"I am convinced that an essential prerequisite to the grant of independence of Malaya is the formation of an adequate Malayan Army to support the civil authority," Templer said.
He sought to create Malayan security forces that were truly representative of the people they were designed to serve. Among his most innovative -- and initially most controversial -- approaches was his insistence that native Malayan-Chinese be included among the local security forces.
This deft maneuver not only gave a sizable minority within the Malayan population a stake in the success of the counterinsurgency and Malayan government, it also denied insurgent leader Chin Peng a critical base of support for his Malayan-Chinese Communist forces. In another brilliant and no less controversial move, he developed a plan that would bestow citizenship upon the hundreds of thousands of Chinese for whom Malaya was home. By providing local citizenry with a reason to accept his plans, he made them feel part of the process of national reconciliation rather than making them feel like the process was thrust upon them.
The French likewise attempted to deplete the ranks of the Algerian insurgent Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) loyalists by creating local projects that encouraged Algerian participation -- and paid them for their services. As with the British in Malaya, the French used this technique in Algeria to engender a sense of community among the citizenry, and payments to the locals fostered a subtle dependence that the people realized could not be replicated by the FLN. Galula was able to successfully isolate his village from the insurgents using this method, as well as a census to gain information about the locals, the establishment of schools and medical facilities, and other efforts to develop the infrastructure of civil society.
Both the British and the French also recognized the importance of legitimizing government throughout each country. While buttressing central authority was always a priority for both, they appreciated the importance of simultaneously developing local government. Local government would not be merely "a useful tool" for the French, but would also serve "as the population's lawyer and representative vis-à-vis the French authorities," Galula wrote in "Pacification in Algeria: 1956-1958.
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Certainly, however, there were differences in the British and French strategies. The British recognized that military power had to complement and even be subordinated to the broader economic and political instruments required to defeat the Malayan-Chinese Communist forces. The French viewed the situation similarly, but did not subordinate military power to the degree the British did.
In addition, the French struggled with translating their recognition of proper strategy and tactics into execution, demonstrating that the former is only half the battle in counterinsurgency. The British, on the other hand, successfully translated their problem identification into execution.
The British employed a more decentralized approach to the execution of their counterinsurgency strategy, benefiting them in ways that eluded the French in their efforts.
First and foremost, the British approach enabled Templer to assume the role of strategic "unifier." Parliament's demonstrated faith in Templer, and the freedom it gave him, ensured that British forces in Malaya operated with a unified strategy. The French government, on the other hand, attempted to control the counterinsurgency from Paris.
Ironically, the government's attempt to exact stricter control of strategic, operational, and even tactical actions, resulted in a lack of control where it was most required. Accordingly, proponents of the heavy-handed approach, which tended to alienate the very indigenes the French were courting, operated unhindered alongside those Galula termed "psychologists," who preferred to embrace more subtle and nuanced techniques that solicited the locals' support.
The environment in which each counterinsurgency was fought also differed dramatically.
Perhaps no two more disparate environments existed than those in which the British and French operated.
Algerian insurgents employed an urban terrorist strategy. The tremendous psychological effects created by such a strategy taught the insurgents that urban insurgency and terrorism represented their best attempts at achieving what conventional theorists refer to as "economy of force.
" Galula said the concrete infrastructure endemic to the urban environment provided "natural amplifiers" for the effects of terrorism. His rationale for this belief was simple: "A grenade or a bomb in a café there would produce far more noise than an obscure ambush against French soldiers in the Ouarsenis Mountains." While Galula meant "noise" in the literal sense, the Algerian insurgents recognized that urban terrorism creates a significant amount of figurative noise as well.
In fact, one can make the case that the FLN was among the first to recognize the tremendous impact created by the effects of media coverage of urban terrorism, which enabled the corrosive consequences of FLN attacks to be felt far beyond the physical locations of the explosions.
The British contended with a phenomenon based more closely on the Maoist model of insurgency. The British environment ostensibly was more placid, but it was no less lethal.
While the French had to contend with an enemy who blended with the populace they were trying to protect in a concrete jungle, the British dealt with an enemy who blended into an actual jungle.
However, the attacks of the Malayan-Chinese Communists, while not as spectacular as those associated with urban terrorism, were often just as effective in achieving the principal aim of any insurgency: psychological dislocation of the populace. Peng's insurgents used the jungle to hide and then spring ambushes against unsuspecting victims.
The attacks instilled a pervasive fear among the populace, who never knew when or where the next attack would occur. Like the FLN, the Malayan-Chinese Communists aimed to frighten the populace and simultaneously de-legitimize the ruling national government. Similar insurgency tactics beget similar counterinsurgency tactics.
Thus, the British and French experiences reveal a deeper commonality among counterinsurgencies that eclipses even the most profound environmental differences. The similarities inherent in the nature of counterinsurgency mandated that the British and French focus on the same tasks: allaying the fears of the public and reestablishing the legitimacy of the central government. These lessons are applicable for contemporary counterinsurgencies.
Lt. Col. Stephen D.
Sklenka is the Commandant of the Marine Corps fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
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