/ f9 3 C/67-4 GUERRILLA COMMUNICATIONS Barton Whaley Research Program on Problems of International Communication and Security Center for International Studies Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, Massachusetts March 1967 b -i- Xerxes ... sent a messenger to Persia with news of his present misfortune at Salamis. Now there is nothing mortal that accomplishes a course more swiftly than do these messengers, by the Persians' skilful contrivance. It is said that as many days as there are in the whole journey, so many are the men and horses that stand along the road, each horse and man at the interval of a day's journey; and these are stayed neither by snow nor rain nor heat nor darkness from accomplishing their appointed course with all speed. --Ilerodotus, Book VIII, Chap. 98 (Godley translation). A necessity was perfect "intelligence", so that we could plan in certainty. The chief agent must be the generals' head; and, his understanding must be faultless, leaving no room for chance. Morale, if built on knowledge, was broken by ignorance. When we knew all about the enemy we should be comfortable. We must take more pains in the service of news than any regular staff. -- T. E. Lawrence, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom hapter 33. -ii- TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface iv I. General Introduction 1 II. General Patterns 5 III. Communist China: 1920-1949 41 IV. Chinese Nationalist Guerrillas: 1937-1945 92 V. Soviet Union: 1917-1956 101 VI. Yugoslavia: 1941-1944 124 VII. Malaya: 1941-1960 140 VIII. Vietnam: 1920-1954 (by Judith Tipton) 150 IX. Cuba: 1956-1959 199 X. Algeria: 1954-1962 (by Meredith Jane Aldrich) 205 Appendix: Methodological Note 227 -iii- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank the following persons for their comments, suggestions, and encouragement on this paper: Mr. Richard E. Barringer, Col. David L. Evans, Mr. Alexander G. Korol, Miss Amelia Leiss, Dr. Robin Remington, and Mr. Frank Rendall. I am greatly indebted to Miss Meredith Aldrich and Miss Judith Tipton for their independent researching and writing of the case studies of guerrilla operations in, respectively, Algeria and North Vietnam, and to Mr. Stanley Feder for his critical reading of the manuscript. The author also gratefully acknowledges the stimulation provided by earlier papers on Soviet and Chinese communications that were supported by Project Michelson of the U.S. Naval Ordnance Test Station, China Lake, California, and carried forward under a contract with the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense (ARPA) under contract #920F-9717 and monitored by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) under contract AF 49(638)-1237. I -iv- PREFACE This paper is an outgrowth of the author's earlier Foreign Press Monitoring by Communist Leaderships (draft, April 1964). I had intended to incorporate the very scattered data on press monitoring during the early guerrilla insurrectionary phases of aspiring Communist regimes in that paper. However, as more materials were uncovered on Communist and other guerrilla com- munications than originally expected, I thought it useful to collate and analyze these in the present separate paper. The fact that the communications aspect of current guerrilla operations are largely concealed under the cloak of close security tends to restrict this paper to historical case studies. Never- theless, its contemporary value is suggested by the fact that certain strong common elements in the cases collected here seem to find sufficient occasional publicity in current operations to suggest that they form significantly pervasive and persistent patterns. Many excellent books and articles are scattered through the proliferating literature on guerrilla operations. Few, however, make more than a tentative examination of the data relevant to communications. The best of the early efforts were case studies, each being a detailed account of a specific operation in a par- ticular place during a narrowly limited period. Among such -v- examplary works I would include those by Spencer Chapman, Vladimir Dedijer, and Edgar Snow. The current trend is to investigate some of the similarities cutting across specific events, places and times so as to yield generalizations that can produce an operationally useful "doctrine" of guerrilla or counter-guerrilla war. The spottiness of the available documentation, the narrow linguistic competence of the author, and the pressure of other com- mitments, renders this paper only an exploratory effort. It is hoped that other persons, qualified to control the bibliography of the individual regions, will be stimulated to systematically collect data toward a cross-case study of which the present one pretends to no more than a demonstration of its feasibility and utility. Among the numerous other case studies that could have been profitably undertaken or expanded and for which unclassified docu- mentation or personal interview data are fairly available to Western scholars would be the following: Chinese Nationalist Guerrillas (SACO, etc.), WW II French Maquis, WW II Palestine, 1946-49 Greek Communist Guerrillas, 1941-49 The Philippine Hukbalahap Rebellion, post-WW II Kenyan Mau Mau Uprising, 1952-56 Cyprus, 1955-59 Hungarian Revolution,.November 1956 1 A special, somewhat parallel case is my Guerrillas in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T., C.I.S., May 1957). -vi- In the absence of an agreed terminology, I will apply "guerrilla" to any armed movement, operation, or personnel operating from bases within a country in opposition to established regular military (and police) authority. Such a portmanteau definition thus deliberately encompasses such related items as guerrilla organizations, insurgent forces, and revolutionary undergrounds. Such a broad definition deviates somewhat from Chinese Com- munist usage. While they too distinguish "regular" troops from "guerrillas," they consider their Red Army--and its direct descendants, the Eighth Route Army and the People's Liberation Army--to be "regulars" and its armed auxiliaries to be "guer- rillas." Their term which is usually translated "guerrilla" is yu-chi-tui t , literally means "roving and attack corps,"roving to avoid annihilation and attacking to annihilate the enemy. Their distinction between yu-chi-chan 7, "guerrilla war" and yUn-tung-chan ,"war of movement," is mainly one between small local independently operating groups and larger units coordinated over time and geography. 2 I would gratefully receive from readers any additional published references to, or personal reminiscences of, specific guerrilla communications use or equipment. Such information need not be restricted to the particular case studies presented 2 Edgar Snow, The Battle for Asia (New York: Random House, 1941), p. 343. -vii- here. Indeed, I would welcome both contradictory data for the given case studies and similar data for deviant types of cases. I would also appreciate information on both counter-communications operations or techniques and international channels of arms supply to guerrillas. I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION This paper is a preliminary survey of the manner by which selected guerrilla organizations have obtained and transmitted information and orders. This survey is undertaken in an attempt to identify any com- mon patterns of structure, function, or development of guerrilla com- munications. Thus, it focuses on the organization, purposes and effectiveness, and types or categories of information used in guer- rilla command nets and communication networks, rather than with the specific content of messages. The basic theme of this paper is the commonality of certain key factors present in case studies of guerrilla operations. The key factors examined here are the communications systems and command nets used by guerrilla organization as well as the pattern of development that these systems and nets undergo. The conclusions and recommenda- tions presented on the basis of the analysis of these factors are confined mainly to those aspects of counter-insurgency that may be termed counter-intelligence and counter-communications. The conclusions reached are general, and the contingent recom- mendations formulated are prescriptive, despite certain dangers of historical generalizations and prescriptive policy recommendations. For example, I tend to share the misgivings of Newsweek's former See Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Dictionary (JD) (Washing- ton, D.C.: 1962) for the definitions of these terms as recent- ly standardized in the U.S. armed services. -2- Southeast Asia bureau chief who argues for the general inapplicability of the Chinese Communist experience to guerrilla operations in South Vietnam.2 Indeed, Mao himself recognized this problem in one of his very works that is so often taken as a model to be applied in other times and climes. 3 Although this paper takes as its earliest case the rise of the Chinese Communists in the 1920's, it is recognized that much rele- vant parallel material is contained in even earlier instances of underground, guerrilla, and insurgent operations.4 Nevertheless, the 1920's marked a sharp break with the guerrilla past as the result of three types of technological innovation: aircraft, more efficient 2 Robert S. Elegant, "South Vietnam: The Theory," The Reporter v. 45, no. 8 (16 Apr. 1962), pp. 8-10. 3 Mao Tse-tung, Problems of Strategy of China's Revolutionary War (1936). Official English translation in Selected Military Writings of Mao Tse-Tung (Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1963), pp. 75-150. Originally written in December 1936. Mao writes: "China's revolutionary war...is waged in the specific environment of China and so has its own specific circumstances and nature distinguishing it both from war in general and from revolutionary war in general. Therefore...it has specific laws of its own." Op. cit., p. 76. Specifically, Mao argues (pp. 76-77) that to apply without modification even the experience of the Soviet civil war is like "cutting the feet to fit the shoes." However Mao also recog- nized, in his Problems of War and Strategy (6 Nov. 1938) that the 8th Route Army's military experience was "precious," because they were one of only three (USSR and Spain) "proletarian" armies.