saying that “decapitation was necessary for identification.” In the words of Hew Strachan, “hearts and minds” was not “about being nice to the natives, but about giving them the firm smack of government. Hearts and minds denoted authority, not appeasement.”
As for the Communists, defectors were well-treated, getting rewards and business opportunities, which were then advertised to the other rebels. Templer offered safe passage, food, and medical care to any Communist who would surrender. Psychological operations were honed to a science, with Police Commissioner Sir Arthur Edwin Young having created by 1952 “an interrogation centre staffed entirely by former rebels who were adept at convincing recently captured or surrendered cadres to speak.” Those who did not surrender, however, got the hammer. Starvation was a key tactic. When insurgent crops were discovered, they were napalmed, forcing the Communists to boil rubber leaves to survive. About 10,000 “alleged hard-core troublemakers” were deported to China. Nearly 7,000 were ultimately killed.
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