Classical Counterinsurgency: A Comparison of Malaya, Algeria and Romania

Andrei Miroiu

A thesis in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

School of Social Sciences

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

December 2014

1 PLEASE TYPE THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES Thesis/Dissertation Sheet

Surname or Family name: Miroiu

First name: Andrei Other name/s:

Abbreviation for degree as given in the University calendar: PhD

School: Social Sciences Faculty: Arts and Social Sciences

Title: Classical Counterinsurgency: A Comparison of Malaya, Algeria and Romania

Abstract 350 words maximum: (PLEASE TYPE)

Highlighting the significance of counterinsurgencies fought in the aftermath of the Second World War for contemporary theory and practice, this thesis is a comparative analysis of the campaigns fought in Malaya, Algeria and Romania between 1944 and 1962. The case selection allows an engagement both with Western and non-Western patterns of anti-guerrilla warfare, allowing this work to conceive counterinsurgency as a coherent object of study across time and cultures. The research question at the heart of the thesis is what accounts for success in counterinsurgency? Considering that the government's main tasks in dealing with armed rebellion are to prevent the spread of rebellion, to identify, find and eliminate the rebels, this work analyses the three campaigns on three dimensions: population control, intelligence and intelligence operations and military operations. In relation to population control, the findings point to the hollowness of the prevalent narrative concerning "hearts and minds" approaches and instead highlight the centrality of massive deportations and physical and psychological intimidation and control of targeted populations. The study of intelligence engages with the relative merits of centralized and decentralized organization for counterinsurgency campaigns, evaluates the use of interrogation and torture and assesses the role of infiltration and counter-gangs. Military approaches such as patrols, cordoning, garrisoning, raids, special forces operations are analysed in relation to achieving success in the campaigns. The concluding comparison section discusses the three cases in connection to contemporary counterinsurgencies. In answering the research question, the thesis argues that population control is the strategic-level answer in counterinsurgency, which makes it problematic for present-day contingencies. It also points out the tactical-level relevance of intelligence and military operations.

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Highlighting the significance of counterinsurgencies fought in the aftermath of the

Second World War for contemporary theory and practice, this thesis is a comparative analysis of the campaigns fought in Malaya, Algeria and Romania between 1944 and 1962. The case selection allows an engagement both with Western and non-Western patterns of anti-guerrilla warfare, allowing this work to conceive counterinsurgency as a coherent object of study across time and cultures. The research question at the heart of the thesis is what accounts for success in counterinsurgency? Considering that the government’s main tasks in dealing with armed rebellion are to prevent the spread of rebellion, to identify, find and eliminate the rebels, this work analyses the three campaigns on three dimensions: population control, intelligence and intelligence operations and military operations. In relation to population control, the findings point to the hollowness of the prevalent narrative concerning “hearts and minds” approaches and instead highlight the centrality of massive deportations and physical and psychological intimidation and control of targeted populations. The study of intelligence engages with the relative merits of centralized and decentralized organization for counterinsurgency campaigns, evaluates the use of interrogation and torture and assesses the role of infiltration and counter- gangs. Military approaches such as patrols, cordoning, garrisoning, raids, special forces operations are analysed in relation to achieving success in the campaigns. The concluding comparison section discusses the three cases in connection to contemporary counterinsurgencies. In answering the research question, the thesis argues that population control is the strategic-level answer in counterinsurgency, which makes it problematic for present-day contingencies. It also points out the tactical-level relevance of intelligence and military operations.

2 Contents

Abstract 2

Acknowledgements 5

1. A research outline 7

1.1 Introduction 7

1.2 Why Romania? 12

1.3 Current state of the field 14

1.4 Research rationale and research questions 35

1.5 Methods and sources 39

1.6 Structure of the thesis 42

2. On the Theory and Practice of Classic Counterinsurgency 44

2.1 Before 1945: the lessons of imperial warfare and local terror 48

2.2 The British experience and doctrine 60

2.3 British COIN campaigns 61

2.4 British and American COIN theory in the “Golden Era” 72

2.5 The French experience and theory of COIN 80

2.6 Soviet and Eastern counterinsurgency 85

2.7 A matter of knowledge, swiftness and brutality 91

3. British Counterinsurgency in Malaya 93

3.1 The political and military context 95

3.2 Population control 106

3.3 Intelligence 117

3.4 Military operations and the elimination of rebel groups 127

3.5 Conclusions 144

4. French Counterinsurgency in Algeria 147

4.1 The context of decolonization 148

3 4.2 Algeria: political and social situation 152

4.3 An outline of the war 159

4.4 Population control 169

4.5 Intelligence and intelligence operations 177

4.6 Military operations 187

4.7 Conclusions 198

5. Romanian Counterinsurgency, 1944-1958 202

5.1 The context of the resistance 205

5.2 A typology of rebel groups 210

5.3 Population control, revolts and deportations 221

5.4 Intelligence and intelligence operations 229

5.5 Military operations 247

5.6 The elimination of rebel groups 256

5.7 Conclusions 261

6. Comparisons and Conclusions 268

Bibliography 289

4

Acknowledgements

The author of this thesis is deeply thankful to all the persons and organisations that have made it possible for him to finish this work. Andrew Tan has been involved from day one until the end, and his guidance, patience, generosity of time and intellectual insights need to be acknowledged first. He has been vital in the entire process and I am deeply grateful for everything he has done. At UNSW, Andrea

Benvenuti, William Clapton, Alan Morris, Laura Shepherd, Elizabeth Thurbon, the lecturers and students involved in the postgraduate research seminars helped with advice and constructive criticism.

Ben Eklof from Indiana University helped me understand that the study of war is my real research interest. Still at IU, Padraic Kenney read my first paper on counterinsurgency and Justin Classen encouraged me to pursue this avenue of study and to submit my work for publication. Dorin Dobrincu shared with me his published and unpublished research, for which I am most grateful. Bruce Hoffman, Thomas Young,

David Glantz, David Lee and a number of anonymous reviewers for Studies in Conflict

& Terrorism, Small Wars & Insurgencies, the Journal of Slavic Military Studies,

Archiva Moldaviae all read portions of my research and offered valuable advice.

Many dear friends helped with advice, with reading and criticizing the thesis. In no particular order, I would like to thank Radu Ungureanu, Daniel Biro, Mihai Zodian,

Remy Low, Christopher Black, Jeremy Simpson and Lucian Dîrdală.

5 I also express my gratitude to the committee from UNSW who granted me the

UIPA that made possible the stay in Australia during these years. My deepest thanks go to the staff of the UNSW Library, the Fisher Library, the Herman G Wells Library and their library loans departments, and also to the staff and benefactors of Leichhardt and

Hurstville public libraries. The secretarial staff of UNSW and all support personnel also deserves many thanks.

I would also like to thank Ludwig van Beethoven, whose symphonies helped me get through some of the toughest moments of my research, and to Stefani Germanotta, whose work helped me not to take the world so seriously all the time.

But without the help, guidance, support, encouragement, constant bearing with me and without the tremendous love of my wife Crisia nothing could have been envisaged, much less accomplished. I owe her this thesis. She is the light of my life and this work is dedicated to her.

6

Chapter 1

A Research Outline

1.1 Introduction

The first decade of the 21st century will be remembered by those who have lived it and by future historians in many ways. Some will think of it as the last golden years before the 2008 global financial crisis hit, a sort of ending of the belle époque that followed the demise of the Soviet Union. Others, especially those living in the emerging economies or focusing on them will remember the period as one of incredible growth, widening prosperity and of the closing of the development gap between them and the

West. Yet some historians will think of it as a decade of counterinsurgency.

Will they be wrong in assuming that? One hardly thinks so. The conflict pitting the world’s greatest military power, the United States of America and a motley collection of allies against radical Islamist terrorists had in fact started in the previous decade and is likely to go on for many years into the 21st century.1 Over the years there have been many approaches to tackling the problem; counterterrorist efforts, combining intelligence, surveillance, black operations and anti-criminal activity were present from the beginning and will go on, given the nature of the threat.2

1 David Rapoport argued over a decade ago that the current conflict pitting the West against radical Islamists is in fact the fourth wave in the history of modern terrorism, having started in the wake of the Islamic revolution in Iran and the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan, see his article “The Fourth Wave: September 11 in the History of Terrorism” in Current History, December 2001. 2 Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, New York: Columbia University Press, 2006, 295. 7 Yet two other main approaches may have been specific for the acute phase of the fight against Islamist radicalism in the first decade of the 21st century: conventional war and counterinsurgency. 3 The United States invaded and occupied two countries within a year and a half after the atrocities of 11 September 2001; Afghanistan was attacked in the fall of 2001 and Iraq in the spring of 2003. After the United States achieved two conventional military victories on the ground, both countries were soon engulfed in chaos, looting, religious and tribal conflicts culminating in civil war and overlapping insurgencies against the occupying foreign forces.4 After botched attempts to use conventional military force against unconventional foes, stretching into years, the

U.S. elected to put its trust in a particular group of military officers and academics who advocated the doctrine of counterinsurgency (COIN) as the best solution to the twin nightmares of Afghanistan and Iraq.5

For almost the entire second half of the decade this particular school of thought dominated the American military establishment. The resources put at the disposal of the

COIN advocates were very large: dozens of billions of dollars each year; over two hundred thousand US military personnel on the front lines and many more at different bases around the world; thousands of intelligence specialists, American and allied and – in no small measure – the power of a media with deep links to the military

3 See David C. Rapoport, “Modern Terror: History and Special Features” in Andrew T.H. Tan (ed.), The Politics of Terrorism. A Survey, London: Routledge, 2006. Islamist radicalism refers in this context to the political movements who seek to reform the social and political basis of modern states and societies according to their interpretation of the Koran and who are willing to pursue violence to reach their goals. 4 Good accounts on how things fell to pieces in Iraq are, among others, Peter W. Galbraith, The End of Iraq. How American Incompetence Created a War Without End, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006 and Thomas R. Mockaitis, Iraq and the Challenge of Counterinsurgency, Westport: Praeger, 2008. For Afghanistan see Seth G. Jones, In the Graveyard of Empires. America’s War in Afghanistan, New York: W.W. Norton, 2009 5 This may be a reflection of the fact that “the blurring of lines between counterterrorism and counterinsurgency is the result of the conflation of terrorism and insurgency in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the outbreak of the Iraqi insurgency”, Andrew T.H. Tan, U.S. Strategy against Global Terrorism. How It Evolved, Why It Failed, and Where It is Headed, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, 17. 8 establishment.6 Schools and courses on COIN appeared in many military and civilian universities across the world. Governmental authorities gave research grants and PhD and Master’s theses on the topic simply mushroomed.7

It is somehow early to evaluate the success of this approach, summed up by one of its observers as a “gamble”.8 Some have argued that it has been quite successful in its application in Iraq but distinctly less so in Afghanistan, while others have been sceptical overall.9 But it is not too early to begin wondering why so much effort has been put in this particular intellectual, military and political approach. It is not too soon to question the intellectual validity of the COIN approach, its historical and conceptual basis. In a sense, this is one of the purposes of this PhD thesis. The argument here is that in order to understand the contemporary COIN approach we must go back to its actual and professed intellectual and practical roots, the study of the classical counterinsurgencies fought immediately after the Second World War.

Their significance both for the theory and practice of contemporary COIN lies in the fact that all major COIN authors and practitioners ground their works and conclusions on the supposedly “golden era of COIN”.10 David Kilcullen, one of the academic and military brains behind the anti-insurgent approach in Afghanistan and

Iraq consciously posits his theory of a comprehensive approach to a globalized

6 The most comprehensive account of these developments to date is Jason Bourke, The 9/11 Wars, London: Allen Lane, 2011. 7 John D. Kelly, Beatrice Jaregui, Sean T. Mitchell, Jeremy Walton (eds.), Anthropology and Global Counterinsurgency, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010, 6. 8 Thomas E. Ricks, The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008, New York: Penguin Press 2009. 9 The best account to date of the formation and evolution of the American COIN establishment is Fred M. Kaplan, The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013. For a very poignant criticism see Gian Gentile, Wrong Turn. America’s Deadly Embrace of Counterinsurgency, New York: The New Press, 2013. 10 See for the term encompassing the period from 1948 to 1973 James D. Kiras, "Irregular Warfare" in David Jordan, James D. Kiras, David J. Lonsdale, Ian Speller, Christopher Tuck and C. Dale Walton, Understanding Modern Warfare, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008, 260. The two years obviously refer to the beginning of the Malayan Emergency and the end of American military involvement in the war in Vietnam. 9 insurgency as both a continuation and sharp correction of the lessons learned from the theorists of the 1960s, especially the British expert Robert Thompson.11 To advance a relatively similar position another foremost analyst of the phenomenon, John Mackinlay frames his approach of the contemporary global insurgency as a post-Maoist phase, thus basing his theory on the presumed importance of Mao Zedong’s influence on the classical, Cold War armed rebellions.12 Probably more importantly from a practical perspective, the 2006 US Army Counterinsurgency Field Manual, co-authored by

General David Petraeus, the top COIN officer in Iraq and then Afghanistan, contains historical sections with lessons learned from previous conflicts in Malaya, Algeria or

Vietnam, as well as a quite significant bibliography of the works on which the entire approach is based.13

The classical counterinsurgencies of the early post-1945 period serve as main source of inspiration for contemporary theory and practice. The “hearts and minds” approach, which forms the consensus in contemporary Western COIN, is essentially the conventional wisdom of the 1990s and early 2000s about what happened in Malaya in the 1950s.14 Similarly, the widely held modern belief that the use of purely military means to destroy an armed rebellion is wrong is based on a set of analyses of the French experience in Algeria from 1954 to 1962.15 Again, the conviction that there is very little use in studying non-Western strategies of COIN because of their alleged over-reliance on violence and lack of a politically-driven approach to quelling rebellions also stems

11 The quintessence of his approach can be found in David Kilcullen, Counterinsurgency, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, 166-167. 12 The larger argument is in John Mackinlay, The Insurgent Archipelago. From Mao to bin Laden, New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. 13 US Army, Counterinsurgency FM 3-24, December 2006. 14 The classic on the subject is Richard Stubbs, Hearts and Minds in Guerilla Warfare. The Malayan Emergency 1948–1960, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. For the consensus see Beatrice Heuser, The Evolution of Strategy. Thinking War from Antiquity to the Present, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, 436-437. 15 For a typical example of these analyses, usually written with very little or no use of French sources see John Pimlott, "The French Army: from Indochina to Chad, 1946-1984" in Ian F.W. Beckett, John Pimlott (ed.), Armed Forces and Modern Counter-Insurgency, London: Croom Helm, 1985. 10 from the literature of the 1960s. According to some authors, the Soviet Union’s “non-

Western” culture, history and geography is responsible for its approach to COIN being substantially different from those of London, Paris or Washington.16

Thus, the study of classical COINs forms an integral part of the contemporary debate on the best ways to deal with armed rebels, clusters of global terrorists and even with the issue of failed states. A legitimate question arises: haven’t those insurgencies been thoroughly researched by now?

Somehow, there is not enough serious academic attention to the study of the counterinsurgencies fought in the first decade and a half after 1945, or to put it differently more recent research is not wholly understood by the mostly non-academic proponents of COIN. Kilcullen, Mackinlay and a host of other experts based their research on a very select number of books usually written by authors with different personal and political agendas. The study of the Malayan Emergency in COIN terms – as well as the other similar actions in which the British were involved, (namely Greece,

Kenya, Cyprus, Yemen and Dhofar), is still overwhelmingly based on the accounts of officials, civilians or military who served there, such as Robert Thompson or Frank

Kitson, or on journalistic accounts.17 The Algerian War, at least in the English-speaking world, is under-researched from a military perspective, and those few existing texts use as main sources David Gallula and Roger Trinquier, French officers of the so-called

“revolutionary war” school, a very particular current of thought which formed just a

16 See for this and the persistence of this attitude Rod Paschall, “Soviet Counterinsurgency: Past, Present and Future” in Richard H. Shultz (ed.), Guerrilla Warfare and Counterinsurgency. U.S. – Soviet Policy in the Third World, Lexington: Lexington Books, 1989. 17 Robert Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency. Experiences from Malaya and Vietnam, London: Chatto & Windus, 1966, Richard Clutterbuck, The Long Long War. Counterinsurgency in Malaya and Vietnam, New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1966, Frank Kitson, Low Intensity Operations. Subversion, Insurgency, Peace-keeping, London: Faber and Faber, 1973 (1971), Robert Faber, The War of the Flea, Bungay: Paladin, 1970. 11 part of the broader picture.18 On counterinsurgencies fought by non-Western nations, especially those in the communist bloc there was very little until the very recent work of

Alexander Statiev.19 While far more serious research keeps on being published in the discipline’s main journals, such as Small Wars and Insurgencies, Civil Wars, Political

Conflict and Terrorism, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Small Wars Journal or The

Journal of Strategic Studies, most of it is focused on immediate problems and less on the reinterpretation of the classical experience.

This is where this research finds its niche. The proposal is to pursue a comparative research of the most important counterinsurgency campaigns of the immediate post-World War II period, the British campaign in Malaya from 1948 to

1960, the French war in Algeria from 1954 to 1962 and to add to them as a balance from a different power and cultural perspective, the campaign waged by Romanian communist authorities against anti-governmental insurgents from 1945 to the late

1950s.

1.2 Why Romania?

Malaya and Algeria are obvious choices: most COIN research refers to them in one-way or another. Romania is not. However, its inclusion adds a significant richness to research. First, in contrast with the two other cases, it discusses a small power fighting an insurgency, a more frequent event in contemporary international politics than the much more visible counterinsurgency campaigns carried out by major powers.

18 David Galula, Counter-insurgency Warfare. Theory and Practice, London: Pall Mall Press, 1964, Roger Trinquier, Modern Warfare. A French View of Counterinsurgency, London: Pall Mall Press, 1964. Even Beatrice Heuser, an eminent historian of military thought falls into the trap of considering them more than just disgruntled officers advocating a particular strategy of fighting rebels, see Beatrice Heuser, “The Cultural Revolution in Counterinsurgency” in The Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 30, No. 1 (2007), 153 – 171. To be fair, this is placed in the context of a review essay in which she abhors the resurrection of their theses in the US military at the beginning of the war in Iraq. 19 Alexander Statiev, The Soviet Counterinsurgency in the Western Borderlands, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 12 Only in the last few years a significant number of countries in Africa and Asia, such as

Libya, Mali, Egypt, Congo, Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Burma were mired, sometimes with no foreign assistance at all, in fighting local insurgencies. As conflicts between states seem to be decreasing in number, the “new wars” will mostly involve fighting armed rebels.20 Therefore, the study of an insurgency fought by a minor power during the period of reference could also provide useful insights for the present- day circumstances and study of COIN.

Secondly the Romanian case is in a political sense the exact reverse of the

Malayan Emergency, being a communist campaign to destroy pro-Western insurgents.

This will help show that post-1945 insurgency should be considered in a broader framework than the “wars of national liberation” paradigm in which most of the

Western literature treats the phenomenon. Furthermore, this will also help in treating counterinsurgency mostly from a military perspective, showcasing some of its characteristics that might be perennial. Thirdly, it was fought in Europe, showing that

COINs never were – and possibly would never be campaigns only fought in the former colonies.21 This was not a quasi-war fought in racial, national or religious terms, but a purely political and ideological conflict, a difference that will complement the other, more typical scenarios. The relative small scale of the Romanian insurgency (especially when compared with Algeria) also helps, because it shows how even a very small number of armed rebels can defy authority for extended periods of time.

Finally, the Romanian case also helps from a methodological and research perspective. While Algeria and Malaya have been researched thoroughly before and

20 See for the waning of interstate war Martin Van Creveld, The Transformation of War, New York: Free Press, 1991; for the new wars Mary Kaldor, New & Old Wars, Cambridge: Polity, 2006 and a criticism of the notion in Stathis Kalyvas, "New and old civil wars" in World politics, Vol. 54, No. 1 (2001), 99-118. 21 As recently as 1998 and 1999 the Serbian and Macedonian governments fought campaigns against Albanian insurgents; in the first case it escalated to major interstate warfare. 13 therefore this thesis will rely in those cases mostly on secondary literature, in Romania an effort to uncover primary sources has been underway only over the last two decades and the secondary literature is just emerging. Therefore in its case this thesis will mostly rely on first-hand accounts, adding significantly to the accuracy of the analysis and the historical dimension of the research.

The brief literature review that follows discusses the contemporary situation in

COIN studies in relation with the main theme of this thesis.

1.3 Current state of the field

Insurgencies, understood as armed rebellions by sub-state groups which aim to overthrow governments, usurp power or simply change certain policies, are as old as states, or, to be more precise than, as old as established authority over a certain territory.

Counterinsurgency, which in this thesis will be defined as the ensemble of measures, political, military, economic and cultural, taken by the central authorities to quell insurgencies, is obviously as old as them.22

This has, of course, been said before. In an attempt to clarify the concepts it is worth mentioning here some of the theoretical definitions and assumptions useful for this study. All insurgencies are one way or another, asymmetric conflicts. Asymmetric wars are challenges to state formation, especially the attempt to establish an internal monopoly on the use of armed force and a single central government.23 At the same

22 Ian F.W. Beckett, Modern Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies. Guerrillas and their Opponents since 1750, London: Routledge, 2001, 14. 23 Beatrice Heuser, The Evolution of Strategy, 389. 14 time, irregular warfare is the use of violence by sub-state actors or groups within states for political purposes of achieving power, control and legitimacy, using unorthodox or unconventional approaches to warfare owing to a fundamental weakness in resources or capabilities.24

An historical example might serve as a good illustration to these concepts. One extremely ambitious Roman politician of the 1st century BC (and that century did not lack ambitious powerbrokers) by the name of Caius Julius Caesar conquered Gaul,

Belgica and raided Britain from 60 to 53 BC, extending the authority of the Roman

Republic to what we now call the English Channel. In a pattern well known for centuries and which endures to the present day, a population vanquished in conventional war rose up in revolt in 53 BC, led by a charismatic group of whose main figure was

Vercingetorix. And again in a model that lived through centuries, as long as the insurgents fought asymmetrically – raiding in small numbers, ambushing Roman columns then withdrawing under the cover of the night and the forests – they scored impressive successes. When Vercingetorix decided to turn action into conventional warfare, making a stand with all his men in the fortress of Alesia, the might of Caesar`s legions vanquished the rebels. Gaul was to be Roman territory for the next five centuries. As everywhere else in the territories they conquered, the Romans used a mix of brutality – slaughtering the rebels and taking many vanquished subjects into slavery

– and what we would now know under the term “hearts and minds” policy: respect for the local culture and their religions, vast improvement to security, better roads, postal service, better justice, better sanitary conditions in the cities and even the access of some members of the elite to the Romans halls of power, some of the Gauls even

24 James D. Kiras, "Irregular Warfare", 232. 15 making it to the Senate.25 However, when the Romans tried to expand these policies in territories devoid of the riches and good roads of Gaul and against sparse populations relying on guerrilla warfare, their success was not guaranteed. In Germania, Caesar’s heir Augustus and his own heir Tiberius saw their hopes of extending imperial authority to the east of the Rhine repeatedly dashed by tribes adept at asymmetrical warfare.26

In a nutshell, the Roman experience encompasses most of the stories we could find in all the counterinsurgencies ever fought. Historians of the phenomenon have proved this in lengthy tomes that take us from the time of the Maccabees to the jungles of Vietnam.27 Some, of course, have contested the use of pre-modern examples for the study of insurgencies, considering that irregular warfare prior to the Second World War was primarily a tactical method used by the weak, while after that it implied a politico- military campaign waged by guerrillas to overthrow the government. 28 For these authors, while it is tempting to view the challenges posed by insurgency as tactical, its fundamentals are political and strategic.29 The ontological shift from guerrilla warfare as method to revolutionary war as phenomenon took place at the beginning of the Cold

25 Career advancing or not, the best account we have of the events is in Caesar, The Gallic Wars, Book 7, available online at http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0001%3Abook%3D7%3Ac hapter%3D1, last consulted on 29 September 2011. The text is the 1869 translation of the Latin text by W. A. McDevitte and W. S. Bohn, published in New York by Harper & Brothers. 26 James Lacey, “Conquering Germania. A Province Too Far” in Williamson Murray, Peter R. Mansoor, (eds.), Hybrid Warfare. Fighting Complex Opponents from the Ancient World to the Present, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. 27 The most comprehensive history of insurgency remains Robert P. Asprey, War in the Shadows. The Guerrilla in History, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1975, 2 vols. Historical research of insurgency can lead sometimes into uncertain territory, such as considering the beginning of Christianity in the framework of Jewish anti-Roman rebellions in the 1st century CE, see Rose Mary Sheldon, “Jesus, as security risk: Insurgency in first century Palestine?” in Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol. 9, No. 2 (1998), 1-37. 28 Ian F.W. Beckett, John Pimlott (ed.), Armed Forces and Modern Counter-Insurgency, London: Croom Helm, 1985, 1. 29 The same political-strategic perspective, though without the indifference to pre-1945 insurrectionary movements can be found in the recent, extremely critical work of Douglas Porch, Counterinsurgency: Exposing the Myths of the New Way of War, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. 16 War. 30 Other recent critics pointed out the degree of brutality in classical COIN campaigns, making them unsuitable models for contemporary warfare waged by law- abiding democracies.31 Yet other authors are convinced of the use of historical lessons in asymmetric warfare for the understanding and conduct of contemporary wars.32 The next chapter of this thesis, dealing with the history and theory of COIN, will approach these matters in closer detail, but this section will focus on where the contemporary debate stands and where the present research can make a significant contribution.

From October to December 2001 a handful of American Special Forces, CIA officers with considerable air support and electronic intelligence aided local anti-

Taliban forces in Afghanistan to a defeat of the radical Islamist government that had controlled the country since 1996. By the end of the year the Taliban were scattered, their power broken; many fled over the border with Pakistan. Al Qaeda, the main target of the US efforts, made a last stand in the Tora Bora caves where its conventional fighting power was eliminated and its leadership was forced into exile. 33 It is understandable in this context the gloating of one of the architects of the campaign, the

US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, who attributed the victory to an astute mix of intelligence, special operations, unconventional thinking (including cavalry charges under B52 air support) and a judicious employment of the benefits of the Revolution in

Military Affairs (which stands for the supposed change in the nature of warfare brought

30 David J. Betz, “Insurgency and Counterinsurgency” in Robert A. Denemark, The International Studies Encyclopedia, Vol. VI, Singapore: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010, 3726. 31 Daniel Branch, Elisabeth Jean Wood, “Revisiting Counterinsurgency” in Politics & Society, Vol. 38, No. 1 (2010), 3-14. 32 Peter R. Mansoor, “Introduction. Hybrid Warfare in History” in Williamson Murray, Peter R. Mansoor, (eds.), Hybrid Warfare. 33 Even after many years of writing about the three months of conventional war in 2001 one of the best accounts remains that of Michael O’Hanlon, “A Flawed Masterpiece” in Foreign Affairs, Vol. 81 No. 3 (2002), 47-63. For a synthetic introduction to Al Qaeda, both before and after 2001, see James M. Lutz, Brenda J. Lutz, Global Terrorism, New York: Routledge, 2008, 93-97. 17 by electronic intelligence, communications, computers and precision weapons).34 A new

“American Way of War”, seeking absolute victory through an overwhelming technological superiority and seemingly invincible, was now heralded.35

The next campaign of the “Global War on Terror” seemed to emphasize this point. From 20 March to 1 May 2003 a coalition encompassing some 150,000

American, British, Australian and Polish ground forces, indeed supported by vast air, naval and space assets, defeated the Iraqi armed forces in conventional warfare and occupied the country, while losing less than 200 lives in combat. 36 Of course, responsible for this victory was at the time the new American Way of War, at least according to neoconservative supporters of George W. Bush. This invincible style of warfare had been spurred by dramatic advances in information technology and relied on speed, manoeuvre, flexibility and surprise. Max Boot, a military analyst, urged the reshaping of the entire US military establishment into a force that would win any similar conflicts in a similar way.37

More than a decade later, this enthusiasm seems strange to us, though we should always be mindful of judging in hindsight. Both Afghanistan and Iraq quickly collapsed into internal strife, civil wars overlapping with insurgencies both against the central authority (seen as a puppet of the occupying forces) and against the Western forces themselves. 38 The US-led coalitions had in both circumstances failed to enact the

34 See for the “Revolution in Military Affairs” Colin S. Gray, Strategy for Chaos: Revolutions in Military Affairs and The Evidence of History, London: Frank Cass, 2004. 35 Donald H. Rumsfeld, “Transforming the Military” in Foreign Affairs, Vol. 81 No. 3 (2002), 20-32. 36 For a detailed analysis of the planning, deployment and fighting in the Iraqi War of 2003 see Michael R. Gordon, Bernard E. Trainor, Cobra II. The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq, New York: Pantheon Books, 2006. 37 Max Boot, “The New American Way of War” in Foreign Affairs, Vol. 82 No. 4 (July/August 2003), 41-58. 38 Jason Bourke, The 9/11 Wars. 18 measures that could prevent insurgencies from happening: an official surrender or peace settlement; maintaining public order; and reconstructing local security forces.39

In retrospect, some authors noted that the new American Way of War was exactly the factor that was preventing the success of occupations, as its inherent emphasis on the quick military defeat of the opponent and lack of concern for the aftermath of warfare actually jeopardized stabilization missions.40 Yet others have not failed to criticize even the military response to the incipient insurgency. In an oft-quoted article published at the worst time of the insurgency in Iraq, British Brigadier General

Nigel Alwyn-Foster found that the American approach to counterinsurgency was utterly inadequate. For him the entire American military culture “engenders a command and planning climate that promotes those solutions that appear to favour quick results. In conventional warfare this is likely to be advantageous, but in other operations it often tends to prolong the situation, ironically, as the quick solution turns out to be the wrong one. In COIN terms the most obvious example is the predilection for wide ranging kinetic options (sweep, search and destroy) in preference to the longer term hearts and minds work and intelligence led operations”.41

These positions are, in a sense, the essence of the criticism that has been laid up until that moment against the initial American military response to the insurgencies of the 21st century by the proponents of COIN seen as a coherent military doctrine. First, the overemphasis on military victory hinders the prospect of long-term stabilization and the goal of nation building in war-torn societies. Secondly – and more important for the

39 Nora Bensahel, “Preventing Insurgencies after Major Combat Operations” in Defence Studies, Vol. 6, No. 3 (2006), 278–291. 40 Brigid Myers Pavilonis, “Fighting the Irregular War in Afghanistan. Success in combat; Struggles in Stabilization” in Steven Carlton-Ford and Morten G. Ender (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of War and Society. Iraq and Afghanistan, London: Routledge, 2011. 41 Nigel Alwyn-Foster, “Changing the Army for Counterinsurgency Operations” in Military Review, Vol. 85, No. 4 (2005), 10. 19 argument of this thesis – the US military’s tackling of the post-invasion crises in Iraq and Afghanistan has largely failed by 2005-2006 because of a reliance on a false interpretation of what COIN should be. A sound, potentially victorious strategy could be built on previously successful anti-insurgent campaigns and lessons should be drawn from classical failures in fighting armed rebels.42 The fact that most of the supposedly victorious and relevant previous COINS were fought by the British armed forces was especially important, as we shall see, in the shaping of the debate on how modern campaigns should be waged.43

Facing the challenge of creating a new strategy for fighting the radical Islamist insurgents a new generation of COIN analysts (mostly military men with some academic credentials, much as their forebears in the generation of the Vietnam War) rose to the conceptual challenge. Foremost among them stand the Australian David

Kilcullen and the British John Mackinlay. Kilcullen especially, both through his writings and his position as advisor to American officials in Washington and the two theatres of war, wielded an influence on theory and policy unrivalled since Sir Robert

Thompson switched from devising the British campaign against communist insurgents in Malaya to being an important advisor to the American forces fighting the Vietcong.44

The reassessment of the policy on COIN should, in Kilcullen’s view, start from a conceptual repositioning towards the contemporary conflict, unique enough to be deserving of its own theory. Indeed, the War on Terrorism must be thought of as a form of globalized insurgency, waged by a vanguard of hypermodern, internationally oriented terrorists, making use of all the tools of globalization and applying a strategy of

42 Kalev I. Sepp, “Best Practices in Counterinsurgency” in Military Review, Vol. 85, No. 3 (2005). 43 The bibliographical list of the US Army, Counterinsurgency FM 3-24 textbook is proof to that. 44 David Kilcullen is a retired lieutenant colonel of the Royal Australian Army with combat experience in East Timor and missions in the Horn of Africa, Iraq and Afghanistan. He was seconded in 2006-2007 to the staff of General David Petraeus right before the writing of the FM 3-25 Counterinsurgency and before the surge in Iraq. 20 transnational guerrilla warfare, while seeking to organize, aggregate and exploit the local, particular, long-standing grievances of diverse – but usually tribal or traditional –

Muslim social groups. 45 The major argument is that globalization creates an environment of shifting means and possibilities and the reaction to it creates an unprecedented category of opponents, ultra-savvy in technology, ideology and ability to move and strike different targets. If this is accepted, both traditional counter-terrorism and classical counter-insurgency are inadequate models for the conflicts of the 21st century.46

Other authors followed the same line. John Mackinlay, drawing largely on

British experience and basing his view on COIN on themes already formulated and debated by Robert Thompson, argues that the contemporary insurgency is global, unlike any of the previous ones, with 21st century minded individuals connected by new technological means, motivated by local examples, relying on nodes which can be anything from individuals to small action groups. While Mao Zedong conceptualised insurgency in political terms, we now live in a post-Maoist era of insurgency, characterized by the delocalization of the threat and the diffuse penetration of the

Western societies by radical attackers. Sometimes insurgents can pierce “black holes” in the fabric of the international system (regions under their control, or escaping state control) and run their operation from there. In these cases traditional military invasions are to be expected, with military means closely followed up by hearts and minds policies, nation building, political and societal campaigns that could last for decades.47

45 David Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla. Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, xiv. 46 Ibid., xv. 47 This is the argument of his book The Insurgent Archipelago. From Mao to bin Laden, New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. 21 The success of these theses was also helped by similar views about the transformation of the terrorist threat in the course of globalization. As one of the most important specialists of counterterrorism, Bruce Hoffman warned years before 9/11, terrorism after the Cold War switched from politically motivated (mainly left wing) to a religious fundament, which potentially makes it more dangerous. Terrorist groups need religious sanction; easier access to “how to” handbooks through bookstores, CD`s, and the Internet made terrorism accessible to anyone with a grievance, an agenda, or a purpose.48 A decade later, well into the “Global War on Terror”, the same author argued that: “a terrorist group like al-Qaeda that has now survived two decades evidences the determination, resilience, and ability to overcome or obviate even the most consequential countermeasures of its governmental adversaries”.49

This way of reflecting on contemporary challenges soon permeated American military and political thinking, which came to believe that the criticism of their British and Australian allies did have a point. Steven Metz, an analyst with a long connection with the RAND Corporation, agreed that the 21st century insurgencies bear unique characteristics that need to be addressed in their own particular way. These unique traits come from the fact that the rebellions of today, especially those waged by Islamist radicals, no longer pit an established government against a non-state group operating in isolation in a given territory. Instead, governments now face “multidimensional clashes having political, social, cultural, and economic components. In an even broader sense, contemporary insurgencies flow from systemic failures in the political, economic, and social realms. They arise not only from the failure or weakness of the state, but from more general flaws in cultural, social, and economic systems. Such complex conflicts

48 Bruce Hoffman, “The Confluence of International and Domestic Trends in Terrorism” in Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol.9, No. 2 (1997), 1-15. 49 Bruce Hoffman, “Al-Qaeda Dangerous as Ever” in The National Interest, 10 September 2008. 22 involve a wide range of participants, all struggling to fill the voids created by failed or weak states and systemic collapse”.50 The change in the outlook of insurgencies comes, in Metz’s view, as a consequence of globalization. For him, insurgencies can be compared with the attempt to monopolize the market, likening insurgencies to corporations. Less and less the insurgents want military victory, the occupation of the capital and the inauguration of a new regime; most of them are content with dominating a section of the “market”. Despite these new trends, the author comes back to the old roots of COIN, urging governments to address the economic and psychological needs of the adversary. To win over the rebel the central authority needs to find ways to employ him and give him purpose.51

Until the rise of the new COIN school, mainly comprising protégées of the powerful General David Petraeus, the U.S. military was very reluctant to tackle rebellions as insurgencies, mainly because of its bad memories of the wars in Southeast

Asia in the 1960s and 1970s. 52 Indeed, as James Corum notes, before the interim counterinsurgency manual of 2004, the last one issued in the US military dated from

1966. The armed forces never wanted to fight in insurgencies, witnessed by the “no more Vietnams’ mindset of the times. As late as the, 1990s the study of COIN was the province of the Special Forces and as such there was no comprehensive understanding of it.53 The Gulf War of 1991 was considered the template of the wars to come and other operations, such as those in Somalia or Bosnia were considered anomalies. A seriously bad influence could be attributed to Alvin and Heidi Toffler’ technological determinism, with their work “War and Anti-War” becoming part of the curriculum in

50 Steven Metz, “New Challenges and Old Concepts: Understanding 21st Century Insurgency” in Parameters, Winter 2007-2008, 22. 51 Ibid. 52 This resentfulness was already noticeable in the late 1970s; see Douglas S. Blaufarb, The Counterinsurgency Era: U.S. Doctrine and Practice. 1950s to the Present, New York: The Free Press, 1977. 53 See for the sidelining of COIN research in the 1980s and 1990s Fred M. Kaplan, The Insurgents. 23 military schools. The technological supremacy paradigm was so important that the study of military history was considered unimportant and there had even been proposals of the elimination of the US Army historical programme, with serious consequences for learning how to fight an insurgency.54

In response to these problems, David Kilcullen rose to the challenge and – in effect – proposed a comprehensive approach to COIN. This approach was most influential both on academic thinking and the military and political practice of COIN in the final years of the first decade of the 21st century. In a series of articles and books published since 2005, he attempted a general theory of COIN warfare as well as proposed a series of tactics and approaches to dealing with the contemporary radical

Islamist “heretics”. At least initially, Kilcullen still seemed to believe that a fair amount of previous work of COINS remained relevant, succumbing in a sense to what some analysts have depicted as the strange fascination of certain scholars with adapting classical counterinsurgency strategy to meeting present-day threats.55 In this, he was arguing in a similar way with another member of David Petraeus circle of advisors, Lt.

Col. John Nagl, an early adept of using the British experience in Malaya for fighting contemporary conflicts.56

However, these lessons are – for Kilcullen - limited due to ontological shifts in the nature of insurgency. In fact, one can say that classical-era insurgencies fought in

Algeria and Indochina involved multiple insurgent movements, and most immature insurgencies do include numerous factions, though this complexity was often not reflected in classical writings. In contrast, present day armed rebellions remain

54 James S. Corum “Rethinking US Army Counter-insurgency Doctrine” in Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 28, No.1 (2007), 127–142. 55 See for a critical analysis of this tendency Andrew T.H. Tan, U.S. Strategy Against Global Terrorism, 12. 56 John A. Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife. Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005. 24 multilateral even as they progress, thus incorporating many diffuse, competing insurgent movements. In contrast to revolutionary war theory, these conflicts lack a

“united front”. Rather, dozens of competing groups pursue their own, frequently conflicting agenda, sometimes resembling criminal groups. Classical COIN approaches in combating them, such as fencing villages, cordon and search, curfews and food control (accepted as routine in Malaya) however, were regarded as inappropriate for

Iraq and Afghanistan because of the total disruption of life they cause in urban neighbourhoods, combined with the negative propaganda effect of enhanced media coverage.57 One is particularly struck here to note that for Kilcullen, as for many other

COIN specialists, it is not the inherently abhorrent nature of these practices that makes them unpalatable, but the fact that they make the occupiers look bad. Later in his works he came to the conclusion that even though in order to defeat global insurgency COIN is a more comprehensive approach than counterterrorism, classical counterinsurgencies cannot serve too much as examples, as they were designed for defeating rebellions in only one country.58

Facing the relative lack of importance of older COIN theory and practice,

Kilcullen had to propose his own comprehensive interpretation of the phenomenon of insurgency, as well as devise a specific response to it. A trained anthropologist, he argued in favour of a comprehensive ethnographic approach combined with a respectful

57 The argument discussed here is put forward in a seminal article, David Kilcullen, “Counterinsurgency Redux” in Survival, Vol. 48, No. 4 (2006-2007), 111-130. 58 David Kilcullen, Counterinsurgency, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, 184. One should note that some authors reject the contention that the West and the United States in particular are facing a global insurgency forced on them by radical Islamist. For instance, Matthew Kowalski states that the contemporary struggle against radical elements of the Muslim world is too complicated to be placed just in the insurgency framework. He suggests that while there are definitely insurgencies to be fought in this larger conflict, it should rather be treated as a “confrontation” (in the historian Michael Howard’s understanding of the term) rather than a “globalized Islamic insurgency”. See his article “Global Insurgency or Global Confrontation? Counter-insurgency Doctrine and the “‘Long’ War” on Terrorism” in Defense & Security Analysis Vol. 24, No. 1 (2008), 65–71. 25 pacification strategy. 59 Indeed, he posits that there are only two fundamentals of counterinsurgency warfare: to understand in detail what drives the conflict in any given area or with any given population; and to act with respect for the local people, putting the well-being of non-combatant civilians ahead of any other consideration, even— in fact, especially—ahead of killing the enemy.60

In this particular endeavour Kilcullen has been supported by a number of other anthropologists working for the US Department of Defense and influential in the writing of the 2006 US Army Counterinsurgency Field Manual 3-24. One of them,

Montgomery McFate, argued that anthropology itself is a discipline invented to support warfare in tribal zones. To win these wars, cultural knowledge of enemies should be considered a national security priority. 61 The ethnographer’s approach should be adopted: cultures, rather than nation states are providing the structures of political life.

This is largely due to the fact that the modern adversaries do not think in the

Clausewitzian framework of war as a rational continuation of politics; rather, their form of warfare, organization and motivations are determined by the society and culture from which they come. One of the most obvious failures to think in anthropological terms was Iraq, where tribal insurgency was the result of a cultural misunderstanding: Bush administration officials believed the structure of government would remain intact after the fall of the regime; instead, the authority reverted to the tribal structures and with their sheiks. 62 To combat that, McFate stresses the need for acquiring “cultural

59 Kilcullen describes his methodological approach in the introduction to his book The Accidental Guerrilla. 60 David Kilcullen, Counterinsurgency, 3. 61 Montgomery McFate, “Anthropology and Counterinsurgency: the Strange Story of their Curious Relationship” in Military Review, Vol. 85, No. 2 (2005). 62 The dissolving of the army and the purge of former members of the Baath party from key positions in administration were particularly bad decisions leading to the unravelling of the Iraqi society, Conrad C. Crane, “Phase IV Operations: Where Wars are Really Won” in Military Review, Vol. 85, No. 3 (2005). 26 intelligence” and for infusing the national security approach with anthropological perspectives.63

A justified question is what exactly this perspective has produced from the vantage point of finding solutions to contemporary insurgencies. Has David Kilculen succeeded in proposing a new paradigm, able to address the problems of globalized insurgency, being able to transcend the problems of classical COIN theories? Somehow disappointingly both for him and the discipline one can argue that he has not. Indeed, in terms of actual solutions Kilcullen states that fighting global insurgency does not require the destruction of every Islamist insurgent on the face of the planet, from the mountains of Afghanistan and Chechnya to the jungles of Indonesia and the deserts of

Yemen. Rather, it calls for a strategy of disaggregation (delinking or dismantling) to prevent the dispersed and disparate elements of the jihad movement from functioning as a global system.64 Furthermore, a cornerstone for defeating the global jihadists is the observation that “there are strong analogies between police work, counterinsurgency, and counterterrorism. Insurgents tend to operate like gang structures and police gang suppression approaches that focus on community security, network displacement and a layered method of overt police presence, criminal informants, and undercover operations is analogous to counterinsurgency, especially in urban environments.

Likewise, some terrorist networks share structural and operational similarities with organized crime networks, and police methods against organized crime syndicates— financial and logistical controls, counter-network operations, detainee exploitation,

63 Montgomery McFate, “The Military Utility of Understanding Adversary Culture” in Joint Force Quarterly, No. 38, 42-48. One should note that this approach is highly contested in the larger community of anthropologists for its presumed forfeiture of ethical principles and standards, with some specialists producing a direct answer to the FM 3-24, Network of Concerned Anthropologists Steering Committee, The Counter-counterinsurgency manual; or, Notes on Demilitarizing American society, Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2009. McFate herself has come under fire, being accused of plagiarism in the sections of FM 3-24 that she wrote, see David Price’s article in Counterpunch, 30 October 2007. 64 David Kilcullen, Counterinsurgency, 167. 27 penetration by informants, and targeted disruption—are similar to the methods used against terrorists.”65

But doesn’t this sound familiar? Isn’t it in effect just a dual call, the first to dismantle the global threat into localized insurgencies and fight them on their own terms, using the experiences of the past and the second to combine counter-terrorism and COIN on a global scale? Indeed this is exactly what Kilcullen is finally reduced to, namely to concede – even though tacitly - that for all the talk about the new nature of the contemporary, global, radical Islamist threat, the best approach would be to return to the lessons we already learned from fighting older foes.66

Of course, there is another option, suggested by authors such as William Polk.

For him, in modern times nearly all of national liberation insurgencies succeed. There is no permanent solution to generalized insurgencies short of near genocide and ultimately, despite technology, numbers, organization or intelligence, counter- insurgencies by those perceived by the population as foreign invaders are bound to fail.67 But even these arguments have their roots in the first debate on COIN, dating from the era of Vietnam. Robert Faber, himself a journalist involved in the Cuban

Revolution, had written as early as 1970 that modern industrial societies cannot defeat popular insurgencies once these are firmly rooted and thus there is only one means of defeating insurgency and that is outright extermination.68

Even stronger criticism, coming from methodological and epistemological corners, has been formulated against the writings of the new COIN school, especially

65 Ibid., 183 fn. 66 To add to this possibly sour assessment of Kilcullen’s efforts even the term “global insurgency”, central to his thinking and supposedly justified by the uniqueness of the post-Cold War religious terrorist threat, was in fact employed in the context of a supposed communist attempt to take over the Third World by the supreme authority of British COIN theory and practice, Robert Thompson. See his Revolutionary War in World Strategy, 1945-1969, London: Secker & Warburg, 1970. 67 This is the main argument of his book Violent Politics. A History of Insurgency, Terrorism and Guerrilla War from the American Revolution to Iraq, New York: Harper, 2007. 68 Robert Faber, The War of the Flea, Bungay: Paladin, 1970, 11. 28 after the effects of the application of FM 3-24 in Iraq and Afghanistan proved less than a staggering success. Douglas Porch, firing a broadside against all theorists and practitioners of counterinsurgency from the times of the French Revolution to the present day, argued that throughout the ages COIN approaches were nothing but

Orientalist theories devoid of strategic value and insight, as well as of any pretensions of innovation. 69 Porch’s approach and especially his less than academic rhetoric is strongly contested by authors sympathetic to what he terms the “COINdinistas” and accepted, in a critical manner, by scholars who view Kilcullen as responsible for promoting a pernicious and flawed view and policy for dealing with asymmetric warfare.70

Others offered a cultural critique of COIN understood as a rigid body of doctrine dominating the American and British military institutions in the aftermath of Iraq and

Afghanistan. In these works COIN is presented as a flawed, technocratic approach disdainful of politics, based on a skewed and dubious interpretation of history.71

An even wider critique of contemporary COIN literature argues that it is ignorant and disdainful towards the Clausewitzian approach to warfare and therefore devoid of a profound understanding of the nature of the conflict. 72 Even military

69 Douglas Porch, Counterinsurgency: Exposing the Myths of the New Way of War, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. The term Orientalism is used here in the sense and with the connotations attributed to it by Edward Said and his followers in post-colonial theory. 70 See for Porch’s adamant critics David H. Ucko, "Critics gone wild: Counterinsurgency as the root of all evil" in Small Wars & Insurgencies, Vol. 25, No. 1 (2014), 161-179 and Porch’s “Reply to David Ucko” in Small Wars & Insurgencies, Vol. 25, No. 1 (2014), 180-185. For a sympathetic review of Porch and Gentile see Celeste Ward Gventer “Counterinsurgency and its critics” in Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 37, No. 4 (2014), 637-663. 71 Celeste Ward Gventer, David Martin Jones, and M. L. R. Smith "Deconstructing counter-insurgency: COIN discourse and the devaluation of strategy" in Cambridge Review of International Affairs ahead-of- print (2013): 1-24. A similar approach can be found in Celeste Ward Gventer, David Martin Jones and M.L.R. Smith “Minting New COIN: Critiquing Counter-insurgency Theory” in Celeste Ward Gventer, David Martin Jones, and Michael Lawrence Rowan Smith, (eds.) The New Counter-Insurgency Era in Critical Perspective, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 72 David Martin Jones, M. L. R. Smith, and John Stone, "Counter-COIN: Counterinsurgency and the Preemption of Strategy" in Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Vol. 35, No. 9 (2012), 597-617. A more elaborate segment criticizing the de-intellectualization, de-contextualization and the de-strategisation of war in COIN theory through its ignorance of Clausewitz can be found in M.L.R. Smith, “COIN and the 29 officers with service in the Middle East in the heyday of the “Petraeus School” mounted a severe criticism of this particular theoretical orientation. Colonel Gian P. Gentile argued in a 2013 book that the team that co-authored FM 3-24 willingly misread historical lessons, especially concerning Malaya, Vietnam and Algeria, over- emphasizing population-centric strategies, whitewashing brutal measures and discounting the ability of regular armed forces to deal with insurgencies.73

But even if we decide not to reject COIN completely as a valid approach, we should still ask ourselves what are the practical consequences of this interpretation of the contemporary state of COIN theory? Indeed, it seems to me that a return to the roots of the discipline, both to the conflicts fought immediately after the Second World War and the corpus of theoretical works they generated is necessary for two very good reasons.

First, as we have seen above, the critical recuperation of these wars and theories

– for good or for bad – is a feature of the dominant views advocated by Kilcullen,

Mackinlay, Nagl and in a sense even McFate. Not only have these authors been reduced to arguing in the terms of the continuing relevance of the old COIN, but indeed they are just a spearhead of an entire host of military officers and academics who point in the same direction. Robert M. Cassidy advocated a reappraisal of colonial campaigns of the

19th and 20th century for better performance in contemporary warfare.74 General Sir

Michael Jackson who commanded the NATO ground component in Kosovo in the immediate aftermath of the 1999 war, argued that the old British approach to COIN led to the contemporary emphasis on stability operations and state-building as the best way

Chameleon: The Category Errors of Trying to Divide the Indivisible” in Celeste Ward Gventer, David Martin Jones, and Michael Lawrence Rowan Smith, (eds.) The New Counter-Insurgency Era in Critical Perspective. 73 Gian Gentile, Wrong Turn. America’s Deadly Embrace of Counterinsurgency. 74 Robert M. Cassidy, “The British Army and Counterinsurgency: the Salience of Military Culture” in Military Review, Vol. 85, No. 3 (2005), 53. 30 of dealing with an insurgency on the long term. 75 Grounded on the well-known practices of the past, the British approach to insurgency was deemed to be – on the long run – the most successful, being shaped by three major peace-time influences: the hearts and minds approach employed in COIN; peacekeeping techniques and procedures based on consent and the use of minimum force; and notions of police primacy.76

This particular approach is best embodied in the practice and pronouncements of

Robert Thompson. In his famous 1966 work Defeating Communist Insurgency, he proposed a set of five principles of a winning COIN campaign seldom contested to this very day: the government must have a clear political aim: to establish and maintain a free, independent and united country which is politically and economically stable and viable; the government must function in accordance with the law; the government must have an overall plan, encompassing all political, social, economic, administrative, police and other measures which have a bearing on the insurgency; the government must give priority to defeating the political subversion, not the guerrillas; in the guerrilla phase of an insurgency, a government must secure its base areas first. 77 A COIN must be fundamentally political; military considerations are secondary and whenever the kinetic approach (read the employment of brute military power) is contemplated considerations of how this would fit in the general hearts and minds strategy were compulsory.78

In the assessment of many authors who have discussed the classical insurgencies fought from the Great War until today those who abided by these rules triumphed and

75 General Mike Jackson, “British Counter-Insurgency” in The Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 32, No. 3, (2009), 347–351. 76 Alice Hills, “Hearts and Minds or Search and Destroy? Controlling Civilians in Urban Operations” in Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol.13, No.1 (2002), 1–24. It is interesting to note that in the Vietnam era other British approaches to insurgency, more blunt and aggressive, were similarly praised – see for instance the assessment of the strategic hamlets initiative in Lewis H. Gann, Guerrillas in History, Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1971, 69. 77 Robert Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency. Experiences from Malaya and Vietnam, London: Chatto & Windus, 1966, 50-58. 78 The three principles of British COIN approach were enshrined as minimum force, civil-military cooperation and tactical flexibility, Thomas R. Mockaitis, “The Origins of British Counter-insurgency” in Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol. 1, No. 3 (1990), 211. 31 those who have not failed. Richard Stubbs and John Nagl, who have produced the most comprehensive recent works on the British intervention in Malaya, agree on these points.79 Appraising the British campaign in Dhofar in the late 1960s and the 1970s in two papers written over two decades apart, John Pimlott and Geraint Hughes both consider that the emphasis on a politico-economic solution that won the allegiance of the local Omanis weighed heavily when accompanied by an intelligent and measured military response.80 The divide et impera strategy, fundamentally a politically approach, is what won for the United Kingdom most of the conflicts they fought in the interwar years in the Arab countries.81 In effect, even non-Western countries that decided to pursue a strategy based on political compromise and a low-key military approach, at least on their own territory, stand a good chance of winning over their own rebels.82

In the same time, those who chose to ignore these lessons and went their own way with a brutal military campaign have failed nearly every single time. The French lost Algeria not because they were defeated in any reasonable understanding of the term, but because they chose to pursue victory through torture, search and destroy missions and the indiscriminate slaughtering of their opponents. The academic chorus in

79 Richard Stubbs, Hearts and Minds in Guerilla Warfare; John A. Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife. 80 John Pimlott, "The British Army: the Dhofar Campaign, 1970-1975" in Ian F.W. Beckett, John Pimlott (ed.), Armed Forces and Modern Counter-Insurgency, London: Croom Helm, 1985; Geraint Hughes, “A ‘Model Campaign’ Reappraised: The Counter-Insurgency War in Dhofar, Oman, 1965–1975” in The Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 32, No. 2, (2009), 271–305. 81 Rod Thornton, “Countering Arab Insurgencies: The British Experience” in Contemporary Security Policy, Vol.28, No.1 (2007), 7–27. The author also lays a heavy emphasis on the anthropological approach of the British colonial officers and military commanders, interested in understanding and operating inside the system of reference and values of the societies they were ruling. 82 For instance, the Indian Army, who inherited many British traditions, had a softer approach on COIN, refraining from the use of artillery and air support. A compromise was always sought, rather than decisive victory. As long as the insurgents did not insist on secession, a political solution would be feasible from the Indian point of view. Two of the post-independence insurgencies, of the Naga and the Mizo population were resolved through the formation of separate states for them inside the Indian Union, see Rajesh Rajagopalan, “Force and Compromise: India’s Counter-Insurgency Grand Strategy” in South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Vol.XXX, no.1, (2007), 75-91. 32 this matter is deafening.83 The Germans who pursued a war of extermination on and behind the Eastern front in the Second World War essentially failed in securing their rear in no small measure because of their lack of interest in preserving any kind of good relations with the population of the occupied territories. Despite the occasional attempt by some local commanders to win over the locals, more often than not the Security

Divisions deployed behind the front and especially the vicious Jagdkommandos behaved so savagely that they practically ensured the continuation of large partisan activities supported by desperate natives of the land.84

Having established the centrality of the classical COIN theory and practice for the current debate, it is time to return to the second main reason why the study of the classical COINS is worthwhile. Simply put, the treatment they received in current academic literature is unsatisfactory. Most of the literature, as mentioned before, is produced by former civilian officials and military officers seeking recognition, professional advancement or in the case of some, to lay the blame of failures on someone else. The products are more often than not “how to win” textbooks, ranging from David Galula with his “four laws of counterinsurgency”85 to David Kilcullen’s

83 To quote just a few authors, see Daniel Moran, Wars of National Liberation, London: Collins, 2006, ch. “Algeria”; John Pimlott, "The French Army: from Indochina to Chad, 1946-1984" in Ian F.W. Beckett, John Pimlott (ed.), Armed Forces and Modern Counter-Insurgency, London: Croom Helm, 1985; Douglas Porch, "French Imperial Warfare 1945-62" in Daniel Marston, Carter Malkasian (eds.), Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare, Oxford: Osprey, 2008; Charles Townshend, “People’s War” in Charles Townshend, The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern War, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. 84 Ben Shepherd, War in the Wild East. The German Army and Soviet Partisans, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004, 226-230; this is also the approach of Peter Lieb, “Few Carrots and a Lot of Sticks. German Anti-Partisan Warfare in World War II” in Daniel Marston, Carter Malkasian (eds.), Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare, Oxford: Osprey, 2008. 85 The laws, in all their rigid splendour, are: 1. The support of the population is as necessary for the counterinsurgent as for the insurgent; 2. Support is gained through the recruitment of an active minority able and willing, through propaganda and other deeds, to rally the neutral majority and to neutralize or eliminate the hostile majority; 3. Support from the population is conditional; 4. Intensity of efforts and vastness of means are essential, David Galula, Counter-insurgency Warfare. Theory and Practice, London: Pall Mall Press, 1964 detailed on pages 74-79. 33 “Twenty-Eight Articles” 86 . Indeed, the impulse to write what may be called prescriptions for insurgency has permeated even works that aim just to describe in detail the workings of the foremost terrorist organization, Al Qaeda.87

Of course, there are many edited volumes and journal articles providing a better, more nuanced picture of classical COINs. Some of the critical approaches published recently are extremely worthwhile, but many tend to view the lessons of the past exclusively in relation to present days campaigns.88 In addition, few are comparative in nature, many are written by authors who ignore primary sources completely and who sometimes do not even master the language of those conducting the anti-insurgent struggle.89 Furthermore, the collected wisdom is that there is little point in analysing the military responses to armed rebellion, especially in the timeframe of interest for this research, largely because it is deemed as just a corollary of political action, or as being the main cause for losing the confrontation, or because it was pursued by non-western powers and therefore unlikely to be an interesting model for the future. This thesis aims to reject the aforementioned positions and to deepen the strategic and historical understanding of COIN.

86 David Kilcullen, “Twenty-Eight Articles: Fundamentals of Company-Level Counterinsurgency” available at http://www.au.af.mil/info-ops/iosphere/iosphere_summer06_kilcullen.pdf, last consulted on 29 September 2011. 87 Rohan Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda. Global Network of Terror, Melbourne: Scribe Publications, 2002, xxv-xxvi calls for military, financial and especially ideological actions to subvert and eventually destroy Al Qaeda. 88 See for instance Gian Gentile, Wrong Turn. America’s Deadly Embrace of Counterinsurgency, New York: The New Press, 2013. 89 A welcome and recent exception to this is the work of Martin Thomas, Fight of Flight. Britain, France and their Roads from Empire, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014, although this is a quite general history of decolonization. 34 1.4 Research rationale and research questions

The proposal is to pursue a comparative study of the COINs fought by the

British in Malaya from 1948 to 1960, the French in Algeria from 1954 to 1962 and in

Romania between the government and anti-communist armed rebels from 1945 to the end of the 1950s. While most of the research done so far, essentially based on “how to” manuals and memoirs written by military and political officials involved in the events, was focused on the political strategies to winning against armed rebels, this work will be more concerned with how population control, intelligence and military operations shaped victory in these campaigns.

The selection of the three cases has a number of advantages, allowing a comparison of three different styles of COIN, in very different social, economic and geographical environments and comprising radically different governments and highly contrasting insurgents. In Malaya, amidst jungles and in extreme humidity an army savvy in imperial policing and bloodied in a brutal war just years before the Emergency confronted the organized effort of Malayan communists. The insurgents were overwhelmingly of Chinese descent, which helped the government in driving a wedge between them and the population at large.90 Algeria witnessed the most violent of the three conflicts, with COIN being just a part of what indeed has been a three-way civil war. Roughly put, an army forced to rely more and more on conscripts and a government that had just lost a colonial war in Indochina was confronted by a particularly ruthless movement of nationalist Algerian Muslims comprising everything from nationalists to communists to religious radicals. The rebellion was fought in the

90 The Chinese were 39% of Malaya`s population during the Emergency, 49% were Malay and 12 percent Indian, apud Richard Clutterbuck, Guerrillas and Terrorists London: Faber and Faber, 1977, 37. 35 deserts, in arid mountains, on the borders with Tunisia and Morocco and – most studied, though not necessarily in depth – in large cities. To add to the already complicated situation the war was joined, prolonged and in the opinion of some lost by the militias of the European settlers, who started by fighting the Muslim rebels and ended by attacking the government’s forces. In Romania a newly formed communist government, backed politically by the might of the Red Army, used its completely inexperienced

Special Forces and People’s Militia against a hodgepodge array of small insurgent groups, usually secluded in forests and high mountains and united only by their hatred for the foreign-imposed rulers. In contrast to the French and British cases but very interesting for the purposes of comparison, in Romania there was a government fighting its own ethnic population on its own territory, proving that COIN is fought in other instances than just colonial, post-colonial or simply imperial warfare.

But why focus on population control, operations and intelligence? To a large degree, these are the three dimensions that account in a great measure for victory or defeat in military campaigns and are permanent elements in any asymmetric campaign.

The political conditions, structures of society, types of government, technology, types of rebel groups, geography, international conditions, the organization, culture and learning abilities of the governmental forces can and do vary enormously from case to case. While the latter factors can explain the outlook and outcome of particular campaigns, it is the first three dimensions that are constant aspects of every campaign.

In effect they are the best avenues of research to answer a set of extremely important questions.

Population control, understood as the ensemble of measures aiming at insuring that the civilian population does not join or cooperate with the rebels and instead chooses the side of the government, was more often than not discussed in the “hearts

36 and minds” framework.91 This study aims to show that even when such an approach was contemplated, it was more often than not just a coat of paint over a violent and abusive campaign of intimidation and dislocation waged by central governments against their own, unarmed citizens. Important research questions are: what were the aims, structure and outcomes of internal deportations in the three case studies? What were the effects of deportations on the targeted populations and on the armed rebels? Did identification, food control and forced labour work? Was the “New Villages”/“strategic hamlets” approach useful? What were the forms of internal propaganda/re-education programs and were they efficient?

In terms of operations what worked best, patrols, sweeps or ambushes?92 Which is the best way to organize a COIN: supreme military and political leadership or the devolution of command? Are Special Forces more useful, or should the authority rely on police work or outright on heavy-handed regular military units? What does the historical record really say about the utility of search-and-destroy versus clear and hold tactics? Is the minimum force approach sound, or were governments more successful when simply flooding the rebel areas with the might of their armed forces? In dealing with operations, technological questions must be addressed and other questions arise, such as what is the role of air superiority and aerial mobility in COIN? Did electronic

91 See for instance the above-quoted works of Thomas Mockaitis, Richard Stubbs, John Nagl. 92 Most of the case studies of older COIN deal extensively with operations. Stubbs and Nagl treat of operations in Malaya; other quite useful studies on operations in Malaya are James E. Dougherty, “The Guerrilla War in Malaya” in Franklin Mark Osanka (ed.), Modern Guerrilla Warfare. Fighting Communist Guerrilla Movements, 1941-1961, New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1964; Anthony Short, “The Malayan Emergency” in Ronald Haycock (ed.), Regular Armies and Insurgency, London: Croom Helm, 1979; David Ucko, “Countering Insurgents through Distributed Operations: Insights from Malaya 1948–1960” in The Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 30, No. 1 (2007), 47 – 72; Karl Hack, “The Malayan Emergency as Counter-Insurgency Paradigm”, Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 32, No. 3 (2009), 383 — 414. For Algeria see John Pimlott "The French Army: from Indochina to Chad, 1946- 1984"; David Galula, Counter-insurgency Warfare; Andre Nouschi, L’Algérie amère 1914-1994, Paris: Editions de la maison des sciences de l’homme, 1995; Daniel Moran, Wars of National Liberation. For a brief study of Romanian operations see Andrei Miroiu, “Wiping out : Romanian Counterinsurgency Strategies in the Early Communist Period” in Journal of Slavic Military Studies, Vol. 23, No. 4 (2010), 666-691. 37 surveillance score significant results against the armed rebels? Did it matter that the weapons used by government forces were usually significantly more modern and efficient than those of their opponents?93 Of course, we should keep in mind that the answers to these questions might be totally different from what one would expect at the beginning of a research. They might not be on the “either/or” pattern and simply the attempt to understand what happened might raise new questions.

The use of intelligence operations in COIN raises its own set of interesting questions.94 What is the role of intelligence officers inside the force pursuing anti-rebel operations? How do they collaborate with the local civilian and military officials and what is their impact on operations? Are traitors and turncoats more important for vanquishing insurgencies than a carefully constructed network of agents penetrating all social and local structures of the society in which the campaign is pursued? How were persuasions, threats, torture or bribes used to turn former insurgents into double agents or government propagandists? What was the historical efficiency of counter-gangs?

When posing all these questions, it is the contention of this thesis that the research that will attempt to answer them is valuable for present day operations, be they in Chechnya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia or wherever the insurgencies of the

93 There is a growing literature on the relation between technology and COIN. The following are just a few relevant works: James S. Corum, Wray R. Johnson, Airpower in Small Wars: Fighting Insurgents and Terrorists, Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003; David Jordan, “Countering Insurgency from the Air: The Postwar Lessons” in Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 28, No.1 (2007), 96–111; Gérard Chaliand, Les guerres irrégulières, XXe-XXIe siècle. Guérillas et terrorismes, Paris : Gallimard, 2008. 94 The study of intelligence as part of post-war COIN operations goes back to the studies and memoirs of Galula and Frank Kitson. For more recent relevant approaches see David Omand, “Countering International Terrorism: The Use of Strategy” in Survival, Vol. 47, No. 4 (2005-2006), 107-116; Greg Mills, “God, History and Countering Insurgency” in Defense & Security Analysis Vol. 23, No. 1 (2007), 101–106; Rod Thornton, “Countering Arab Insurgencies: The British Experience”; Michael Kirk-Smith, James Dingley, “Countering terrorism in Northern Ireland: the role of Intelligence” in Small Wars & Insurgencies, Vol. 20, Nos. 3–4, (2009) 551–573. For pseudo-gangs an interesting approach was proposed by Bill Bailey, “Hearts and Minds, Pseudo Gangs and Counter Insurgency: Based upon Experiences from Previous Campaigns in Kenya (1952-60), Malaya (1948-60) & Rhodesia (1964-1979)” in the Proceedings of the 1st Australian Counter Terrorism Conference, Edith Cowan University, Perth Western Australia, 30th November 2010. 38 21st century will be fought. There is scarcely any contemporary development, be it theoretical or technological that nullifies the lessons that could be learned from the past.

Drones, extensive electronic surveillance and anthropologically guided engagement teams may change the historical particularities of a given campaign, but do not alter the fundamental challenges governments face when dealing with armed rebels: to prevent the spread of insurgency, to identify the guerrillas and to eliminate them.

To sum up, the main research question of this thesis is what accounts for success in counterinsurgency? The answers provided point to the strategic relevance of population control and the tactical lessons that can be drawn from intelligence and military operations.

1.5 Methods and sources

While there are serious studies on anti-rebellion tactics and operations in the framework of “imperial policing” dating from the 1890s to the 1940s (the names of

Charles Callwell and Charles Gwynn come to mind), the research in COIN studies went through two main phases. The first encompassed the “golden era of COIN” which largely corresponded with the years of American involvement in Vietnam, when most of the classic works already quoted in the footnotes in this chapter were written. The second phase, continuing to this very day, started in the aftermath of the botched

American campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. The methodology of my research relies on an understanding of this growing literature, and the three COINs I studied will pass through its filter. However, this thesis tries to avoid the traps in which previous attempts, especially those belonging to the “warrior-scholars” of the American

39 establishment. They have been rightfully criticized for their understanding of the past, especially the uncritical reliance on the memoirs of colonial officials and sources that provided glowing accounts of their success.95

In addition to the growing number of academic monographs on COIN, I will rely on official collections of published documents. Of great help will be reports and analysis produced by government bodies such as ministries of defence and also those published by non-governmental organizations, such as the RAND Corporation. The collections of academic journals with an interest in the field, such as The Journal of

Strategic Studies, Small Wars and Insurgencies, Defence Studies, Civil Wars, Defense

& Security Analysis, Terrorism and Political Violence, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism,

Military Review would also be very important.

For the case studies, the research goes beyond the monographs and scholarly articles already covering the field and uses a larger array of works dealing with the history, society, economy and geography of the three countries. Most importantly, although this is not a thesis of history and therefore does not require archival research, it makes use as much as possible of primary sources, mainly collections of government documents, military and political, concerning the period of interest. While some information is still classified, for each of the three countries there are published volumes of documents dealing with my immediate research interests.96 Especially the Romanian

95 Daniel Branch, “Footprints in the Sand: British Colonial Counterinsurgency and the War in Iraq” in Politics & Society, Vol. 38, No. 1 (2010), 17-21. 96 To mention just a few of them, see Ronald Ham (ed.), The Labour government and the end of empire, 1945-1951, London : HMSO, 1992, 4 vols.; A.J. Stockwell (ed.), Malaya, London : HMSO, 1995, 3 vols.; David Goldsworthy (ed.), The Conservative government and the end of empire 1951-1957, London : HMSO, 1994, 3 vols.; Service historique de l'armée de Terre, La Guerre d'Algérie par les documents, ongoing collection since 1990; Patrick Eveno, Jean Planchais, La Guerre d'Algérie : dossier et témoignages, Paris : Editions La Découverte - Le Monde, 1989; Consiliul Național pentru Studierea Arhivelor Securității “Bande, bandiți și eroi”. Grupurile de rezistență și Securitatea (1948-1968, Bucharest: Ed. Enciclopedică, 2003; Adrian Brișcă, Puica Buhoci (eds.) Rezistența armată din Munții Apuseni. Gruparea maiorului Nicolae Dabija, 1948-1949, Bucharest: Institutul Național pentru Studiul Totalitarismului, 2007; Adrian Brișcă, Radu Ciuceanu (eds.) Rezistența armată din Munții Făgăraș. 40 case study was based, to an overwhelming degree, on primary sources coming from the archives of the intelligence and law enforcement governmental agencies. In addition to that there are memoirs of the main military and political officials of the COINs, useful for anecdotes and a bird’s eye view on events.97 Much too often the analysts of anti- insurgent operations paid attention only to the type of documents mentioned above and left the memories of insurgents to the use of historians and anthropologists. It is my intention to recuperate them and to give their voices a chance to shed light on controversies surrounding the military efficiency of COIN. 98 In this regard, my knowledge of English, French and Romanian helped me in going beyond the linguistic confines that limited some of the previous analysts of COIN, who more often than not were unable to use primary sources or even secondary literature because of not knowing another language besides English, a shortcoming very common especially in American military circles, where up to this day it is possible to confer advanced degrees on – for instance – the analysis of French operations in Algeria based entirely on English- language sources.

Grupul Ion Gavrilă-Ogoranu 1949-1955, Bucharest: Institutul Național pentru Studiul Totalitarismului, 2007. 97 For Malaya the dominant view comes from the memoirs of Sir Robert Thompson. Among the French generals some of the most influent testimonies belong to Raoul Salan, Memoires. Fin d'un empire, vol. 4, Paris: 1974, but there are quite a few others to be explored. For Romania one could mention, among the growing number of such testimonies, Consiliul Național pentru Studierea Arhivelor Securității Pseudomemoriile unui general de Securitate, Bucharest: Humanitas, 2007. 98 Since the 1980’s there is a wealth of memoirs by former insurgents that is still little used in the study of COIN. For Malaya, see for instance Chin Peng, My Side of History, Singapore: Media Masters, 2003; The Memoirs of Rashid Maidin. From Armed Struggle to Peace, Selangor: Strategic Information and Research Development Centre, 2009; Fong Chong Pik, The Memoirs of a Malayan Communist Revolutionary, Selangor: Strategic Information and Research Development Centre, 2008. For Algeria, among many others, see Said Ferdi, « Algérie : les débuts de la guerre d’Algérie » in Gérard Chaliand, Les guerres irrégulières, XXe-XXIe siècle. Guérillas et terrorismes ; Si Azzedine, On nous appelait Fellaghas, Paris: Stock, 1976. For Romania, see Ion Gavrilă Ogoranu, Brazii se frâng dar nu se îndoiesc, Baia Mare: Marist, 2009, 2 vols. 41 1.6 Structure of the thesis

This thesis comprises six chapters. The present first chapter offered an introduction to the theme and a brief literature review focused on the contemporary state in COIN studies highlighting the relevance of the study of classical anti-rebel campaigns for present-day theory and practice. It also presented the research questions, a methodological discussion as well as a comment on sources. The second chapter will comprise an extended review of the history and theory of counterinsurgency with a special focus on how population control, intelligence and military operations were shaped and in the same time how they impacted on previous campaigns. A critical literature review will form the core of it. The third, fourth and fifth chapters will be country-based study cases of Malaya, Algeria and Romania. After an introduction containing a sketch of the history of the conflict and the particular historical, economic, geographic and cultural circumstances of the area, I provide in-depth analytical sections on population control, operations and intelligence, attempting to answer the research questions mentioned above. The sixth and final chapter will draw a comparison between the three COINs, will highlight the possible relevance of the research for 21st century operations against armed rebels and draw the final conclusions.

The hope is that this research deepens the study of COIN through its use of a vast array of sources and approaches. Laying at the intersection of war studies, military history, terrorism studies and international relations, the thesis aims to throw fresh light both on the history of classical counterinsurgencies and also to critically contribute to the contemporary debate concerning the role of military approaches in

42 counterinsurgency and post-conflict situations, the relevance of which, in the light of

Iraq and Afghanistan, hardly needs to be justified.

43

Chapter 2

On the Theory and Practice of Classic Counterinsurgency

This chapter sets out to chart the theoretical and historical foundations of this research. It will comprise an extended discussion of Western, especially British and

French and Eastern (especially Russian and Soviet) experience of counterinsurgency

(COIN), with a special focus on the theory and practice of the phenomenon in what some experts have termed its “golden age”, the period between 1945 and 1973.99 One of the most important tasks it sets to achieve is to argue that the most notable success in counterinsurgency, understood as the set of methods employed against politically motivated armed rebels, is achieved through good quality intelligence used by law enforcement and special military units. In a sense, in the larger debates concerning the phenomenon, it sides with those advocating counter-terrorism and low intensity operations against those arguing for a more comprehensive, civilian-based approach to

COIN. As it will be shown throughout the rest of the chapter and in the case studies, population-centric strategies all too often imply vast coercive campaigns against civilian populations, raising legal and moral problems for democratic governments.

Of course, this is not a new approach. There is a vast tradition in COIN studies, which will be explored in this chapter, arguing in the same direction. But there are two reasons that make a rehash of these arguments particularly important today. First, the consensus in the discipline seems to favour those who argue for the civilian-based

99 James D. Kiras, "Irregular Warfare" in David Jordan, James D. Kiras, David J. Lonsdale, Ian Speller, Christopher Tuck and C. Dale Walton, Understanding Modern Warfare, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008, 260. 44 approach to anti-insurgent campaigns. Historians of the phenomenon noted, with some justice, that nearly everyone agrees today that in COIN it is crucial to focus on the needs and interests of the population inhabiting the area in question. 100 The “hearts and minds” approach dominates contemporary practice and theory; a reality highlighted by its enthusiastic adoption as standard U.S. strategy in the recent campaigns in Iraq and

Afghanistan and official theory in its 2006 FM 3-24 COIN Field Manual. Yet even in the circumstances of the ongoing “War on Terror” one could easily argue that whatever notable success has been achieved it was done so through counter-terror tactics or through diplomacy. The elimination of the Al-Qaeda leadership and command network in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the neutralization of Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia were achieved through good intelligence and precise military operations, while the stalemate in the civil war of Iraq prior to the American departure in 2011 was achieved less through the 2007 “surge” than through negotiations with the warring parties.101

The second reason is that nearly all contemporary theory is in one sense or another based on COINs fought in the “golden age”, even though conflicting lessons are drawn. Some of the contemporary practitioners, such as the British General Sir Michael

Jackson think that only the lessons concerning a civilian-based approach are worth remembering.102 Other authors chart their ways between the lessons concerning kinetic, military approaches and a political, civilian centred approach. David Kilcullen for instance, while leaning towards a comprehensive approach that calls for massive involvement with the intent to transform the lives of the communities where COIN is

100 Beatrice Heuser, The Evolution of Strategy. Thinking War from Antiquity to the Present, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, 436. 101 See Jason Bourke, The 9/11 Wars, London: Allen Lane, 2011. A similar view concerning South East Asia is to be found in Andrew Tan, Security Strategies in the Asia-Pacific. The United States’ “Second Front” in Southeast Asia, New York: Palgrave, 2011, especially ch. 1 and 2. 102 General Mike Jackson, “British Counter-Insurgency” in The Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 32, No. 3, 2009, 347–351. 45 undertaken, admits that the ultimate goal of the campaign, which is the elimination of armed rebels, is achieved through well-informed military operations.103

Thus, this chapter argues that a comparative reconsideration of British, French and Eastern COIN theory and experience needs to be done through the prism of intelligence and operations. This is not to be interpreted as implying that “hearts and minds” COIN strategies are fundamentally wrong or misguided in theory. But what this chapter and in effect this entire thesis will argue is that the most notable replicable success in defeating insurgents, which is the most pressing purpose of COIN, is largely achieved through good operations based on sound intelligence. Population-centric strategies, the politically safe term for population control, do not work without military victory. Moreover, all too often they tended to imply massive internal deportations, countrywide surveillance and population identification programs, food control, as well as specific regulations that suspended basic human rights. As this chapter and the case studies will show, they were “hearts and minds” approaches just in theory, while in reality they meant extremely harsh measures against civilians, which could and should not be contemplated in the 21st century. However, intelligence and operations, especially those that did not involve torture or, respectively, indiscriminate killing, are tactical constants of such campaigns and their lessons can still be useful.

Of course, the conclusions of the study at large will serve as a partial caveat concerning the pursuit of COIN by states devoted to the principles of the rule of the law and to human rights. Success in COIN is possible, yet it may be conditional on breaking some fundamental legal and moral principles upon which contemporary liberal

103 The inclination towards a comprehensive, civilian-based approach to COIN is more visible in his earlier works, such as David Kilcullen, “Counterinsurgency Redux” in Survival, Vol. 48, No. 4 (2006- 2007), 111-130 and David Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla. Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Later on he would advocate a more complex strategy, with more emphasis on intelligence and operations see David Kilcullen, Counterinsurgency, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. 46 democracies are based. The debate between legality and necessity is a larger, ongoing problem and will be only touched upon in this thesis, mostly to highlight that there were few differences in the actual pursuit of COIN between the liberal-democratic Western countries and the “proletarian dictatorships” of the East.

Two aspects need to be mentioned before moving to the core of this chapter, the first methodological and the second theoretical. Methodologically, the status of many of the theoretical works on which the study of classical COIN is based is ambiguous. Most big names in the field (Thompson, McCuen, Pustay, Paget, Kitson, Galula, Trinquier and of our contemporaries Kilcullen or Mackinlay) are military men who fought in the campaigns they were later attempting to analyse and upon which they based their theories. Their experiences will be mentioned when their theories will be discussed. It would be therefore somehow incorrect to treat their works in the same way in which one would refer to dispassionate, academic scholarship concerning the phenomenon researched. In a sense, this may be one of the reasons why contemporary analytical research on COIN is misguided: scholars have treated as academic research works which can best be described as theoretically-bent primary sources or memoirs. This thesis will try to navigate between the twin temptations to treat their works as just memoirs or to consider them only as theoretical research.

This chapter is structured in sections describing COIN practice and theory before 1945 and sections discussing post-1945 British, French and Communist campaigns. 1945 is chosen as a sort of natural watershed moment dividing experiences that can be (and were) treated as “imperial warfare” and campaigns fought in a world where decolonization was an inescapable phenomenon. 1945, through the establishment of the United Nations Organization and its adoption of the Universal Declaration of

Human Rights three years later, also marks the moment after which the pursuit of an

47 outright, ruthless, extermination campaign against armed political adversaries would become unacceptable, though, as we shall see, this had little immediate impact in some of the cases.104 This separation point is also taken by many of the theorists of the phenomenon writing in the sixties and seventies, though their reasons had more to do with what they perceived as the politicization of armed rebellions in what was seen as a worldwide Communist grab for power. Pre-1945 campaigns can be treated in a general, collective manner, while after the end of World War II both the practice and the theory become too complex and it is necessary to deal with each country or political bloc separately.

2.1 Before 1945: the lessons of imperial warfare and local terror

Most authors who would write in the times of either the “wars of national liberation” stretching roughly through the three decades following the end of the Second

World War or those writing during the “War on Terror” of the first decade of the 21st century, tend to see the campaigns fought before 1945 in the framework of imperial warfare. The story they tell is mostly inspired by the works of Colonel C.E. Callwell and General Charles Gwynn, treating the response to armed rebellions as “little wars of a few mounted men”, the metropolis’ response to disturbances in its distant colonies.

Obviously, the situation is far more complex than that and is worthy of a more careful examination.

104 A good discussion of this can be found in Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History. Power and the Politics of Difference, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010, 424-429. 48 Notable trends in the pursuit of politically motivated rebellions would manifest themselves in the decades of the American and French Revolutions. Some of them, such as rural mobilization against a centre that seeks to rewrite ancient rules of political and economic exchange, the ruthlessness of a revolutionary government or the inevitable failure of weak rebels either through lack of coordination or through a too rapid transition from guerrilla bands to conventional formations would became regularities observed in the following centuries.

Two examples come to mind: the short lived farmer’s insurgency in

Pennsylvania in the years following the end of the American War of Independence and the Catholic and royalist French rebellion in the Vendée. In Pennsylvania an agrarian insurgency manifested mainly through large numbers of roadblocks in protest to developments after the American Revolution that saw financiers in Philadelphia vastly enriched by speculating on the war debt at the expense of local farmers. Roadblocks, paralysing the local economy almost completely, could have been a serious hindrance and a potent weapon in the hands of the farmers. Eventually, after the passing of the

Constitution, the federal army was sent in and the lack of cooperation on a large scale ensured an easy victory for the authorities.105

The rebellion in the Vendée in 1793-94 is in a sense more interesting, as it was the first major experience with political insurgency for the republican French army.

Outraged by the central government`s treatment of organized Catholic religion and the execution of the king and mobilized by local nobles and priests, the peasants from the conservative region in the West of the country rose in rebellion. But, in a pattern to be repeated over the centuries that followed, lack of coordination, of good leadership and

105 Terry Bouton, “A Road Closed: Rural Insurgency in post-Independence Pennsylvania” in The Journal of American History, Vol. 87, No. 3, (2000), 855-887. 49 the desire to win battles in the open field against conventional forces spelled the doom of the rebellion.106 In a pattern of terror that would again be followed by governments in the centuries to come, the authorities unleashed in the Vendée the “Infernal columns” of

General Turreau in February 1794. 12 separate special groups wreaked havoc on the rebel areas through summary executions, destruction of property, confiscation of food and also using the evacuation of loyal citizens from the region. At the end of the campaign, 160,000 of the 800,000 inhabitants of the rebel areas had perished.107

In the aftermath of the French Revolution, the preoccupation with insurgencies was given a boost by the conflict that brought a Spanish word, guerrilla, to the attentions of European militaries and governments. From 1808 to 1812 nationalist and conservative Spanish irregulars fought a bitter and bloody insurgency against the occupying French forces. However, Spain was lost to Napoleon through the conventional victory of English-led forces under Wellington, not through the bravery of the local rebels. Though some luminaries of 19th century military thinking such as Carl von Clausewitz would give some serious thought to the Spanish lessons and the possibility of a people’s war, the general agreement was that unconventional warfare could never be a serious threat to well organised and motivated government forces.108

The colonial conflicts that marked the military experience of European forces confronting non-Western enemies through the period that lasted up to World War II provided both vindication to the thesis that asymmetric warfare does not stand a chance against a determined governmental force and also many insights into the patterns of

106 Anthony James Joes, “Insurgency and Genocide: La Vendée” in Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol.9, No.3 (1998), 17-45. 107 Charles Townshend, “People’s War” in Charles Townshend, The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern War, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, 156-157. Townshend believes that the ideological aspect of the struggle led to the scale of the horrors perpetrated by both sides, again a characteristic that would manifest itself in following insurgencies. 108 John Ellis, A Short History of Guerrilla Warfare, Ian Allan: London, 1975. 50 armed rebellions and their suppression which will form the theoretical basis of COIN studies up to this very day. The laboratory of these theories, in a cruel coincidence with the events studied later in this thesis, was Algeria.

Launching the invasion of the vast North African territory in 1830, the Royal

French forces discovered soon after their capture of Algiers and Oran that to take cities in the non-Western world does not mean victory in the same way in which it did when fighting like-societies in Europe. A vast armed rebellion broke out and for 17 years, under the leadership of Abd El-Kader, local insurgents were able to pin down the vast majority of French military forces. While French generals still clung to the hope that they would be able to destroy their enemy in open battle their campaign stalled, for the enemy was too smart to seek direct confrontation. It was only with the arrival of

General Thomas Bugeaud and his introduction of light, flying columns of troops able to move at great speed and in surprising patterns that military advantage shifted decisively to the occupiers.109 The adoption of forces specially suited to countering fast-moving rebels worked well in combination with the “razzia”, a tactic aiming at the destruction of the livelihood of the local rebels through confiscation of food, burning stores and slaughtering their animals.110

Lessons of counterinsurgency would not be learned only by Western European powers fighting technologically backward populations thousands of kilometres from their shores. In their own turn and following their own paths to contiguous continental empires, the Russians and Americans would wage asymmetric warfare in recently acquired lands. In the 1840’s and 1850’s the armies of the Tsar fought to consolidate

109 For a less sympathetic view of Bugeaud see Douglas Porch, Counterinsurgency: Exposing the Myths of the New Way of War, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, 16-29. 110 Bruce Vandervoort, Wars of Imperial Conquest in Africa, 1830-1914, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998, 56-70. Bugeaud was rediscovering the tactics pursued in 107-106 BC in the same territory by Gaius Marius against the Numidian rebel Jugurtha, Neil Faulkner, Rome: Empire of the Eagles, Longman: Harlow, 2008, 127. 51 their relatively recent hold of the Northern Caucasus against a local insurgency. The rebels` strengths were raids of great speed, storming isolated forts and fixed positions in the mountains and ambushing Russian columns in the thick Caucasian woods.111 As a strategy for the occupying power, reconnaissance in force did not work. The strategy of strangulation worked best – by constructing a line of forts, roads, clearing the woods, burning the pastures when necessary; also very important was the confiscation of the livestock, depriving the population of their means of sustenance. The insurgents could and did storm some of the forts, but the Russians usually came back in force.112

For its part, the U.S. Army learned the first serious lesson in COIN fighting the

Seminoles in Florida, the Sioux-led confederation in the Great Plains and the Apache and Comanche rebellions in Texas, Nevada and New Mexico. Whenever the American

Indians chose the path of direct, conventional confrontation, their success could only be temporary. Notable from the operational perspective were the large-scale deportations to the Indian Territories and reservations, raids by cavalry very similar in essence to the

French flying columns, destruction of villages, massacres of whole communities. From the perspective of the use of intelligence in COIN, of paramount importance was the use of Native scouts, able both to track raiding parties or larger concentrations of opposing forces and to provide insights into their strategic philosophy and military options.113

The closing decades of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century saw the ripening of “imperial warfare”. In countless occasions, from the Western Sahara to the jungles of Indochina and from the hills of Transvaal to the snowy mountains of the Indian North-western frontier small (and sometimes not so small) forces of Western

111 Paul B. Henze, “Fire and Sword in the Caucasus: The 19th Century Resistance of the North Caucasian Mountaineers” in Central Asian Survey, Vol. 2, No. 1 (1983), 5-44. 112 W.E.D. Allen, Paul Muratoff, Caucasian Battlefields. A History of the Wars on the Turco-Caucasian Border, 1828-1921, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953, 46-53. 113 James O. Gump, The Dust Rose Like Smoke. The Subjugation of the Zulu and the Sioux, Lincoln: The University of Nebraska Press, 1994. 52 European soldiers supported by large native contingents defeated armed uprisings of the locals. In the Western Sudan the French colonial marines defeated rebel tribal confederations using a combination of “razzias” with the construction of a network of forts in the interior, connected by river gunboats or railways whenever it was possible and affordable.114 In turn, the British fought a staunch Boer rebellion in South Africa.

London won through a shrewd combination of constructing local forts and blockhouses connected by barbwire and railways, deportation and internment of vast numbers of inhabitants and the use of special forces and turncoats.115 This experience, as well as previous colonial encounters in Africa and Asia formed the basis for the first full-blown military textbook on how to deal, from a tactical perspective, with armed rebels. Its author, Colonel C.E. Callwell, advocated good intelligence and small-scale operations and exhibited the expected dismissive attitude towards insurgents belonging to other cultures and races.116

At the turn of the century the U.S. faced a stiff insurgency in the Philippines in the aftermath of the Spanish-American war of 1898. The Philippines brought a new element to the development of politically motivated armed rebellions, with the uprising being led by nationalist intellectual elites, anticipating in a sense the post-World War II insurgencies. Again, the judicious use of local intelligence led the American forces to capture the main leaders of the rebellion and bring the conflict to an end.117

114 A.S. Kanya-Forstner, “The French Marines and the Conquest of the Western Sudan, 1880-1899” in J.A. De Moor, H.L Wesseling (eds.), Imperialism and War. Essays on Colonial Wars in Asia and Africa, Leiden: Brill, 1989, 122-140. 115 See for a summary description Douglas Porch, Wars of Empire, London: Collins, 2006. Also on the British campaigns in post 1870 Africa see John Darwin, Unfinished Empire: the Global Expansion of Britain, London: Penguin, 2012, especially ch. 5. 116 C.E. Callwell, Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996. 117 Lewis H. Gann, Guerrillas in History, Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1971. 53 World War I seemed to many the embodiment of conventional warfare. Fought on vast fronts with masses of infantry and artillery divisions, eventually with squadrons of aircraft and dozens of tanks, it seemed to leave very little space for irregular warfare.

Indeed the few actions that may fall within the purview of low intensity operations and insurgencies were confined to the peripheries of the world system, notably including

Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck`s German campaign in East Africa and the British-inspired

Arab insurgency which brought to international fame Colonel T.E. Lawrence. 118

Especially Lawrence, who was a shrewd self-promoter, was able to inflame the imagination of the enthusiasts of asymmetric warfare. His rear-guard actions were fought in the northeast corner of the Arabian Peninsula, where his small, highly mobile

Arabian raiders cut the communications of regular Ottoman forces operating against the

British armies in Egypt. 119 However, by the admission of the very men who led

Vorbeck and Lawrence, these actions were “sideshows inside sideshows”.120

The end of the war and the chaos it ensued in the territories of the former Tsarist

Empire saw the emergence of a guerrilla movement led by a charismatic anarchist

Cossack, Nestor Makhno. The most important aspects highlighted by both sides during the conflict were raiding, cavalry operations and the use of the tachanka (a machine gun mounted on a horse drawn fast carriage). Basically, the rebels were defeated because of the increase in power of the Bolsheviks and the war-weariness of peasants whom they claimed to represent and support.121 In Russian Central Asia (Turkestan), a diffuse set of

Islamic Turkic groups, collectively known as “Basmachi” fought a nationalist and religious insurgency against Soviet authorities until the late 1920s. While the rebels

118 For a fairly scathing look at both campaigns see Douglas Porch, Counterinsurgency, especially the section on T.E. Lawrence, 86-96. 119 T.E. Lawrence, Revolt in the Desert, London: Jonathan Cape, 1927. 120 See for that I.F. W. Beckett, The Great War, 1914-1918, Harlow: Longman, 2007 and Martin Gilbert, First World War, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1994. 121 Michael Malet, Nestor Makhno in the Russian Civil War, London: Macmillan, 1985. Also see Charles Townshend, “People’s War”, 163. 54 proved successful in the first years of the uprising, once the Communists were freed from the worries of the civil war they were able to flood the area with the Red Army and confront mobile warfare with mobile warfare. Defeated in combat, many Basmachi fled over the border with Afghanistan.122

The interwar years saw a number of colonial rebellions, as well as an increasing theoretical interest towards understanding the best approaches to avoid or quell them.

The advent of a new technology – aircraft - seemed to herald a new era of fighting small-scale conflicts. Practitioners and theorists alike were convinced for some time that airpower will make fighting insurgencies easier, cheaper and somehow surprisingly more humane, maybe even destroying altogether the incentive towards rebellion, as the futility of it would become apparent after bombers levelled entire villages in a matter of minutes. No other country was more enthusiastic in this regard than the United

Kingdom.

The area that seemed to vindicate these views was the Middle East. In the Arab countries, tribalism and authoritarianism have been fundamental cultural traits, and the

British have made efforts in the first half of the 20th century to grasp them and to integrate the findings in their COIN strategies. In these territories, the British usually selected an amenable faction or collection of tribes and rewarded them with pecuniary benefits in exchange for loyalty. In the Iraq rebellion of 1919-1920, after setbacks in

1919, Britain made a surge in 1920, which convinced many insurgents to give up. After that moment aerial bombing became dominant in dealing with insurgencies. There were,

122 Marie Broxup, “The Basmachi” in Central Asian Survey, Vol. 2, No. 1 (1983), 57-81. 55 of course, strict limitations on the use of air power, in the sense in which urban targets were off limits and a serious concern existed towards protecting civilians.123

Throughout the interwar era, unrest in India saw massive urban protest and riots, with an increase in the politicization of the local masses and elites. The governmental response hovered between appeasement and the Amritsar massacre of April 1919, where a few dozen British troops gunned down over a thousand protesters within a few minutes, in a clear breach of the “minimum force” strategy which was the supposed normal British response to disturbances and riots.124

Of particular significance for the development of COIN literature and especially

British practice is the work of General Charles Gwynn, Imperial Policing, published in

1934 and soon after incorporated into official military regulations as the doctrine for fighting “small wars”. Gwynn called for early involvement of the army in rebellions. In the same time, he warned against excessive severity that can antagonize the population and increase the number of the insurgents, but argued that anything that can be seen as government weakness can force neutrals to the side of the rebels.125 He identified the important principles of COIN as follows: the amount of military force employed must be the minimum the situation demands; it is fundamental that the primacy of the policy of the Government and the fact that the questions of policy remain vested in the civil government; the action needs to be firm and timely and the army must always cooperate with the civilian power.126

123 Rod Thornton, “Countering Arab Insurgencies: The British Experience” in Contemporary Security Policy, Vol.28, No.1 (April 2007), 7–27. 124 See for a discussion of this Charles Townshend, Britain’s Civil Wars. Counterinsurgency in the Twentieth Century, London: Faber and Faber, 1986, 14. 125 Charles W. Gwynn, Imperial Policing, London: Macmillan, 1934, 5. 126 Ibidem, 14-15. 56 Gwynn was not a dove, by any means. He further argued that martial law is important because it allows civilian (mainly police) intelligence services to be put under the control of the military which is strictly necessary in order to coordinate tactical movements and the level of necessary force. The tactical principles he advocated for dealing with the insurgents revolved around mobility, surprise, co-ordinated action, energy, and relentless pressure. When things got really serious, the British doctrine stated that armed rebellion should be suppressed with any violence at the disposal of the government and any type of weapons.127

Doctrine in the interwar years was not just a British pastime. The Americans re- learned the lessons of fighting insurgents in multiple conflicts fought in the jungles of

Latin America. The U.S. Marines became the specialized force in COIN during these decades, advocating in their first textbooks on guerrilla warfare the use of highly mobile, well-informed forces able to track down and eliminate the rebels.128

As the world transitioned to another great conflagration in 1939, insurgency would erupt on a scale previously unknown. In fact, one could even argue that the great era of nationalist and communist insurgency started with World War II, rather than the end of the conflict. By most accounts, the nation who confronted the most serious and long-lasting insurgencies was Nazi Germany. Both in the occupied territories of

Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union vast partisan armies would clash with the Germans, sometimes in conventional fashion but more often in guerrilla-style.

Fighting Tito’s partisans in Yugoslavia, the Germans learned early on that good information is essential for the pursuit of the rebels. Two kinds of intelligence were important in the process: that gathered before operations and that needed as operations

127 Ibidem, 17-24. 128 Ian F.W. Beckett, Modern Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies. Guerrillas and their Opponents since 1750, London: Routledge, 2001, 48. 57 were undertaken 129 The best tactics against partisans in Yugoslavia were reconnaissance-strike operations, attack-pursuit operations, destruction through surprise attack and hunt. Encirclement-annihilation operations were preferred but were the most demanding in terms of material and personnel.

On the Eastern Front German and allied forces confronted a vast and determined partisan movement, sometimes operating in very small groups and sometimes in coordinated, large units. Before the invasion of the Soviet Union, German generals concluded that the rigorous exercise of terror against resistance from the population and the ruthless prosecution of combat would make a crucial contribution to the campaign's outcome. This belief led to the criminal orders issued to German army units at the beginning of the campaign.130 To stabilize and pacify the whole rear of the front in the war against the Soviet Union the German authorities had in the beginning five small security divisions. From 1942 on Slovakian and Hungarian troops were also used in the rear, where they acted with a brutality that matched the German model. Sometimes the security divisions organized massacres out of their own initiatives.131 This violence had cycles and turns, but was to characterize the approach of Nazi military units towards both the rebels and the civilian population. In hunting down the partisans themselves, after 1942 the dominant tactic was to employ mobile, independent Jagdkommandos, of reinforced platoon strength. Late in the war, the Germans also invented the concept of fortified villages (Wehrdorfer) to break the link between partisans and the civilian population, but it was far too late to be implemented.132

129 Charles D. Melson, “German Counter-Insurgency Revisited” in Journal of Slavic Military Studies, Vol. 24, (2011), 126. 130 Ben Shepherd, War in the Wild East. The German Army and Soviet Partisans, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004, 23. 131 Peter Lieb, “Few Carrots and a Lot of Sticks. German Anti-Partisan Warfare in World War II” in Daniel Marston, Carter Malkasian (eds.), Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare, Oxford: Osprey, 2008. 132 Peter Lieb, “Few Carrots and a Lot of Sticks”. 58 It would be wrong not to mention, even in passing, the degree to which the

Western allies sought to promote and aid the anti-German insurgents in Europe and the anti-Japanese rebels in Asia and the Pacific. In Europe, there were high initial expectations, eventually trumped, that there would be huge uprisings in German- occupied territories.133 In Asia, as we shall see, the British went so far as to actively cooperate even with Communist guerrillas, as long as they played the anti-Japanese card.134

As World War II ended and the West European imperial powers returned or tried to keep their authority over their colonies, they did not do so devoid of doctrine and historical memory for fighting local rebels, though the troops had mostly conventional-warfare experience and training. But the French, the British and to a lesser extent the Dutch and the Portuguese had to face a number of realities that indeed made

1945 a clear break with the previous, imperial eras. First, their status as global powers and their economic stature had been greatly eroded in the war and therefore their ability to sustain long-term serious conflict in distant lands had been affected.135 Secondly, the defeat of the French at the hand of the Germans and of the British by the Japanese in

Southeast Asia had shattered the myth of their invincibility in the eyes of subjected populations in Indochina, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Africa and the Middle East. Last, but not least, 1945 witnessed the birth of the United Nations, at least in theory an organization in which all the states of the world, irrespective of their strength, are equals; subsequently, the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in

133 Evan Mawdsley, “Anti-German Insurgency and Allied Grand Strategy” in Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 31, No. 5, 2008, 695-719. 134 Robert Thompson, Make for the Hills. Memories of Far Eastern Wars, London: Leo Cooper, 1989. 135 Jeremy Black, War since 1945, London: Reaktion Books, 2004. 59 1948 enabled all opponents of COIN to pose moral and very often legal challenges to the pursuit of anti-rebel operations.136

For their own part, the Soviet authorities and armies returning to the western territories of their countries or participating in the installation of a number of

Communist-dominated governments in East European nations faced a vast number of rebel groups, most of them local nationalists or anti-Communists. Behind the Iron

Curtain, their leverage to deal with the armed opponents would be far greater, but their experience and especially the less-researched experience of the Communist-inspired governments of their satellites will highlight features of COIN which are in the same time perennial and less known.137

2.2 The British Experience and Doctrine

No other imperial power would inspire more interest and, quite interestingly, more emulation in their own COIN experiences than the British. While there may be many explanations of this, a few of them stand out. First, the British themselves pursued a far more consistent dedication to the academic study of COIN. Secondly and perhaps more importantly the British authorities and academics have always presented their campaigns not only as victorious, but also claimed that they were pursued within the limits of the law and with the good of the local population as the most important preoccupation of colonial authorities. Only recently the cracks in this narrative have

136 For a good discussion of 1945 as a watershed moment see Peter Calvocoressi, World Politics since 1945, New York: Pearson Longman, 2009 and Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945, London: Vintage, 2010. 137 See the chapter on Eastern Europe by Norman Naimark in Melvyn P. Leffler, Odd Arne Westad, The Cambridge History of the Cold War, Vol. I Origins, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 60 begun to be evident, in the works of historians like Caroline Elkins or military analysts such as Huw Benett or Alex Marshall.138 The uncovering of new documents in April

2012 also proved the tampering of previously available records and painted a grimmer outlook of the imperial counterinsurgencies.139 In Malaya for instance, the destruction of documents pertaining to security matters was done on a large scale and in two phases lasting no less than 20 months. The first destruction took place inside government offices and the second at a secret facility, where five lorry loads of documents were disposed of under the supervision of a security liaison officer.140

The next section of this chapter will explore briefly the practical experience the

British acquired in Greece, Malaya, Kenya, Cyprus, Borneo and Dhofar and then move to the theoretical body of literature produced based on these campaigns.

2.3 British COIN Campaigns

Two distinct points concerning permanence and change in British military culture concerning COIN need to be mentioned before proceeding to the analysis of post-war campaigns. The first, highlighted by authors such as Thomas Mockaitis or

Robert Cassidy, argues that up to 1960 there was very little change in the social structure of the British army, essentially a working-class military commanded by the upper classes. Its mainstays were the regimental system that created a close-knit group

138 See for the challenge to classical COIN use in today’s textbooks and strategies for dealing with guerrilla warfare Alex Marshall, “Imperial Nostalgia, the Liberal Lie, and the Perils of Postmodern Counterinsurgency” in Small Wars & Insurgencies, Vol. 21, No. 2 (2010), 233–258. 139 Calder Walton, Empire of Secrets. British Intelligence, the Cold War and the Twilight of Empire, London: Harper Press, 2013, xxx. 140 Edward Hampshire, “‘Apply the Flame More Searingly’: The Destruction and Migration of the Archives of British Colonial Administration: A Southeast Asia Case Study” in The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Vol. 41, No. 2 (2013), 341. 61 of men who fought and lived together for many years and the use of professional troops.

Very important was flexibility, evidenced in the switch from large sweeps to small-units operations as the campaigns progressed.141 The second perspective points to possible changes in the British military culture at the tactical level as early as the latter stages of the Second World War. One witnessed a move from strong columns raids to small patrolling; helicopter assault and support operations were envisaged as early as 1944, and counter-gangs were already mentioned as a possible approach.142 The following examples will also illustrate the salience of each of these views.

Between 1945 and 1949 the pro-Western, monarchist government in Athens fought a bitter campaign against ELAS, a military-political organization of Greek

Communists. Greece can be great guerrilla country with its rugged mountains with just enough resources to scrape a living in small groups.143 The Greek communists built a powerful military force to oppose the central government, having taken massive amounts of arms, ammunition and equipment from the Italian occupation units they disarmed after Italy’s surrender in September 1943. In a sense, conflict between ELAS and the government in Athens was a continuation of struggles begun earlier, as fighting amongst different left and right wing factions fighting the Nazis was endemic during the guerrilla war with the Germans.144 The Greek guerrillas were organized in groups of 50-

100, were lightly armed and used to attacking unprotected villages and sabotaging lines of communications. To highlight its prowess, one has to mention that ELAS had a wide

141 Robert M. Cassidy, “The British Army and Counterinsurgency: the Salience of Military Culture” in Military Review, Vol. 85, No. 3 (2005), 55-56. 142 Tim Jones, “The British Army and Counter-guerrilla Warfare in Transition, 1944-1952” in Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol. 7, No. 3 (1996). 143 Edward R. Wainhouse, “Guerrilla War in Greece, 1946-49: A Case Study” in Franklin Mark Osanka (ed.), Modern Guerrilla Warfare. Fighting Communist Guerrilla Movements, 1941-1961, New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1964, 218. 144 Svetozar Rajak, “The Cold War in the Balkans, 1945-1956” in Melvyn P. Leffler, Odd Arne Westad, The Cambridge History of the Cold War, Vol. I Origins, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, 203. 62 network of intelligence personnel (called “self defence”), possibly numbering 50,000 informers, many in the urban centres.145

In a pattern followed in many post-1945 conflicts, the Greek war started in

September 1946 with the murder of isolated right-wing officials. Raids against the villages followed, and a refugee problem was created. 146 A vast displacement of population took place, with close to 700,000 people fleeing from the villages to the cities. Faced with this challenge, the Greek authorities sought and obtained help from their allies and long-term protectors, the British. London would deliver; throughout

1945 British forces operated against guerrillas in mobile column patrolling, mopping-up actions and sweeping operations in the mountains of Greece.147 During the initial stages of the campaign, the overall strategy was “clear and hold”; witness to that was the formation of 97 battalions fixed in their areas of recruitment. 148 Faced with slow progress and even reverses an idea that had been tested during World War II returned to the fore, namely the massive use of Special Forces as main counter-guerrilla units.

Commandos took precedence in fighting the insurgents, through night raids, deep raids, and penetration to attack the rear of enemy troops and also as a strategic reserve transported by aircraft.149

In every successful operation of the Greek government pursued after 1946 the army and police security forces took steps to destroy or make inoperable the guerrilla intelligence network in the target area.150 In Greece, there were two main types of air

145 Edward R. Wainhouse, “Guerrilla War in Greece, 1946-49: A Case Study”, 220-223. 146 J.C. Murray, “The Anti-Bandit War” in T.N. Greene (ed.), The Guerrilla – and how to fight him, New York: Praeger, 1965, 68-69. 147 Tim Jones, “The British Army, and counter-guerrilla warfare in Greece, 1945-49” in Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol. 8, No. 1 (1997), 89. 148 J.C. Murray, “The Anti-Bandit War”, 76. 149 Tim Jones, “The British Army, and counter-guerrilla warfare in Greece, 1945-49”, 92-93 and J.C. Murray, “The Anti-Bandit War”, 83. 150 Edward R. Wainhouse, “Guerrilla War in Greece, 1946-49: A Case Study”, 224-226. 63 operations, the first aimed at the destruction of guerrilla forces and the second as direct support of ground troops. The air force was considered very efficient and worthwhile151.

Navy patrols were essential to cut any possible resupply or infiltration by sea.152 Also, after 1947 forced resettlement programs were introduced and were considered quite successful by the British military mission.153 In addition to that one needs to mention the collapse of external support for the Greek communist insurgents. In late 1948 the

Yugoslav leader Iosip Broz Tito decided to strangle the lifeline to the Greek rebels and this led to a collapse of resistance and precipitated the end of a conflict that was already militarily lost.154

Insurgency, nationalist or communist, sprung up in the British Empire the moment the Second World War was over. Indeed, concerning areas such as Southeast

Asia many scholars embrace now the thesis that “the fighting that never stopped”, pointing to the continuities of violence from the early 1940s to the present day.155 Other armed uprisings can easily be linked to political and human horrors of World War II.

Amongst them one can highlight the Palestinian crisis of 1945-48. Armed groups of

Jewish nationalists, wishing to hasten a solution in their favour of the problem of the

British mandate in Palestine, waged a ruthless terror campaign against British military, police and government officials. The Palestinian experience is interesting in the framework of British experience in COIN, mostly because many tactics and operations were tested through its course. Cordoning of urban areas, house searches, the need to improve cooperation between army and police intelligence branches were all features of future COINs; furthermore, as we shall see in the chapter concerning Malaya, many

151 Beatrice Heuser, The Evolution of Strategy, 403. 152 J.C. Murray, “The Anti-Bandit War”, 89, 106-108. 153 Tim Jones, “The British Army and Counter-guerrilla Warfare in Transition, 1944-1952”, 275. 154 Svetozar Rajak, “The Cold War in the Balkans, 1945-1956”, 206-207 and J.C. Murray, “The Anti- Bandit War”, 74 and 105. 155 Christopher Bayly, Tim Harper, Forgotten Wars. The End of Britain`s Asian Empire, London: Allen Lane, 2007. 64 officers, policemen and government officials had their first experience fighting armed rebels in Palestine and did not appear in Southeast Asia as novices in their trade.156

The Malayan case will be treated at length in the third chapter, but for the purposes of completeness one must mention here the most important features of the conflict. From 1948 to 1960, the British military and colonial administration, in conjunction with local forces, fought a bitter conflict against a Malayan Communist movement.157

From a military perspective Malaya featured a vast array of operations and approaches including ambushes, patrols, sweeps through the jungle and the cordoning of big population centres. A vast intelligence network operated against Communist supporters and informers in the big cities and the rural communities and was combined with a psychological warfare campaign. Population control was exercised on an extremely large scale. Over half a million Chinese peasants were deported from the jungle fringes into Malayan-policed and administered secure villages surrounded by barbwire. As the third chapter shows, the reality of the Emergency differed in a good measure from the “hearts-and-minds” approach, but somehow that particularly narrative still dominates the academic discourse concerning the Malayan Emergency.158

156 See chapter on Palestine in John Newsinger, British Counterinsurgency. From Palestine to Northern Ireland, Houndmills: Palgrave, 2002. 157 See Anthony Short, “The Malayan Emergency” in Ronald Haycock (ed.), Regular Armies and Insurgency, London: Croom Helm, 1979; Charles Townshend, Britain’s Civil Wars. Counterinsurgency in the Twentieth Century, London: Faber and Faber, 1986; Thomas R. Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency, 1919-1960, London: Macmillan, 1990. 158 Good sources on the military aspects of the Malayan conflict are James E. Dougherty, “The Guerrilla War in Malaya” in Franklin Mark Osanka (ed.), Modern Guerrilla Warfare. Fighting Communist Guerrilla Movements, 1941-1961, New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1964; Julian Paget, Counter- Insurgency Campaigning, London: Faber and Faber, 1967; Richard Stubbs, Hearts and Minds in Guerrilla Warfare : the Malayan Emergency, 1948-1960, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989; John A. Nagl, Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam : Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, Westport, Conn. : Praeger 2002; David Ucko, “Countering Insurgents through Distributed Operations: Insights from Malaya 1948–1960” in The Journal of Strategic Studies 30: 1 (2007), 47 – 72; Karl Hack, “The Malayan Emergency as Counter-Insurgency Paradigm”, Journal of Strategic Studies, 32: 3 (2009), 383 — 414. 65 The British fought two parallel colonial insurgencies in the fifties in addition to the conflict in Malaya: the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya and the struggle with EOKA in

Cyprus. Tellingly, Kenya was the place where even some who defend the British way in

COIN admit that the level of brutality was extremely high and that the “hearts-and- minds” approach was not used in any reasonable understanding of the term.159 In 1952 the Kikuyu tribesmen of central and Western Kenya rose in armed revolt against the

Europeans. Resorting to old, traditional religious beliefs and a system of mystical processes of exacting death oaths from its members, the Kikuyu rebels were crudely armed, mostly with makeshift and a few captured weapons and operated in uncoordinated groups in forests and in the settled farmland.160 The authorities had a deliberate approach to deny their enemies the right to be treated as lawful military opponents, choosing not to apply the 1949 Geneva Conventions. Torture, beatings, indiscriminate killings and violence constituted an “exemplary force” approach in stark contrast to the professed British policy of “minimum force”, thus proving again that extreme violence was a mainstay of colonial counterinsurgency.161

In addition to cordoning and searching Kikuyu houses in Nairobi, the British military conducted a vast range of military operations against the rebel groups operating inside and outside settlers’ areas. They were supported in their endeavours by a Home

Guard officered by the young sons of European farmers and manned by a vast number

159 John Newsinger, British Counterinsurgency, 1-2, Thomas R. Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency, 1919-1960, 46. 160 See a fragment of General Frank Kitson’s memoirs on the Mau Mau rebellion in Frank Kitson, “Kenya, 1952-1956: Mau Mau” in Julian Thompson (ed.), The Imperial War Museum Book of Modern Warfare. British and Commonwealth Forces at War 1945-2000, London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 2002, 127-144. 161 This is a point made by Huw Bennett, “The Other Side of the COIN: Minimum and Exemplary Force in British Army Counterinsurgency in Kenya” in Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol. 18, No. 4, (2007), 638–664. Some authors argued that the blame for the violence should not be assigned to regular British forces, but rather to local military units, such as the King’s Africa Rifles and the settler-run Home Guard, see Rod Thornton, “‘Minimum Force’: a reply to Huw Bennett” in Small Wars & Insurgencies, Vol. 20, No. 1, (2009), 215–226, others disagree, Huw Bennett, “Minimum Force in British Counterinsurgency” in Small Wars & Insurgencies, Vol. 21, No. 3, (2010), 459–475. 66 of Kikuyu loyalists, which prompted some authors to consider the Mau Mau rebellion as a form of civil war inside this tribe. 162 This internal conflict was fostered and intensified by the British authorities, especially through rewards for the loyalists, which included large land redistribution in their favour.163 The most spectacular intelligence- special operations feature of the Kenya campaign was the use of counter-gangs. The

Police Special Branch used Kikuyu turncoats to infiltrate the guerrillas. Despite the fact that the insurgency per se was the domain of the Army and the police, the intelligence services organized and ran the pseudo-gangs, which achieved noticeable success in finding and defeating the real rebels, up to the point when they were able to assassinate guerrilla leaders164.

A vast system of concentration camps operated, where hundreds of thousands of

Kikuyu tribesmen were held for years, sometimes in appalling conditions, subjected to torture, food deprivation and a concerted effort to wage psychological warfare against their brain through propaganda and indoctrination. Some academics that exposed these realities (and who had to wait for the first decade of the 21st century to do so) likened this experience to the Soviet Gulag.165

If ever the British met a more conservative political force than they, raised up in arms against London, this was in the late 1950s on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus.

EOKA (the National Organization of Cypriot Fighters) was an extreme nationalist movement who wanted not only to get rid of the hated British occupier, but also to

162 Daniel Branch, Defeating Mau Mau, Creating Kenya. Counterinsurgency, Civil War and Decolonization, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2009. 163 Daniel Branch, “Footprints in the Sand: British Colonial Counterinsurgency and the War in Iraq” in Politics & Society, Vol. 38, No. 1, (2010). 164 Bill Bailey, “Hearts and Minds, Psuedo Gangs and Counter Insurgency: Based upon Experiences from Previous Campaigns in Kenya (1952-60), Malaya (1948-60) & Rhodesia (1964-1979)” in the Proceedings of the 1st Australian Counter Terrorism Conference, Edith Cowan University, Perth Western Australia, 30th November 2010. 165 Caroline Elkins, Imperial Reckoning. The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya, New York : Henry Holt and Co., 2005. 67 achieve union with Greece (Enosis) and to subdue the local Turkish population. To achieve this, the Greek rebels unleashed a sustained campaign of terror against British authorities, police and military units, using assassinations, raids by armed groups and special bomb squads against the Turkish minority. Led by the ferociously conservative colonel Georgios Grivas, whose first moves targeted the Greek communists on the island, EOKA mobilized the local population to an extremely high degree, the women playing an important role as couriers and having boys as young as 15 conscripted as fighters. 166 Concomitant with the armed struggle, legal political opposition was conducted under the leadership of local bishop Makarios, and the concerted effort brought the entire issue on the United Nations agenda, complicating matters for

London.

To this, the British seemed uniquely unable to respond in a population-centred approach or even to restrain their regular units. While sometimes they were able to extract information from captured rebels or blackmailed locals, more often than not their operations were “blind” from an intelligence perspective and brutal enough to alienate the locals even more.167

The ultimate failure of the British in Cyprus can also be explained by the mixed performance of their intelligence services and the interference of political authorities when swift action could have changed the course of the conflict. On the one hand, most of British officials and policemen did not bother to learn Greek, which resulted in few rebel couriers being apprehended. EOKA never used wireless communications, which made electronic intelligence useless. Torture was endemic during interrogations of

166 Georgios Grivas, Guerrilla Warfare and EOKA’s Struggle. A Politico-Military Study, London: Longmans, 1964. 167 Doros Alastos, Cyprus Guerrilla. Grivas, Makarios and the British, London: Heinemann, 1960. 68 captured insurgents, but success was below expectations.168 On the other hand, while

EOKA was never completely penetrated, much of its structure was known through captured documents and especially Grivas’s diary, which was sold to British officers by an insurgent. British intelligence located Grivas in February 1959, but Prime Minister

Harold Macmillan refused the go-ahead order to capture him for fear negotiations with

Greece and Turkey on the future of the island would collapse.169 Other authors see the failure as due to a misconceived grand strategy (to cling to the Middle East) combined with an ineffective military COIN. Also, the British had bad luck in having to oppose such gifted political and military leaders such as Makarios and Grivas.170

No sooner than Cyprus and Malaya ceased to be problems for the British that trouble arose in Southern Arabia. Threatening the key port of Aden, local tribesmen started attacking in 1963 the trade routes and the forces of the local emirs. The British reaction had no trace of a “hearts-and-minds” strategy. Supported and sometimes airlifted by helicopters and leapfrogging from strategic height to strategic height, a brigade-sized force (39th Brigade) ventured to the north of Aden; the defeat of the insurgents was not so much accomplished through direct combat, but rather through the food deprivation caused by the imperial troops, who confiscated and killed the animals who were the main nutrition source for the locals. However, soon after that an urban insurgency flared up in Aden itself, where left-wing unionists pursued a terrorist

168 See for the topic of torture the chapter “Britain’s dirty wars?” in David French, The British Way in Counter-Insurgency, 1945-1967, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. 169 Panagiotis Dimitrakis, “British Intelligence and the Cyprus Insurgency, 1955–1959” in International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, Vol. 21, No. 2 (2008), 375-394. 170 James S. Corum, Bad Strategies. How Major Powers Fail in Counterinsurgency, Minneapolis: Zenith Press, 2008, 122. 69 campaign against the authorities, which after a half-hearted attempt to subdue it decided to call it quits in 1967.171

Parallel to Aden, London faced another provocation, this time in Southeast Asia.

Between 1963-66 the UK, acting in concert with other Commonwealth forces and determined to preserve the security of Malaysia and Brunei, fought a bitter and secretive campaign in the jungles of Northern Borneo against armed rebels aided by Indonesia.172

The opponents, much like in Malaya, were ethnic Chinese labelled as “communists” and supported by the Indonesian government who wanted to incorporate Sarawak,

Sabah and Brunei.

Geography was similar with Malaya with a jungle terrain, but with a 1,000 miles long border with Indonesia. The main initial mission was to prevent the incursions of

Indonesian-trained armed groups from Kalimantan to Borneo and the establishment of insurgent bases. The fundamentals for the eventual British military victory were the use of helicopters, good and light equipment and better training, especially through jungle warfare school.173 To a great degree, responsible for the defeat of the insurgents was the judicious employment of specially trained forces, Gurkhas, British and Australians, who took war to the enemy in raids up to 20 kilometres deep into enemy territory, making

Borneo a showcase for the role of Special Forces in COIN.174

One of the longest COINs fought by the British, spanning nearly a decade from the mid`1960s until 1975 took place in the Western regions (Dhofar) of the Sultanate of

171 Thomas R. Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency in the Post-imperial Era, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995, ch. 3. 172 General Walter Walker, “Brunei and Borneo, 1962-1966: An Efficient Use of Military Force” in Julian Thompson (ed.), The Imperial War Museum Book of Modern Warfare. British and Commonwealth Forces at War 1945-2000, London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 2002, 207-226. 173 Christopher Tuck, “Borneo 1963-66: Counter-insurgency Operations and War Termination” in Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol. 15, No. 3, (2004), 89-111. 174 Robert Thompson, “Regular Armies and Insurgency” in Ronald Haycock (ed.), Regular Armies and Insurgency, London: Croom Helm, 1979, 16. 70 Oman. A United Kingdom client for over a century, Oman was faced initially with a tribal and nationalist uprising that, after confiscation by a radical movement helped by

Yemen, Iraq and China, became Communist. The Dhofar campaign is regarded within the British Army as a ‘model’ COIN campaign. It is one of the few post-1945 conflicts

(alongside Malaya and the Philippines) where Western or pro-Western governments defeated insurgents both militarily and politically. Initially, extreme ruthlessness was used against the nationalist-leftist guerrillas, whose leading fighters received training in the Soviet Union and China. After initial reverses, the Omani had to undergo serious and guided military reforms, with British officers in command of the Sultan’s army and its main anti-insurgent formations; extremely important was the secondment of British troops, especially SAS, and the deployment of an Iranian Imperial Brigade and Omani-

Iranian naval cooperation. On an operational level one witnessed again the encouragement of desertions and recruitment of former insurgents in special anti- guerrilla formations. Also important were the construction of land barriers with minefields and barbwire to isolate pacified zones from the insurgent ones.175

Some authors argue that while the Dhofar campaign was fought with traditional

COIN methods, including counter-gangs and “hearts and minds” tactics, the efforts faltered. However, the nationalist insurgent movement was eventually captured by the

Yemeni, Soviet and Chinese helpers and was turned into a Marxist-Leninist movement.

This made it possible for the British to initiate successful operations against it. Among the most important anti-rebellion actions was psychological warfare, essentially based on stirring Islamist feelings against the “Godless” insurgents – through propaganda and co-opting local religious leaders. The success, largely in 1973-75, was due to the

PFLOAG (Popular Front for the Liberation of the Arabian Gulf) deciding to engage

175 Geraint Hughes, “A ‘Model Campaign’ Reappraised: The Counter-Insurgency War in Dhofar, Oman, 1965–1975” in The Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 32, No. 2, (2009), 271–305. 71 Omani forces in conventional battle, exactly when higher oil revenues and serious

Iranian military help boosted the Sultan’s capabilities.176 However, there are indications that this might be a little farfetched, as the last open conventional attacks of the insurgents against the SAS and the forces of the Sultan were at the battle of Mirbat in

July 1972, a good three years earlier than the end of the rebellion.177 Nevertheless,

Dhofar was an important campaign from an intelligence and operational perspective, with the emphasis on Special Forces, airlift and counter-gangs all too evident.

2.4 British and American COIN Theory in the “Golden Era”

A vast corpus of work was inspired by the campaigns fought by the British in the first decades after 1945. British and American academics, military officers and high civilian officials took it upon themselves both to understand what had happened and to articulate lessons and even theories on how to deal with insurgencies. It makes little sense to treat them separately in the following survey of literature, for the reasons briefly explained below.

While the interest in the study of COIN might have remained a British preoccupation in the English-speaking countries, America’s wars and conflicts in

Southeast Asia after 1961 and the seeming utility of previous experience gathered in

Malaya, Kenya and Cyprus provoked a serious interest in Washington, both theoretical

176 Marc R. DeVore, “A More Complex and Conventional Victory: Revisiting the Dhofar Counterinsurgency, 1963–1975” in Small Wars & Insurgencies, Vol. 23, No. 1, (2012), 144–173. 177 John Pimlott, "The British Army: the Dhofar Campaign, 1970-1975" in Ian F.W. Beckett, John Pimlott (ed.), Armed Forces and Modern Counter-Insurgency, London: Croom Helm, 1985, 39. 72 and practical.178 On the practical side, many officers and officials of the Commonwealth were involved in the planning and pursuing of the initial COIN-inspired approaches in

Vietnam. Robert Thompson, considered one of the architects of the victorious Malayan campaign, counselled American generals and officials in Vietnam, being instrumental in the adoption of the “strategic hamlets” policy.179 Ted Serong, the father of Australian jungle warfare tradition, was a consultant in Vietnam and then worked for the RAND

Corporation and the CIA, lending credence to the idea that the use of montagnards against the Vietcong was inspired by the use of aborigines against the Communist guerrillas in Malaya. 180 Another influence on American action in Vietnam was the establishment of CORDS (Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support), an attempt to pacify the country through a hearts-and-minds approach of British vintage.181

In the 1960s a series of authors came to dominate the field and influence military practice in the Western countries to a very significant degree. In 1962, two

American military historians, Peter Paret and John Shy rose to the challenge of interpreting the new guerrilla movements. The two authors stressed the significance of the political factor in contemporary insurgencies by noting the prominent role of the

178 Charles Maechling, jr. “Counterinsurgency; the First Ordeal by Fire” in Michael T. Klare, Peter Kornbluh (eds.), Low-Intensity Warfare. Counterinsurgency, Proinsurgency and Antiterrorism in the Eighties, New York: Pantheon Books, 1988; William P. Yarborough, “Counterinsurgency: The U.S. Role – Past, Present and Future” in Richard H. Shultz (ed.), Guerrilla Warfare and Counterinsurgency. U.S. – Soviet Policy in the Third World, Lexington: Lexington Books, 1989. 179 Ian F.W. Beckett, “Robert Thompson and the British Advisory Mission to South Vietnam, 1961-1965” in Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol.8, No.3 (1997), 41-63. 180 Russell Parkin, “The Sources of the Australian Tradition in Irregular Warfare, 1942-1974” in Small Wars & Insurgencies, Vol. 20, No. 1, (2009), 118–140. One needs to mention, though, that the French had already pursued this approach during their colonial war in Indochina. 181 On CORDS and the intellectual framework in which Vietnam was fought a good source still is Douglas S. Blaufarb, The Counterinsurgency Era: U.S. Doctrine and Practice. 1950s to the Present, New York: The Free Press, 1977. It is interesting to note that the Phoenix Program, an intelligence operation aimed at destroying the infrastructure and support network of the Viet Cong, doubled CORDS. From 1968 to 1972 American advisers in cooperation with South Vietnamese police and regular military units neutralized 81740 guerrillas, of whom about a third were killed, Dale Andrade, James H. Willbanks, “CORDS/Phoenix. Counterinsurgency Lessons from Vietnam for the Future” in Military Review, Vol. 86, No. 2, (2006), 18-20. 73 political officers inside the armed forces of nationalist Algerians fighting the French colonists. 182 Paret and Shy argued that combating guerrillas is both a military and political problem. The worst mistake in confronting insurgency is to fight conventionally; controlling a piece of land is not important but the security of one’s base and rear is fundamental. Three main tasks of the counter-guerrilla action can be identified: the military defeat of guerrilla forces; the separation of guerrillas from the population and the re-establishment of governmental authority and the development of a viable social order. 183 From an operational and intelligence perspective, success in

COIN combines mobile striking forces with close territorial control. The areas should be held by regular troops, militia or better-armed police and the fighting forces should be special military units guided by good tactical intelligence, as the lack of it is the great weakness of mobile striking forces.184

James Eliot Cross, a former Special Operations OSS officer in World War II spoke from experience and careful study. More focused on the tactical, operational and intelligence aspects of COIN, he highlighted the change in the capacities of governmental forces by such technological advances as helicopters and short take-off and landing planes and pinpointed the role of bribery in the process of penetration of the enemy’s organization. 185 More interestingly, influenced by events in Algeria, Cross included a chapter on urban insurgency, in which he argued that to prevent and destroy urban rebellions the most efficient weapon is a good-quality secret police as the best

182 Peter Paret, John W. Shy, Guerrillas in the 1960`s, New York: Praeger, 1962, 19-22. 183 Ibidem, 40-41. 184 Ibidem, 42-44. 185 James Eliot Cross, Conflict in the Shadows. The Nature and Politics of Guerrilla War, London: Constable & Company, 1964, 29, 34. The section on bribery was written under the inspiration of a conversation with the man credited with the destruction of the HUK rebellion in the Philippines in the 1950s, Ramon Magsaysay, who revealed it as one of his main weapons. The American forces helping the locals did resort to other more gruesome tactics, such as capturing guerrillas, killing them by draining them of their blood and abandoning them to be found by their comrades, in order to rekindle fears of the mythological local vampire, see Montgomery McFate, “Anthropology and Counterinsurgency: the Strange Story of their Curious Relationship” in Military Review, Vol. 85, No. 2 (2005), 32. 74 COIN operations against urban guerrillas stem from very good intelligence coming from traitors and spies. At the same time, it is better to use police rather than military forces in urban COIN, mostly for morale purposes and for limiting violence or the appearance of imminent violence.186

John S. Pustay, a Major in the United States Air Force, published in 1965 an influential book that addressed the need to fight communist insurgency. He considered that insurgency warfare is “a cellular development of resistance against an incumbent political regime which expands from the initial stage of subversion-infiltration through the intermediate stages of overt resistance by small armed bands and insurrection to final fruition in civil war”.187 Pustay agreed with the thesis that the cooperation between the government and the local populace that must become involved in defending its own area is essential; otherwise any COIN is doomed to failure.188 In this vein, he argued that resettlement must be used cautiously as it can backfire into more hatred for the government. Pustay put a high emphasis on intelligence - especially the need to “fully exploit” captured or surrendered insurgent personnel. There is a necessity to build intelligence collection and evaluation centres and infiltration could also yield enormous benefits. Deep penetration reconnaissance patrols are also effective if technology is used to maximize their efficiency. Cutting off foreign aid is of the essence and also psychological warfare operations could pay off the time and money invested in them.189

But first among the theorists of COIN stands Sir Robert Thompson, a Malayan

Civil Service official and a RAF officer active in guerrilla operations in China and

Indochina in World War II, an important member of the team that conducted COIN in

186 Ibidm, 46-51. It is interesting to note, for the future course of this study, that Cross treats the French OAS (the military conservative group fighting against the French government after it decided to gave up Algeria) as an urban guerrilla. 187 John S. Pustay, Counterinsurgency Warfare, New York: The Fee Press, 1965, 5. 188 Ibidem, 84-86. 189 Ibidem, 101, 106-109. 75 Malaya from 1948 to 1960 and the head of the British advisory mission to Vietnam in the 1960s. His most influential work, Defeating Communist Insurgency, printed in 1966 and widely quoted ever since, was written explicitly as a theory of insurgency and

COIN, asking how do communist guerrilla forces survive, and even threaten to prevail over large – scale conventional forces supported by countries whose power, wealth and good intentions are seemingly invincible.190

Thompson embraced from the beginning the population-centric, hearts-and- minds approach, considering that a lesson learned from Malaya is that even if an armed insurgency is defeated the political and subversive struggle will go on and can still win, as it happened in Algeria, mainly because aggressive military tactics like search and clear operations create more enemies than they kill on the long term.191 Yet it would be a mistake to consider that Thompson emphasized solely civilian measures. Indeed, he argued that among the operational stages of fighting insurgency are clearing and holding rebel areas through military means.192 It was deemed essential to destroy the infrastructure of an insurgency and for these he maintained a solid stress on the importance of intelligence. For the execution of these operations, he was against “search and destroy” missions and preferred long-range operations by Special Forces, useful because they could, like in Borneo, operate even against trans-border enemy bases. He was an enthusiastic supporter of the strategic hamlets approach, which was deemed essential for the most important and complex stage of COIN; as late as 1979 he was still defending this strategy.193

190 Robert Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency. Experiences from Malaya and Vietnam, London: Chatto & Windus, 1966, 13. 191 Ibidem, 35, 39. 192 Ibidem, 111, 121. 193 Robert Thompson, “Regular Armies and Insurgency”, 11-16. 76 It is important, and directly connected with the discussion above, to keep in mind that Thompson was one of the main supporters of the idea that the world was facing a general, Soviet-supported attempt by the world revolutionaries to destroy legitimate, democratic governments and to confiscate power in the Third World for their own purposes. 194 Throughout his life he would remain a hardliner, believing that

“insurgencies have contributed nothing to human well-being.”195

As Thompson won a wide appreciation both before and after the publication of his main book on COIN, others followed in his footsteps, some under his direct patronage. One of them was the American Lieutenant-Colonel John J. McCuen, who published in 1966 his Art of Counter-Revolutionary War. For him, it is essential to recognize early the nature of the revolutionary threat and to organize a massive psycho- political military effort to counter it. McCuen was a firm believer in the oil-spot strategy, conceived as the gradual extension of strategic bases until the entire country is being secured. He linked tactical approaches with the population-centric strategy, arguing in favour of the counter-organization of the population and to achieve this planning for the welfare of the nation is essential. Also, the author puts an emphasis on psychological action, propaganda and otherwise.196

A major contributor to the COIN debate was Richard Clutterbuck, a British military engineer who experienced first-hand insurgency in Palestine, Malaya and

Thailand. In his major work on COIN, published in 1966, he framed the contemporary conflicts involving armed guerrillas in the general struggle against communism. In an interpretation based especially on Malaya he argued that there are three phases and three

194 See especially his latter work, Robert Thompson, Revolutionary War in World Strategy 1945-1969, London: Secker & Warburg, 1970. 195 Robert Thompson, preface at John J. McCuen, The Art of Counter-Revolutionary War. The Strategy of Counter-insurgency, London: Faber and Faber, 1966, 15. 196 John J. McCuen, The Art of Counter-Revolutionary War, 19, 324-330. 77 strategies in any successful COIN: a defensive phase – where an accent on security is necessary; an offensive phase – with an accent on intelligence; and a victory phase highlighted by a stress on good government.197 The keys to victory in Southeast Asia were securing the population and attacking the logistics of the Malayan Communists.198

Clutterbuck was strongly in favour of strengthening intelligence, especially through population control. In Malaya, he argued that the main anti-guerrilla measure was the introduction of identity cards, cataloguing anyone who’s not in their areas and curtailing the freedom of movement. The British officer had no qualms against extremely repressive measures, supporting the suspension of habeas corpus, allowing authorities to arrest and detain without trials. Clutterbuck supported searches of private properties without warrant, or even the blatant disregard for justice evident in the fact that the

“imposition of the death sentence for a man caught with an unauthorized weapon became mandatory for judges.”199

From a tactical perspective, he was against large clearing sweeps through the jungle, arguing instead in favour of smaller patrols rather than company-sized attacks on insurgent camps.200 To achieve victory against rebels, good government and a good intelligence system would allow little progress for insurgency. Clutterbuck was convinced that counterinsurgency is a matter of restoring law and order.201

Other authors writing in the early 1970s also praised population-control approaches or focused on the role of intelligence in COIN. Lewis Gann believed in the superiority and what he perceived as the relative humane British approach stating that

London fought insurgencies in a highly intelligent fashion, not condoning torture,

197 Richard Clutterbuck, The Long Long War. Counterinsurgency in Malaya and Vietnam, New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1966, 4-5. 198 Richard Clutterbuck, Guerrillas and Terrorists London: Faber and Faber, 1977, 42. 199 Richard Clutterbuck, The Long Long War, 32-33, 38-39. 200 Ibidem, 52-53. 201 Ibidem, 178. 78 focusing on capturing terrorists alive and using police work. He was also convinced that the strategic hamlets were a socially beneficial strategy, as well as a key to success against Communist rebellion.202

Frank Kitson, an intelligence officer with experience in Kenya, Cyprus and

Aden who eventually rose to be a General published his work on COIN in 1971 and argued in favour of an intelligence-first approach to COIN campaigning. Kitson stressed the need for “operational intelligence” and argued that sometimes multiple information services can work well despite a lack of coordination, thus seemingly believing that there is no specific necessity to integrate police and military intelligence, a view advocated by other theorists.203 The British officer understood all too well the benefits of psychological warfare, by which he meant propaganda, re-education, turning one community against another, using voice aircraft or even the psychological effect of outright bombing the jungle. His most notable contribution, though, rested in his advocacy of counter-gangs, groups of intelligence officers and turncoats sent into enemy territory, posing as guerrillas, infiltrating and destroying larger bands or assassinating isolated members of the insurgent movement.204

In a nutshell, the above section justifies the assertion that both the theory and practice of British COIN were deeply involved with matters of military operations and intelligence. When one goes beneath the political layer, focused on population-centric approaches (hearts-and-minds) it is easy to discover that practitioners and researchers alike understood that armed rebels are defeated by military means. In this regard, they

202 Lewis H. Gann, Guerrillas in History, Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1971, 68-69. 203 Frank Kitson, Low Intensity Operations. Subversion, Insurgency, Peace-keeping, London: Faber and Faber, 1973 (1971), 75-76. 204 Ibidem, 78-79. 79 were closer to their French and Communist counterparts than later researchers of COIN would like to admit.

2.5 The French Experience and Theory of COIN

Much like the British, the French were confronted with armed rebellion in their colonial empire as soon as the Second World War was over. Rioting in Algeria in 1945 was brutally repressed, and this seemed to remain the favourite approach to rebellion in other corners of the empire. In Madagascar in 1947 a local uprising was brutally put down by the French military, the tens of thousands of victims eliciting little interest from the international community.205 But by far the most violent conflict in which Paris was involved in the first decade after the end of the Second World War was the war in

Indochina (1946-1954), where a Communist-led armed rebellion, vastly inspired and aided by Chinese example and Soviet materiel, fought for independence. While initially elements of the urban struggles in Hanoi and its environs could fall within the purview of COIN studies, the ability of leaders such as Ho Chi Min and Vo Nguyen Giap to mobilize the population and to switch to large-scale conventional operations means that, for the most part, the Indochina conflict was mostly a war rather than an insurgency.206

However, as we shall see in the special chapter on Algeria, many of the French officers who fought in Africa learned their trade in Vietnam, much like their peers in the British armed forces who fought in Malaya had learned their lesson in Palestine.

205 Lewis H. Gann, Guerrillas in History, 67. 206 See for a succinct description of the conflict Daniel Moran, Wars of National Liberation, London: Collins, 2006. 80 The Algerian conflict (1954-1962) remained in history as a classic case of winning the war while losing the peace.207 Algeria will comprise an entire chapter of this thesis, so here one can find just the broad outline of the analysis. The Algerian

Front for National Liberation (FLN) launched a campaign of bombings and assassinations on 1 November 1954. The authorities reacted swiftly enough. Paris amassed within a year and a half over 190,000 troops against an estimated 20,000 rebels and through a system of raids, local terror, cordoning, clear-and-hold approaches effectively broke the back of the rural insurgency by 1956.

When the FLN moved the fight to the streets of the big cities (Oran, Algiers,

Constantine) through a ferocious bombing campaign against European civilians, the

French authorities reacted by sending in crack troops, establishing a thorough intelligence system penetrating the rebels’ organizational and support network.

Widespread torture was a mainstay of the system as was the condoning of a vast anti-

Arab campaign waged by local militias run by the European settlers. But within months the urban insurgency was defeated, forcing the insurgents to move to the countryside and from there to the mountains. Continually harassed by raids of French Special Forces making good use of helicopters and increased firepower and isolated from possible help or sanctuaries in Morocco and Tunisia through a system of patrolled and electrified land barriers, the FLN was no serious military threat to the government. Rather than the actions of the rebels, the collapse of will of metropolitan France to hold on to Algeria was the prime factor of the eventual proclamation of independence in 1962.208

207 James S. Corum, Bad Strategies, 77-78. 208 The fragment on the course of the Algerian War is based on François Sully, The Age of the Guerrilla. The New Warfare, New York: Parent’s Magazine Press, 1968; Robert Faber, The War of the Flea, Bungay: Paladin, 1970; John Pimlott, "The French Army: from Indochina to Chad, 1946-1984" in Ian F.W. Beckett, John Pimlott (ed.), Armed Forces and Modern Counter-Insurgency, London: Croom Helm, 1985; Andre Nouschi, L’Algérie amère 1914-1994, Paris: Editions de la maison des sciences de l’homme, 81 The Algerian experience generated a school of thought that remained influential up to this very day, for good or for bad.209 The “guerre révolutionnaire” school taught that by definition, revolutionary (or subversive) war is political. The goal of revolutionists is the takeover of government, a view grounded, like the entire approach of the “counter-revolutionary war” on the acceptance of the relevance of the Chinese theories of revolutionary warfare advocated by Mao Zedong. One can even say that because they assumed that the rebels were either ideological fanatics or were seeking personal power, French analysts never seriously considered winning the war through negotiation.210

Some of the French theorists argued that revolutionary warfare is a combination of partisan activity and psychological activity and therefore these two areas need to be covered by a government that wants to win in modern insurgency. For Peter Paret, one of the early American analysts of this current of thought, the maxims of the French school were: the rebels have to be cut from any foreign assistance; the enemy’s regular forces and larger groups must be destroyed – with success exploited by psychological operations in order to prompt demoralization and desertion; the government must protect communications and very important administrative and economic centres; resettlement must be attempted when necessary and so must be the re-education of captured rebels, essential for psychological warfare.211

1995; David Jordan, “Countering Insurgency from the Air: The Postwar Lessons” in Contemporary Security Policy, Vol. 28, No.1 (2007), 96–111. 209 David Galula is still quoted as a most relevant author in the bibliography of the latest American military field manuals on COIN. Some went as far as to claim that he was the main influence on American military thinking in Iraq before the change led by General Petraeus after 2006, see Beatrice Heuser, “The Cultural Revolution in Counterinsurgency” in The Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 30, No. 1 (2007), 153–171. 210 Peter Paret, French Revolutionary Warfare from Indochina to Algeria. The Analysis of a Political and Military Doctrine, London: Pall Mall Press, 1964, 9-22. 211 Ibidem, 23-24. 82 The author who would get the most appreciation, at least in the Anglo-Saxon world was Major David Galula, whose 1964 work treated insurgency as a small species of civil war; for him, an insurgency is a protracted struggle conducted methodically, step by step, in order to attain specific intermediate objectives leading finally to the overthrow of the existing order. 212 Galula postulated four “laws” of COIN as a cornerstone of his reflection on the matter: the support of the population is as necessary for the counterinsurgent as for the insurgent; support is gained through the recruitment of an active minority able and willing, through propaganda and other deeds, to rally the neutral majority and to neutralize or eliminate the hostile majority; support from the population is conditional; and the intensity of efforts and vastness of means are essential.213

As it is obvious from the “laws”, the French officer was highly interested in military means to quell an armed rebellion. From an operational perspective, he rejected the possibility and effectiveness of counter-gangs, because they would be either destroyed or incorporated by the wider formations, thus providing an opposite perspective to the one advanced by Frank Kitson. Galula advocated instead that the most useful forces to combat insurgency are highly mobile and lightly armed infantry with some field artillery for support; armoured cavalry and maybe horse cavalry for road surveillance and patrolling; ground support and observation planes of low speed, high endurance, great firepower while well protected against small-arms fire; blockade ships if necessary; and a very good and dense signal network.214 This force-centred approach to COIN also supposed a set of military and political tactics that were deemed

212 David Galula, Counter-insurgency Warfare. Theory and Practice, London: Pall Mall Press, 1964, 4-5. Galula, like his British counterparts, believed that contemporary revolutionary war was inspired and directed in a sense by the Communist bloc. 213 Ibidem, 74-79. 214 Ibidem, 73, 93-94. 83 absolutely necessary to thoroughly defeat the enemy. The most important were the destruction or exhaustion of the insurgent forces, the deployment of area-control static units, contact with and control of the population, the destruction of the insurgent political organization, organizing a party of the local elites to fight in the elections and winning over or suppressing the last guerrillas. Thus, Galula favoured a conservative approach in political terms, advocating a form of “guided democracy” which would sort out the problems of the local communities.215

If Galula’s theses are still seen as influential in contemporary works on COIN, the work of one of his colleagues in Algeria, Roger Trinquier, went from high appreciation in the 1960s to near oblivion in the decades passed since, not in small measure due to some of the ruthless measures he advocated. His heavy-handed approach had certainly to do with his direct experience in Algiers, where he ran the urban intelligence network that destroyed the FLN in that city.216 Trinquier’s views may seem very modern to the contemporary reader; he argued that conventional war between major powers will never be fought again and there is a pressing need to focus on new types of conflict. In pages that could be written by many authors of the 21st century he argued that these new conflicts would involve armed clandestine organizations wanting to impose their will on the population and whose main tactics would be terrorism.217

To deal with these organizations nothing is more important than good information and any means to get the information out of captured rebels is acceptable.

In a clear defence of torture, Trinquier stated that interrogations must be conducted by specialists who would not flinch in inflicting pain on the prisoners, who actually are

215 Ibidem, especially chapter 7. 216 John Pimlott "The French Army: from Indochina to Chad, 1946-1984", 63. 217 Roger Trinquier, Modern Warfare. A French View of Counterinsurgency, London: Pall Mall Press, 1964, 2, 8-9. 84 expected to have no problems in being treated so. The terrorist must accept suffering and possible death “as a condition inherent in his trade and in the methods of warfare that, with full knowledge, his superiors and he himself have chosen”. 218 While population control is important, taking a census and issuing identity cards to every individual being essential measures, the struggle is won through the establishment of a countrywide intelligence system using ground-level informers and traitors. The information obtained through the use of spies and the interrogation of enemy prisoners needs to be speedily used and interpreted by specialized intelligence personal to achieve the desired results.219

Trinquier did indeed envisage a larger effort to defeat urban insurgency, especially through direct action in the cities involving a propaganda effort, good police operations and a social improvement program, but in the end he remained convinced that the enemy needs to be defeated with his own weapons. In his words, future conflict

“will be a juxtaposition of a multitude of small actions. Intelligence and ruse, allied to physical brutality, will succeed the power of blind armament”.220

2.6 Soviet and Eastern Counterinsurgency

Contemporary, as well as older literature on COIN usually refuses to engage with non-Western practice and theory of counter-guerrilla warfare. The reasons most often invoked for this refusal stem from a belief that the cultural differences between the West and the East were so strong as to lead to completely dissimilar approaches that

218 Ibidem, 21-22. 219 Ibidem, 31-39 220 Ibidem, 43, 113-114. 85 could never be replicated.221 In the case of Russian and Soviet COIN, authors writing at the end of the Cold War were arguing that the country and its outlook is not Western and does not abide except in name to Western norms and customs in warfare. Although there was a long tradition of Marxist regimes in fighting counterinsurgencies

(practically the Communist countries had been counterinsurgents for their entire existence), this cultural difference makes their experience in the same time unique and little relevant for the West.222

But even if this theory holds true (and there are indeed deep cultural and political differences, especially concerning the political unaccountability of the

Communist regimes), their experience remains extremely relevant from the perspective of strategic studies. In the end, they were governments trying to defeat armed rebels and, despite their great powers concerning society at large, they faced similar problems as their opposites in the liberal West when conducting the actual operations and intelligence gathering. The Soviet regime, which had fought its first COINS, as mentioned above, against Makhno in the closing years of the Civil War and later against a Basmachi uprising in Central Asia, faced stiff resistance in its attempts to recuperate and control the territories snatched from it by the Germans in 1941-42. The initial response, even while the Nazi troops were still on Soviet territory, was extremely brutal.

Regular troops and the Interior Ministry (NKVD) troops ravaged Chechen and Northern

Caucasian villages in the back of the front, ruthlessly suppressing any attempt by local

221 For a relatively nuanced view on the matter see Yuri Zhukov, “Examining the Authoritarian Model of Counter-insurgency: The Soviet Campaign Against the Ukrainian Insurgent Army” in Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol. 18, No. 3 (2007), 439-466. 222 Rod Paschall, “Soviet Counterinsurgency: Past, Present and Future” in Richard H. Shultz (ed.), Guerrilla Warfare and Counterinsurgency. U.S. – Soviet Policy in the Third World, Lexington: Lexington Books, 1989. 86 armed rebels to get in touch with the advancing Germans in 1942.223 Thousands were killed outright, without trial or any legal formality. Population control techniques were implemented in the thick of war (as they had been attempted in the territories occupied by Moscow in 1940 in the Baltic States, Poland and Bessarabia) and the authorities pursued vast deportations of hundreds of thousands of citizens belonging to suspect ethnicities from their homelands to Siberia.224

For many regions in the Soviet Western Borderlands and in the countries

“liberated” by the Red Army the violence did not stop in May 1945. Anti-Communist armed resistance movements continued their struggle into the 1950s, many rebels hoping they were fighting in the early stages of another World War pitting the oppressive Soviets against the benevolent, liberal and democratic West led by the

United States. 225 In the most sweeping research attempted so far on the subject,

Alexander Statiev argued that after 1944 anti-Soviet groups already fighting in the woods by the time of the reoccupation made up the core of the resistance. The guerrillas were mainly peasants, though the leaders still came from urban middle and lower middle class. Some underground networks were centralized, others had only an embryonic organization; those centralized (OUN-B – Ukrainian Nationalists, the Polish

Armija Krajowa) had a coherent strategy, infrastructure and control of their forces.

Generally the nationalist guerrillas were heroic: when surrounded in their bunkers they did not surrender, either charged the attackers until mowed down by machine guns, or

223 Alexander Statiev, “The Nature of Anti-Soviet Armed Resistance, 1942–44. The North Caucasus, the Kalmyk Autonomous Republic, and Crimea” in Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, Vol. 6, No. 2 (2005), 285–318. 224 Alexander Statiev, “Motivations and Goals of Soviet Deportations in the Western Borderlands” in The Journal of Strategic Studies Vol. 28, No. 6 (2005), 977–1003. 225 Alexander V. Prusin, The Lands Between. Conflict in the East European Borderlands, 1870-1992, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, 205. 87 committed suicide with grenades. Many relatives of the guerrillas preferred to commit suicide than reveal the location of the fighters.226

Obviously, the Soviet regime did not have at the beginning many supporters in the western borderlands, but eventually peasants increasingly sided with the state, in order to break the vicious circle of violence and chaos. However, the support of the poor peasants was weaker than expected, in no small measure due to the blunders and brutalities of the policy.227 Among the methods used against guerrillas foremost was deportation, affecting the largest number of people among all counterinsurgency measures. Forced migrations targeted not only the active opposition but all potential opponents, like family members of known guerrillas, class enemies, and the former elite as well as entire ethnic groups.

Among the fiercest opponents of the nationalist partisans were what Statiev calls, in reference to Mexican militias, the Red Rurales. In order to suppress resistance in the western borderlands, the Soviet state also armed thousands of local peasants who fought the insurgents side by side with the regular forces. The peasant anti-insurgent fighters, knowing the sentiments and activities of every person in their village, frustrated the aim of some insurgents to live between actions as ordinary farmers, thus forcing the enemies of the Soviets to surrender or to be full-time insurgents, a tough position after 1944. In non-forested regions, full time insurgency was impossible.228

The particular tactics and policies devised to deal with the partisans included establishing local platoon or section-sized garrisons (as many as 623 in Ukraine in

1945). Mainly, they were organizing ambushes and were supplemented by patrols of

226 Alexander Statiev, The Soviet Counterinsurgency in the Western Borderlands, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, 107-108. 227 Ibidem, 134, 161. 228 Ibidem, 209-229. 88 larger units (company-sized) with light weapons, in radio contact with motorized

NKVD companies ready to intervene where guerrillas had been spotted.229 Another procedure was sealing a particular village for a week, methodically searching every house with dogs. Intelligence gathering was paramount. Regional party leaders, for instance in Ukraine, where N.S. Khrushchev was very active in combating partisans, were responsible for the establishment of an enormous agent network numbering tens of thousands of informers who became the most important source of intelligence about the insurgency.

Intelligence activities helped covert operations; those included testing loyalties, as well as making some of the guerrillas and supporters turn on each other, using some insurgents to suspect others were agents in order to kill them. Commando units made of former insurgents operated against guerrillas, often with spectacular success. The interrogation of captured guerrillas was particularly brutal; it often involved beatings, burnings with cigarettes, and on stoves.230 Other means, especially psychological, to break the will of the insurgents and their supporters were intimidation through show trials, bringing and exposing bodies of the dead guerrillas in the villages and public executions, especially hangings. Interspersed between these were amnesties for some of the partisans who wanted to surrender.231

One could say that the Soviet regime was born fighting insurgents in the 1920s and died in the late 1980s doing the same. Throughout the 1980s the USSR fought a bitter conflict defending its proxy regime in Afghanistan against a countrywide Islamic rebellion supported by Pakistan, the United States, thousands of volunteers and millions

229 See for this type of operation in Bessarabia B. Movilă, “Rezistența anticomunistă din Basarabia și cauzele ei (1944–1950)” in Școala memoriei 2006, Fundația Academia Civică, 146. 230 Alexander V. Prusin, The Lands Between, 209. 231 Alexander Statiev, The Soviet Counterinsurgency, Chapter 9. 89 of dollars from the Arabian Peninsula. The armed rebellion was part of an internal anti-

Communist power struggle that had indeed begun before the Soviet invasion of the country on Christmas Day, 1979. To counter the guerrillas, Moscow’s armed forces employed initially large-scale manoeuvres with big units and artillery fire, with limited effect. After 1984 there was a switch to small raiding and strike units, but only 10-15% of the Soviet Forces were able to mount them. Even at the peak, the Soviet troops were too few to deal with the rebellion, with never more than 130,000 men available. Very efficient were attack helicopters and close-support fixed wing aircraft. The Afghan secret police also used, with a certain degree of success, counter-gangs.232

However, villages continued to be destroyed and the population terrorised, with anti-personnel mines taking a heavy toll. The fact that the USSR also attempted nation- building and population-centric strategies, with thousands of civilian personnel deployed throughout the country to support its institutions and help in the construction of modern infrastructure could not ameliorate the brutality of the campaign, which resulted in failure and retreat in 1989.233

Subservient Communist regimes fought their own COINs, rarely facing adversaries as strong as the Soviets did or having their ability to project force on such a large scale. Preliminary research of one of the case studies for this thesis, Romania, shows that the most successful approach was the proactive collection of intelligence, through willing informants, torture of captured partisans or relatives of partisans, or

232 Geraint Hughes, “The Soviet-Afghan War, 1978-1989: An Overview” in Defence Studies, Vol. 8, No. 3 (2008), 338-340. 233 Rodric Braithwaite, Afgantsy: the Russians in Afghanistan, 1979-89, New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. 90 through blackmail. The intelligence thus gathered then had to be combined with rapid military operations to destroy the guerrillas.234

2.7 A matter of knowledge, swiftness and brutality

This chapter comprised an extensive discussion of counterinsurgency theory and history, from its beginnings in what historian Robert Palmer has called the “Age of the

Democratic Revolution” in the final decades of the eighteenth century to its culmination in the first three decades after the Second World War. The focus has been on the

British, American, French and Russian traditions of COIN, in an attempt to understand the practical and analytical stage in which the discussion of the case studies can take place. A few conclusions seem to have risen, able to generate a general framework for the following research.

First, one must nuance the conclusions usually reached by present day theorists and military and political officials such as David Kilcullen, John Mackinlay, Thomas

Mockaitis, General David Petraeus and General Michael Jackson whose views were discussed in the first chapter. They seemed to assume that the pinnacle of reflection and practice of their predecessors in fighting armed rebels was the “hearts-and-minds”, population-centred COIN. Indeed, the previous discussion showed that the practice of successful and unsuccessful COINs had more to do with military matters and what is more significant all the main theorists of the period did put a lot of emphasis on good intelligence and well conducted military operations as keys to victory.

234 Andrei Miroiu, „Wiping out : Romanian Counterinsurgency Strategies in the Early Communist Period” in Journal of Slavic Military Studies, Vol. 23, No. 4 (2010), 690. 91 Secondly, while there is little doubt in the light of the literature review sketched above that operations and intelligence are of paramount importance in COIN, there is little consensus about the efficiency of specific military approaches to COIN. Some authors advocated Special Forces and raids; others were in favour of clear-and-hold, oil- spot strategies. Some theorists thought that technological advances would make armed rebellion impossible; others thought it mattered little. Regarding intelligence, many were in favour of an integration of special services under military command, while some argued that multiple intelligence agencies can work well even if separate. The debate about the utility of counter-gangs is still ongoing.

This thesis will attempt to answer these questions and others concerning population control, military operations and intelligence in the cases of Malaya, Algeria and Romania. This study will attempt to shed light on these matters and draw larger implications concerning present-day theories and campaigns, which have already been so much influenced by the British and French COIN. In the case of population control for instance, the case studies will throw further doubt on its presumed benign aspects, strongly questioning its use in historical COINs and challenging the use of historical experience for contemporary campaigns.

92

Chapter 3

British Counterinsurgency in Malaya

Both the United Kingdom and the French Republic scored military victories in the colonial campaigns they respectively fought in Malaya from 1948 to 1960 and in

Algeria from 1954 to 1962. At the end of each of these conflicts their military forces controlled the disputed territories, having systematically defeated, rooted out and forced their enemies into hiding or across international borders.235 Despite that, both conflicts ended with the colonial powers leaving the two lands and recognizing their independence. Although the British left Malaya in the hands of a friendly government representing the local economic elite and all too willing to make military and economic concessions to the former colonial power and the French left Algeria to its former adversaries, the result was in a sense the same: a military victory combined with a cessation of formal imperial ties.236

The two campaigns were brutal affairs in which tens of thousands lost their lives and millions were displaced. In each of them, both the government and the insurgents may have followed noble, generous goals, but in doing so they wrought pain and

235 However, neither the Malayan insurgents nor the Algerian rebels saw things this way. In their memoirs, the Malayan communists never refer to 1960 as the year of their defeat, nor did the Algerian nationalist concede the same for 1960-1961. For the first, see Fong Chong Pik, The Memoirs of a Malayan Communist Revolutionary, Petaling Jaya: SIRD, 2008 and Rashid Maidin, The Memoirs of Rashid Maidin. From Armed Struggle to Peace, Petaling Jaya: SIRD, 2009. An especially important work is the memoir of the main communist leader, Chin Peng, My Side of History, Singapore: Media Masters, 2003 in which 1989 is acknowledged as the real end of the conflict, due to the agreements signed in Thailand between the remnants of the Malayan Communist Party and the Malaysian authorities. For Algeria, see Robert Merle, Ben Bella, London: Michael Joseph, 1967. 236 For Malaya see Barbara Watson Andaya, Leonard Y. Andaya, A History of Malaysia, Honolulu: University of Hawai`i Press, 2001; T.N. Harper, The End of Empire and the Making of Malaya, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. For Algeria, Benjamin Stora, Histoire de la guerre d’Algérie (1954-1962), Paris : La Découverte, 1995. 93 suffering on many innocents. In a pattern that has very little to do with the stated aims of the guerrillas and the professed democratic values of the governments, the conclusion of the conflicts was reached through violence and bloodshed. The Malayan case is particularly relevant in this regard; as for many decades the scholarly and policy views held that part of the conflict was a benign, “hearts and minds” campaign to win the allegiance of the civilians through bettering their living prospects. As newer literature shows and as this chapter will discuss, the reality was far more brutal, amounting to the destruction of a whole way of life through forced internal deportation of hundreds of thousands of civilians. For some contemporary authors, the Malayan Emergency was no less than a civil war forcing the population to choose between the communists and everyone else.237

This chapter will discuss the Malayan Emergency in four key sections: the first section presents the political, economic and military context of the conflict, with a focus on internal and foreign aspects. The second section is concerned with population control, featuring a discussion of the deportations, resettlement and destruction of villages, food rationing, identity controls and propaganda aimed at civilians. The third part will deal with intelligence, focusing on the evolution and types of information gathering and intelligence-analysis and how this was relayed to military units. The fourth section is an analysis of military operations, most prominently sweeps, patrols, ambushes, deep strikes, air operations, and the use of counter-gangs and of propaganda aimed at guerrillas; it also examines the selective elimination of some of the insurgent groups and leaders.

237 Karl Hack, “Everyone Lived in Fear: Malaya and the British Way of Counter-insurgency” in Small Wars & Insurgencies, Vol. 23, No. 4-5 (2012), 672. 94

3.1 The Political and Military Context

When the military crisis erupted in Malaya in June 1948 the situation in the

British colony had been seriously deteriorating for a number of years. Some of the pro-

British authors, writing close to the events or even close to our days and influencing the subsequent literature had rosy views of the colonial situation that appear quaint nowadays. Noel Barber, a journalist whose book on the war was widely read and quoted ever since its publication, had no qualms in making a statement such as: "[i]n 1948

Malaya (...) had achieved a rare distinction: it was a contented paradise in which men of many skins and creeds lived in harmony, enjoying the highest standard of living as the country moved quietly but firmly - and without any strife - to the day when it would be granted independence from the British (...)."238 Gregory Blaxland, a military historian of post-1945 British campaigns, sees uniformly Malaya as the richest part of the Empire and an economic success story.239 In this land many races and creeds “lived in harmony and enjoyed one of the highest standards of living in all Asia”.240

Obviously, the situation could have looked this way from the perspective of the approximately 12,000 white planters and engineers mostly living on the rich western side of the peninsula.241 The view was shared by the few thousands British officers and administrative officials which, together with the ruling Malay princes and the heavily-

Chinese local bourgeoisie enjoyed the benefits of one of the world’s greatest sources of

238 Noel Barber, The War of the Running Dogs. How Malaya Defeated the Communist Guerrillas 1948- 60, Glasgow: Fontana, 1972, 12. 239 Gregory Blaxland, The Regiments Depart. A History of the British Army, 1945-1970, London: William Kimber, 1971, 73. 240 E.D. Smith, Counter-insurgency Operations: Malaya and Borneo, London: Ian Allan, 1985, 5. 241 Julian Paget, Counter-Insurgency Campaigning, London: Faber and Faber, 1967, 45. 95 rubber and tin, as well as the trade flowing through the highly strategic port of

Singapore.242 For the rest of the population, divided amongst three main ethnicities with

49% ethnic Malay, 39 % Chinese and 12% Indian, things were looking a bit different in the war-devastated country.243

Warfare for a number of intensive months in 1941-42, over three years of

Japanese occupation confronted by a Communist-led guerrilla movement and the political and economic pains of the re-establishment of British rule after August 1945 meant deep scars for the country. Over half a million Chinese had joined their fellow countrymen in a squatter existence in the fringe of the jungles, scraping a meagre existence from subsistence agriculture.244 In the small cities and villages close to the rubber plantations and tin mines hundreds of thousands of Malays and Chinese looked for jobs and the restarting of production brought the same meagre wages and colonialist attitudes from the English owners and managers of the estates.245 In the larger cities, the

Malay and Chinese middle classes were expecting a change in their favour, with a new power-sharing agreement with the British and some were beginning to nurture dreams of independence.246 In the jungles covering the mountains that form the central spine of the peninsula, tens of thousands of aborigines continued their traditional ways of life,

242 Rubber for instance was, after the war, more important than manufacturing in the exports of the British Empire, John Newsinger, British Counterinsurgency. From Palestine to Northern Ireland, Houndmills: Palgrave, 2002, 41; for the role of rubber and tin role before the war see M.C. Rickfels, Bruce Lockhart, Albert Lau, Portia Reyes, Maitrii Aung-Thwin, A New History of Southeast Asia, Houndmills: Palgrave, 2010, 242. 243 For statistics on population see Richard Clutterbuck, Guerrillas and Terrorists, London: Faber and Faber, 1977, 37. Others mention for 1941 41% Malay to 43% Chinese, M.C. Rickfels et. al., A New History of Southeast Asia, 327. Many of the Chinese had intermarried with Malay families, adopting Islam and all but forgetting their language. 244 The Chinese massive immigration to Malaya started after the British development of the port of Singapore in 1818 and, later in the 19th century, fuelled by the demand for labour in the tin and rubber industries in the Western part of the Peninsula, Sam C. Sarkesian, Unconventional Conflicts in a New Security Era. Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam, Westport: Greenwood, 1993, 60-61. 245 For living and working in British Malaya see Rashid Maidin, The Memoirs of Rashid Maidin. For the attitudes of the British see the memoirs of Robert Thompson, Make for the Hills. Memories of Far Eastern Wars, London: Leo Cooper, 1989. 246 See for that Khong Kim Hoong, Merdeka! British Rule and the Struggle for Independence in Malaya, 1945-1957, Kuala Lumpur: Institute for Social Analysis, 1984. 96 uninterrupted for centuries and millennia except for the brief period during the war when they entered a reciprocal-help relationship with the anti-Japanese guerrillas.247

In this context the return of the British proved a challenging experience both for the authorities and the colonised peoples. The princely states of Malaya and the crown colonies were initially ruled by the British Military Administration, until the new civilian High Commissioner would negotiate with the elite a new power arrangement for the country248, in a general colonial strategy that envisaged a coordinated move towards autonomy and, after many decades, independence on British terms. But the post-war re-occupation seemed to bring a determined effort by the British to bring the

Malay states in a streamlined colonial setting. The local population saw the Malayan

Union, the first proposal for a political functioning of the country as an attempt to preserve indefinitely the colonial status of their country.249 To form the Malayan Union, which called for a vast reduction of the power of the princes, reduced to the positions of religious rulers and political figureheads, extreme pressure was applied on the sultans or regents of the Malaysian states, usually by being accused of collaboration with the

Japanese. Any pretence of their British Residents or Advisors, in place for a long time, having just consultative attributions was dropped. 250 In addition to diminishing the power of the local rulers, one of the most contentious points of the Malayan Union was the near-universal enfranchisement of the Chinese, many of whom were seen by the

247 John D. Leary, Violence and the Dream People. The Orang Asli in the Malayan Emergency 1948- 1960, Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1995. 248 This military administration lasted from September 1945 until the formation of the Malayan Union on 1 April 1946, A.J. Stockwell, “Southeast Asia in War and Peace: The End of European Colonial Empires” in Nicholas Tarling (ed.), The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia, Vol. II The nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Singapore: Cambridge University Press, 1992, 353. 249 M.C. Rickfels et. al., A New History of Southeast Asia, 329. 250 Barbara Watson Andaya, Leonard Y. Andaya, A History of Malaysia, Honolulu: University of Hawai`i Press, 2001, 266. 97 ethnic Malays as outsiders, economic migrants recently arrived in the country to reap the benefits but unwilling to share its culture.251

To counteract it, the first major local political force (United Malays National

Organization - UMNO) was created, under the leadership of a local nobleman from

Johore, Dato Onn bin Jaafar. It became instrumental in making the British negotiate in

July 1946 a new form of political framework for the country, which led to the formation of the Federation of Malaya on 1 February 1948. Citizenship was restricted to those who resided in Malaya for at least 15 of the previous 25 years, issued a declaration of permanent settlement and could speak Malay or English. Less than 10% of the Chinese qualified for automatic citizenship.252

This Malayan political mobilization prompted the Chinese and Indian communities to join the political struggle in early 1946. British intelligence was quick to pick this up and summarized it as such: “Malays and Chinese who possess a high spirit of nationalism are working against each other”.253 Soon overshadowing other

Chinese political groupings, the local Chinese communists became the backbone of resistance to the Federation, in a broader social and political struggle. Their main initial approach was using the trade unions in the political struggle, especially the General

Labour Union, which had 263,000 members in the years after the war. Indeed, the

Malayan Communist Party (MCP) dominated the trade union’s confederation in 1946-

1947, which was used in a framework of legal political struggle both against the

251 Sam C. Sarkesian, Unconventional Conflicts in a New Security Era, 58. 252 Barbara Watson Andaya, Leonard Y. Andaya, A History of Malaysia, 268; M.C. Rickfels et. al., A New History of Southeast Asia, 329; A.J. Stockwell, “Southeast Asia in War and Peace”, 354. 253 HQ Malaya Command Weekly Intelligence reviews no 30-32, 31 May – 22 June 1946 CO537/1581 nos. 14, 15 and 16 in A.J. Stockwell (ed.), Malaya, London: HMSO, 1995, Part I The Malayan Union Experiment 1942-1948, 242. 98 economic elite and the political arrangement that excluded most of the Chinese from effective participation in Malayan social and political life.254

This radicalization was obviously seen with some degree of regret by the British, which throughout the war held good contacts with the Chinese communists that had formed the largest element of the Malayan’s Peoples Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA), the guerrilla front harassing Japanese occupation forces. British liaison officers and members of the commando unit Force 136 worked with the communists, provided them with weapons, got to know some of their emerging leaders such as the very young Chin

Peng and eventually even signed an agreement with the MPAJA putting it under the orders of South East Asia Allied Command. 255 Communist acquiescence and cooperation had been instrumental in the relatively swift restoration of British authority in the colony. The stabilization of South East Asia in the first years of what was soon called the Cold War was important on many economic and strategic levels and in no small measure served to reassure the pre-eminence of the British as the most important allies of Washington in the area.256

In retrospect, in comparison to the violent reaction of the Vietnamese communists to the French return to Indochina, the MCP’s reaction was both a blessing for London and a puzzle for everyone else. But the MCP’s failure to launch an aggressive anti-British campaign had a few explanations, which can also highlight some of its features as a guerrilla force. First, and perhaps foremost, the leadership of the

MCP was during the war and until early in 1947 in the hands of Lai Tek, who had been

254 Khong Kim Hoong, Merdeka!, 122-123; Barbara Watson Andaya, Leonard Y. Andaya, A History of Malaysia, 270. 255 Geoffrey Fairbarn, Revolutionary Guerrilla Warfare. The Countryside Version, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974, 125-126. 256 Nicholas Tarling, Britain, Southeast Asia and the Onset of the Cold War, 1945-1950, Singapore: Cambridge University Press, 1998, 309, 313. 99 a British agent for a long time before the war.257 Indeed, Lai Tek had begun betraying his party comrades soon after he was recruited in the early 1930s by French intelligence in Indochina. Passed over to the British after his cover was blown and after moving from Saigon to Singapore, he quickly rose to power positions within the party, where he successfully advocated a pacifist and legalist agenda. During the war he became a double agent, preserving his life and luxurious lifestyle by helping the Japanese to deliver a devastating blow to the MPAJA. He accomplished that by tipping them to the location of a leadership conference he had organized but where he had conveniently failed to show up.258 Through the massacre of his peers his position inside the party had been consolidated and he seems to have never been questioned or criticized until

February 1947 when he absconded with Party funds, leaving it in disarray.259

Secondly, the subsequent generation of MCP leaders was extremely young and inexperienced except in the ways of guerrilla warfare. Their cooperation with the British military during the war may have initially softened their attitudes – the next leader of the party himself, Chin Peng, had been awarded the Order of the British Empire and decorated by Admiral Louis Mountbatten personally.260 The MPAJA units had marched together with the British in victory parades throughout Malaya in the fall of 1945 and – in a move that can be blamed again on Lai Tek, had agreed to its own disbandment and many of its individual members had surrendered their weapons for cash payments.261

257 John Newsinger, British Counterinsurgency, 36. 258 Richard Clutterbuck, The Long Long War. Counterinsurgency in Malaya and Vietnam, New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1966, 17, 29. 259 Lai Tek’s fate is shrouded in mystery, but nearly certainly Thai communists caught up with him in Bangkok and put an end to his life, probably in 1947; see Richard J. Aldrich, The Hidden Hand. Britain, America, and Cold War Secret Intelligence, Woodstock: The Overlok Press, 2002, 496. 260 Julian Paget, Counter-Insurgency Campaigning, 43. 261 Each man who did this was paid 350$ and 6000 out of 7000 took up the offer James E. Dougherty, “The Guerrilla War in Malaya” in Franklin Mark Osanka (ed.), Modern Guerrilla Warfare. Fighting Communist Guerrilla Movements, 1941-1961, New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1964, 300. 100 Unlike almost any other communists around the world, the Chinese communists in Malaya also had virtually no direct and personal links with the centres of Marxist-

Leninist thought and practice. Unlike their Northern Vietnamese comrades, educated in the leftist circles of Paris and enjoying direct help from Mao Zedong, the MCP leaders were isolated.262 To highlight this no better example can be given than the theory that the Moscow-issued order for the beginning of the insurgency had been relayed in

February 1948 during a stop-over in Kuala Lumpur by the Australian communist

Lawrence Sharkey, returning from a conference in Calcutta. While no documentary support has ever been found in favour of this theory and most historians reject it, it serves to highlight the isolation of the MCP, which could not even send its own people to Calcutta. In effect, Malaya was such a peripheral theatre from Moscow’s perspective that Stalin was uninterested and perhaps unable to send any help or issue any guidance both before and after 1948.263

Thirdly, the MCP was cut-off from any outside help not only by its leadership’s lack of contacts and the lack of interest in its activities from Moscow, but also by the geographic features of the country which played a significant role in its strategy and in its nearly-unavoidable defeat. Indeed, Malaya is a long peninsula 460 miles long and

200 miles wide, with extremely long coastlines that were easily patrolled by the Royal

Navy. The only neighbour with which it shared a land border, Thailand, mostly behaved like a British ally and did not allow any help to reach the MCP.264 Most of the six million inhabitants were concentrated in the great city of Singapore and on the western side of the peninsula in a narrow strip of a few dozen miles where the rubber plantations

262 Anthony Short, “The Malayan Emergency” in Ronald Haycock (ed.), Regular Armies and Insurgency, London: Croom Helm, 1979, 65. 263 T.N. Harper, The End of Empire, 152; Peter Lowe, Contending with Nationalism and Communism. British Policy towards Southeast Asia, 1945-65, Houndmills: Palgrave, 2009, 44. 264 Robert Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency. Experiences from Malaya and Vietnam, London: Chatto & Windus, 1966, 19. 101 and the tin mines were situated, leaving the eastern side sparsely populated.265 The

“proper” guerrilla country was the mountainous, jungle covered interior, which could provide shelter and rest, but was hard to navigate and dangers such as falling trees, leeches and lice kept those living in it constantly on the edge.266 Moreover, the soil of the country, both in the jungle and on its fringes, was poor for agriculture. Already before the insurgency started getting food was a problem, Malaya producing only a third of its food consumption.267 Large groups of people could not survive on game and fruits in the jungle, so the support of local civilian population was crucial for any guerrilla force operating outside the western areas of the peninsula.

To this one needs to add a fundamental ethnic reality. The MCP was and remained an overwhelmingly Chinese manned and dominated party. While some

Malays joined it, eventually being able to form during the Emergency a full Malay communist regiment and some prominent Indians were among its members, the Chinese dominance was both a blessing and a curse, as it insured the cooperation of the many poor Chinese but also the hostility of the vast number of Malays.268

Despite all of these considerations, the MCP chose the path of violent confrontation after the disappearance of Lai Tek. The Malayan Federation project could be seen as a tactic to deny for a long time independence for the country; it also enshrined, from the communists’ perspective, the dominating position of the British planters and mine owners and managers, in an alliance with the Malay and Chinese bourgeoisie; while it was also making life more difficult for the poor Chinese. These political problems were overlapping a deep economic chasm for the lower classes in

265 Sam C. Sarkesian, Unconventional Conflicts in a New Security Era, 63. 266 Fong Chong Pik, The Memoirs of a Malayan Communist Revolutionary. 267 On the food problem and generally the social crisis that was the basis of the rebellion see T.N. Harper, The End of Empire, 94-95, 97. 268 Martin Thomas, Bob Moore, L.J. Butler, Crises of Empire. Decolonization and Europe`s Imperial States, 1918-1975, London: Hodder Education, 2008, 63. 102 Malaya, with low wages, unsecure jobs and the continuation of a rural crisis that had begun during the Great Depression and never stopped.269 The rural crisis itself was the root cause for the explosion in the numbers of the Chinese squatters scrapping a meagre existence from a low-quality soil. What the British colonizers and their academic defenders considered “a primitive and destructive mode of agriculture”, the MCP saw as the terrible effect of capitalist and imperialist rule and in need of immediate correction.270 Thus, starting with late 1947 and through the first months of 1948 the communists of Malaya pursued a path of confrontation, starting with mass strikes and union actions and escalating into armed attacks as the summer of 1948 set in.271

Confronting all of this, the British authorities could rely on the support of many local social and political power structures, as well as the resources the metropolis could send to defend the richest of its foreign possessions after the loss of India in 1947.

Unwavering throughout the crisis, the British planters, tin mine owners, engineers, administrators, police officers and government workers offered their time, money and efforts to the suppression of the rebellion.272 By a crushing majority, the ethnic-Malay population rejected the communist appeal and joined the counterinsurgency efforts, especially after the speeding up of the independence-granting process.273 Obviously, the political and economic elite, Malay and Chinese alike abhorred any communist project

269 For an extended view on labour and wages before the Emergency see T.N. Harper, The End of Empire, 98. 270 Geoffrey Fairbarn, Revolutionary Guerrilla Warfare, 144. 271 Before the Emergency started in June 1948, the country was affected by large, Communist-inspired strikes and labour unions protests. Police violence was considerable; in a confrontation on 1 June on a Johore estate the police killed eight workers, see Karl Hack, Defence and Decolonisation in Southeast Asia. Britain, Malaya and Singapore 1941-1968, Richmond: Curzon, 2001, 117. MCP reaction was swift, already in the first half of June 1948 there had been 19 murders and attempted murders attributed to the communists, see Malayan Security Service Political Intelligence Journal CO537/3753 no 35, 15 August 1948 in A.J. Stockwell (ed.), Malaya, Part II, The Communist Insurrection 1948-1953, 64-65. 272 Martin Shipway, Decolonization and its Impact. A Comparative Approach to the End of Colonial Empires, Singapore: Blackwell, 2008. 273 The British tapped skilfully in anti-Chinese feelings caused by the retribution of the anti-Japanese guerrillas (the Chinese and MCP-dominated-MPAJA) in 1945 against those perceived as collaborators, Donald M. Nonini, British Colonial Rule and the Resistance of the Malay Peasantry, 1900-1957, New Haven: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, 1992, 109-110. 103 and lent all its support to the government 274 . Their economic interests had been intertwined with those of the British since the beginning of massive cultivation of rubber at the beginning of the 20th century and further strengthened by the formation of massive Chinese banking houses in the interwar period, providing loans for those investing in the main export industries of the country.275

The internal strengths of the British authorities should not be neglected. First, the experience of colonial warfare was vast.276 Despite the arguments of some authors that jungle-fighting ability was lost in the three years passed from 1945 to 1948 this can hardly be believed. 277 The government also could – and did eventually – call upon imperial forces whose natural setting was the jungle, most importantly the Iban trackers from Borneo, the Fijian Regiment and the Kenya-based King’s African Rifles; the

Gurkha brigades also adapted extremely fast to the realities of warfare in the Malayan interior.

Secondly, while at the beginning of the Emergency the effective number of troops that the British could field against the MCP was roughly the same as that of the rebels (around 8,000), the government could call on massive reinforcements from the

United Kingdom and Hong Kong and could rely on the limited, but solid help from

274 These groups were carefully identified by British intelligence early on during the Emergency, Letter from H. Gurney to T. Lloyd CO537/3758 no 19, 8 October 1948 in A.J. Stockwell (ed.), Malaya, Part II. 275 Yen Ching-Hwang, “Historical Background” in Lee Kam Hing, Tan Chee-Beng, (eds.), The Chinese in Malaysia, New York: Oxford University Press, 2000, 18-19. 276 Charles Townshend, Britain’s Civil Wars. Counterinsurgency in the Twentieth Century, London: Faber and Faber, 1986, 14. 277 Daniel Marston, “Lost and Found in the Jungle. The Indian and British Army jungle warfare doctrines for Burma, 1943-45, and the Malayan Emergency, 1948-60” in Hew Strachan (ed.), Big Wars and Small Wars. The British army and the lessons of war in the twentieth century, New York: Routledge, 2006, 97. Others have made a broader argument against the idea of a permanent and specific COIN culture inside the British military, see Jones, David Martin, and M. L. R. Smith "Myth and the small war tradition: Reassessing the discourse of British counter-insurgency" in Small Wars & Insurgencies, Vol. 24, No. 3 (2013), 436-464. 104 Australia.278 Human resources, most importantly police and intelligence specialists with experience in Palestine and India were also available for counterinsurgency.279

Thirdly, the government had the financial ability to vastly increase the numbers of policemen and the size of paramilitary units in the country and improve the quality of their armament and transport280, while simultaneously carrying a systematic program of uprooting the support the communists could get from the Chinese squatters. Indeed, one can argue that the crisis “entailed a far-reaching militarisation of Malayan society and made the colonial state an authoritative presence in the lives of many Malayans for the first time”.281 In these regards, the beginning of the Korean War in the summer of 1950 had a very beneficial effect for the government of Malaya, driving the prices for rubber and tin to record highs. The ability to spend more on security forces was thus vastly increased. This also enabled the planters and mine owners to spend more on private security, thus helping the COIN campaign.282 To insure that the valuable products of

Malaya would flow freely towards their customers, the British were involved in the restructuring of trade unions, especially targeting Chinese-dominated organizations and disrupting their formation.283

One can roughly distinguish three main phases of the Emergency. For the first two years of the Emergency the government constantly increased its strength and

278 For the numbers of rebels see Anthony Short, The Communist Insurrection in Malaya 1948-1960, London: Frederick Muller, 1975, 114. 279 The belief of some authors that the campaign was fought with limited resources is thus unfounded, Robert M. Cassidy, “The British Army and Counterinsurgency: the Salience of Military Culture” in Military Review, Vol. 85, No. 3 (2005), 57. 280 A policy with questionable results, see Eric Jardine, "The Influence of Military Materiel on Tactics and Strategy in Counterinsurgency: a Case of British Malaya" in Defence Studies, Vol. 11, No. 4 (2011), 636-656. 281 T.N. Harper, The End of Empire, 150. 282 Dunlop – one of the major corporate owners of plantations had 70 armoured cars and was hiring European security officers, Richard Stubbs, Hearts and Minds in Guerrilla Warfare. The Malayan Emergency 1948-1960, Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1989, 107, 112. 283 Leong Yee Fong, “The Emergence and Demise of the Chinese Labour Movement in Colonial Malaya, 1920-1960” in Lee Kam Hing, Tan Chee-Beng, (eds.), The Chinese in Malaysia, New York: Oxford University Press, 2000, 183. 105 pursued a strategy of denying the communists the possibility of occupying safe bases in inhabited areas, while in the same time suffering many attacks and failing in most attempts of crushing the insurgency through large-scale conventional military operations.284 In the second phase, roughly corresponding with the period between the formulation and adoption of the “Briggs Plan” in the summer of 1950 and 1955, the

British achieved victory in the field through a mixture of a vast population control strategy, increased intelligence ability and a better and more flexible operational approach. In the third phase, from 1955 to 1960, the British and the newly independent

(from 1957) government from Kuala Lumpur focused on propaganda, informative penetration and counter-gangs to mop-up the remainder of the communist fighters, until their final retreat into Thailand.

The analysis that follows is centred on population control tactics, intelligence gathering and its use, the military operations and the destruction of the rebel groups, with a chronological approach taking a step back and being used only when describing a transformational process.

3.2 Population Control

Traditional warfare between organized armed groups, be they states or other entities, supposed that victory is achieved either through a battle or series of battles which would render one of the opponents unable to fight or through control of a number of strategic locations or a vast area of the disputed lands. In asymmetric conflict victory in battle rarely brings total victory, because guerrillas almost never engage their full

284 Robert Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency, 16. 106 strength against the government’s forces; similarly, even full control of the entire disputed territory does not necessarily translate into victory, as the unidentified rebels could easily blend into the population, like fishes in the sea in Maoist parlance, and restart armed action as soon as the authorities` vigilance diminishes.285

Population control, physical and psychological, replaces territorial control in

COIN. To achieve victory the government needs to organize the favourable groups, to cultivate the neutral, to try to placate the mildly hostile, while deporting or isolating and re-educating those groups deemed to be the most dangerous. Moreover, the government needs to portray itself as a better solution for its citizens, both by providing a long-term solution to the root problems of the rebellion, be they social, economic or political and by being seen to act in the framework of the rule of the law.286

In Malaya this was, in a sense, the big key to eventual military and political victory over the communist guerrillas. While military action played a very important role, initially by preventing the rebels from acquiring bases, then by forcing them to operate in smaller and smaller groups and eventually by mopping up the remaining groups, it was large-scale actions involving extensive deportations to China, the massive “resettlement” program involving almost half of the two million Chinese living in Malaya and the propaganda effort which accounted for complete victory. 287

Throughout the latter stages of the Malayan Emergency and in the subsequent decades, in memoirs and academic monographs this effort has been called, rather benignly, a

285 Mao Tse-Tung, On Guerrilla Warfare, New York: Praeger, 1961; Ian F. W. Beckett, Modern Insurgencies and Counter-insurgencies. Guerrillas and their Opponents since 1750, London: Routledge, 2001, 70-76. 286 This is a distillation of some of the principles of COIN identified by Robert Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency, 50-58. 287 This argument was mostly defended by Karl Hack, see his articles “British Intelligence and Counter- Insurgency in the Era of Decolonization: The Example of Malaya” in Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 14, No. 2 (1999), 124-155 and “The Malayan Emergency as Counter-Insurgency Paradigm”, Journal of Strategic Studies, 32: 3 (2009), 383 — 414. 107 campaign for the “hearts and minds” of the population, an expression that made a great career, still flourishing in contemporary field manuals and COIN practice. The following analysis argues that what happened could be better interpreted as a brutal, often ruthless campaign targeting a specific ethnicity and those allied with it. Total control over the bodies and even the minds of possible opponents was what the government aimed for and in a general sense this was achieved.288

It must be said from the beginning that the British military and civilian authorities made sure that they worked in a legal framework, or they made efforts to create the legal framework in which their actions would be justifiable. Having done so permitted them many things. First, it allowed them to present an image of legality and legitimacy that could be used for propaganda purposes. This image was so strong that decades afterwards some academics were still able to defend the British record in colonial counterinsurgency and even present it as a model. Secondly, it allowed their personnel to operate with impunity. In this regard, the careful selection of documents for preservation and the destruction of some files before their shipment to the archives in the United Kingdom after the proclamation of Malaya’s independence in 1957 also played an important part.289 Thirdly, it permitted a swift and decisive treatment of all groups and individuals deemed as security threats, while assuaging their officers and troops that everything is ethical and normal.290

288 A similar interpretation can be found in Huw Bennett, “'A very salutary effect': The Counter-Terror Strategy in the Early Malayan Emergency, June 1948 to December 1949” in Journal of Strategic Studies, 32: 3 (2009), 415 — 444 289 Ian Cobain, Owen Bowcott and Richard Norton-Taylor, “Britain destroyed records of colonial crimes”, The Guardian, 18 April 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/apr/18/britain-destroyed- records-colonial-crimes last consulted on 19 October 2012. 290 The legal aspects of the British approach to counterinsurgency in the late colonial era, with special references to Malaya have been masterfully analysed in David French, The British Way in Counter- Insurgency, 1945-1967, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. The above interpretation in these matters owes a lot to this work. 108 One of the most important legal perspectives was to consider the United

Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a non-binding document and to also label the communist insurgents initially as common-law bandits and then as terrorists.

Failing to recognize the crisis as a civil war permitted the authorities to ignore the provisions of the Geneva conventions for the treatment of prisoners of war, by denying the status of legal combatants to their enemies.291 The Emergency Regulations that were adopted therefore legalised deportations, resettlement, and destruction of property.292

Even more poignantly, they suspended habeas corpus, allowing for indefinite detention without trial of suspected sympathizers of the MCP; the most ruthless provision, applied in a few hundred cases, called for mandatory death penalty for anyone caught in possession of an illegal firearm.293 The judges were forced to issue this punishment, making their independence a theoretical notion.294

In the aftermath of the assassination of three British citizens on 16 June 1948 and the subsequent proclamation of Emergency throughout Malaya, the British authorities moved swiftly against those identified by the civilian intelligence agencies as the most dangerous in the Chinese community. An immediate program of deportations, justified mostly by their lack of Malayan citizenship, was started, with whole families removed from their homes and deported to mainland China. 295 After a lull in the program caused by the victory of the communists in the Chinese Civil War in

291 See for different perspectives on the topic Charles Townshend, Britain’s Civil Wars; John Newsinger, British Counterinsurgency; Thomas R. Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency, 1919-1960, London: Macmillan, 1990. 292 For instance, according to Regulation 17D the High Commissioner could order the arrest of whole villages proved to aid the guerrillas; in the first nine months of 1949 was used 16 times with 6000 people detained, Julian Paget, Counter-Insurgency Campaigning, 54. 293 Most prominent case was that of one of the few Indians allied with the communists, S.A. Ganapathy, a former president of the Pan-Malayan Federation of Trade Unions, who was hanged by the British authorities on 4 May 1949 for illegally possessing a revolver, Anthony Short, The Communist Insurrection in Malaya 1948-1960, 210. 294 Richard Clutterbuck, The Long Long War, 39. 295 Whole villages were sometimes deported, Karl Hack, “The Malayan Emergency as Counter- Insurgency Paradigm”. 109 September 1949, the deportations were resumed, as Mao Zedong was willing to show the world that the new regime was a home to all oppressed.296 In total, 12,000 Chinese were deported in the course of the Emergency. As the government had moved extremely fast, both immediately before and immediately after against the known

Communist and trade union elites in Malaya’s main cities (especially Singapore,

Malacca and Kuala Lumpur), this effectively deprived the MCP of an urban arm, constraining it to a rural and jungle-based approach.

Although anti-colonial and leftist riots in the big cities were erupting as late as

1957, they were never serious threats and the simple shipment of Ghurkha battalions from the mainland to Singapore and their parading through the streets quelled the most serious disturbances.297 To illustrate this point one can look at the 1954 and 1956 riots rocking the streets of Singapore. Both of them were organized and led by the pro- communist student organizations and the city and involved school lock-downs and ample street marches. In May 1954 police broke down riots with dozens wounded and arrested.298 Government closing of two schools and arresting pro-communist student organizers caused the more serious riots of October 1956. The demonstrators attacked and burned police and European cars and after police failed to quell the disturbances regular British army battalions were sent in, blocking the main choke points of

Singapore. 12 people were killed, 11 by the police and 2,346 arrests were made. In the combined operation, helicopters were used, dropping teargas and dye on the crowds.299

Vast numbers of those arrested during the Emergency were not deported, but instead were held for years without trial in what were effectively internment camps.

296 Martin Shipway, Decolonization and its Impact, 169. 297 Richard Clutterbuck, The Long Long War, 30. 298 Richard Clutterbuck, Conflict and Violence in Singapore and Malaysia, 1945-1983, Boulder: Westview Press, 1985, 82-83. 299 Ibid., 121-141. During the events, 31 vehicles were burned, 101 damaged and three buildings were burned down. 110 Deprived from contact with their families, thousands of suspected collaborators and sympathizers of the rebels lived in makeshift barracks and huts, guarded by Malay troops officered by British personnel. Hard labour with very little pay was the norm in these camps, though the detainees had time to discuss their political options, either remaining steadfast or choosing to repent. 300 Some, though very few, were able to escape without getting shot and joined the rebels. Drawing from the inmates in these camps, a re-education centre was created and its success, at least as reported by those running it, was notable.301

The most notorious aspect of the population control policies in Malaya was the vast program of internal deportation, called in official documents and subsequent academic literature “resettlement”. The British colonial government realized soon after initial military operations failed to destroy the insurgents that one of its most important strategies needs to be the separation of the rebels from their sources of support. As the

MCP was 90% Chinese and drew its strength from the poor elements of this ethnic group of the peninsula, the authorities resolved to target the group in order to destroy the Min Yuen (People’s Movement), the communist logistical and intelligence network operating in its midst. While this was realised fairly early, the crystallization of the policy was in the proposals issued by Lieutenant-General Harold Briggs in the spring of

1950. The outline of his strategy called for: dominating the populated area, securing them and use them as information sources; breaking up the Min Yuen in the populated areas; therefore to isolate the bandits from the food and information supply

300 Rashid Maidin, The Memoirs of Rashid Maidin. 301 The centre was opened at Taiping in the state of Perak in November 1949 and it processed (re- educated) 1280 Chinese until March 1953 of which only 8 “relapsed” into Communism, Thomas R. Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency, 1919-1960, 114. 111 organization; destroying the bandits by forcing them to attack the security forces in the secured territory.302

Internal deportation was identified early on as the best way to deal with the rebel’s support network.303 Indeed, programs of moving the rural ethnic Chinese in government-controlled communities started in 1949 under the High Commissioner Sir

Henry Gurney304, but were brought to their full intensity under High Commissioner and

Director of Operations General Sir Gerald Templer, who ruled Malaya with proconsul powers from 1952 to 1954. It was during this latter period when the program was fully completed and the results became apparent, although it can be argued that already by

1952 the policy had broken the back of the insurgency. 305 Overall, it involved the destruction of the squatters’ way of life, as all of them – half a million people – were forced to move from their villages (kampongs) in the jungle’s fringes to a number of

“New Villages” in areas closer to the coast and to the main plantations and tin mines. In addition to that, another half a million Chinese already working on the plantations and tin mines were regrouped from their initial lodgings to government controlled and policed settlements. Numbers of the deported reached 423,000 for the Chinese squatters relocated in 410 new villages and about 650,000 mine and estate workers settled in wired-in villages. They accounted for about half of the entire Chinese community in

Malaya.306

302 “The Briggs Plan” CAB 21/1681 MAL C(50)23, Appendix, 24 May 1950 in A.J. Stockwell (ed.), Malaya, Part II, 217. 303 Telegram from Henry Gurney to Creech Jones CO717/167/52849/2/1948, ff 108-110, 25 October 1948 in A.J. Stockwell (ed.), Malaya, Part II, 77-79. 304 Cabinet memorandum by Creech Jones CAB 129/33/1, CP (49) 52, 5 March 1949 in A.J. Stockwell (ed.), Malaya, Part II, 118. 305 Karl Hack, ““Iron Claws on Malaya”: The Historiography of the Malayan Emergency” in Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 30, No. 1 (1999), 109. This can be seen in the significant drop in MCP attacks after this year, with the MRLA forced to merely struggle for its survival. 306 David French, Army, Empire, and Cold War. The British Army and Military Policy, 1945-1971, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012, 115. 112 The process of deportation itself was painful enough. Government troops usually arrived in a village and gave its inhabitants a few hours to gather their belongings after which they were herded in trucks and moved to their new places of residence. The troops then burned the village and destroyed the crops. To assuage their feelings, their superiors assured European soldiers and officers that the squatters were just nomads and the kampongs just temporary shelters. 307 Obviously, the Chinese peasants were not able to collect all of their belongings and they were seldom compensated for their losses.308

The “New Villages” were sometimes portrayed as clean, organized and safe communities offering their inhabitants security from attacks, good roads, schools and medical assistance.309 Obviously this is true in a certain regard, though in the initial phases of the resettlement programs those who lived in the new communities found very little in terms of hygiene and education, at least until the government got organized and financed this program accordingly. The Chinese families were indeed allotted a small plot to build a hut and grow some crops and a sum to support them for their first five months.310 They were also promised titles of property to the lands they were going to cultivate.311 But from the perspective of the former squatters the reality of their new homes must have been strikingly different. Undergoing the trauma of having been moved from their homes, they found themselves in new, unknown surroundings, confined in what were effectively camps surrounded by barbwire, some with night

307 ibid. 308 As one of the classic analysts of the Emergency said: “putting the squatter inside a fence, and quickly, was all that seemed to matter”, Richard Stubbs, Hearts and Minds in Guerrilla Warfare, 103. 309 Robert Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency, 121; James E. Dougherty, “The Guerrilla War in Malaya”, 303. As late as 2010 some could write: “The Chinse villages were not constructed as concentration or labour camps, but as politically engaged and progressive communities”, David H. Ucko, “The Malayan Emergency: The Legacy and Relevance of a Counter‐ Insurgency Success Story” in Defence Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1-2 (2010), 26. 310 Julian Paget, Counter-Insurgency Campaigning, 59. 311 Thomas R. Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency, 1919-1960, 116. 113 perimeter lighting. Obviously, night moves were prohibited. Moreover, the villages were for many years guarded by police units raised almost entirely from the ethnic

Malays, who were not necessarily displaying a very endearing attitude towards the

Chinese.312 It took a long time until the effect of government propaganda was positive and the authorities were able to replace the Malay policemen with Chinese Home

Guards insuring the security of the New Villages.313 As Karl Hack argues, “hearts and minds” approaches were auxiliary and anyway they came late to the New Villages, making their effect in the years after 1952, a long time after the bulk of the resettlement had taken place.314

Understanding that a main priority for destroying Min Yuen was the classification of all possible supporters, the government started issuing identification cards to all of the inhabitants of the new settlements, thus tracking their moves and connections. The identity cards comprised personal details, a photograph and fingerprint. By identity controls when leaving or entering the village and random controls on the roads, any suspect individual or move could be thus detected and brought to the attention of intelligence agencies. 315 The MCP understood this soon enough and it strove to destroy the identification cards of anyone they encountered, thus mostly insuring that the civilians went through a harrowing bureaucratic process of having to renew their cards.

Possibly the most efficient COIN policy which was permitted by the resettlement program was strict food control and rationing. As noted before, Malayan soil cannot easily support vast numbers of people and the jungle itself, where guerrillas

312 Richard Clutterbuck, Guerrillas and Terrorists, 39; Richard Clutterbuck, The Long Long War, 40. 313 John Newsinger, British Counterinsurgency, 41. 314 Karl Hack, “Iron Claws on Malaya”, 124. 315 Richard Clutterbuck, The Long Long War, 38. 114 were forced to operate soon after the beginning of the crisis, is even less able to provide food to large numbers of people dwelling in it, especially if they are not accustomed to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. By destroying the squatter settlements the British cut the lifeline they could give to the communist guerrillas.316 To insure that food would not even trickle from the New Villages, strict food controls were implemented at the entrance of the settlements. The Chinese workers, marched daily to their new working places, rubber plantations, tin mines or agricultural plots, were subjected to systematic searches and controls for food. Workers were prevented for having any food for lunch; when food was issued to the inhabitants of the villages, it usually consisted of fried rice

– which in the humid climate became inedible within two days.317

One should add that it was not only the Chinese who were subjected to the resettlement policies. In the early phases of the conflict, until it was realized that they can be turned to the government`s side with better effect if left in the jungles, substantial numbers of Malayan aborigines were also moved to New Villages.

Unaccustomed to a sedentary lifestyle and confinement to enclosed, insalubrious places, the death toll among them was larger than in the ranks of the squatters.318

Resettlement was not, obviously, an easy walk in the park for the military authorities. There were serious instances when the former squatters refused to comply with the government guidance in the new communities, either by continuing their support for the insurgents, either by refusing to cooperate with the police and intelligence agencies in providing information about the rebels. In some cases, the reaction of the authorities involved collective punishments over whole villages. General

316 Peter Lowe, Contending with Nationalism and Communism, 46. 317 The extremely detailed regulations concerning the conduct of searches can be found in Director of Operations, Malaya, The Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya, 3rd edition, 1958. 318 John D. Leary, Violence and the Dream People. 115 Gerald Templer, who otherwise coined the benign “hearts and minds” slogan for his policies, personally carried out such punishments in Tanjong Malim and other recalcitrant communities.319 Put under arrest and an early curfew, the inhabitants and their elders were publicly scolded, fined and had their food rations reduced.320 More often than not, collective punishments eventually produced compliance, although there were voices that doubted their efficiency.321 In a few cases the reaction could be far more brutal. The most notorious incident was at the New Village of Batang Kali, where troops of the 2nd Scots Guards shot and killed under the pretence of an attempted escape

20 unarmed but recalcitrant Chinese villagers, with the whole incident deemed legal by the Attorney General of Malaya.322

Overall, the population control policies were brutal and effective.323 They broke the connections between the MCP and their main source of support, severing intelligence and food supplies for the guerrillas. They allowed government easy access to a population that could be coerced or convinced through different incentives to side with it, while also permitting the development of an information network that was eventually used to eliminate the Min Yuen. It also helped that the policy was combined with a serious propaganda effort aimed at civilians, in which the British-inspired and coordinated Malayan Chinese Association played a great part.324 This psychological warfare component was aiming to show that the communists were even more brutal and violent than the authorities and that the established rule, coupled with promises of land

319 Charles Townshend, Britain’s Civil Wars, 160. 320 On collective punishment in Tanjong Malim, Pekan Jabi and Permatang Tinggi see the letter from Oliver Lyttleton to Grimond CO1022/56 no 35, 10 December 1952 in A.J. Stockwell (ed.), Malaya, Part II, 424-425. 321 For instance, Victor Purcell, Malaysia, London: Thames and Hudson, 1965, 112-113. 322 David French, Army, Empire, and Cold War, 123; Gregory Blaxland, The Regiments Depart, 87 gives 26 dead. 323 Karl Hack, Defence and Decolonisation in Southeast Asia, 114. 324 The MCA regulations were discussed before their adoption with the High Commissioner himself, telegram from H. Gurney to Creech Jones CO537/4242 no 1, 19 December 1948 in A.J. Stockwell (ed.), Malaya, Part II, 88. 116 and citizenship in an independent Malaya was preferable to a government led by the

MCP.325

While without the military component the resettlement policies would have been impossible, they were a key to victory especially in the geographical and social conditions of Malaya, where such a strategy could be followed because it had the support of a vast number of the Malay population and because the government had the resources and willingness to pursue it. It is very hard to think that this is an experience that could be exported in a different setting. While similar efforts – with even greater brutality – were successful in Kenya, they failed spectacularly in Vietnam, with serious effects on the American military effort in the country.326

3.3 Intelligence

In insurgencies that do not escalate to the stage of conventional warfare the military superiority of government forces, both numerically and technologically, is nearly always crushing. The guerrillas seldom score more than a few sparse tactical victories, more often than not in carefully prepared ambushes. When confronted with the full force of the regular military, they need to flee or face defeat and knowing this simple reality is enough to highlight the importance of intelligence for the counterinsurgents. In Malaya much as elsewhere, finding the enemy was akin to winning, as the communists’ military could not withstand the full power of the British

325 Kumar Ramakrishna, Emergency Propaganda. The Winning of Malayan Hearts and Minds, 1948- 1958, Richmond: Curzon, 2002, 205. 326 Ian F.W. Beckett, “Robert Thompson and the British Advisory Mission to South Vietnam, 1961-1965” in Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol.8, No.3 (1997), 41-63. 117 police, army and special forces. This section will examine the organization of information gathering and intelligence analysis during the Emergency, as well as the methods that proved efficient in dealing with the MCP-led rebellion.

It is interesting to note from the beginning a peculiarity of the organization of intelligence in Malaya, which sets the Emergency firmly inside the British tradition of

COIN. While other governments, when confronted with armed rebellions, have decided to entrust the military with the task of defeating the guerrillas and therefore allowed military intelligence to play the main part in the conflict, the British in most of their colonial conflicts chose to entrust civilian agencies with this mission. This preference came from the persistent view that counterinsurgency is mostly a matter of restoring law and order, not of military victory, and that civilian agencies are the most legitimate and appropriate organizations for accomplishing this task. 327 Considering their enemies closer, at least in behaviour, to armed bandits rather than political opponents, the British authorities thought that a police-type information gathering structure was better suited to dealing with them than military intelligence structures, which were designed for conventional warfare. There were, of course, other reasons of a more practical nature, such as the fact that the military intelligence structures of the army units in Malaya were woefully inadequate. 328 In many instances they consisted of just one officer either deemed by his superiors unfit for command or staff roles, or one who had intelligence tasks as additional burdens to a larger administrative role.

The main organizations dealing with civilian intelligence matters before the beginning of the Emergency were the Malayan Security Service and the Criminal

Investigations Department of the Police. While the first concerned itself mainly with

327 Richard Clutterbuck, The Long Long War, 178. 328 Field intelligence was nearly lacking in 1948, John Coates, Supressing Insurgency. An Analysis of the Malayan Emergency, 1948-1954, Boulder: Westview Press, 1992, 34. 118 political intelligence, targeting immediately after the war all groups opposed to the continuation of British rule in Malaya, the second was monitoring all incidents concerning armed violence and had a good documentation and identification filing system that played a vital part in the early stages of the conflict.329 Accounts of their efficiency differ, with some authors considering their performance at the beginning of the crisis a complete failure.330 However, some accomplishments cannot be denied. The

MSS, despite being understaffed especially in Chinese affairs, played a very important role in the spring of 1948 and in the early weeks after the declaration of Emergency in

June the same year, helping the authorities first to break-up union action and then to arrest many of the known communists activists and sympathizers early on in the conflict.331 Intelligence agents working with the crack paramilitary unit Ferret Force helped in the discovery and killing on 16 July 1948 of Lau Yew, the leader of the

Military Committee of the MCP, a serious blow to that organization. 332 The MSS, through preventive work, also prevented generalized riots in the early phase of the conflict.333

Internal squabbles and lack of confidence in what the MSS could accomplish, combined with a conviction that the Emergency took the service by surprise eventually led to its demise through a take-over of its functions by a strengthened Malayan Special

Branch (SB), a part – like in the United Kingdom – of the local police.334 In time, the authorities ensured that the SB ran the entire intelligence effort in Malaya; they were

329 Especially on the Security Service see Leon Comber, “The Malayan Security Service (1945-1948)” in Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 18, No. 3 (2003), 128-153. 330 Calder Walton, Empire of Secrets. British Intelligence, the Cold War and the Twilight of Empire, London: Harper Press, 2013, 165. 331 David French, Army, Empire, and Cold War, 113. 332 Robert Jackson, The Malayan Emergency. The Commonwealth’s Wars 1948-1966, London: Routledge, 1991, 28. 333 Richard Clutterbuck, The Long Long War, 32-33 334 Geoffrey Fairbarn, Revolutionary Guerrilla Warfare, 138-139. 119 hoping that centralization would lead to strategic success. 335 They could reasonably expect the military intelligence structures and regular units to acquiesce to this power structure because current army regulations and decades-old traditions concerning imperial policing, based on the previously mentioned works of Callwell and Gwynn, were defining the roles of the armed forces in counterinsurgency as support to the actions of the civilian government.336

Many resources were invested in the new organization, especially concerning personnel.337 Leaders with experience in colonial affairs in India and Palestine were brought in. Also many lower-ranking cadres with service during the Jewish uprising in

Palestine, especially police sergeants, where brought by the hundreds to serve in the SB or in the police forces proper. All military units were eventually required to transmit all the information they gathered in the field to local officers of the SB. 338 Ample debriefings after any mission in the field were compulsory. To insure the smoothness of this apparent civilian intrusion in military affairs the government seconded between two and three-dozen army military intelligence officers to the Special Branch. 339 These officers fulfilled two main tasks; the first was the analysis of information for operational purposes and the second, no less important, to serve as a transmission belt between regular military units and the civilian leaders of the SB. 340 The other main British agencies with intelligence attributions, the MI5 and MI6 concerned themselves with strategic information and did not play a direct role against the communist guerrillas.

335 Georgina Sinclair, “‘The Sharp End of the Intelligence Machine’: The Rise of the Malayan Police Special Branch 1948–1955” in Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 26, No. 4, (2011), 460-477. 336 See Chapter 2. 337 The evolution of Special Branch numbers was: in 1948 12 officers and 44 inspectors, in 1953 123 officers and 195 inspectors, Karl Hack, “British Intelligence and Counter-Insurgency in the Era of Decolonization: The Example of Malaya” in Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 14, No. 2 (1999), 128. 338 Charles Townshend, Britain’s Civil Wars, 29. 339 For the reorganization, especially under Templer, see Richard J. Aldrich, The Hidden Hand, 506-507. 340 Anthony Short, The Communist Insurrection in Malaya 1948-1960, 363. 120 However, the massive strengthening of intelligence and law enforcement agencies during the Emergency led some to conclude that Malaya had become a police state.341

In addition to an expansion of personnel by bringing in British specialists, the

SB was greatly strengthened over the years by the recruitment of a substantial number of Chinese and Chinese-speaking agents of European origin. This was extremely necessary, given the paucity of such workers in the early phases of the conflict. Their role was fundamental in interrogating captured and surrendered enemy personnel, in reading captured documents, in producing fake propaganda and in crafting targeted messages aimed at certain guerrillas and guerrilla groups.342 Chinese officers in the SB and the police also helped to forge strong bonds between the elite of their ethnic group and the Malayan and British leaders working towards a controlled transition towards independence.

The methods employed and avenues taken in defeating insurgency in Malaya were, like in many other COIN campaigns, a mixture of police work, counter-terrorism and military intelligence procedures such as scouting. It would be hard to make judgements as to which particular method was the most successful, as the records are still not completely open, and there is much to learn also from failures and enterprises that only yielded limited success.

Intelligence agencies everywhere would prefer informative penetration, through the placement or recruitment of agents inside the enemy organization, as it can provide authorities with precious information on most aspects of organization, training, tactics, plans and leadership. Great victories could be scored by informative penetration, an assertion amply proven in a COIN fought in the same time as Malaya: a single agent

341 Calder Walton, Empire of Secrets, 184. 342 Leon Comber, Malaya’s Secret Police 1945-60. The Role of the Special Branch in the Malayan Emergency, Singapore: ISEAS Publishing, 2008, 133. 121 placed inside the headquarters of the Huk communist rebels in the Philippines provided information which led to the arrest of 1175 and the destruction of that organization’s logistic network. No such major success was achieved in Malaya during the Emergency, although one could probably argue that before its beginning the handling of Lai Tek provided major benefits in avoiding an immediate post-war insurgency.343

Once the MCP and its military wing, first styled Malayan Peoples’ Anti-British

Army and then renamed the Malayan Races Liberation Army (MRLA) took to the jungle it became extremely difficult to plant agents or moles inside the jungle camps proper.344 The few agents that were attracted were hard to contact and debriefing was next to impossible without permanently removing them from the rebel organization.345

If immediately “turned”, the Special Branch could return to the jungle surrendered enemy personnel (SEP) within 24 or 48 hours since they were apprehended. Waiting for longer would jeopardize their successful re-insertion in the communist guerrilla groups, and the counter-intelligence structures of the MRLA were particularly vigilant and ruthless. Throughout the conflict the communists routinely purged their ranks in the hunt for British spies (or “running dogs”), which contributed to the near-impossibility of information penetration.346

Of far greater use was the recruitment of agents inside the support network of the communists or in the “New Villages”. The voluntary agents and those willing to cooperate when offered the possibility were offered cash stipends and – at the end of their mission – relocation to Hong Kong.347 The recalcitrant would be coerced through

343 John S. Pustay, Counterinsurgency Warfare, New York: The Fee Press, 1965, 106-109. 344 Anthony Short, The Communist Insurrection in Malaya 1948-1960, 362. 345 Leon Comber, Malaya’s Secret Police, 81-82. 346 Karl Hack, “British Intelligence and Counter-Insurgency”, 132. 347 Thomas R. Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency, 1919-1960, 117; Martin Shipway, Decolonization and its Impact, 168. Substantial sums were offered for the heads of the guerrillas, 30000 pounds for Chin 122 threats of various intensities that could culminate with the placement of communist propaganda materials in their houses. 348 Facing the prospect of imprisonment, many chose to work as informants for the government. The information they provided targeted the Min Yuen communist support organization revealing the names and moves of its members, while also providing insights into the MCP’s attempts to directly approach the villagers.349 Among the most precious agents the SB could have were the couriers who moved information between the jungle guerrillas and the Min Yuen in the villages. 350 The rebels recruited the couriers mainly from the ranks of the rubber tappers; these had valid reasons to be alone for a long time in the jungle without arousing suspicion.351 When government intelligence managed to turn them into their own agents, the couriers helped in tracking enemy movements and camps and in many occasions provided the necessary information for organizing ambushes, which throughout the conflict were the most efficient tactic for killing and capturing the largest number of insurgents.352

Handling the informers without revealing their identities, particularly in the tightly knit Chinese rural communities was a difficult task, requiring time and subtlety.

SB officers and other intelligence agencies working for the SB would conduct large- scale searches and interrogations of whole villages as a cover for the debriefing of their agents. For instance, the Chinese Affairs Department (supposedly an aid agency) was mounting Operation Letter Box, involving visits at dawn in Chinese villages by teams of intelligence officers who administered questionnaires in Chinese and assured the

Peng, 15000 for Yeung Kwo, the military chief and 15000 for Lau Lee, the propaganda leader or chief, see Julian Paget, Counter-Insurgency Campaigning, 50 fn. 2. 348 Richard J. Aldrich, The Hidden Hand, 508; Calder Walton, Empire of Secrets, 186-187. 349 Karl Hack, Defence and Decolonisation in Southeast Asia, 125-126. 350 Brian Stewart, “Winning in Malaya: An Intelligence Success Story” in Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 14, No. 4, (1999), 279. 351 John Coates, Supressing Insurgency, 157-158. 352 Director of Operations, Malaya, The Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya, (ATOM) 3rd edition, 1958, XI. 123 locals that the answers would be anonymous.353 Interviews were conducted in private on a one to one basis.354 It was more of a psychological warfare operation than intelligence gathering, for it served mostly to make insurgents nervous and keep them on guard.

The other main sources of human intelligence were, of course, SEPs and captured enemy personnel. Though usually apprehended by army units, special forces teams or jungle police companies, their main interrogation was undergone in safe locations by SB officers. Up until recently it was thought that relatively little physical brutality was involved in the interrogation process. 355 However, new declassified sources show that the interrogation of captured and surrendered enemies involved sleep deprivation of up to 72 hours, threats, humiliations and sometimes torture involving beatings and the removal of fingernails.356 Information concerning immediate enemy moves was fast relayed as tactical intelligence to the units on the ground, with the hope that it would lead to the discovery of other insurgent groups or camps. 357 But the interrogators were also trying to extract information about enemy organization, morale, identity, leadership, weapons and patterns of operation. Larger, analytical documents based on these interrogations formed the strategic intelligence read by the military and civilian decision makers. It is interesting to note that the British pioneered the use of sociologists and their methods in the formulation of profiles of the rebels through interrogations based on scientific research methods.358

Other elements were of significant importance in the acquiring of information.

In the early stages of the Emergency, before a concerted effort to acquire and make

353 Brian Stewart, “Winning in Malaya”, 276. 354 On the procedures for interrogation, both for civilians and troops see ATOM, XIV. 355 Leon Comber, Malaya’s Secret Police, 83. 356 Calder Walton, Empire of Secrets, 187-188, 190. 357 Anthony Short, The Communist Insurrection in Malaya 1948-1960, 364. 358 Lucian W. Pye, Guerrilla Communism in Malaya. Its Social and Political Meaning, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956. 124 good use of human intelligence was on its way, the study of captured documents was a main source of information.359 It helped establish the moves, identities and the general organizational structure of the insurgent regiments.360 The documents were generally obsolete by the time of their deciphering (a process slowed by the initial lack of

Chinese-speaking officers) and unusable as tactical and operational intelligence.

However, they could provide a good strategic picture of the insurgency, especially when documents of the Central Committee of the MCP outlining a Maoist-inspired campaign or revealing a drop in morale were eventually captured.

In a more gruesome manner, the bodies of dead insurgents – killed in fire fights or discovered in the jungle were used as sources.361 Regulations asked for troops in the field to remove the killed guerrillas and to transport them to safe bases for identification, either by carrying them or by calling, when possible, for helicopter evacuation. In the early stages, when evacuation was impossible, some troops would chop up the head and hands of the guerrillas and leave the rest of their bodies where they fell. 362 This became a court martial offence eventually and it was replaced by taking at least two photos of each cadaver if evacuation was impossible. This method allowed for keeping good track of progress and carefully identifying the guerrillas, with the aim of extracting further information from their known relatives and friends.363

As the MRLA was quite unsophisticated from a technological perspective and made virtually no use of electronic communication systems, signals intelligence was of

359 Peter Dennis, Jeffrey Grey, Emergency and Confrontation. Australian Military Operations in Malaya and Borneo 1950-1966, Sydney: Allen&Unwin, 1996, 97. 360 Richard J. Aldrich, The Hidden Hand, 500. 361 Malaya memorandum by O. Lyttelton, CAB 129/48, C(51)59, 21 December 1951 in A.J. Stockwell (ed.), Malaya, Part II, 344. 362 Brian Stewart, Smashing Terrorism in the Malayan Emergency. The Vital Contribution of the Police, Selangor: Pelanduk Publications, 2004, 24. 363 Director of Operations, Malaya, The Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya, 3rd edition, 1958, XIV. 125 no major importance in collecting information of the guerrillas.364 The SB attempted though to put communication technology in the service of the COIN campaign through the use of specially modified radios that were placed on the market with the hope that they would fall in the hands of the communists. Incorporating a homing device, it was hoped that the interception of the use of these radios would lead to the location of a rebel headquarters. However, success was limited.365

While the Special Branch intelligence effort focused on information penetration, the recruitment and running of agents, identification of dead enemy personnel, the deciphering of captured documents and a limited signals intelligence program, the

British Army units focused on gathering intelligence through the traditional approach of scouting.366 While local Malay troops and policemen were of good use, most accounts of the Emergency place a great emphasis on the recruitment of Iban trackers from

Borneo.367 Living their whole lives in very similar conditions as the communists were attempting to do in Malaya, their experience in finding enemies through treacherous jungle paths was great; the fact that some of them had a tradition of head-hunting undoubtedly helped. The Iban initially came in limited numbers of a few dozens, were attached to army units as their scouting element and also passed their expertise to regular soldiers, of whom especially the Gurkhas proved very good students.368 In time their numbers grew enough that they were able to form an entire battalion, the Sarawak

Rangers. Scouting was recognized as an extremely important information-gathering

364 Anthony Short, “The Malayan Emergency”, 66. 365 Richard J. Aldrich, The Hidden Hand, 504. 366 David H. Ucko, “The Malayan Emergency”, 23. 367 Gregory Blaxland, The Regiments Depart, 81. 368 Robert Jackson, The Malayan Emergency, 38. 126 source by the Army leadership, which included a special course on tracking in the curriculum of its Training Centre of the Far East Land Forces.369

3.4 Military Operations and the Elimination of Rebel Groups

This section examines military operations during the Malayan emergency, with special attention paid to force structure and numbers, operational options such as sweeps, cordoning, search and destroy missions, ambushes, deep strikes and air operations. The connection between intelligence and operations will also be examined, especially in the context of the elimination of armed groups of the MCP.

A significant number of academics, writing years and decades after the events, have judged the initial reaction of the British military commanders as inadequate and ineffectual and argued that it took years, as many as four, until coherent and efficient operations were finally undertaken. At the face of things and if we only assess military efficiency and success by the number of enemies killed or captured and by a standard of total victory, these opinions might stand true. But they do little justice from a historical perspective and, arguably, even from a strategic one.

When the Emergency was declared in the second half of June 1948 guerrilla attacks had already killed dozens of people in the preceding weeks. The British military command, devoid of intelligence coming from the inner structures of the MCP, had little insight in the intentions and military dispositions of the enemy. While it was generally known that the guerrillas of the MRLA numbered around 8,000 fighters

369 John Coates, Supressing Insurgency, 167. 127 divided in twelve regiments and the type and quantity of weapons of their disposal was more or less easy to estimate, hardly anything was known about the strategy the rebels intended to pursue. Only much later, in 1949, captured documents of the Communist leadership gave inkling into overall enemy perceptions and strategy. Not knowing whether the rebels intend to pursue a terrorist campaign, a skirmishes strategy or an all- out attempt to establish safe bases inside the country from which to launch conventional attacks, the government’s commanders also had to take into account the feeble state of the forces at their disposal.370 Although on paper the number of available battalions in

June 1948 looked sufficient, most of them were under strength, especially the Gurkhas who took over a year and a half to reach full complement.371 Reinforcements could be brought in and indeed they came, from the United Kingdom and from Hong Kong, but it would take weeks and months before they could be put to good effect in the field.372

The police was in no state, either numerically or through its training, to be of help against the guerrillas.

It is in this context that one should try to understand the initial military moves of the government commanders. One of the first actions was to create two paramilitary units, Shawforce and Ferret Force, who would make great use of available human resources specialized in jungle warfare and take the fight to the enemy’s ground. The

Ferret Force would become the best known of the two. The unit was composed of former officers of the Force 136 (the British commando group and liaison with the communist rebels during the Japanese occupation), Malayan policemen and local

British planters and overseers of the tin mines.373 The Ferret Force was structured in six teams of 15 men and operated mostly independently in a strike role, sometimes

370 Richard Clutterbuck, The Long Long War, 42. 371 Anthony Short, The Communist Insurrection in Malaya 1948-1960, 114. 372 Gregory Blaxland, The Regiments Depart, 81. 373 Julian Paget, Counter-Insurgency Campaigning, 52. 128 achieving significant success. As a small force, though, it was only as much as it could do. To add to that, its maverick status inside the British government forces made it hard to be accepted by both political officials and Army generals and eventually it was disbanded at the end of 1948. Its expertise was solid enough though and many of its members became trainers for other, regular military units and its experienced commanders led the jungle warfare school established to teach incoming officers and

NCO’s.374

But the commando forces were just a small element of the initial military reaction of the British generals. Using the forces they had at their disposal and – in the months that followed – the reinforcement brigades, conventional military operations were launched against the communist insurgents. These operations took the form of sweeps though the rural areas experiencing attacks and soon moved into the jungle fringes. Whole battalions would move in specific areas in full strength, combing at best they could the villages, roads and – much more difficult – the jungle.375 The sweeps were from early on combined arms operations, with artillery pounding the target areas before infantry moved in and Spitfire fighter planes machine-gunning suspected enemy positions. In nearly all of the cases but especially in the early phases of the conflict the sweeps were “blind” operations, with little or no tactical intelligence available. 376 In terms of killed and captured enemies, the large sweeps produced very little for the amount of effort involved. But one could argue that the swift, massive, violent reaction of the government forces prevented the communist guerrillas from ever being able to grow from a small, unconventional force into a serious military threat. Complementing

374 Daniel Marston, “Lost and Found in the Jungle”, 98. 375 An early example is the September 1948 big offensive mounted in Johore led by the Ferret Force and three battalions of infantry. Twelve camps were destroyed; vast caches of ammunition were discovered as well as propaganda books. 27 insurgents were killed in the operation, Gregory Blaxland, The Regiments Depart, 82-83. 376 Comprehensive descriptions of sweeps can be found in John Coates, Supressing Insurgency and Sam C. Sarkesian, Unconventional Conflicts in a New Security Era. 129 the sweeps, the decision to station forces of company strength in strategic positions between villages and between villages and rubber plantations and tin mines vastly disrupted enemy action. These quick reaction groups could reach a road-connected position in a few minutes after an attack and deliver massive support for the defenders. 377 The sweeps and the strategic-placed companies effectively forced the

MRLA to stop operating in battalion and company strength, vastly decreasing its firepower during attacks and therefore its prospect for anything else than minimal success.

It is harder to justify the option for continuing the sweeps involving large forces for many years after the initial operational objective had been achieved. Indeed, despite the operational focus shifting to other options from 1949 on, the sweeps remained a feature of military action in Malaya basically until the end of massive British involvement.378 Until the mid – 1950s and even later (so years after the departure of

General Sir Gerald Templer, who according to many completely changed the British approach in Malaya), the armed forces would sweep the jungle in vast numbers with massive air and artillery support, after previously dividing it in squares according to maps obtained through careful air photographing of the target areas. 379 Despite mediocre success at best, the operations were continued, apparently being considered appropriate by each wave of British officers and generals sent from commands in

Germany to serve for a time in Malaya. Commonwealth forces were also trained for these specific operations rather than any different options; the Australian battalions for instance were taught to place an emphasis on conventional tactics at their training base

377 Julian Paget, Counter-Insurgency Campaigning, 53. 378 Richard Clutterbuck, The Long Long War, 52. 379 In Operation Nawab (in early 1949) two reinforced battalions combed an area while also setting up ambushes. For all their efforts they reported one kill and 59 arrests. In October 1949 in Operation Leo 24 platoons patrolled an area of Johore for ten days, with artillery and bombers pounding the area in advance. They accomplished nothing, John Coates, Supressing Insurgency, 150. 130 at Canungra and they were indeed called to operate in such fashion when they were eventually deployed.380 One could wonder whether in this regard the British Army did indeed become by the middle of the conflict the efficient “learning institution” that experts such as John Nagl claimed it was.381

Large-scale sweeps were used in conjunction with a set of other military operations right from the start of the Emergency. Cordoning and searches stood prominently among these and were features of military action in Malaya throughout the conflict. While the purpose of the sweeps had been to dislodge the enemy from areas supposedly under its control or its threat and in this regard were more clearly in the framework of conventional military approaches, cordoning and searches were mostly pursued in the areas already under some measure of government control. Their outlook owed more to policing actions than military operations per se, being conceived as criminal-apprehending tactics – which suited the description of guerrillas as “bandits”, prominent until General Gerald Templer had it changed to “communist terrorists”.382 In the regular cordoning and search operations a force usually of company or platoon strength would surround a village, block the roads leading to and from it and would conduct, together with intelligence officers of the SB a thorough search of the houses and a screening and interrogation of the inhabitants. After the identification cards with photograph and fingerprints had been issued, the cordoning and search operations were an efficient method for reinforcing population control. While this operational option

380 Peter Dennis, Jeffrey Grey, Emergency and Confrontation, 90-91, 93-95. 381 In his widely read Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife. Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam, Westport: Praeger, 2002. 382 Gregory Blaxland, The Regiments Depart, 105. 131 sometimes produced good intelligence and even led to the capture of insurgents and their sympathizers, it was helpful, but not in any way decisive for military victory.383

Both large-scale sweeps and cordoning and search operations failed to deliver victory by themselves for a multiplicity of reasons, such as the initial scarcity of troops, preparation and intelligence, as well as the MCP’s tactical adaptation to it. Being frustrated in their attempts to establish safe bases in the northern regions of Malaya, the communist insurgents moved to an outright Maoist strategy after December 1948.384

The MRLA established camps deep in the jungle and consolidated its logistical support and network intelligence among the Chinese community and the Aborigines. Instead of large-scale attacks, made impossible by vigorous government action, the classic guerrilla tactics of hit and run and ambushes became the staple of insurgent action in the country.385

These attacks became more and more furious as the resettlement program removed the Chinese squatters from easy to reach positions and put them under strong governmental control. Indeed, the height of Communist strikes in Malaya was reached simultaneously with the peak of the internal deportation program. 386 Until the new villages were consolidated and enough security was provided, the insurgents’ attacks could be devastating and a significant number of ethnic Malay policemen made deals for their lives with the insurgents, allowing them to penetrate the villages. Some lucky strikes and ambushes could score significant morale and propaganda victories, such as

383 In Operation Cascara, mounted in September 1949 by the 2nd Coldstream Guards, 1400 people were screened, one insurgent was killed and 33 guerrillas were apprehended, David French, Army, Empire, and Cold War, 114. 384 Gregory Blaxland, The Regiments Depart, 81; Khong Kim Hoong, Merdeka!, 138. 385 On 24 December an ambush against Gurkhas in Kelantan resulted in four troops killed and 13 wounded. On 31 December 1948 the 4th Hussars lost in an ambush in Kelantan the commander of the patrol and six officers killed. The guerrilla ambushes continued in January 1949 in Kedah with Gurkhas losing eigth dead, Gregory Blaxland, The Regiments Depart, 87. 386 Gregory Blaxland, The Regiments Depart, 97. 132 the killing of 18 policemen on 23 March 1950.387 Famously, a guerrilla group ambushed on 7 October 1951 the car of the British High Commissioner Sir Henry Gurney, killing him.

However, once the resettlement was completed by the early 1950s and the

Malay police guarding it was replaced by a strong and armed Chinese Home Guard, massive reinforcements increased the number of available troops to 4,000 and the number of policemen to 67,000, and jungle warfare was taught to arriving officers,

NCO’s, soldiers and policemen, the British were in a position to launch more flexible operations against the insurgents.388

The first important operational change was to switch from battalion and company-strength missions to a vastly higher number of platoon and squad-strength operations. 389 This was permitted by the initial large-scale operations; they made it impossible for the MRLA to attempt large-scale moves. The change allowed for a vast increase in the number of patrols in the jungle, which obviously meant stronger and constant pressure on the insurgents.390 Regular patrols lasted around five days, being limited by the quantity of food the troops could carry and covered a variable area depending on the terrain, roughly of a radius between 5 and 20 miles.391 The difficulty of patrolling in the jungle cannot be overemphasised. In addition to the humid climate, low light which predisposed many to melancholia, difficult terrain and slow marches one needs to add the recurring dangers of falling trees, lice, leeches, snakes and even tigers. The thick bush made it very difficult to spot enemy moves and camps, rendered

387 The guerrillas lost 29 dead to achieve this victory, Robert Jackson, The Malayan Emergency, 33-34. 388 Karl Hack, “The Malayan Emergency as Counter-Insurgency Paradigm”. 389 David H. Ucko, “The Malayan Emergency”, 22; David Ucko, “Countering Insurgents through Distributed Operations: Insights from Malaya 1948–1960” in The Journal of Strategic Studies 30: 1 (2007), 47 – 72. 390 Richard Clutterbuck, The Long Long War, 53; Daniel Marston, “Lost and Found in the Jungle”, 101. 391 Special Forces, especially the SAS, could survive for much longer in the jungle, Robert Jackson, The Malayan Emergency, 37. 133 offensive action difficult and escapes easy.392 All of this combined to make patrolling an extremely strenuous and frustrating enterprise, especially when combined with its low efficiency in terms of kills. It is estimated that it took 6500 hours of patrolling to spot an insurgent and longer to kill one.393

Patrolling by itself would have never led to notable success except for putting constant pressure on the insurgents, but combined with changes in the force structure and composition and other operations it did contribute to victory. The force changes had much to do with eventual adaptation to the conditions of asymmetric warfare in the jungle.394 The impact of the trackers from Borneo has already been mentioned. Far better training was offered by the Far East Land Forces Command to incoming officers and troops, with special counterinsurgency courses.395 Lt. Col. William Walker summed up operational regulations in a textbook, The Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in

Malaya, which became a Bible for the British units fighting in the Emergency.

Special Forces were raised, such as the Malayan Scouts, who inherited the tradition of the Ferret Force and became one of the numbered commandos of the

Special Air Service.396 Outside the military per se, Police Jungle Companies made of

Malay troops, Borneo trackers and officered by British personnel emerged as specialised units. Also notably was the switch from a military effort conducted by forces from the United Kingdom to one in which units from the rest of the empire shared the burden.397 As early as March 1951 the Chief of the Imperial General Staff

392 Brian Stewart, Smashing Terrorism in the Malayan Emergency. 393 John S. Pustay, Counterinsurgency Warfare, 87. 394 And their vast increase in numbers. Already when General Briggs took command in April 1952 he had at his disposal 40000 troops and 80000 auxiliaries, Martin Thomas et. al., Crises of Empire, 62. 395 Daniel Marston, “Lost and Found in the Jungle”, 98. 396 Stephen Twigge, Edwards Hampshire, Graham Macklin, British Intelligence. Secrets, Spies and Sources, Kew: The National Archives, 2008, 104. 397 In 1952 the forces in Malaya were 10 British battalions, 8 Gurkha, 5 Malay, 2 African and one from Fiji, Gregory Blaxland, The Regiments Depart, 102. 134 suggested using colonial troops as best suited to fight colonial insurgencies.398 In the course of the conflict a serious contribution was brought by the battalions of the King’s

African Rifles, the Gurkhas and the Fijian Regiment, who systematically achieved higher, kill ratios than the European battalions.399

Better force structures and improved intelligence led to more successful search and destroy deep-strike missions in the jungle.400 With scouting, fighting and support platoons operating in conjunction, British forces struck at suspected communist camps.

In the rare cases when – mostly through excellent intelligence or more often through enemy negligence – the guerrillas were surprised, the outcome of the strike was the destruction of the insurgent groups. In most cases though, government forces found empty camps; after a search for any possible intelligence materiel, resulting sometimes in the discovery of important documents, the troops would torch the huts. 401 More importantly, they were instructed to systematically destroy any food or any cultivated fields, insuring that returning insurgents would starve. It is important here to mention that military units were systematically destroying across Malaya all cultivated fields that were not under government control and were suspected of being used by the MCP.402

Deep strikes became particularly efficient, at least in the assessment of governmental authorities, after Police Jungle Companies established permanent forts inside the jungles, allowing them to operate in the middle and in the back of the

398 Cabinet Meeting assessing the progress of the Briggs plan PREM 8/1406/2 GEN 345/8, 13 March 1951 in A.J. Stockwell (ed.), Malaya, Part II, 285. 399 John Coates, Supressing Insurgency, 166-167. 400 Ian F. W. Beckett, Modern Insurgencies and Counter-insurgencies, 103. 401 Due to paltry results the missions had their opponents, see Robert Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency, 35. 402 There was also an attempt to use air power in the destruction of the crops, without success, E.D. Smith, Counter-insurgency Operations: Malaya and Borneo, 28. 135 MRLA.403 To this was added the alliance struck with the Aborigines, who were offered by the government food and medical supplies and assistance in return for their cooperation.404 In due course, special Aborigines units were raised and added to the

British forces. Operating in their own environment, they proved to be among the most efficient forces in terms of the kill ratio achieved.405

There seems to be a general agreement that the most successful operations against the MRLA were intelligence-conducted ambushes. With information coming from captured documents, interrogations in the New Villages, the debriefing of SB agents among the Min Yuen couriers but most importantly from captured or surrendered enemy personnel, British units surrounded and blocked roads and points believed to be travelled at certain times by insurgents. When successful, entire enemy groups could be destroyed. 406 However, the ambushes depended for their success not only on good, reliable and fast-transmitted information, but also on good organizational skills of the officers commanding the involved units. The relatively high rate of failure was often blamed on this last aspect.407

In the latter stages of the conflict, especially after 1955, the efficiency of the ambushes was increased by the employment of counter-gangs, the so-called Q squads.408 Early experiments in the use of counter-gangs in Malaya can be traced back to 1949, the year of the formation of the "Chinese Assault Teams". Dressed and

403 On their organization as well as those of other bases established by Special Forces see The Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya, VI.1. 404 Julian Paget, Counter-Insurgency Campaigning, 72. 405 John Coates, Supressing Insurgency, 159. 406 Roy Follows with Hugh Popham, The Jungle Beat. Fighting Terrorists in Malaya 1952-1961, London: Cassell, 1990. 407 The Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya, XI mentions that in 1956 out of 50 ambushes 34 were unsuccessful and of those 28 were due to the inadequacy of the troops and their commanders. 408 Brian Stewart, Smashing Terrorism in the Malayan Emergency, 287. 136 equipped like the insurgents, they were specialized in organizing ambushes. 409 Their descendants, the Q squads were formed by turncoats (gathered from an organizational perspective in the Special Operational Volunteer Force) and SB officers and operated in the jungle in the pretence of being guerrillas and trying to attach themselves to MCP armed units. At certain auspicious times they would turn against their comrades, killing or capturing them. 410 By 1957 they amounted to 10 platoons, each with 24 men.

Assessments of their usefulness vary, some sources considering them of limited use outside the geographical area they knew.411

The air operations conducted in support of land forces vastly aided the military effort in Malaya. Throughout the conflict bombers and fighters of the Royal Air Force conducted strikes at suspected enemy areas, camps and concentrations. 412 From an outright quantitative perspective, although the ordnance dropped came in large quantities, very few guerrillas were killed. However, the psychological effect was deep and led some of the insurgents to surrender.413 Transport aircraft were instrumental in delivering supplies for forces operating deep in the jungle. Without precise timing and the systematic and prompt delivery of food, ammunition and medical supplies at pre- established drop points the patrols and deep-jungle operations would have been by necessity much shorter. Jungle forts would have been impossible to maintain in the absence of air resupply.414

409 Tim Jones, “The British Army and Counter-guerrilla Warfare in Transition, 1944-1952” in Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol. 7, No. 3 (1996), 285. 410 Stephen Twigge et. al., British Intelligence, 105; Leon Comber, Malaya’s Secret Police 1945-60, 165, 285. 411 Riley Sunderland, Antiguerrilla Intelligence in Malaya, 1948-1960, RAND RM-4172-ISA, 1964, 50- 51. 412 Malcolm Postgate, Operation Firedog. Air Support in the Malayan Emergency 1948-1960, London: HMSO, 1992, 149. 413 The military situation in Malaya, memorandum by Mr. Stratchey CAB 21/1681, MAL C(50)21, 17 June 1950 in A.J. Stockwell (ed.), Malaya, Part II, 235. 414 Malcolm Postgate, Operation Firedog, 150-152. 137 Starting in 1952 helicopters made their presence felt in Malaya to a very important degree. Their main contribution to offensive actions was transporting troops for deep-strike operations. Though initially limited because of the small size of the helicopters, this improved in time. They were also important for transporting wounded troops and the dead enemy personnel for identification by intelligence officers in the rear areas.415 Overall, the helicopters transported 5,000 casualties, 19,000 passengers,

110,000 troops and carried 2.5 million pounds of supplies and ammo.416

A portrait of military operations against communist insurgents in Malaya would be incomplete without a mentioning of the psychological warfare efforts, of the propaganda actions targeted at guerrillas.417 Mostly run (from a content perspective) by a civilian body, the Office of Information in Malaya, psychological warfare comprised a number of important actions. One was the black propaganda section that ran a fake communist journal aimed at confusing guerrillas. 418 Its role was very important in countering MCP’s own leaflets and publications.419 Another was the employment of former guerrillas, captured and surrendered enemy personnel in publishing tracts aimed at their former comrades and urging them to quit the struggle. The SEP’s also ran lecture tours in rural communities, hoping to influence unknown members of the Min

Yuen to cease their collaboration with the rebels.420

415 David Jordan, “Countering Insurgency from the Air: The Postwar Lessons” in Contemporary Security Policy, Vol.28, No.1 (April 2007), 99. 416 Ian F. W. Beckett, Modern Insurgencies and Counter-insurgencies, 103. 417 The most comprehensive work on the topic is Kumar Ramakrishna, Emergency Propaganda; for this and the following fragment see especially 209-210, 215. 418 Malaya memorandum by O. Lyttelton, CAB 129/48, C(51)59, 21 December 1951 in A.J. Stockwell (ed.), Malaya, Part II, 346-347. 419 Susan L. Carruthers, Winning Hearts and Minds. British Governments, the Media and Colonial Counter-insurgency, London: Leicester University Press, 1995, 89. 420 Kumar Ramakrishna, “Content, credibility and context: Propaganda government surrender policy and the Malayan communist terrorist mass surrenders of 1958”, in Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 14, No. 4 (1999), 243. 138 But the most prominent programs were the distribution of propaganda leaflets and the use of voice aircraft.421 Over the course of the Emergency the number of leaflets dropped by aircraft in the jungle, describing the government`s offers of amnesty increased to tens of millions and in due turn were published on impermeable paper, insuring their survival in the humid conditions in the jungle.422 Dakota aircraft took turns flying slowly over certain pre-selected areas, broadcasting through large loudspeakers 27-second long messages, repeating after 3 seconds.423 Sometimes making use of intelligence from captured or surrendered enemies, these messages could mention by name the guerrillas suspected to be in a certain area, urging them to surrender. It is estimated that as the guerrillas were worn out by living in the jungle, were starved and continuously hunted down by mobile operations of the British Army, by 1953 the propaganda efforts paid dividends in increasing the number of surrendered enemy personnel.424

A special mention needs to be made at this point about the role of C.C. Too, an officer of Chinese origins who had served during the Second World War as liaison between the MPAJA and the OSS, thus becoming acquainted with some of the

Communist leaders. Becoming head of the Psychological Warfare Section after 1956

Too was instrumental in propaganda and information gathering in the “New Villages”.

The PsyWar Section ran the whole process of conceiving, writing, translating and

421 Julian Paget, Counter-Insurgency Campaigning, 69. 422 The number of leaflets distributed jumped from 30 million in1948 to 53 million in 1950, 77 million in 1953 and over 100 million in any year from 1954 to 1957. Twelve mobile cinemas were also in action in 1948, increasing to 91 units in 1953, able to bring their messages to a million people monthly, see Robert Jackson, The Malayan Emergency, 110. 423 Ibid., 113. 424 350 guerrillas surrendered because of targeted propaganda that year, James E. Dougherty, “The Guerrilla War in Malaya”, 306. Also see Geoffrey Fairbarn, Revolutionary Guerrilla Warfare, 141. 139 distributing leaflets to the air force. They also conceived and translated the voice messages, which were recorded by Radio Malaya.425

Later in the conflict and especially after independence, an amnesty policy led to further defections. After an offer was made in August 1957, 122 guerrillas surrendered,

36 of them having held leadership positions.426 Even more surrenders in 1958 forced

Chin Peng’s hand into demobilizing the party that year, hastening the end of the

“shooting war”.

The following table presents data concerning the evolution of violence during the most intense years of the Emergency and the numbers of military casualties on both sides, with the mention that, in the parlance of the times, incidents denote encounters when the communists opened fire, contacts denoting instances when security forces opened fire:427

Year 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954

Total incidents 4739 6082 3727 1170 1077

Total contacts 983 1911 1868 1407 993

Security forces casualties 889 1195 664 209 241

Insurgent casualties 942 2050 2131 1695 1197

425 See on this and on a vast collection of leaflets and posters made by the government, Herbert A. Friedman, “Psychological Warfare of the Malayan Emergency, 1948-1960”, available at http://www.psywar.org/malaya.php last consulted 10 September 2013. 426 Kumar Ramakrishna, “Content, credibility and context”, 258-259. 427 Sam C. Sarkesian, Unconventional Conflicts in a New Security Era, 72. 140 The biggest encounters in Malaya, as could be expected in an asymmetric conflict, resulted from tactical mistakes, either of the communists or the security forces.

On 22 January 1950 an insurgent group remained in its camp although its position had been spotted, losing in the ensuing fight 22 of its men. In March 1950 a Malay

Regiment platoon returned to its base in Kelantan on the same route it left and in the ambush that followed 17 troops were killed and 6 wounded.428 On 22 December 1950, after an incident with Gurkhas the previous day, another Gurkha company on a rubber plantation luckily intercepted an insurgent group. In the greatest field victory of the

Emergency the insurgents lost 35 dead for one Gurkha killed.429

Sometimes quick reaction could yield victories for the security forces: the pursuit of the thirty guerrillas which killed Henry Gurney on 7 October 1951 resulted in the capture of five of them and the discovery that they had received support in a village close by. The local population was detained and the village burned as a reprisal.430

Intelligence operations and the more or less enforced cooperation of the inhabitants of the “New Villages” with the police started to pay off in May 1950. For instance, a woman informer from Kajang provided intelligence that led to an ambush by security forces in which four rebels were killed and three taken prisoner. 431 More importantly, in July 1952 the Special Branch received information concerning the location of guerrilla leader Liew Kon Kim from one of his former lovers. Hunted down in swamps for six days by two companies of the Royal West Kent Regiment, he was killed when running away.432

428 John Coates, Supressing Insurgency, 143. 429 Gregory Blaxland, The Regiments Depart, 90. 430 Richard J. Aldrich, The Hidden Hand, 503. 431 Gregory Blaxland, The Regiments Depart, 92. 432 Ibid., 108. 141 Even good intelligence did not always make easy the life of army units involved in the Emergency. In his memories of an ambush laid in 1952, Arthur Campbell recalls that even though the police had relayed good information concerning the location of guerrillas, the march through the jungle to the ambush point was most difficult, with his unit taking a day and a night of slow walking through jungle and swamp to reach their designated position. However, the effort was worthwhile, with two guerrillas killed, one wounded and two other civilian helpers captured. 433 Ambushes remained difficult operations until late in the conflict; for instance, in 1956 a small Australian unit of six soldiers laid a trap close to a railway line. Four guerrillas were spotted and engaged, but only one was killed in combat, the other three escaping.434

It took until 1952 for the Special Branch to map the location and area of responsibility of the insurgent formations. Operation Hive (started on 25 August 1952) in Seremban (the state of Negri Sembilan) covered 25 square miles and was based on the Special Branch’s penetration of the communist intelligence system in Seremban.

This was accomplished through “turning” guerrillas, a procedure discovered as more efficient than informative penetration. As mentioned in the section concerning intelligence, many of the agents working for the SB were suppliers of the MCP. Some of them were arrested successively in order not to blow up their cover. In the nine weeks of the operation, which involved one Gurkha battalion and 2 SAS squadrons a total of 29 insurgents were eliminated. Among those captured early on was a courier with precious documents that aided in the operation.435

433 Arthur Campbell, Jungle Green, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1953, 163-173. His recollections also point to the racism and disdain felt by government troops towards their Chinese communist opponents: the guerrillas have “meagre brains” and “[l]ike most of his fellow-terrorists, he was a coward at heart, brave only when holding up for robbery, or shooting in cold blood, a smaller party of helpless citizens.” (170) 434 Ray Alcorn, The Malayan Emergency, 1948 to 1960, 1990, 67-68. 435 John Coates, Supressing Insurgency, 152. 142 Another example of good coordination between intelligence officers and regular army units is the Ulu Langat Operation, begun on 10 December 1955 when Special

Branch located 17 guerrillas encamped near Ulu Langat and relayed the information to the Hampshire Regiment. The military used a SEP to guide them to the camp. They marched through the night through thick jungle and rubber plantations and cordoned the camp, sealing off all possible exits. In the ensuing attack eleven rebels were killed and two were captured, at the cost of one soldier slightly wounded.436

A typical deep-jungle operation of the late period of the conflict, “Termite”

(July-November 1954) saw an air attack and an airdrop of 3 squadrons of the 22 SAS in an area where the rebels lived together with the aborigines. They were followed on the ground by five infantry battalions supported by police, the turncoats of the Special

Operations Volunteer Force and allied aborigines. Together they eliminated 15 rebels.

The operation continued in 1955 with the establishment of a jungle fort manned by the

Police Field Force.437

In the later stages of the Emergency desperate guerrillas, hungry, demoralized and influenced by government propaganda turned on their leaders. On 6 March 1959

Siu Mah, party secretary for Perak and the commander of the group that ambushed and killed Henry Gurney was killed by his own bodyguard while his two other remaining men had just betrayed him to a Special Branch officer.438

436 Riley Sunderland, Army Operations in Malaya, 1947-1960, RAND RM-4170-ISA, 1964, 218-221. 437 Ibid., 157-158. 438 Leon Comber, Malaya’s Secret Police 1945-60, 280-281. 143 3.5 Conclusions

The present chapter discussed the Malayan Emergency thematically, from the perspectives of population control, intelligence and military operations. In varying degree, they all played their part in ensuring that the British civilian and military authorities won their conflict with the communist insurgents, allowing them to leave an independent Malaya in the hands of a hand-picked elite, the expression of a consensus between Malay, Chinese and local European commercial, financial and industrial interests.

To a large degree, the analysis shows that the population control policy of the

British government was quite different from its fairly benign portrayal in the historical literature dominant in the field until the 1990s. While improvements had indeed been made to the “New Villages”, they came late. Moreover, to focus on the sanitation, electricity and educational facilities introduced in the new settlements for the Chinese misses the fundamental reality that they were the product of a violent campaign that uprooted hundreds of thousands of people from their way of life, which was thoroughly destroyed. It also glosses over the first years of these villages, when they were no more than squalid labour camps, with their population living behind barbwire, with its movements and food controlled and being forced to march daily to work on rubber estates or in tin mines. To characterize this as a “hearts and minds” campaign is no more than a cruel irony. However, if success is to be judged in terms of removing a major problem regardless of the means used to accomplish this, the internal deportation program in Malaya was effective. It solved the first task each government has in dealing with armed rebellion, namely to prevent the spread of conflict to the population at large.

By achieving this, population control through deportation provides a strategic-level

144 solution to insurgency, but nowadays it would fail legal and moral norms of democratic societies.

The intelligence approach in Malaya witnessed indeed an important qualitative evolution during the conflict. From an understaffed and under-resourced structure, the civilian intelligence service operating under the police grew into a capable instrument, operating a vast network of informers in areas of interest. The investment of massive human and technological resources with a special focus on Chinese-speaking officers and on techniques of identification of enemies paid off, as did the penetration of the communists’ support network, the Min Yuen. While it was difficult to insert double agents in the guerrilla groups operating in the jungle, the intelligence services did a good job in mapping the structure, identities and location of these armed formations.

When the refinement of intelligence gathering and processing became obvious, success was impressive. Also, the option of keeping all non-patrol related intelligence functions in the hands of the Special Branch also helped, especially because the MCP was such a tightly knit and highly integrated structure.

Military operations encompassed large scale strikes and sweeps through the jungle, small patrols, checkpoints, ambushes, deep-strike operations by special forces, massive air bombings, naval patrols, the creation of permanently manned forts deep in the jungle and a massive military-led propaganda campaign. This chapter has provided an analysis of these and took a certain distance from those who deem the large-scale operations a waste of time and money. It showed instead that they played an important part in denying a generalization of the insurgency, in preventing large-unit attacks by the insurgents and in the latter stages of the campaign contributed to the demoralization of the guerrillas through constant shows of overwhelming force. Small-scale unit operations were also surveyed, highlighting their problems, success and failures. While

145 initially ad-hoc units such as the Ferret Force achieved tactical victories, they were unable to deal with the MRLA, which was too large and developed to be tackled by a small force. In the course of the conflict and especially after large-units operations had hindered the movements and deployment of communist forces and after the internal deportations dislodged support networks, the small units became more useful and efficient in discovering and destroying small MCP camps. However, the analysis of military operations has shown that the Malayan Emergency was a very complex campaign, making it difficult to boil down to a few simple lessons. Nonetheless, tactical lessons can still be learned, such as those concerning the establishment of mobile units guarding the roads, the cooperation of military units with civilian intelligence or the use of natives and specialized tracking units.

The final chapter of the thesis will discuss these elements in comparison with the similar approaches in Algeria and Romania, highlighting similarities and differences and questioning their relevance for present-day COIN practice.

146 Chapter 4

French Counterinsurgency in Algeria

Among the three cases analysed in this thesis, Algeria stands apart through its sheer magnitude. While Malaya and Romania can, within reasonable limits, be discussed solely in the terms of COIN research, in Algeria counterinsurgency was just a segment of a profound crisis and a large-scale civil war. The drama unfolding from

November 1954 until the summer of 1962 led to close to a million dead, two million

Algerians forced to leave their homes and a million European Algerians compelled to leave. It also led to the collapse of the French Fourth Republic and three distinct terrorist campaigns, waged by Algerian nationalists, European settlers and the French government itself.439 Of the three conflicts studied, it truly and sadly deserves to be called a civil war and therefore the aspects of French counterinsurgency on which this research is focused (population control, intelligence and military operations) are just a part of a very large picture.440

Much historical controversy still surrounds many of the aspects of the Algerian war, a situation prolonged by the fact that many archives were closed until recently and some Algerian sources and those of the French intelligence services are still to be fully opened and researched. However, a general narrative of the relevant aspects for COIN research of the civil war can be constructed from the vast amount of research produced since the conclusion of the conflict. This chapter provides an overview, with a special focus on the internal and international political situation of Algeria, its social divisions,

439 A masterful recent synthesis is Martin Evans, Algeria: France’s Undeclared War, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. 440 Another synthesis, older but still useful for understanding the broader context is Bernard Droz, Évelyne Lever, Histoire de la guerre d’Algérie, Paris: Seuil, 1982. 147 the situation of the French government and its capabilities and the structure, tactics and outlook of the rebel nationalist groups, as well as a chronological narrative of the conflict focusing mainly on the actions of the Algerian rebels and the European radicals.

It will then analyse governmental military responses, namely French counterinsurgency.

4.1 The Context of Decolonization

When the rudimentary bombs set by the fighters of the Front de Libération

Nationale (National Liberation Front, FLN) went off all over Algeria on the day of All

Saints, 1 November 1954 they did not shatter the peace of a remote colonial corner of a serene republic. France had been at war for the past eight years trying to preserve its empire in Indochina. All around Algeria, in Tunisia and in Morocco, the fires of anti- colonial rebellion were already burning for years.441

In a similar bid with the British in Malaya, the post-war French governments had attempted to recuperate and maintain a hold on to its vast and potentially rich colonies in Southeast Asia - Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Fight, not flight, was the preferred option. 442 But unlike the English confronting the Chinese communist guerrillas, the authorities in Paris had to fight a much stronger adversary in Vietnam, united by nationalist sentiment, communist ideology, the powerful personality and shrewd leadership of Ho Chi Minh and led in battle by possibly the most skilful non-

441 For the need to explore the conflict within the general process of decolonization see Raymond Dronne, Vie et mort d’un empire. La décolonisation, Paris: France-Empire, 1989. 442 Martin Thomas, Fight or Flight. Britain, France and their Roads from Empire, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. 148 Western general of the century, Vo Nguyen Giap.443 The French had to fight their way in late 1945 and early 1946 into a resentful country, whose ethnic divisions were numerically less important than those in Malaya, with only conservative religious minorities in the south and small warrior tribes in the north willing to ally with them.444

The rebels - the Vietminh – were able to conduct from early on two types of campaigns, a generalized guerrilla war throughout the countryside with terrorist attacks in the main cities and – crucially – a conventional war with communist battalions taking the field against French battalions. 445 Receiving international exposure through the personal connections of its leadership with leftist circles in the West and substantial material and military support from the neighbouring Chinese communists, victorious in their own civil war in 1949, the Vietminh were in a far better position than its comrades in Malaya ever were. Their major conventional victory in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in the spring of 1954 led to success in the war and – most importantly for revolutionaries elsewhere – to the spread of the belief that a local refinement of the Maoist strategy is the key to the defeat of oppressors and colonialists.446

The French military had learned a few important lessons of their own in

Indochina and it is relevant to discuss them, as they were applied with far more tactical and operational success in Algeria. First, many of the officers who fought against the

Vietminh believed that they were facing an entirely different adversary from anything that had ever taken to the battlefield. This enemy was amorphous, able to blend at will into the population and unlike other nationalist rebels they were perceived to be the local wing of the global communist bid for mastery organized by Moscow. To the

443 For a general perspective see Jacques Valette, La guerre d’Indochine 1945-1954, Paris: Armand Colin, 1994. 444 John Pimlott, "The French Army: from Indochina to Chad, 1946-1984" in Ian F.W. Beckett, John Pimlott (ed.), Armed Forces and Modern Counter-Insurgency, London: Croom Helm, 1985, 56. 445 Jacques Dalloz, La guerre d’Indochine 1945-1954, Paris : Seuil, 1987, 131. 446 Ian F.W. Beckett, Modern Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies. Guerrillas and their Opponents since 1750, London: Routledge, 2001. 149 Maoist theory and its Vietnamese iteration they responded with their own theory of

“revolutionary war” (guerre révolutionnaire), which became the mainstay of an entire school of thought within the army.447 The main characteristic of this type of war was its fundamental political and psychological nature and its emphasis on population control.

To respond to subversive warfare the military had to think and act asymmetrically and make sure that the destruction of the political and military arms of the rebellion goes hand in hand with a psychological campaign of political propaganda aimed at the population at large, with the eventual purpose of shifting control from the guerrillas to the government.448 Any method used in this approach, be it torture, disinformation, brainwashing was acceptable if it achieved its purpose. The "French way in COIN" called for a structural reform of the colonized country, affecting its politics, economy and society, a process largely accomplished from above. 449 The proponents of this approach – most famously generals Raoul Salan and Jacques Massu and colonels Roger

Trinquier, Marcel Bigeard and Charles Lacheroy, all Indochina veterans – went on to shape French strategy in Algeria.450

Aside from strategic approaches, operational and tactical lessons for fighting insurgency were also learned in the jungles of Indochina. While cordons and sweeps and search-and-destroy missions were well-known approaches, innovation was also present. The French military created special anti-guerrilla forces in the form of the

Mixed Airborne Commando Groups made of French officers and NCOs and native

Vietnamese paratroopers who operated deep inside rebel-held territory gathering

447 Peter Paret, French Revolutionary Warfare from Indochina to Algeria. The Analysis of a Political and Military Doctrine, London: Pall Mall Press, 1964, 5, 9. 448 Ibid., 10, 23-24. 449 Jacques Fremeaux, "The French Experience in Algeria: Doctrine, Violence and Lessons Learnt" in Civil Wars, Vol. 14 No. 1 (2012), 52. 450 See especially for Bigeard’s experiences and influence Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace. Algeria 1954-1962, London: Macmillan, 1977, 168. 150 intelligence and engaging enemy units in combat.451 Intelligence operations led to the co-opting of native mountaineer militias in the war effort and a number of “counter- gangs” operating in the rear of the enemy were raised.452 Some of them were strong enough to engage whole Chinese infantry divisions sent in support of the Vietnamese communists.453 To prevent movement of enemy units and to “show the flag”, the army raised a network of towers each one kilometre away from the other, along the routes.

Local forces helped by small mobile French forces permanently garrisoned the towers.454

The defeat in Indochina left many officers with two deep-seated feelings. The first was a revanchist approach, a non-compromising stance that France needed to prevail in any future revolutionary war. The second was a belief that the army could have accomplished far more if they had not been failed by weak politicians in Paris, too willing to compromise with a deadly enemy at the expense of French interests.455 Both feelings were to have a strong impact on the political and military behaviour of the army during the Algerian conflict.

These views were in a sense strengthened by the experience in the previous years in Morocco and Tunisia, both countries neighbouring Algeria. Starting in the late

1940s and intensifying in the early 1950s, powerful anti-colonial movements rocked the two French-governed Muslim nations. In both of them, small guerrilla movements sprung up and urban terrorism was also present, to which the army responded more

451 The second commander of this unit, working directly under French foreign intelligence service SDECE was Roger Trinquier, Philippe Pottier, “GCMA/GMI: A French Experience in Counterinsurgency during the French Indochina War”, in Small Wars & Insurgencies, Vol. 16, No. 2, (2005), 125-146. 452 In the sense used by Frank Kitson in his 1960 work Gangs and counter-gangs, as pro-government units behaving like guerrillas and operating independently of the regular military formations. 453 Ibid., 133-134. Jacques Valette, La guerre d’Indochine 1945-1954, 139-142. 454 Jacques Dalloz, La guerre d’Indochine 1945-1954, 147. 455 Douglas Porch, La légion étrangère 1831-1962, Paris: Fayard, 2004, 648. 151 often than not in a conventional manner and with a certain degree of brutality. However, it sometimes displayed innovative approaches such as raising native mobile units and horse cavalry regiments, far more suited to the terrain.456 In Tunisia Paris faced a typical nationalist uprising led by a charismatic politician, Habib Borguiba; in Morocco the population gathered around the figure of the sultan, perceived as an independence fighter.457 In a grim warning for the events that followed in Algeria, in both Tunisia and

Morocco the European colonists formed their own anti-guerrilla paramilitary units waging a savage campaign against the locals, thus seriously hampering the government’s efforts for a political solution.458 Eventually, both of them were granted independence in the spring of 1956 and they would provide massive support for the

FLN in its anti-colonial struggle.

4.2 Algeria: Political and Social Situation

The vast territory of Algeria, comprising a fertile coastal region, a barrier of mountains and a significant portion of the Sahara desert, fell under French domination after a short campaign of conquest in 1830 and became stabilized after a very long campaign of pacification between 1831 and 1847.459 Particularly the latter endeavour, in which Marshal Bugeaud developed savvy approaches to counterinsurgency that have

456 Benjamin Stora, Algérie, Maroc. Histoires parallèles, destins croises, Paris: Zellige, 2002, 40-41. 457 Militarily they were not spectacular campaigns. In Morocco it consisted mostly of terrorist attacks and only one large guerrilla action with raiders from Spanish Morocco tying up a division of Legionnaires and Spahis in the Riff Mountains in the fall of 1955, Robert Faber, The War of the Flea, Bungay: Paladin, 1970, 101-102. 458 Anthony Clayton, The Wars of French Decolonization, London: Longman, 1994, 88-108. 459 The Sahara is easily forgettable in the context of this war, being extremely difficult to cross and used by the French only for oil production, missile development and tests and atomic testing, see Jacques Frémeaux, “The Sahara and the Algerian War” in Martin S. Alexander, Martin Evans, J.F.U. Keiger (eds.), The Algerian War and the French Army, 1954-62. Experiences, Images, Testimonies, Houndmills: Palgrave, 2002. 152 been discussed in chapter 2, was to remain engrained in local and French consciousness as the founding episode of French Algeria.

In no other part of the Paris-ruled colonial empire had European-born populations moved with more alacrity than on the shores of Algeria. The relative short distance from Europe coupled with the promise of riches through the cultivation of vines and trade were major factors in this relatively large-scale migration. So powerful was this process that Algeria enjoyed a special status within the French state. Unlike any other colony, it was considered an integral part of France and was divided in departments, like the metropolitan territory. The movement of people was at the same time facilitated by and in its own turn contributed to a major socio-economic change engineered by the military authorities which ruled the country in its first five decades of occupation. By introducing the European concept of individual ownership of the land, the government in Algiers simultaneously expropriated the best agricultural terrain in the coastal areas, destroyed tribal-based networks of power and prestige and in the process wiped out the local elites who could have become active opponents.

Furthermore, by reorienting the economy from cultivating grain and animal husbandry towards large-scale production of wine, the European colonists disturbed the local patterns of work and employment and insured that native Algerians would find themselves with few choices in this regard.460

The population that moved to Algeria after 1847 was mixed ethnically, with about half of all of colonists from 1954 having a non-French background, mainly

Italian, Spanish and Maltese. They were all granted French citizenship by the turn of the century and within a few generations most of the European Algerians were self-

460 This segment is based on Eric R. Wolf, Peasants Wars of the Twentieth Century, London: Faber and Faber, 1971. 153 identifying with French values and way of life. However, the economic pattern which favoured large-scale agricultural enterprises led in the decades following World War I to land being concentrated in relatively few hands.461 A large number of Europeans worked relatively small farms, which were significantly more prosperous than those of their Muslim countrymen. Those who failed in the agricultural endeavours moved to the cities, most notably the three provincial centres of Algiers, Oran and Constantine, some getting into trades, very few joining the bureaucracy and most of them becoming industrial workers or members of an increasingly dissatisfied and anti-Muslim lumpen- proletariat. By 1954 nearly one million Europeans lived in the country.462

The Algerian Muslims, the vast majority of inhabitants, were mostly kept in a deliberate state of economic, political and social dependency throughout the French occupation of Algeria. Deprived of traditional leadership, they had to choose between life as workers on French agricultural estates, inferior jobs in the European-dominated cities or subsistence agriculture. Despite being part of France in no smaller measure than Normandy or Champagne, the Muslim children did not benefit in significant numbers from the vast and supposedly compulsory education system in which their

European counterparts were enrolled. Of course, this led to the community having an extremely small number of trained professionals such as doctors, lawyers, engineers or teachers. Sanitary and social services were almost non-existent. More poignantly, in a country where voting rights for men were secured as early as 1848, the native Algerians benefited from them in a very limited way until the end of the Second World War and even afterwards they were limited to voting in a separate college, the seven million

461 30% of the colonists owned 85% of the land, see Eric R. Wolf, Peasants Wars of the Twentieth Century. 462 Daniel Lefeuvre, “Les pieds-noirs” in Mohammed Harbi, Benjamin Stora (eds.), La guerre d’Algérie, Paris: Pluriel, 2010. 154 Muslims having as many representatives in parliament as the one million Europeans.

Muslim women were not allowed to vote until 1958.463

Faced with this situation, the Algerian Muslims developed, albeit fairly slowly until the end of the Second World War, certain patterns of resistance. Throughout the

1930s, a religious movement led by local ullemas helped create a feeling of national pride, especially strong among the children enrolled in a local version of the Boy

Scouts.464 The political movements initiated during the war represented more powerful expressions of local nationalism. Messali Hadj created the first strong native Algerian political organization demanding political and economic rights including autonomy for the country within the French Republic. Swinging between spending time in jail for political agitation and delivering speeches from the pulpit of the French parliament of which he was a member, Messali Hadj was the main figure of an Algerian nationalism that the French authorities could have used as a dialogue partner. But already at the end of the Second World War he had two contenders for the leadership of Muslim Algeria, a man and a strategy. The individual was Ferhat Abbas, who formed his own, more radical political grouping and was the first to ask directly, in a manifest published during the war, for an end to French occupation and for an independent Algeria. Abbas and Hadj, two charismatic figures, were to dominate the public sphere of the debate throughout the first post-war decade, but were eventually pushed into the background by the growing prominence of the strategy of violence which led to the final collapse of

French Algeria.465

463 This segment is based on Bernard Droz, Évelyne Lever, Histoire de la guerre d’Algérie; Martin Evans, Algeria: France’s Undeclared War; Martin Thomas, Fight or Flight. 464 One particularly popular slogan was “Arabic is my language, Algeria is my country, Islam is my religion”, Eric R. Wolf, Peasants Wars of the Twentieth Century. 465 See for the evolution of nationalist groups during and after the Second World War Martin Evans, Algeria: France’s Undeclared War. 155 The Algerian population was loyal to the French government (be it the collaborationist Vichy or, after 1942, the pro-allied one led by Charles de Gaulle) throughout the Second World War, with significant numbers of Muslim Algerians fighting in the European theatre of operations. However, one needs to understand the relatively formal aspect of this loyalty, which largely comprised fulfilling military obligations and not seeking a subversive understanding with Berlin. The nationalist

Algerian movement was still nascent during the war and its leaders still believed that concessions could be won from Paris through a loyal stance. Spurred by the efforts of these nationalists and the ideals of national self-determination that they were exposed to many times during the war, local radical elements had decided to immediately ask for rights at the end of the war.466

Foreshadowing in nearly all of its aspects the war that came a decade later, the

“incident” in Sétif on Victory Day, 8 May 1945 and the events that followed it in the surrounding region highlighted both the desire of vast segments to remove the French domination of the country through any method and the determination of the European government and population to maintain its position there at any cost. The revolt came upon a background of hunger and deprivations, with a drought settling in, as well as previous intelligence reports of nationalists trying to mount protests during the Victory celebrations. In Sétif, a town in the Berber-dominated region in the Constantine department the crisis of 8 May 1945 began when a demonstration carrying pro- independence banners and slogans was stopped by the police. The disbanded Algerian youths attacked with firearms, knives and bats civilian Europeans in the streets, killing dozens. On the same day, many villages in the surrounding areas erupted in nationalist

466 Best account for the politics of post-war French Algeria remains Charles-Robert Ageron, Histoire de l’Algérie contemporaine, Vol. II De l’insurrection de 1871 au déclenchement d la guerre de libération, Paris: PUF, 1979. 156 riots, with Europeans attacked, killed and houses burned 467 . The French military response was extremely brutal. In the following days, army units sent to the region retook the occupied farms, sometimes machine-gunning civilians and insurgents indiscriminately. Aviation and artillery were used against larger rebel groups and even navy ships fired their big guns in support of the land operations. Even more chillingly was the reaction of the European colonists. In one particular case, a militia formed by the mayor of Guelma conducted a counter-terror action that led to between 500 and 700

Algerians murdered.468 Altogether at least 1,200 Algerians were killed in reprisals, with their own estimates many times higher.469

Sétif was to set in motion a series of processes that led directly to the independence war. One of them was the increasing of European migration from the countryside into the big cities; in the absence of good employment opportunities, many of them blamed their predicament on the actions of the Muslims and became radicalized. 470 The second was the continuous growth in numbers and power of a section of Algerian nationalists that believed that the way to independence was through insurrection and violence, and who were willing to use terrorism to achieve their political goals. While Messali Hadj and Ferhat Abbas continued their electoral politics, more extremist elements within their movements sought on embarking on armed resistance against the French colonial power.471 They created the Organisation spéciale, a secret military wing of the nationalist Algerian People’s Party, to prepare the ground

467 Report of General Henry Martin 1 H 1726 in Jean Charles Jauffret (ed.), La guerre d’Algérie par les documents Tome I L’avertissement 1943-1946, Vincennes: Service Historique de l’Armée de Terre, 1990, 206-209. 468 Anthony Clayton, “The Sétif uprising of May 1945”, in Small Wars & Insurgencies, Vol. 3, No. 1 (1992), 9. 469 It is perhaps useful to note that a few years later another revolt, this time in Madagascar, was brutally suppressed by the French authorities, with an estimated 60000 people killed, John Pimlott "The French Army: from Indochina to Chad, 1946-1984", 47. 470 Ibid., 62. 471 Benjamin Stora, Histoire de la guerre d’Algérie (1954-1962), Paris: La Découverte, 1995, 10-11. 157 for armed insurrection. However, in 1950 vigilant police action uncovered the plot and the organization and completely rooted it out, with the arrest of 92 of its members, among them a future major figure of Algerian resistance, Ahmed Ben Bella.472

The early 1950s and the first years of the independence war witnessed a significant debate concerning the future of Algeria, particularly in regards to the rights of the Muslim population. Elections for the parliament in Paris and for the local representative parliament continued, with Muslims and Europeans divided in two colleges of unequal strength and with many native Algerians simply denied the right to vote. Despite this, nationalists still won seats in the two assemblies, giving public voice to local grievances.473

However given the extremely slow progress and the obvious and strong opposition of French colonists towards an autonomy that would jeopardize their privileged position, groups of Algerian Muslims, many of them with military training through having served in the Second World War or more recently in Indochina were ready to take things from where the Organisation spéciale had left them.474 These men were local nationalists with a broader regional conscience, some having travelled to

Cairo, at the time the stirring pot of Arab nationalism, where the revered former leader of the anti-French Moroccan resistance in the 1920s, Abd el Krim, was presiding since

1947 a “Committee for the Liberation of the Arab Maghreb”. 475 One major characteristic of this group was its youth, with the ages of its leaders varying in 1954 between 35 and 28, thus being similar, generation-wise, with their fellow

472 Intelligence brief, 10th Military Region May 1950 1 H 2856 in Jean Charles Jauffret (ed.), La guerre d’Algérie Tome II Les portes de la guerre : des occasions manquées a l’insurrection 10 mars 1946-31 décembre 1954, 1998, 184-185. 473 Charles-Robert Ageron, Histoire de l’Algérie contemporaine. 474 Charles Townshend, “People’s War” in Charles Townshend, The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern War, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, 167-168. 475 Benjamin Stora, Algérie, Maroc, 42. 158 revolutionaries in Malaya and later on in Cuba.476 They would go on to form the Front de Libération Nationale, (FLN) and its military wing, the Armée de Libération

Nationale (ALN), which would be the main opponents of the French authorities in the ensuing eight-year war.477

4.3 An Outline of the War

When the FLN unleashed its military campaign for the liberation of Algeria in

November 1954 it could rely on very limited numbers of fighters and weapons, with no areas free from government control and limited networks of support, either inside or outside Algeria.478 Indeed, the original nine members of the organization were able to recruit a few hundred into the fold before the beginning of the insurrection and overall could count on only a few hundred small weapons of World War Two Italian vintage, previously smuggled from Libya.479 Although the organization was able to hit dozens of targets all over Algeria in the first day of the attacks, its strength was always assumed to be in the eastern region of the country, the Kabylie, where there were fears that the ethnic divisions between Kabyles and Arabs might weaken the rebellion.480

On the other hand, the French had 60,000 men of the 10th Military Region headquartered in Algiers, and consisting of three divisions in the three main cities

476 Hocine Ait Ahmed was born in 1926, Larbi Ben M’Hidi in 1923, Mohamed Boudiaf in 1919 and Krim Belkacem in 1922, Benjamin Stora, Histoire de la guerre d’Algérie, 12. 477 Raymond Dronne, Vie et mort d’un empire, 200. 478 Egyptian intelligence is said to have supported the rebels from the beginning and Egyptian public radio called for insurrection from the first days of the conflict, see Andre Nouschi, L’Algérie amère 1914- 1994, Paris: Editions de la maison des sciences de l’homme, 1995, 214; Daniel Moran, Wars of National Liberation, London: Collins, 2006, 113. 479 Robert Merle, Ben Bella, London: Michael Joseph, 1967, 93. 480 Raymond Dronne, Vie et mort d’un empire, 199. 159 (Algiers, Oran and Constantine). In addition, the French Foreign Legion had called

Algeria home for more than a century. Initial warnings from French intelligence remained unheeded by the government in Paris.481 However, within 48 hours of the

FLN attacks on 1 November 1954 the French authorities had already dispatched three extra police companies and four parachute battalions to Algeria, highlighting their ability to use forces freed by the end of the war in Indochina. 482 They were to be needed, as early on intelligence reports considered that the beginning of the insurrection was most serious in the Constantine region and the Aures Mountains. Dispelling any misconception that the first bombs could have been the work of a small, disorganized movement, the discovery of groups of up to fifty fighters operating in the area prompted the analysts to consider that the situation was going to get worse.483 Within weeks,

French intelligence noticed the extension of the rebellion beyond the Aures region, highlighting the existence of strong insurrectionary organisations. The same experts also discovered the arrival in Oran of metropolitan-based nationalists and recognized that this was bound to bring troubles.484

These worries were in a sense a reaction to the perceived initial lack of preparation, but in reality they were at the time exaggerating the ability of the FLN to launch massive attacks. Although having already organized the Algerian territory in six wilayas (regions or commands) for the purposes of revolutionary administration and combat, the Muslim rebels at the time did not have the numbers, weapons and the political support to mount more than small attacks on government sites and positions.

481 Roger Wybot, at the time the director of French internal intelligence service DST declared that since March 1954 reports on the constitution of a violent rebel organization were issued by the DST, but they were not taken into consideration by the political authorities, interview in Patrick Éveno, Jean Planchais (eds.), La guerre d’Algérie, Paris: Le Monde, 1989, 151. 482 Benjamin Stora, Histoire de la guerre d’Algérie, 9. 483 Intelligence brief 2eme Bureau, French General Staff, 5 November 1954 10 T 489 EMAT/ 2eB Algérie in Jean Charles Jauffret (ed.), La guerre d’Algérie Tome II, 695-696. 484 Intelligence brief 2eme Bureau, French General Staff, 19 November 1954 10 T 489 EMAT/2eB Algérie in Ibid. 160 However, the belief that brutal government retaliation would bring more people on its side led to the ALN embarking on a terrorist campaign early on in the war despite its initial weakness.485 Its fighters mounted numerous bomb attacks and shootings against

French officials and civilians alike, hoping both to demoralize them and to incite the government into high-profile punitive actions that would be condemned from abroad and hated within.486 But terrorism also targeted, quite intensively, other Muslims and not only those who sided with the French, but also other nationalist groups such as the one headed by Messali Hadj, as FLN did not admit other competitors in its fight for

Algerian independence.487 In a particularly gruesome instance, in June 1957 its fighters killed 300 inhabitants of a messalist (pro-Messali Hadj) village near Melouza.488 As

Martha Crenshaw observed: “[t]errorism played a major role as a constant reminder of the presence of the FLN (...). Terrorism was also critical to the FLN’s bid for the allegiance and the obedience of the Algerian people”.489

Terrorism as a strategy works only if it is a catalyst to popular uprising and in this sense it served its purpose on 20 August 1955, when the first massive attacks were unleashed against Europeans in the North Constantine area. Some called that day the true start of the war, as the uprising killed 71 Europeans.490 20 August 1955 was the point of no return in the terrorist strategy of the Constantine-based FLN. In addition to

485 Andre Nouschi, L’Algérie amère 1914-1994, 212. “The rebels cut the throat of people as they would cut the throat of lambs”, writes Raymond Dronne, Vie et mort d’un empire, 202. 486 Daniel Moran, Wars of National Liberation, 115. One attack in Phillippeville left 123 Europeans and Muslims dead. 487 The FLN killed 8 Muslims for every Frenchman they suppressed, David Galula, Pacification in Algeria, 1956-1958, Santa Monica: RAND, 2006 (1963), 17-18. 488 Guy Pervillé, “Terrorisme et guérilla: de la Toussaint rouge à la tragédie des harkis”, in La guerre d’Algérie (1954-1962), Editions Odile Jacob, 2004. 489 Martha Crenshaw Hutchinson, Revolutionary Terrorism. The FLN in Algeria, 1954-1962, Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1978, 152. 490 Benjamin Stora, Histoire de la guerre d’Algérie, 17-18. 161 massive attacks on French civilians, the FLN also attacked the moderate Algerians who advocated a non-violent strategy.491

In this framework of continuous attacks and governmental repression, perhaps the most important and long-standing development was the growth in numbers for the

FLN, which reached 20,000 armed men operating in the country by 1956, testimony of the increasing adherence of parts of the Muslim population to the cause of independence. 492 Also very significant was the increased support from other Arab nations, which provided vast quantities of weapons as well as the means to smuggle them into the country. Even the royal yacht of the Jordanian monarch was used for this purpose.493 After their independence, Tunisia and Morocco became shelters for many refugees fleeing the war and increasing numbers of ALN fighters created training and recruitment bases in these countries, with the acquiescence of the authorities.494 The

Arab nations became vocal supporters of Algerian independence in the United Nations

Organization, causing diplomatic embarrassment for France and its allies in the General

Assembly. The FLN itself and its nationalist allies were able to create a propaganda office in New York and to gain audience times with important U.S. officials. In one particular instance in late 1956, Ferhat Abbas and a FLN leader, Abderrahman Kiwan

491 Guy Pervillé, “Le terrorisme urbain dans la guerre d’Algérie” in Jean-Charles Jauffret, Maurice Vaïsse (eds.) Militaires et guérilla dans la guerre d’Algérie, Bruxelles: Complexe, 2001. 492 Andre Nouschi, L’Algérie amère, 219. This is the moment when the FLN truly became an “armed clandestine organization”, as Roger Trinquier called it in Modern Warfare. A French View of Counterinsurgency, London: Pall Mall Press, 1964, 8-9. 493 Robert Merle, Ben Bella, 95. 494 The Algerian External Delegation moved into Tunisia in 1957, turning it into an “Eastern Base” of the insurrection. Over 30000 ALN troops were training in Tunisia; the wounded were treated in Tunisian hospitals. Many impoverished refugees came from Algeria to Morocco (40000 until the end of 1957) and Tunisia (60000 until the end of 1957), see Edgar O’Ballance, The Algerian Insurrection, 1954-62, London: Faber and Faber, 1967, 85-86. 162 went to a meeting at the State Department to inform the Washington diplomats on the situation in Algeria and the political demands of the groups opposed to the French.495

This growth in numbers and power was reflected at the “Conference of

Soummam” in August 1956, where the internal leadership of the FLN decided to introduce military ranks for the ALN (the highest was colonel, for the commander of a wilaya) and stricter military regulations, including for payment. The ALN already had uniforms and was considering itself a proper military force.496 More importantly, at

Soummam, it was decided to escalate the terrorist campaign from the countryside and the small towns to the big cities. According to Robert Faber, this came from a need to strengthen the message the FLN was sending to Paris and to the world, and it was also thought as a move to increase the strength of its urban arm. 497 In his memoirs, Si

Azzedine – one of the ranking urban FLN members in Algiers - describes the process of recruitment into the organization that culminated, in Mafia style, with the assassination by the recruit of a target designated by their superior.498

The collapse of the external leadership of the FLN through its capture by French intelligence in October 1956 combined with the failure of Paris and London in their military expedition against Egypt in early November to strengthen the belief of the

Algerian rebels that a major offensive in the cities would lead to victory.499 This led to the disastrous “Battle of Algiers” in the first eight months of 1957, in which the urban

495 Doc 86 Memorandum of a conversation at the Department of State, 29 November 1956 in Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1955-1957, Vol XVIII Africa, Washington, 1989, 255-258. 496 Edgar O’Ballance, The Algerian Insurrection, 72-74; Andre Nouschi, L’Algérie amère, 213. 497 Robert Faber, The War of the Flea, 32. 498 “Le récit de Si Azzedine” in Gérard Chaliand, Les guerres irrégulières, XXe-XXIe siècle. Guérillas et terrorismes, Paris: Gallimard, 2008. 499 General André Martin, interview in Patrick Éveno, Jean Planchais (eds.), La guerre d’Algérie, 111. 163 arm of the FLN was completely destroyed, but only after mounting 751 attacks that left

314 people dead and 917 wounded.500

From that moment on, the military situation went from bad to worse for the

Algerian nationalists. A massive increase in the number of military units allowed the government in Paris to have multiple options for dealing with the insurgents. Improved

French tactics and better use of technology such as helicopters led to more successful operations against ALN groups operating in the countryside. The construction of large electrified barriers patrolled by mobile infantry units at the borders with Morocco and

Tunisia nearly completely cut off military support from the outside. In desperate attempts to cross the barriers the ALN suffered serious defeats and by 1958 lost the ability to operate at battalion strength.501 The population control measures, including propaganda, internal deportations, and psychological warfare and “hearts-and-minds” measures began to take root in the countryside. So much of the population was brought to the side of the government that by the end of the conflict 200,000 Algerian Muslims

(the harkis) were serving in the armed forces, some of them in elite anti-guerrilla units; this force represents ten times the maximum number of troops the FLN ever mustered.

Eventually, in 1959-1960 a set of large scale manoeuvres led by the French commander in theatre, air force General Maurice Challe saw massive sweeps through Algerian territories from west to east with elite units and special anti-guerrilla forces destroying or forcing into hiding the last remnants of the FLN. 502 In late 1960, the military

500 Guy Pervillé, “Le terrorisme urbain dans la guerre d’Algérie”. The increased lethality of the attacks in 1957 is explained by the insurgents having gained access to more powerful explosives after July 1956, when the Algerian Communist Party decided to merge its military branch with the FLN. 501 See for a synthesis Henri Le Mire, Histoire militaire de la guerre d’Algérie, Paris: Albin Michel, 1982. 502 John Pimlott "The French Army: from Indochina to Chad, 1946-1984", 66. 164 campaign was over though a handful of ALN groups were still resisting in the Aures

Mountains.503

But victory in the field, paradoxically, corresponded with defeat at home.504 The

Algerians nationalists were fond of boasting, especially after the war, that the main factor in winning the war was their political external and internal campaigns – including the obtaining of support in the UN General Assembly and, especially after 1960, a campaign of peaceful demonstrations in the main Algerian cities by tens of thousands of

Muslims. But it is more than likely that the fractures inside French society caused by the social cleavages in Algeria as well as by the discovery of horrors perpetrated by all sides was at least as important for the final outcome of the war.505

Indeed, by the latter stage of the conflict one could distinguish among the

French at least three distinct groups competing for shaping the agenda on Algeria. The most pernicious of these was the collection of radical European colonists’ groups that finally merged in 1961 to form the Organisation de l’armée secrète (Secret Army

Organization, OAS).506 The radical colonists were shaping governmental policy in the country since before the war, but during it their positions became more and more intransigent and even initially reform-minded Governors General such as Jacques

Soustelle or Roger Lacoste or prime-ministers such as Guy Mollet fell under their sway, continuing the hard-line policies against the Muslims. Their representatives in Paris controlled enough votes in Parliament to shape most of the fast revolving cabinets of the

Fourth Republic and their groups of counter-guerrillas controlled for a long time the streets of the main Algerian cities, with the acquiescence of the civilian authorities and

503 Charles de Gaulle, Mémoires d’espoir, Vol. I Le Renouveau 1958-1962, Paris: Plon, 1970, 100-101. 504 H. Canuel, “French Counterinsurgency in Algeria: Forgotten Lessons from a Misunderstood Conflict”, Small Wars Journal, smallwarsjournal.com, last consulted on 2 January 2013. 505 This led to a veritable “war within the war”, Benjamin Stora, Histoire de la guerre d’Algérie, 55-64. 506 John Pimlott "The French Army: from Indochina to Chad, 1946-1984", 62. 165 the army. 507 These groups, formed mostly by low-skilled or unemployed Europeans with some military experience and with the occasional professional in command, were to prove a major liability for maintaining a French Algeria.508 Through vicious attacks against Muslim neighbourhoods, often in response to similarly horrific attacks perpetrated by the FLN against civilian targets, they ensured that the rift between the two communities only became wider.

Their radicalism became so extreme that they often struck at the representatives of the French army and government that were not strong enough in their views. In

January 1957 one of their commandos nearly assassinated General Raoul Salan; ironically, he would become in the following years one of their heroes and leaders.509

When the tide turned against them in 1960, the OAS unleashed an indiscriminate campaign both against urban Muslims and Europeans perceived as traitors. With the cooperation of radical army officers they planned to assassinate President Charles de

Gaulle as early as December 1960.510 Starting in early 1961 they attacked French troops and became such a problem that the army eventually moved against them. In late March

1961, after the OAS killed 7 soldiers, the troops attacked the European neighbourhood of Algiers killing 35 people and destroying buildings. During subsequent demonstrations in the same city, the army opened fire on marching Europeans, killing

70 and wounding 200.511 Until its eventual dismemberment by French intelligence in the following years, the organization became an international terrorist group operating from Spain, Switzerland and Italy and would go on with its attacks against those governmental authorities that it perceived as traitors.

507 On the political aspects see Martin Evans, Algeria: France’s Undeclared War. 508 On the social composition of the anti-guerrilla groups see Alexander Harrison, Challenging De Gaulle. The OAS and the Counterrevolution in Algeria, 1954-1962, Praeger: New York, 1989, 4-5. 509 Remi Kauffer, L'OAS. Histoire d'une organisation secrète, Paris: Fayard, 1986, 47. 510 Ibid., 93-95. 511 Philippe Masson, Historie de l’armée française de 1914 à nos jours, Paris: Perrin, 2002, 444-445. 166 The army itself, especially its more elitist wing represented by the officers of the

“revolutionary warfare” school and the paratroopers and Foreign Legion troops, emerged with an agenda on its own in the conflict. It went so far as to provoke the fall of the French Fourth Republic through a putsch in Algiers in May 1958 and the threat to drop airborne divisions on Paris if power did not revert to General Charles de Gaulle, at the time perceived as a defender of the idea of French Algeria.512 Further through the war, when the General himself leaned towards granting independence to Algeria and started negotiations with the FLN at Evian, a group of generals and superior officers tried to mount another coup in April 1961 to remove him from power, but this time they failed, as regular army units, composed of draftees, refused to join the coup and remained loyal to Paris.513 The generals and officers who escaped arrest or the purges that followed the coup went on to take over the leadership of the OAS and ended in exile, in jail or even before a firing squad.514

The third player was the President of the Fifth French Republic, the Second

World War hero of the Free French, General Charles de Gaulle. Although brought back to power in 1958 by the army in Algeria, de Gaulle harboured an intense dislike of the

French colonists, who had sided with Vichy during the war.515 He also held little regard for the generals fighting the war, which he considered deeply careerist and lacking in

512 Jean Touchard, Le gaullisme: 1940-1969, Paris: Seuil, 1978. 513 However, the CIA believed during the days of the Algerian putsch (started on 22 April 1961) that the rebel generals controlled the army in Algeria and they would either strike at Paris or try to enlarge the war by attacking FLN bases in Tunisia, Doc. 43 Memorandum from Allen Dulles to J.F. Kennedy, 24 April 1961 in FRUS, Vol. XXI Africa, Washington, 1995. 514 See for a narrative Serge Berstein, La France de l’expansion, Vol. I La République gaullienne 1958- 1969, Paris : Seuil, 1989. 515 Anthony Clayton, “The Sétif uprising of May 1945”, 3. Even during the May 1958 putsch which paved the way for his return to power, de Gaulle made sure to keep the generals in Algeria at arm’s length, see Jonathan Fenby, The General: Charles de Gaulle and the France he saved, New York: Skyhorse, 2012. 167 broader perspectives of the world in which the conflict was taking place.516 Although in

1958 de Gaulle was still talking about a status-quo “peace of the braves” with the rebels and pursued an economic policy of developing the country and improving the life of its inhabitants, from 1960 he took steps towards a negotiated end of the conflict, bringing

Algeria in line with the other African colonies of France, which were granted independence during that year.517 In taking the hard decision to abandon Algeria, the

General was helped by a serious mood-shift of the French public. Taking more and more notice of the conflict since reservists were committed in 1956, the metropolitan population was torn apart by revelations concerning the horrific aspects of the conflict, most notably the use of torture. 518 Eventually, through referendum, it massively supported de Gaulle and independence for Algeria.519

While Algeria was eventually lost, the French adapted well on the technical and military level to the challenges of the FLN, winning in the field after 1957-1958.520

Thus, according to Peter Paret, “France`s inability to retain Algeria can hardly be blamed on faulty doctrine”521. The following sections of this chapter will explore some of the main avenues for victory in the field against the armed Algerian rebels.

516 Philippe Masson, Historie de l’armée française, 441. He would use the putsch of April 1961 to get rid of his opponents in the Army, with three regiments’ disbanded, as well as the air and parachute commandos. During 1961 1800 officers leave the army, 1300 willingly and 500 fired. 517 His own account of his view on the conflict is in Charles de Gaulle, Mémoires d’espoir. 518 Gil Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars. State, Society, and the Failures of France in Algeria, Israel in Lebanon, and the United States in Vietnam, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003, 100- 102. 519 A general political overview of these swings in policies and public opinion is in Serge Berstein, La France de l’expansion, 45-47. 520 Alf Andrew Heggoy, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Algeria, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1972, xi-xii. 521 Peter Paret, French Revolutionary Warfare from Indochina to Algeria, 123. 168 4.4 Population Control

Perhaps surprisingly, it is in the area of population control that the French authorities simultaneously proved to be the most innovative and also the least perceptive.522 While some of the methods and tactics were truly novel and many were not repressive, but rather belonging to the mindset of “hearts-and-minds”, Paris effectively lost the conflict by alienating in the end the core of the Algerian Muslim population and the European colonists’ support for its conduct of the conflict.

When dealing with local rebellions in colonial settings, the French military had developed a specific strategy deriving from the experiences and published works of generals Galliéni and Lyautey, conquerors and pacifiers of Indochina, Madagascar and

Morocco in the last two decades of the 19th century and the first three decades of the

20th century. In addition to the swift, precise and converging military operations envisaged by the two generals, stability and population control were fundamental for eventual victory and indeed their entire approach took the name of tache d’huile (oil spot), from the measure envisaged in the latter cases. 523 After securing militarily a certain territory, it was the task of army and civilian officials to restore order and legality, as well as public services while in the same time cooperating with the local elites who could shoulder the burdens of government. It was hoped that good conditions in these areas would spread to their vicinity and thus ensure a rapid and less costly

522 Pierre-Alexandre Lléonci, “L’innovation dans l’armée française durant la Guerre d’Algérie”, MSc thesis, Montreal, 2011. 523 See for a critical view, especially of Lyautey’s actions in Morocco, Douglas Porch, Counterinsurgency: Exposing the Myths of the New Way of War, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, 99-100. 169 pacification campaign.524 These lessons were ingrained in the French military mind and they would survive unscathed the campaign in Algeria, as the works of David Galula would suggest. In his pamphlet published after the conflict as a guide for American military beginning their serious involvement in Vietnam, his first two laws of counterinsurgency were: one, the support of the population is as necessary for the counterinsurgent as for the insurgent; and second, this support is gained through the recruitment of an active minority able and willing, through propaganda and other deeds, to rally the neutral majority and to neutralize or eliminate the hostile elements.525

The “oil spot” strategy combined well with certain tenets of the “revolutionary warfare” school which argued that the political and psychological nature of the conflict are far more important than its military side and therefore the battle for the bodies and minds of the population should take precedence. The synthesis between the two approaches will be seen in an interesting and innovative approach to this area of counterinsurgency.526

Political propaganda towards the Algerian Muslim population and social and economic initiatives meant to win it over were main features of the campaign waged by successive French governments. Speaking directly to the population were audio-visual and printed media. The authorities made serious efforts to gauge and influence the mood of the population through radio broadcasts and newsreels in cinemas, highlighting the achievements of the authorities in building a better Algeria and the perils that could

524 Jean Gottman, “Bugeaud, Galliéni, Lyautey: the Development of French Colonial Warfare” in Edward Mead Earle (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy. Military Thought from Machiavelli to Hitler, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973 (1943). 525 David Galula, Counter-insurgency Warfare. Theory and Practice, London: Pall Mall Press, 1964, 74- 79. 526 As argued by Roger Trinquier in relation to urban warfare, good counterinsurgency supposes a propaganda effort, good police operation and a social program, Modern Warfare, 43. 170 come from a FLN takeover of the country.527 In these regards, government propaganda was routinely describing the rebels as a communist fifth column (again, this was part of the obsession of the officers of the “revolutionary warfare” school), although in all likelihood the little Algerian Muslim communist groups that were absorbed in the FLN did not influence the overall direction of the insurrection.528 Some credence to this view was given by the fact that many of the weapons smuggled in the country were coming from the Eastern Bloc, most notably Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.

In addition to the audio-visual means, the authorities mounted a printed media campaign, especially through the use of posters. It was, in many senses, a good strategy as these could be seen by anyone going to public spaces and, through skilful drawing, could do away with the inconvenience that many of their target public were illiterate.529

These posters routinely portrayed the rebels as uncouth, murderous individuals on the run from benevolent authorities. In the imagery popularized by the counterinsurgents, the rebellion was always drawing its last breath. Sometimes, though, more than posters were displayed in public places to influence the local population. In displays of cruelty, in Orléansville standing orders called for displaying in public places the bodies of killed rebels for 24 hours.530

527 The Fifth Bureau of the General Staff in Paris, commanded by Colonel Charles Lacheroy and employing from 1958 to 1962 David Galula shaped this entire strategy, Gregor Mathias, David Galula. Combattant, espion, maître à penser de la guerre contre-révolutionnaire, Paris: Economica, 2012, fifth part. 528 This narrative was mostly helpful in metropolitan France, where since the late 1940s political and military decision makers were seriously concerned about a Soviet-sponsored guerrilla war waged by communist rebels inside metropolitan France. The Algerian War was interpreted in some military circles as a perfect example of a side action in a global strategy of subversion, see Paul Villatoux, “L’institutionnalisation de l’arme psychologique pendant la guerre d’Algérie au miroir de la Guerre Froide” in Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains, No. 208, 2002, 35-44. 529 Leaflets were also left in public spaces or dropped from aircraft, Nacéra Aggoun, “Psychological Propaganda during the Algerian War. Based on a Study of French Army Pamphlets” in Martin S. Alexander, Martin Evans, J.F.U. Keiger (eds.), The Algerian War and the French Army, 1954-62, 193- 194. 530 Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace, 172. 171 It is important to note in this framework that most of the direct and indirect propaganda in Algeria was the product of a specially formed agency, the Fifth Bureau of the Staff of the 10th Military Region in Algiers with similar departments in the other big military units. This was a psychological warfare structure dominated by officers of the “revolutionary warfare school”. 531 Its influence on the course of the operations would become so powerful and – in the end – so disturbing for the authorities in Paris that it was one of the first structures to be dismantled by de Gaulle in the aftermath of the failed putsch of April 1961.532

However, propaganda would have been inefficient in the absence of concrete actions on the ground, from the tiniest corner of the Casbah (native Arab quarter in

North African cities), to the last douar (small village) or djebel (mountain). Especially in the latter part of the conflict, after de Gaulle’s return to office, the colonizing power launched a vast program of economic restructuring of Algeria. The Constantine Plan of

3 October 1958 called for industrialization, education for all, new houses to be built for a million people, 400,000 new jobs and 250,000 hectares allocated to Muslims.533 In addition, the vast increase in the production of oil in the country would lead to more jobs for the local population, thus alleviating many of the social ills that predated, but in many ways were amplified by war.

In addition to the economic program that helped in bringing a significant number of Algerians on the side of the government, the military authorities also mounted one of the most innovative strategies for bringing the population under the

531 Formed in 1955, their main targets for propaganda were Algerian women and youth, Mohammed Bendara, “La guerre psychologique dans la guerre d’Algérie” in The Journal of Sophia Asian Studies, No. 29 (2011), 174-175. 532 Charles de Gaulle, Mémoires d’espoir, 91-92. 533 Serge Berstein, La France de l’expansion, 50. 172 control of the central authorities.534 This was done through the Sections Administratives

Spécialisées (SAS), groups made of European officers and NCOs protected by native troops and operating on the whole territory of Algeria, from the safest areas to the zones most contested by the fighters of the FLN. The SAS team, usually made of four men protected by armed Algerian guards, had a number of functions. First, they provided links between the population and the civilian government on economic and political matters. Secondly, they gathered intelligence, provided medical and educational services and undertook night patrols, as well as protecting the weekly open markets.535

The SAS had a strong sanitary mission, in the framework of the Free Medical

Assistance program initiated by the authorities. They were helped in their activity by the

Itinerant Medical-Social Teams made of female personnel of the army, who would help create infirmaries in the countryside.536 These teams had psychological action as one of their main tasks, mainly by reconnecting the population with the views and the policies of the administration.537 After 1956 the SAS officer was in a sense the most important man in the fight against the FLN, because the conflict had become one for the mind and allegiance of the peasants. 538 Recognizing their importance, the FLN made special efforts to attack sanitary convoys and to seize and destroy medicines, as a directive of the 5th Wilaya from 15 October 1957 made clear.539

However these relatively benign and peaceful measures do not account for the whole extent of population control techniques employed by the French government during the Algerian war. Re-education camps were deemed necessary to deal with part

534 John Steward Ambler, The French Army in Politics 1945-1962, Ohio State University Press, 1966, 180. 535 Alf Andrew Heggoy, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Algeria, 197. 536 Centre de Doctrine d’Emploi des Forces (CDEF), “Les Sections Administratives Spécialisées en Algérie: Un outil pour la stabilisation”, Cahier de la recherche doctrinale, 2005, 57. 537 Mohammed Bendara, “La guerre psychologique dans la guerre d’Algérie”, 179. 538 Alf Andrew Heggoy, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Algeria, 173. 539 Document in Mohammed Harbi, Gilbert Meynier, Le FLN. Documents et histoire 1954-1962, Paris : Fayard, 2004, 68. Also see CDEF, “Les Sections Administratives Spécialisées en Algérie”, 58. 173 of the civilian population. They had been tried before in Indochina, where up until the end of the war they managed to convert 9,500 prisoners to the nationalist cause and thus to opposing the communists. In Algeria, the re-education camps were officially designated as such in October 1957, with brainwashing systematically used. This was a psychological warfare technique to which some French officers of the “revolutionary warfare school” had been themselves exposed while being detained in prisoner camps in

Vietnam540.

As in many previous and contemporary civil wars, the central authorities concluded that it would be beneficial to remove a large part of the Algerian Muslim population from small, distant villages where they could easily fall under the influence of the FLN into larger localities, closer to strategic points and army bases. It is estimated that a total of two of the seven million Algerian Muslims that lived in the country in the late 1950s went through internal deportations, sometimes forcefully removed by French troops, who destroyed their homes and their cultivated lands.541

The first camps were organized in the Aurès, a mountainous region in the East of the country as early as 1955, but their existence only became known to the wider public through the report of Michel Rocard, leaked to the press in March 1959. 542

40,000 people were displaced in 1955. By summer 1957 there were already a million people in the camps. The Sections Administratives Spécialisées, the military-political units tasked with gaining the trust of the population and presented as the spearhead of a

“hearts and minds” approach were also heavily involved in the whole process. By early

540 Marie-Catherine Villatoux, “Traitement psychologique, endoctrinement, contre-endoctrinement en guerre d’Algérie : le cas des camps de détention” in Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains, No. 208, 2002, 45-54. 541 Douglas Porch, La légion étrangère 1831-1962, Paris: Fayard, 2004, 661. 542 The report became fully available only in 2003, but the fragments published in 1959 contributed both to a change of policy concerning the camps and to the shifting in the public mood concerning the war, Tassadit Yacine, “Révélations sur les "camps" de la guerre d'Algérie” in Le Monde diplomatique, Actualités, (Février) 2004, 29. 174 1959 there were over 936 centres in operation. 543 Altogether, the number of those deported or detained in their own villages amounted to a staggering 40% of the Algerian population. The most exact available figure for the number of those deported can be given for 1 April 1961, when 2,932 centres held 1,958,302 people.544

The strategy was widely welcomed by the officers of the “revolutionary warfare school”, who saw in it a possibility of applying their theory about cutting the link between the guerrillas and the population. Although some of the camps were presented by propaganda as model villages, many were surrounded by barbwire, were heavily guarded and movement was supervised.545 Among the 2.5 million Algerians placed in the camps the most affected were the 400,000 nomads, whose way of life was completely altered. They were specifically targeted in order to cut the guerrillas from a source of food and information. To force them in the camps, sometimes their herds were machine-gunned from French military aircraft.546

At most, the deported had a few days or hours to pick up their goods and leave.

Most frequently, however, army trucks would simply arrive at a village, surround it and immediately transport everyone to their new lodgings. 547 Even more strikingly, the soldiers compelled the Algerian Muslims to sign documents in French saying that they voluntarily agree to the destruction of their own homes as a contribution to the war and

543 Michel Rocard, Rapport sur les camps de regroupement et autres textes sur la guerre d’Algérie, Paris: Mille et une nuits, 2003, 103-153. 544 One good source on the camps is Michel Cornaton, Les camps de regroupement de la guerre d’Algérie, Paris: L’Harmattan, 1998 (1967). 545 Anne Guérin-Castell, “Un déshonneur de la République”, http://www.ldh- toulon.net/spip.php?article692, last consulted 13 June 2013. 546 Simon Chavarie, “Quadriller, regrouper, contrôler, sedentariser”, http://www.lepanoptique.com/sections/histoire/quadriller-regrouper-controler-sedentariser/, last consulted 13 June 2013. 547 Michel Cornaton, “Les camps de regroupement de la guerre d’Algérie”, colloque Pour une histoire critique et citoyenne. Le cas de l’histoire franco-algérienne, 20-22 juin 2006, Lyon, ENS LSH, 2007, http://ens-web3.ens-lsh.fr/colloques/france-algerie/communication.php3?id_article=259 last consulted 13 June 2013 175 that they would seek no material compensation. 548 The new settlements, sometimes simple ghettos in already existing large urban concentrations, were controlled through the use of military troops, but more useful than these were the networks of agents of influence and informers that French intelligence established in their midst.549 The camps were devised to crush all idea of private life and in fact they were a tool of total control over the bodies and minds of the interned.550 This process of internal deportation, like similar events in history, led to much untold suffering, both through the loss of the old way of life and former homes and through the often insalubrious new surroundings, devoid of proper sanitation and public services. 551 Disease and depression took countless lives and the material and psychological damage could never be fully estimated. In addition to internal deportation, French officers also introduced numbers for the houses and cards for each dwelling containing the number and description of the inhabitants and other information in order to improve population control.552

The involuntary movement of many Algerian Muslims corresponded to an acceleration of movement of Algerians of European ancestry from their rural farms and small towns into the larger cities, mostly out of fear of FLN attacks.553 This would have at least two negative consequences on the war from the perspective of the authorities.

The first was the fact that the radicalized European population vastly increased in

548 Keith Sutton, “Army Administration Tensions over Algeria's Centres de Regroupement, 1954-1962” in British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Nov., 1999), 248-249. 549 Jacques Fremeaux, "The French Experience in Algeria: Doctrine, Violence and Lessons Learnt" in Civil Wars, Vol. 14 No. 1 (2012), 57. 550 Especially the new houses were inadequate for the preservation of the intimacy boundaries of traditional Muslim communities, Michel Cornaton, Les camps de regroupement de la guerre d’Algérie, 80-91. 551 Even French military sources are critical of these camps, Centre de Doctrine d’Emploi des Forces, “Les Sections Administratives Spécialisées en Algérie : Un outil pour la stabilisation”, Cahier de la recherche doctrinale, 2005, 50. 552 Alf Andrew Heggoy, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Algeria, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1972, 183. 553 Algiers increased enormously, from 162000 to 870000, Oran from 119000 to 300000 and landlocked Constantine from 103000 to 275000 mostly through European movement, see Andre Nouschi, L’Algérie amère 1914-1994, 202. 176 Algiers, Oran and Constantine, thus making the job of controlling them more difficult.

The second was the gradual emptying of the Algerian countryside of a European civilian presence, leaving mostly the army, police and gendarmerie to deal with the problems, thus creating the sensation of a militarized society.

4.5 Intelligence and Intelligence Operations

The first aspect that needs to be mentioned in an analysis of French intelligence during the Algerian War is its relative lack of organisational integration. Indeed, one of the major priorities of counterinsurgents is usually to concentrate all information analysis under one organization, usually working under the unified command of the governmental forces. Few analysts of COIN – such as Frank Kitson – see merit in having multiple agencies dealing with secret information about enemy operations in guerrilla warfare.554 However, the French in Algeria found it impossible and undesirable to have this unified structure.

The first reason for doing so was geographical, as the FLN and its supporters conducted their activities not only on the territory of Algeria, but also in metropolitan

France, in Tunisia and Morocco after their independence, in other Arab countries which were willing to lend them support, as well as in some European countries such as

Germany or Switzerland from where their agents could buy weapons and explosives

554 See Chapter 3 in Frank Kitson, Low Intensity Operations. Subversion, Insurgency, Peace-keeping, London: Faber and Faber, 1973 (1971). 177 and hire the means to smuggle them into the theatre of operations.555 The second reason was primarily tactical, as throughout the conflict, with varying degrees of intensity, the

FLN employed rural and urban terrorism as well as guerrilla actions, both necessitating different intelligence approaches. Indeed, one can easily understand how this led to the impossibility of establishing a sort of COIN supremo in the case of the Algerian War, unlike the case of most localized insurrections. For these reasons, in this section the analysis will be focused on these particular geographical and tactical sectors in which

French intelligence services operated against the Algerian nationalists.

There were four main French intelligence structures. 556 The Service de

Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-espionnage (SDECE) was Paris’s civilian foreign intelligence service and generally operated outside the country’s metropolitan or colonial territory.557 The Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire (DST) functioned as a structure of the Ministry of Interior and was the main domestic intelligence agency, also with extensive attributes in combating terrorism. The Army’s main intelligence analysis structure was the Second Bureau of all the general staffs of its units, and in relation to Algeria the most important of these was the Second Bureau of the staff of the

10th Military Region in Algiers. 558 Finally, the local authorities also deployed the intelligence-gathering structures of the police and the gendarmerie.

555 For an analysis of the collaboration between French and German intelligence in dealing with FLN members operating in the Federal Republic of Germany see Mathilde Von Bülow, “Franco-German Intelligence Cooperation and the Internationalization of Algeria’s War of Independence” in Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 28, No. 3 (2013), 397-419. 556 For a brief overview see Claude Faure, “Bref historique des services de renseignement et de sécurité français contemporains”, Revue historique des armées, No. 247, (2007), 70-81. 557 However, it did employ in Algeria its own special unit, the 11th Shock Group which destroyed the FLN terrorist group in Orléansville, Maurice Faivre, “Le renseignement dans la guerre d’Algérie” in Jean- Charles Jauffret, Maurice Vaïsse (eds.), Militaires et guérilla dans la guerre d’Algérie, Paris: Complexe, 2001, 296. 558 See for a sample of their work intelligence briefs of the 2eme Bureau of the 10th Military Region from early November 1954 to the end of the year in Jean Charles Jauffret (ed.), La guerre d’Algérie Tome II, 741-755. 178 Relations between these structures were complex and not always straightforward, especially when operating on Algerian territory. While the police and gendarmes’ intelligence gathering structures functioned semi-independently in the first phase of the war, the direct oversight exercised by the Army on urban counter-terrorism after 1956-1957 led to a subordination of them to military intelligence. The same cannot be said of the DST structures, whose leaders answered directly to the Minister of the

Interior and through him to the Prime Minister and not to the military hierarchy, except when prompted to do so by their leaders in metropolitan France.559 However, this lack of coordination cannot be said to have greatly hampered the course of action, which can be judged as a success in the general framework of the war.

Unsurprisingly, the task of dealing with the external arm of the FLN belonged largely to the SDECE and its operations, especially those in non-Arab countries, were mostly successful. The main objectives of the foreign intelligence service were to apprehend or deal one way or the other with the foreign leadership of the FLN and to disrupt and possibly annihilate the networks of arms smugglers. For the first of these missions, SDECE operatives followed the movements of the leaders of Algerian radicals through Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia, sometimes being able to infiltrate their organization. When given a clear go, the service would attempt to assassinate important figures in the rebel movement, with mixed success.560

More efficient in dealing with the foreign leadership of the FLN, somehow surprisingly, was the Army intelligence service - which also had the advantage of operating with less oversight from the political leadership in Paris. Especially when cooperating with SDECE operatives, success could be significant. In October 1956 it

559 Maurice Faivre, “Le renseignement dans la guerre d’Algérie”, 292-294. 560 Robert Merle, Ben Bella, 100. 179 was Army intelligence Colonel Gardes who organized one of the most spectacular actions of the war; finding out that the main leaders of the exterior leadership of the

FLN were flying from Morocco to Tunis while skirting Algerian air space, he convinced the generals in command to have the Air Force intercept the civilian plane and have it land on Algerian territory, on 22 October.561 The fact that the pilot and the stewardess were collaborators of SDECE, receiving their orders from the head of

French foreign espionage in North Africa, Colonel Jean Allemand, certainly proved important.562 This act, condemned by some as air piracy, led to the capture of Ahmed

Ben Bella, Mohamed Boudiaf, Hocine Aït Ahmed, Mohamed Khider and Mostefa

Lacheraf, basically decapitating the foreign arm of the organisation and pushing the internal leadership into the “Battle of Algiers” in 1957.563

SDECE proved its full worth against the arms dealers in Western Europe who sought of making profits by selling weapons to the Algerian nationalists. Killings of

German and Swiss arms merchants and the bombings of vessels carrying weapons were organized by the head of Service Action, colonel Robert Rousillat.564 Bureau 24 of the

SDECE had as a main task the disruption of FLN efforts to procure weapons for the

ALN. Their main targets seemed to have been European companies willing to deal with the FLN or coerced into cooperation. Covert operations included paid assassins and the opening of factories in Spain and Switzerland producing defective armaments then given to the rebels.565 Most of the operations took place in Germany, where the SDECE and later on the OSS were rumoured to have assassinated a number of arms dealers supplying the Algerian rebels. Some of the arms dealers were assassinated in

561 Edgar O’Ballance, The Algerian Insurrection, 76. 562 Roger Faligot, Jean Guisnel, Remi Kauffer, Histoire politique des services secrets français. De la Seconde Guerre mondiale a nos jours, Paris: La Découverte, 2012, 174, 176-177. 563 Andre Nouschi, L’Algérie amère 1914-1994, 221; Daniel Moran, Wars of National Liberation, 116. 564 Roger Faligot, Jean Guisnel, Remi Kauffer, Histoire politique des services secrets français, 219-220. 565 Charles R. Shrader, The First Helicopter War. Logistics and Mobility in Algeria, 1954-1962, Westport: Praeger, 1999, 200-201. 180 Switzerland, where French agents stabbed them and even shot arrows at their targets.

Bombing ships was also one of the priorities of French foreign intelligence. In a very spectacular action, its agents blew up in the port of Hamburg using a mine the freighter

Atlas, carrying Norwegian dynamite for the FLN rebels.566 While admitted by many sources, including those in the French intelligence community, these assassinations and bombings were never fully investigated and no one was arrested or tried for them.567

Also, French intelligence cooperated with naval forces to disrupt severely the supply of weapons by water, searching about 600 ships every month. Sometimes the discoveries were huge: the Sudanese Athos, intercepted in October 1956 after its crew was infiltrated by a SDECE operative, carried over 70 tons of arms and ammunition.568

The Yugoslav ship Slovenija was captured in January 1958 carrying 55 tons of arms, while the Czech vessel Lydice, intercepted in April 1959 held 12000 rifles and 2000 machine-guns. 569 However, some authors dispute these figures and highlight the difficulties and sometimes the meagre results of naval inspections. Mathilde Von Bülow mentions that only 95 ships were inspected between June 1956 and February 1961; of those 18 carried possible contraband for the FLN and the French had to release seven of these as unwarranted suspicions. Moreover, the success of the DGSE forced the

Algerians to look for support and weapons in the Eastern Bloc. This made it virtually impossible for French intelligence to disrupt the weapons supplies and shipments.570

The DST dealt with those elements of the FLN operating in French territory.

According to a testimony of its director of the time, Roger Wybot, the main tactic was

566 Douglas Porch, The French Secret Services. From the Dreyfus Affair to the Gulf War, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995, 371. 567 Mathilde Von Bülow, “Myth or Reality? The Red Hand and French Covert Action in Federal Germany during the Algerian War, 1956-61” in Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 22, No. 6 (2007), 787-820. 568 Roger Faligot, Jean Guisnel, Remi Kauffer, Histoire politique des services secrets français, 175. 569 Charles R. Shrader, The First Helicopter War, 201-203. 570 Mathilde Von Bülow, “Myth or Reality?”, 800, 809. 181 infiltration and it succeeded to the extent that on 10 December 1958 DST scored its biggest victory, arresting the entire general staff of the FLN in metropolitan France:

“[w]e knew everything, we had microphones everywhere, they [the FLN leaders] had girlfriends provided by the DST.” 571 The organization was decapitated through the arrest of its leaders and faded in importance, although it did organize many street demonstrations throughout the years of the conflict. One possible explanation for its lack of operational ability despite the large numbers of Algerian Muslims living in metropolitan France were the suspicions inside the organization, which led FLN to purge its ranks by killing many members thought to be moles, or who were simply unreliable.

Gathering operational intelligence against guerrillas operating inside Algeria was mostly the responsibility of the Army’s specialized services. 572 Military units would routinely cordon villages and start the interrogation of the locals, sometimes under the threat of having them deported to the “camps de regroupement”, sometimes by simply threatening to destroy their houses, burn their crops and kill their animals.573

These units, called the Détachements Opérationnels de Protection (DOP) had a

HUMINT function, entering a locality, interrogating separately all the inhabitants, making indexes and re-interrogating those most-cited as being connected with the guerrillas.574 These interrogations had to be done in a fashion that would protect the locals working undercover as informers, for any direct public contact with an Algerian source could lead to that person being targeted for assassination by the FLN guerrillas.

Thus, the interrogators would usually have to interview everyone in a community in

571 Interview in Patrick Éveno, Jean Planchais (eds.), La guerre d’Algérie, 152. 572 Benjamin Stora, Histoire de la guerre d’Algérie, 29. See for the use of some of this units Raymond Noël, Édouard Chollier, Roger Dejean, Claude Merviel, “Les brigades de recherché et de contre-sabotage (BRCS) en Algérie” in Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains, No. 208, 2002, 91-117. 573 John Pimlott "The French Army: from Indochina to Chad, 1946-1984", 65. 574 Maurice Faivre, Le renseignement dans la guerre d’Algérie, Panazol: Lavauzelle, 2006, 163. 182 order not to divulge their main sources.575 The local informers were to prove invaluable, not only in pointing out the movements, locations and style of operation of the armed guerrillas, but also in the disruption and elimination of the administrative, support and intelligence network of the FLN, the Political-Administrative Organization (OPA).576

The SAS, in addition to their role of connecting the needs of the population with the actions of the government, also had an intelligence-gathering role, which was enhanced by its primarily “hearts-and-minds” approach, the use of natives in its ranks and the employment of French officers who could speak Arabic.577 Later in the war, the newly formed “commandos de chasse” were instrumental both in intelligence gathering and in cutting off rebels from their bases, closing down on them and eventually destroying the guerrilla groups, with or without the help of other army formations.578 As conflict progressed, the army stopped conducting random cordon and search operations, but used intelligence gathered by commandos to target directly ALN katibas (bands) hidden in the mountains. Terrain also helped, as the higher grounds were less populated and the guerrillas could get much less help from the locals.579

As mentioned, starting in late 1956 and early 1957, the FLN launched a series of bombings and machine-gun attacks against European civilian targets in Algiers, most famously using its female agents to plant bombs in milk bars, dancing clubs, cafes and

Air France agencies. Once apparent that the civilian authorities had lost all of their ability to deal with the crisis, the command of the anti-terrorist operation was entrusted

575 It was argued that the DOP practiced torture during these interrogations, see Raphaëlle Branche, “La torture pendant la guerre d’Algérie” in Mohammed Harbi, Benjamin Stora (eds.), La guerre d’Algérie, 564-565. 576 David Galula, Pacification in Algeria, 20. Also see 1988 interview with General Raymond Chabanne, a parachute captain in Algeria in Colonel Bigeard`s 3rd Colonial Parachute Regiment in Patrick Éveno, Jean Planchais (eds.), La guerre d’Algérie, 166. 577 CDEF, “Les Sections Administratives Spécialisées en Algérie”, 33. 578 Pierre André Cerutti, Jean-Christophe Damaisin D’Arès, Les têtes chercheuses du général Challe. Les commandos de chasse, spécialistes de la contre-insurrection, Sceaux: L’esprit du livre, 2011, 102-103. 579 Christopher Griffin, “Major Combat Operations and Counterinsurgency Warfare: Plan Challe in Algeria, 1959-1960” in Security Studies, Vol. 19 (2010), 573. 183 to the military authorities, which brought in general Jacques Massu and his 10th

Parachute Division.580 The general created a special intelligence structure for dealing with the FLN in Algiers and had two specialists in gathering information and revolutionary warfare working in it, Roger Trinquier and Paul Aussaresses. The first was in charge of intelligence and the second, a former SDECE officer transferred to an

Army position, commanded operations. 581 The 3rd Parachute Colonial Regiment, commanded by Colonel Marcel Bigeard, an old Indochina hand and adept of the

“revolutionary warfare” theory, represented the boots on the ground.582 The main goal of Massu was to capture the FLN leadership through intelligence operations.583

This new structure, helped by already existing measures such as the cordoning of the Casbah (the Algerian neighbourhood) and the issue of identity cards, proceeded to an administrative reorganization of the Muslim areas, which were divided in sectors, sub-sectors, blocks and buildings over which native overseers working for the French were put in charge. In these quarters, the intelligence service recruited a vast network of spies to uncover suspect persons and movements and infiltrate the FLN. When FLN operatives were captured, the real ordeal began. Using procedures long-tested by the police, gendarmes and other military units in rural Algeria, French military intelligence routinely tortured captives to extract information from them as soon as possible. The main types of torture from early on in the war were beatings, water-boarding and electrocution. The preferred method seems to have been water-boarding. In time, rape

580 Also in the process placing police intelligence under the army Maurice Faivre, “Le renseignement dans la guerre d’Algérie”, 297. 581 The intelligence structure was called Dispositif de Protection Urbaine, John Pimlott "The French Army: from Indochina to Chad, 1946-1984", 63. 582 For the Indochinese origins of many French approaches to intelligence gathering see Alexander J. Zervoudakis, “From Indochina to Algeria: Counter-Insurgency Lessons” in Martin S. Alexander, Martin Evans, J.F.U. Keiger (eds.), The Algerian War and the French Army, 1954-62. 583 Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, New York: Columbia University Press, 2006, 59. 184 and hanging a person by their hands or legs were also used.584 In case torture left permanent scars or wounds, the victim would more often than not be killed. During the

“Battle”, 24,000 Algerians were arrested. The corpses of 3,000 who died during interrogations were entombed or weighted and dumped into the sea from helicopters.585

The FLN required all of their fighters to remain silent for only 24 hours, after which they could talk. 586 This duration was deemed by the organization to be an adequate time to render useless any operational information extracted and put out of danger the persons connected with the arrested. However, this only led to an increase in pace and intensity of the tortures, as the French interrogators knew that the information needed to be fresh in order to be useful.587 If during this procedure the rebel cracked very early, in a matter of hours, the intelligence officers would try to turn him or her into an agent working for them, and release them on the streets immediately. 588

Infiltration was a most-sought after action against the guerrilla, providing not only information but internal destabilisation of the FLN networks, as deception and false information were brought by infiltrated agents inside the guerrilla groups.589 Most of this operation was organized by intelligence captain Paul-Alain Leger, who also focused on intoxicating the FLN leadership with rumors of massive French infiltration of ALN units.590 This spreading of false intelligence led to massive internal purges in the Wilaya

584 Raphaëlle Branche, “La torture pendant la guerre d’Algérie”, 553, 562. On rapes, see Raphaëlle Branche, “Des viols pendant la guerre d’Algérie” in Vingtième Siècle. Revue d'histoire, No. 75, 2002, 123-132. 585 Anthony Clayton, Frontiersmen: Warfare in Africa since 1950, London: UCL Press, 1999, 26-27. 586 Roger Trinquier, Modern Warfare, 35. 587 Paul Aussaresses, Services spéciaux Algérie (1955-1957), Paris: Perrin, 2001, 34-35. 588 Roger Trinquier, Modern Warfare, 39. 589 Quentin Pichelin, Vaincre une guérilla. Le cas français en Algérie, Paris: CRD, f.a., 28-29, 43. 590 Roger Faligot, Jean Guisnel, Remi Kauffer, Histoire politique des services secrets français, 194-195. 185 III which led to the murder of thousands of insurgents at the hands of their own comrades.591

These horrific approaches found justification in the works and testimonies of the military officers and intelligence specialists in charge of counterinsurgency operations.

For instance, Roger Trinquier wrote that the terrorist must accept suffering and possible death “as a condition inherent in his trade and in the methods of warfare that, with full knowledge, his superiors and he himself have chosen”.592 Similarly, Constantin Melnik, who served as a counterterrorism czar in the cabinet of de Gaulle, argued that:

“unfortunately, experience proves that the use of torture is the most effective method of obtaining in a minimum of time the information required to neutralize a terrorist network”.593

Colonel Bigeard’s troops and the special “blue kepis” commandos working in the Casbah and employing a significant number of harkis put the information extracted through this means to good use. They were able, in a series of spectacular missions, to apprehend some leaders of the urban wing of the FLN, such as Larbi Ben M’Hidi, who would die in suspicious circumstances while being detained, or Saadi Yacef, the

Algerian military commander in the city. 594 Security forces killed his second in command, Ali La Pointe and others by storming the building where they were holing up or by blowing up the houses altogether, which led to many civilian victims.595 By the fall of 1957, the Battle of Algiers was over and FLN would disappear as a permanent threat in the city for two and a half years. When it returned, it did so not as a terrorist

591 Constantin Melnik, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Algeria, RAND, 1964, 188. See for documents corroborating this view a circular of Captain Othmane, commander of the 4th zone of the 5th (Oran) wilaya, summer 1957 and a directive of colonel Amirouche, commander of the 3rd wilaya, 11 May 1958 in Mohammed Harbi, Gilbert Meynier, Le FLN. Documents et histoire 1954-1962, 545-546. 592 Roger Trinquier, Modern Warfare, 21-22. 593 Constantin Melnik, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Algeria, 195. 594 See for a complete narrative Pierre Pellissier, La bataille d’Alger, Paris: Perrin, 1995. 595 Douglas Porch, La légion étrangère, 669. 186 group, but as a nationalist faction organizing huge, peaceful street demonstrations for independence.

From a purely operational perspective, the course of action taken was a complete success, with the radical urban wing of the FLN completely destroyed, its network broken, its leaders arrested and killed, never to be resurrected as a violent movement.596

In terms of victory in the field against a terrorist group, there had scarcely been one more complete than this. However, the price paid in human lives, the breaking of the law and total disregard for human rights and dignity was high. Once these were revealed to the public in metropolitan France and the world, it led to serious erosion in support for the war and generated condemnation of Paris in international organizations.

4.6 Military Operations

Of the three cases compared by this thesis, the Algerian war witnessed by far the largest, most complex and violent military operations. Two reasons for this were the size and tactical options of the guerrillas. The FLN fielded at its highest 20,000 armed fighters inside the country with 30,000 reserves being trained in Tunisia, a number three times higher than the Malayan communists mustered and at least ten times higher than the Romanian rebels. This vast military force, in addition to the usual hit-and-run attacks and ambushes which are the preferred tactics of guerrillas everywhere sometimes went into battles in battalion sized formations against French regular military units. Another reason was the size and variety of the country, with fertile plains near the

596 John Steward Ambler, The French Army in Politics 1945-1962, 172. 187 sea, a barrier of arid mountains to the south, southeast and west and beyond that the vast expanse of the Sahara desert.

In such complex circumstances, the government in Paris experienced serious difficulties even without the insurrection ever becoming generalized. Vast resources in troops and materiel were needed and the French were able to put in the field a very large

European-born force, which grew from 58,000 to 400,000 at its peak. The following table highlights the evolution of ground troops effectives in Algeria, not including the gendarmes597:

Date Number of Army troops in Algeria

1 November 1954 58,000

1 January 1955 73,500

1 January 1956 180,000

1 January 1957 355,300

1 January 1958 395,000

1 January 1959 400,000

1 January 1960 395,000

1 January 1961 400,000

1 January 1962 372,000

597 Source: Charles R. Shrader, The First Helicopter War, 40-41. 188 This was made possible by the fact that – in stark contrast with Indochina – the government could lawfully use draftees and reservists in Algeria, which was considered an integral part of the Republic rather than a colony. During the first years of the conflict, the duration of military service was increased to as much as 31 months for regular draftees; starting in 1956 contingents of reservists were also sent to the war, sometimes after large protests in their metropolitan embarkation points.598 In this way

(and also by bringing in the units that served in Indochina), the number of the large military units operating in the area of the 10th Military Region increased from three to sixteen divisions, including elite formations such as the Foreign Legion, Colonial

Regiments and the Parachute Regiments – the most feared of the counter-insurgent forces.599

To train these vast numbers of troops and officers sent into conflict, the French official COIN school for reserve officers was opened in March 1956 in Arzew in the province of Oran. The courses lasted for 12 intensive days and contained lessons in

Islamic culture and Algerian life, as well as a study of Maoist thought and other revolutionary doctrines.600

In a pattern that probably fits every counterinsurgency campaign, the governmental forces used raids and patrols from early on in the war. Again, as always, they proved to be fairly ineffectual in terms of enemies apprehended or killed, as fast- moving and lightly armed guerrillas could easily disappear in the forests or mountains or blend in the population. However, they were useful in a way that cannot be properly quantified, as they showed the local population the continuous presence and superiority

598 Patrick Rotman, Bernard Tavernier, La Guerre sans nom. Les appelés d’Algérie, Paris: Seuil, 1992. 599 The sixteen administrative areas in which the three Algerian departments were divided could be converted in operational zones under military commanders if it was necessary. Charles R. Shrader, The First Helicopter War, 33, 36-37. 600 Alf Andrew Heggoy, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Algeria, 176-177. 189 of the governmental forces.601 However, these patrols could end in disaster, especially if mounted in unknown terrain by poorly trained troops. In the famous “Palestro incident” in late May 1956 a full platoon of the 9th Colonial Infantry Regiment composed of newly arrived reservists from the region of Paris was completely wiped out by guerrillas helped by local villagers about 80 kilometres southeast of Algiers. In a massive operation pursued by seven parachute battalions under General Massu and aided by helicopters, the rebel gang was hunted down for five days until finally surrounded and liquidated, with 17 guerrillas killed.602

When raids were the result of intelligence concerning the location of enemy groups, or when they were mounted by experienced troops, they could lead to spectacular victories for the French. In one particular incident in 1956, Colonel Marcel

Bigeards’s 3rd Colonial Parachute Regiment in one pursuit operation killed 125 FLN fighters.603

One organizational change for mobile warfare that helps illuminate the adaptation and versatility of the counterinsurgents is the reintroduction of a military arm that had been deemed obsolete by the mechanization of warfare and the increase firepower of the infantry. Having previously experimented with the idea during the rebellion in Morocco, the French raised mounted units for patrols, raids and population control purposes. Three horse regiments were raised for service in Algeria. The main reasons were a lack of road infrastructure and the suitability of horse units for rough terrain, especially the mountains. In Algeria, the “Spahi” regiments, while officered by metropolitan officers, were mostly made of French Muslim troops. Swords were carried

601 Constantin Melnik, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Algeria, 179-180. 602 Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace, 152-153. 603 Anthony Clayton, Frontiersmen, 24. 190 when mounted. In communities in which the horse was loved and the mounted warrior respected, cavalry played a psychological and a subtle population control role.604

The cavalry units took part in actions against the guerrillas, usually victorious but with considerable losses, due to their light armament. However, their mobility and speed played an important part in scouting and gathering information in difficult terrain.

Their main tasks were making contact with the population and territorial control. In

1959, for instance, the 5th Algerian Spahi Regiment was covering daily an area of 20-30 kilometres near Roumia, thus enabling an easy discovery of suspect movements. At night, specially placed units would wait in ambush for guerrilla groups to appear.605

It is easily understood that these mobile units and tactics could not be used with great effect if large swathes of the country were left devoid of army presence. Static, permanent presence was necessary and it had to be much stronger than the very light, multi-purpose SAS teams. Inspired by the idea that territorial control leads to a reassertion of governmental control over its citizens, the military commanders pursued the quadrillage.606 This tactic was based on having secure points from which reserve forces could sweep the territory. Conventional tactical wisdom of the time called for the battalion to be the main formation for quadrillage operations, the company being considered too weak and the regiment too slow.607 Both the strategy of quadrillage and the use of short-term cordoning and sweep tactics failed to defeat the ALN in the first two years of the war because the number of available French forces was too small.608

604 Pierre Durand, “La cavalerie au cheval pendant la guerre d’Algérie 1956-1962. Survivance ou résurrection ?” in Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains, No. 225, 2007, 81-91. 605 Thierry Noulens, “Les unités à cheval en Algérie, 1954-1962”, Revue historique des armées, Vol. 249, (2007), 93-109. 606 Quentin Pichelin, Vaincre une guérilla, 24. 607 CDEF, L’Emploi des forces terrestres dans les missions de stabilisation en Algérie, Cahier de la recherche doctrinale, 2006, 30-31. 608 Yoav Gortzak, "Using Indigenous Forces in Counterinsurgency Operations: The French in Algeria, 1954-1962" in Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 32 No. 2 (2009), 311-312. 191 Later in the war, 75 sectors were created in 1959 by General Jacques Allard to support the quadrillage. They were divided in three categories by the seriousness of the situation on the ground, some sectors hosting two regiments and the smallest fewer than three battalions.609 Semi-static units could achieve important victories, though mostly through lucky hits. For instance, army units used for the protection of oil pipelines cornered the unit of the famous Wilaya commander Amirouche in March 1959. In the fight, 75 men were killed and 85 arms were captured.610

This approach was greatly enhanced by the recruitment of vast numbers of

Muslim Algerians in French military units. Either through coercive means, through the promise of pay or simply receiving those Muslims whose families had been attacked, blackmailed or threatened by the FLN or the OPA, the government eventually employed over 223,000 harkis in its ranks.611 It has to be said though that unlike the British in

Malaya, the native force in Algeria was used mostly in support, logistical and construction roles, with very few actually going in combat; often they were judged to be of poor military quality or their loyalty was questioned.612 There were reasons for the second concern, highlighted by events such as the incident of 19 February 1956 near

Tlemcen, when 50 soldiers from the 50th Tirailleurs Regiment killed their French lieutenant and another ten men, took 100 weapons from the stores and deserted to the

FLN in a pre-arranged move. 613 Also, the status of the harkis was unclear; some

Frenchmen – and even themselves – often considering them as hired labourers rather

609 Charles R. Shrader, The First Helicopter War, 37-38. 610 Interview in 1988 with General Georges Buis, commander of the 8th Spahi Regiment in Algeria in Patrick Éveno, Jean Planchais (eds.), La guerre d’Algérie, 243. 611 Ethan M. Orwin, “Squad leaders today, village leaders tomorrow: Muslim auxiliaries and tactical politics in Algeria, 1956–1962”, Small Wars & Insurgencies, Vol.23, No.2 (2012), 330-351. 612 William B. Cohen, “The Harkis: History and Memory” in Patricia M.E. Lorcin (ed.), Algeria&France 1800-2000. Identity. Memory. Nostalgia, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2006, 165. 613 Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace, 138. 192 than soldiers.614 This did not prevent the FLN, after the independence of the country, to unleash its wrath upon them. 150,000 were killed; many of them were simply forced to clear minefields without any equipment.

However, all of these operational measures could not bring victory, as the FLN and its OPA held sway in the many Algerian quarters that believed that France’s rule should end altogether. To this popular support was added the massive external supplies of weapons and troop training, from both Tunisia and Morocco. While government tackled popular support through population control actions, most notably psychological warfare, internal deportation, the SAS teams and intelligence operations, the cutting of external help to the guerrillas had to be achieved mostly through military means.

Therefore, a large system of barriers was built facing the frontiers. Two such lines,

“Morice” and “Challe” were built near the Tunisian frontier, with an 8 foot high fence electrified at 5000 volts, surrounded by landmines and patrolled by 80,000 men with armoured cars, searching lights and supported by aviation and heavy artillery.615

The barriers were for the FLN in military terms what the SAS teams were in the area of population control: a death threat.616 Without the weapons smuggled by fresh troops coming overland and with the sea totally controlled by the French Navy, the FLN could only rely on a few light weapons and makeshift bombs and on terrorist attacks, which proved unfeasible after the government troops changed tactics during the “Battle of Algiers”. The defense of the frontiers became so effective that in the second half of

1960, only 40 men with 40 weapons were able to successfully cross the barrages.617

Camel convoys trying to avoid the barrages by crossing the border to the south, in the

614 Yoav Gortzak, "Using Indigenous Forces”, 320-321. 615 Daniel Moran, Wars of National Liberation, 120. 616 Guy Pervillé, “La ligne Morice en Algérie, 1956-1962 (2004)” in Panoramiques, No. 67 (2004). 617 Constantin Melnik, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Algeria, 171. 193 Sahara, were intercepted in nine out of ten cases, as aerial surveillance could spot them easily. In any case, they could only transport very limited amounts of weapons.618

It became paramount for the survival of the guerrilla to cross the barriers and the largest battles of the conflict took place in attempts at getting through. On 15 June 1957, an entire battalion crossing from Tunisia was surprised and 205 men were killed.619 In the battles of Souk Ahras in early 1958, the biggest engagements of the war, the ALN tried to force the Morice Line with seven companies and over 800 men.620 Total losses for the rebels were 620 dead and captured, including a battalion commander. The

French total losses were 38 dead and 35 wounded. A few other engagements in the next two months marked an end to the “Battle of the Barrages”, the attempt to fight the way into Algeria. Between September 1957 and May 1958, ALN lost over 6,000 men trying to cross the barrages.621

It was in these mobile, conventional actions that – in addition to the normal organisational and firepower superiority of the regular army units – technology played a major part in defeating the guerrillas. 622 Importantly, the transport and armoured helicopters delivered heavy blows to the guerrilla, either through lifting French troops to strategic locations during battles or through direct fire against rebel armed groups.623

Their importance had been recognized early on in the conflict, with a U.S. report from

1956 based on conversations with French military officials stating that Paris valued

618 Charles R. Shrader, The First Helicopter War, 218. 619 Edgar O’Ballance, The Algerian Insurrection, 90. 620 Andre Nouschi, L’Algérie amère 1914-1994, 223. 621 Charles R. Shrader, The First Helicopter War, 216-217. 622 Interview with Raymond Chabanne in Patrick Éveno, Jean Planchais (eds.), La guerre d’Algérie, 164. 623 CDEF, L’Emploi des forces terrestres, 42. For the armoured helicopter see Daho Djerbal, “Les maquis du Nord-Constantinois face aux grandes opérations de ratissage du plan Challe (1959-1960)” in Jean- Charles Jauffret, Maurice Vaïsse (eds.), Militaires et guérilla dans la guerre d’Algérie, 204-206. 194 highly the helicopters, considering 50 to be as useful as 200,000 men.624 However, it was during this later phase that they became prominent in counter-guerrilla warfare and their use was massive: from one in 1954 there were 82 in the country by 1957 and 400 in 1960. The terrain was particularly suited to the use of helicopters and air mobility in general was of the essence.625

Another two approaches to counterinsurgency were extremely relevant to highlight the organizational and operational flexibility and innovation of the French armed forces during the Algerian war. The first of these was the employment of counter-gangs, Algerian Muslims’ armed groups, sometimes made of former FLN fighters working with government support in terms of money, weapons and intelligence and employing guerrilla tactics against the nationalist rebels.626 While the French had experimented with forming counter-gangs in Indochina, in Algeria they became quite prominent in prosecuting the conflict, despite the qualms held by some counterinsurgency experts about their efficiency. 627 One such counter-gang was the

“maquis Kobus”, code named for Belhadj Abdelkader, a former member of the

Organisation secrète, turned agent for DST in 1950. He was one of the main sources inside the nationalist Algerian groups in the months before the beginning of the insurrection. Kobus created his own nationalist maquis, close to the political group of

Messali el-Hadj and anti-FLN. It grew eventually into an 800-strong force, vastly aided with armament, transport and supplies by the French (including supplies delivered by the SAS, which were supposed to have different missions). In fights against the FLN

624 Telegram from the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (Greunther) to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 12 March 1956, Doc. 69 in FRUS, 1955-1957, Vol. XVIII Africa, Washington, 1989, 238. 625 “By 1959, the French helicopter force had flown some 40,000 hours on operations, evacuated 7,500 casualties, and carried over 48,000 passengers and 1,200 tons of freight.” David Jordan, “Countering Insurgency from the Air: The Postwar Lessons” in Contemporary Security Policy, Vol.28, No.1 (April 2007), 96–111. 626 Mohammed Bendara, “La guerre psychologique dans la guerre d’Algérie”, 182. 627 David Galula, Counter-insurgency Warfare, 73. 195 formations in the spring of 1957, it inflicted 500 losses while taking 200 casualties. In

April 1958, his own men betrayed Abdelkader after negotiations with the FLN, killed him and defected to their former enemies.628

Another counter-gang, led by Mohammed Bellounis, controlled for a year a large territory in southern Algeria, with serious French support. This veritable army counted anywhere in between 4,000 and 8,000 combatants, a vast force in support of the metropolitan military effort. An adherent of Messali Hadj, Bellounis formed his own militia in 1955 and eventually sided with the French in 1957. While efficient against the

FLN, he became a liability through the ruthlessness of his forces and was eliminated by the security forces in July 1958, being killed together with many of his men.629

The second approach ended up being the tip of the spear of the large offensives mounted between 1959 and 1960 under the command of General Maurice Challe, which combed Algeria from west to east in separate operations sometimes lasting for months and led, in the assessment of the French military commanders and of independent analysts, to the near total destruction of large FLN armed groups.630 In Kabylia, for instance, the operations resulted in 1,460 killed guerrillas, 1,323 captured and arrested,

85 switching sides and 1,270 weapons captured. 631 Taking full advantage of the operational experience gained in five years of insurrectionary warfare, the military created special counter-guerrilla groups, the commandos de chasse. 632 These were extremely mobile units, lightly armed but strong enough to engage large rebel groups,

628 Jacques Valette, “Le maquis Kobus, une manipulation ratée durant la guerre d’Algérie (1957-1958)” in Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains, No. 191, 1998, 69-88. 629 Philippe Gaillard, L’Alliance. La guerre d’Algérie du général Bellounis (1957-1958), Paris: L’Harmattan, 2009. 630 Christopher Griffin, “Major Combat Operations”, 569-570. 631 Report of General Faure (commander of the 27th Infantry Division) on the results of the Challe Offensive in Kabylia, 24 October 1959 in Mohammed Harbi, Gilbert Meynier, Le FLN. Documents et histoire 1954-1962, 99. 632 For an overview see Pierre André Cerutti, Jean-Christophe Damaisin D’Arès, Les têtes chercheuses du général Challe. 196 self supporting and able to last for a significant amount of time in the mountains or in the arid areas.633 The commandos de chasse took the fight to the last hideouts of the guerrillas, the mountains and the night. 634 One of these units formed in 1959, the

“commando Georges”, commanded by a French officer but made up of former FLN fighters, was responsible for the elimination of 1,800 rebels and the capture of 1,200 weapons.635

These units also had improved radio communications and were able to call on quick air support from bombers or armed helicopters, testimony of the enhanced inter- service cooperation in place by this time of the war (the fact that Maurice Challe was an air force general played an important part in this). By this time in the war the troops in the field could benefit from vastly improved intelligence coming from air surveillance.

Surveillance squadrons were established after 1956 in each of the three army corps in

Algeria. After 1959 the missions became targeted and fairly short in duration (one hour and a half), focusing on the reconnaissance of a small area. Photographic reconnaissance started in the early years producing low-quality photos, with the maps produced based on them having a scale of 1/20000. In time, and with technological improvement, the Air Force surveillance teams were able to produce photos that led to maps of a 1/5000 or even 1/3000 scale. The ground forces considered photographic intelligence to be 60-70% accurate.636 Thus technology played a significant part in dealing decisively, though in a conventional manner, with the Algerian guerrillas.

633 Proving Galula’s assertion that the less sophisticated the counterinsurgent forces, the better they are, Counter-insurgency Warfare, 32. 634 Gil Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars, 85. 635 Pascal Le Pautremat, “Le commando Georges. De la contre-guérilla à la tragédie (1959-1962)”, Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains, No. 213, 2004, 95-103 ; Henri Le Mire, Histoire militaire de la guerre d’Algérie, 276-277. 636 While the Air Force took the photos, it was the Army intelligence officers who interpreted them and produced intelligence materials based on them, Marie-Catherine Villatoux, “La reconnaissance aérienne 197

4.7 Conclusions

This chapter has provided an analysis of the French COIN approach in Algeria taking into account the broader framework of the civil war in the country, the context of decolonization and the lessons learned in fighting previous large and small-scale insurrections in Indochina, Morocco and Tunisia. The focus was, much as in the rest of the research, on population control, intelligence and military operations.

The Algerian War of Independence stands apart not only among the other case studies of this work, but in the general series of decolonization conflicts. It showcased how a relatively small, lightly armed group of determined nationalists can unleash a powerful insurrection in a relatively peaceful country and how, by gathering a certain amount of internal and external support, they can carry on fighting despite taking large losses and having their leadership almost completely eliminated. The war led to a staggering loss of life, with the lowest estimates at 350,000 dead and the highest at 1.5 million. It also uprooted two million Muslim Algerians from their homes through internal deportation and destroyed the European community in the country, with a million refugees in France by the fall of 1962. In a sense, this does make the conflict unique and its analysis contextual. However, at a tactical and operational level - and some would argue even at a strategic level – there are a number of conclusions and lessons to be learned from the way in which the government pursued an anti-guerrilla campaign.

dans la lute anti-guérilla” in Jean-Charles Jauffret, Maurice Vaïsse (eds.), Militaires et guérilla dans la guerre d’Algérie, 315-319. 198 In terms of lessons learned, as this was a conflict much greater in scale than either Malaya or Romania, the conventional approaches such as sweeps, cordon and searches, pursuits, the creation of military barriers, direct engagements and mopping up of enemy formations took a larger share of the overall COIN effort and largely accounted for victory in the field. This was in a great measure possible because the opponent, the FLN, aimed consistently to reach the conventional stage of warfare thus enabling the government to often fight on its own terms. FLN’s military structure and training in a sense made this option seem sensible even in the face of the greatest odds.

These classical approaches not only showed the flag throughout the country, preventing movement in large formations, but also prevented the guerrillas from creating bases and safe areas in Algeria. In engagements, French numerical superiority and greater firepower and in the later stages the mobility, technology and command and organizational capability of governmental troops proved to be too much for the rebels.

From an intelligence perspective, the relative disaggregation of the French agencies and efforts was surprisingly efficient in dealing with rebels operating inside and outside Algeria. Not only that after 1956 the arms supplies were disrupted and those willing to deal with the rebels were eliminated, but intelligence efforts were instrumental in destroying or severely isolating the guerrillas’ leadership in France and the rest of North Africa. While some of the more daring approaches such as using former nationalists who had sided with the government to create special, covert anti- guerrilla units had a mixed success at best, they do need to be considered as possible options for future conflicts. Although military-led intelligence efforts also won the campaign against urban terrorism in 1957, the horrific price paid ultimately helped alienate the metropolitan population from the goals of the conflict. Population-control strategies proved efficient and innovative. The wide social, economic and medical

199 action of the SAS teams and other government agencies helped rally to the French position a far greater number of Algerians than the FLN directly counted among its active members and might truly deserve to be studied as a good practice for future campaigns, despite the practice of wide-scale deportations.

The resilience of the French government, its ability to pour enormous resources into the conflict as well as its determination after 1958 to truly change the political and economic bases of Algeria combined with the versatility of its army and intelligence services to achieve military victory on the ground. However, the war was lost eventually, as the FLN shifted its urban effort from terrorism to massive peaceful demonstrations which showed that, in a sense, the French were fighting against the very ideals of their state: liberty and equality for every human being. The peaceful demonstrations and their repression by the police, combined with the revelations of torture served to delegitimize Paris both inside and outside Algeria. In addition, the erosion of metropolitan political support for an increasingly expensive and embarrassing situation in Algeria led to the eventual peace with the FLN and independence for the country on 5 July 1962. The lesson that one can draw from this final victory of the Algerian nationalists is that in an era dominated by nationalism all governments perceived by a vast number of their subjects as alien, occupying powers are bound, sooner or later, to be chased away.

But one should keep in mind that this was a deeply violent conflict in which all the three sides – the French armed forces, the nationalist Algerians and the elements of the European population of the North African country perpetrated systematic horrors against their opponents. While no camp was blameless, the actions of the French government deserve special scrutiny. The practices of a democratic, law-abiding republic, signatory of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights had very often an

200 inhumane, immoral and illegal character. Practitioners would do well to think about this case in the future counterinsurgencies of this century.

201

Chapter 5

Romanian Counterinsurgency, 1944-1958

Even before the Moscow-backed Romanian communists took power in early

March 1945 armed groups and subversive movements were contesting their bid for controlling the destinies of this European nation. The Romanian Communist Party

(Partidul Comunist Român, PCR) would go on to fight these armed groups and others formed in the following years for more than a decade and a half, until the last isolated armed rebels were captured in 1961 and 1962.637 While these groups never formed a unitary movement, were quite small and unable to pose vital threats to the regime, they did constitute an insurgency in the sense of a politically-motivated, armed struggle against a central government.

Indeed, when compared with the Malayan and Algerian case, the Romanian insurgency can be even more relevant for contemporary concerns, being a scattered, diffused and leaderless movement united nevertheless by an ideology (nationalism) and by the belief that armed struggle would contribute to the downfall of an illegitimate regime supported by a foreign power. In this it resembles what Mark Sageman called the “leaderless jihad” to describe post 9/11 evolutions in the Middle East.638 Studying the Romanian case allows us to broaden the research towards non-colonial counterinsurgency, which more often than not is the regular occurrence in anti-guerrilla campaigns. Moreover, in this particular regard one sees a government fighting

637 PCR was renamed the Romanian Workers Party (Partidul Muncitoresc Român, PMR) in 1948 after the absorption of the social democrats. 638 Marc Sageman, “Leaderless Jihad: Radicalization in the West”, on www.newamerica.net, last consulted 24 June 2013. 202 opponents who belong to the same ethnicity, race and culture, illuminating aspects of

COIN that were absent in Malaya or Algeria. Furthermore, studying a communist government’s reaction to armed rebellion allows us to answer the question concerning the existence of a particular “democratic COIN”, especially in the immediate post-war era.

Unlike the Polish, Baltic and Ukrainian anti-communist and anti-Soviet insurgencies which overlapped the Second World War and continued in the decade that followed this conflagration, the Romanian anti-communist armed struggle was virtually unknown to the Western public during the Cold War.639 Throughout the 1950s, 60s and

70s, prominent analysts discussing the communist takeover of the country and its

Stalinist-inspired social and economic transformation rarely mentioned any kind of political or military opposition to the new regime.640 If they did, they tended to assume that this resistance was crushed in 1946-1947 and that the few, armed guerrillas operating in the mountains met a similar fate in the following years.641 In this they were following somehow unwillingly the view propagated by Bucharest, which throughout that period allowed the publication of literary works or the screening of movies describing the fate of their opponents in similar terms.

However, after the fall of Eastern European communist regimes in 1989, a deluge of memoirs and testimonies coming from survivors of these movements, their relatives or other former political prisoners in communist prisons soon changed this

639 See for instance Juozas Daumantas, Fighters for Freedom: Lithuanian Partisans versus the USSR, 1944-1947, Toronto: Lithuanian Canadian Committee for Human Rights, 1975. 640 See for instance Reuben H. Markham, Rumania Under the Soviet Yoke, Boston: Meadow Publishing Company, 1949; Alexandre Cretzianu (ed.), Captive Rumania, New York: Praeger, 1956. 641 Ghiță Ionescu, Communism in Rumania 1944-1962, London: Oxford University Press, 1964, 124. 203 view.642 These works brought into public light the existence, intensity and length of the insurgency, although falling into the trap of most memoirs by exaggerating its uniqueness or significance.643 A more rigorous study of the Romanian anti-communist armed resistance began in the middle of the 1990s when researchers, initially without much institutional backing started working in the archives of the Romanian secret police, Departamentul Securității Statului (Securitate). The results of this research have been impressive, with dozens of volumes of documents published and a solid secondary literature emerging in the field. Over the last decade and a half, a number of research institutes, national inquiry commissions and a scientific board working under the auspices of the Romanian Presidency contributed to this effort.644 Although massive syntheses are few or still await publication and the literature published in other languages (such as English and French) is scarce, the amount of published primary sources makes the Romanian case, quite surprisingly, far better documented than the other two case studies of this thesis, Malaya and Algeria.645

This chapter will therefore be able to analyse the counterinsurgency waged by

Romanian communists in greater detail, as more is known about how the insurgent groups were eventually discovered and defeated. The emphasis remains on population

642 See for an interesting perspective on them Monica Ciobanu, "Reconstructing the History of Early Communism and Armed Resistance in Romania" in Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 66, No. 9 (2014), 1452- 1481. 643 Florian Banu, “Câteva considerații privind istoriografia Securității” in Caietele CNSAS, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2008), 191. 644 Among them I need to mention Consiliul Național pentru Studierea Arhivelor Securității, Institutul Național pentru Studiul Totalitarismului, Academia Civică, Comisia Prezidențială pentru Analiza Dictaturii Comuniste din România. 645 The most complete work on the subject, belonging to the former director of the National Archives Dorin Dobrincu, still awaits publication, Rezistența armată anticomunistă din România (1944 – începutul anilor `60), PhD thesis, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iași, 2006. The author would like to express his gratitude to Dr Dobrincu for sharing his research. A comprehensive and synthetic work of his in English is Dorin Dobrincu, “Historicizing a Disputed Theme: Anti-communist Armed Resistance in Romania” in Vladimir Tismăneanu (ed.), Stalinism revisited: the establishment of communist regimes in East-Central Europe, Budapest: Central European University Press, 2009.

204 control through deportations, on intelligence and on military operations leading to the defeat of the insurgency.

5.1 The context of the resistance

Anti-communist armed resistance began in a Romania devastated by a war in which it was essentially defeated and occupied by its foe for two decades, the Soviet

Union. The pro-Axis government of Ion Antonescu (1940-1944), which initially governed in an alliance with the local iteration of the European fascist phenomenon, the

Legionary Movement, took the country to war against Moscow in June 1941, ostensibly to recuperate the territories annexed by the Soviet Union in June 1940, Bessarabia and

Northern Bukovina. On the Eastern Front the Romanian contribution was significantly higher in terms of troops and losses than all of the other German allies, with two

Romanian armies destroyed in the Battle of Stalingrad alongside Marshal Von Paulus`s

8th German Army. Economically, Romanian oil production from the oilfields of Ploiești fuelled the German war machine, becoming one of the main targets of British and

American air raids after 1942.646

Keeping in touch with the “barbarisation of warfare” on the Eastern Front, the

Romanian troops had a significant share in the extermination of Jewish population and in the mass killing of Soviet citizens in occupied areas, most notably Transdniestria and

646 See for a synthetic work Mark Axworthy, Cornel Scafeș, Cristian Crăciunoiu, Third Axis, Fourth Ally. Romanian Armed Forces in the European War, 1941-1945, London: Arms and Armour, 1995. 205 Odessa. 647 This behaviour, which in turn elicited a special condemnation and harsh treatment of the country from the victorious Soviets, had its roots both in a historical mistrust and fear of Russia and in a strong state-backed anti-Soviet and anti-Communist propaganda. Indeed, the Romanian action on the Eastern Front was portrayed as the

“Holy War against Bolshevism”, seen as a struggle for the life and soul of the nation in the face of an implacable enemy bent on their destruction.648

These relatively widespread feelings and convictions were unlikely to subdue in the aftermath of the conflict, with hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops on Romanian soil and the remnants of the national army fighting this time against German and

Hungarian troops around Budapest and in the Tatra Mountains.649 Bessarabia and North

Bukovina were to remain detached from Romania; all the political leadership who had led the country in the war was arrested, put through SMERSH interrogation in Moscow than turned over to the Romanian authorities for trial as war criminals. A number of them, including Ion Antonescu, were given death sentences and executed in June

1946.650 The terms of the armistice convention signed with the Allied Powers on 12

September 1944 seemed for many Romanians extremely harsh, a war-torn country being forced to pay a large war indemnity to its main victor, with a large part of this war

647 Omer Bartov, The Eastern Front 1941-1945. German Troops and the Barbarization of Warfare, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985; Final Report of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania, Iași: Polirom, 2005. 648 Grant T. Harward, “Peasant Armies at Odds: Romanian-Soviet Interaction During the Second World War” in Journal of Slavic Military Studies, Vol. 24, No.2 (2011), 274-298. 649 After the 23 August 1944 coup that ousted Marshal Antonescu, Romania changed sides and its remaining armed forces fought Nazi Germany and Fascist Hungary until the end of the war. Up to 12 Romanian divisions were subordinated to the Soviet 3rd and 4th Ukrainian Fronts and fought in Transylvania, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. 650 Radu Ioanid, FSB (eds.), Lotul Antonescu în ancheta SMERȘ, Moscova, 1944-1946, Iași: Polirom, 2006. SMERSH was the special counterintelligence and interrogation unit of the Soviet Ministry of the Interior. 206 debt being collected in precious industrial machinery and products with high export- value such as oil and wood.651

To crown all that, the political groups and parties who had led the country through the interwar period were with good reason perceived by Moscow and its local proxies as staunchly anti-Soviet and opposed to any transformation of the country according to a Marxist-Leninist model. Therefore the Romanian Communist Party

(PCR) had to move fast against these opponents, boosted by the support of Soviet troops in the country and the two pro-communist Romanian army divisions recruited and trained by political commissars in the prisoner camps inside USSR and brought in late 1944 in the country. With part of the government’s ministerial positions in the hands of the internal wing of the PCR ever since the coup that ousted Antonescu on 23

August 1944 this task was becoming increasingly feasible, more so by the takeover throughout the autumn and winter of that year of the intelligence and police structures of the state.652

After half a year of struggle with the centre and right-wing formations in the cabinet and after a major push from Soviet adjunct Foreign Minister Andrey Vyshinsky, the PCR assumed virtually full power on 6 March 1945 in a new administration led by

Dr Petru Groza. This new government, while including as token formations agrarian and social-democrat groups, was in all but name a Communist government, with the party assuming the posts that would allow it to implement faster and more aggressively an agenda to the liking of Josef Stalin. 653 By the summer of 1948, the Romanian

651 Keith Hitchins, Rumania, 1866-1947, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. 652 Despite its age a standard work remains Ghiță Ionescu, Communism in Rumania 1944-1962. See next footnote for an explanation of internal and external wings of the PCR. 653 The “internal” group of the PCR, led by party leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej and comprising among others Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu, Gheorghe Apostol, Ion Gheorghe Maurer, Chivu Stoica and Nicolae Ceaușescu had won its spurs in the strikes and anti-war manifestations of the 1930s and in its majority spent the war in jail. The “external” group, whose prominent members were Ana Pauker, Teohari 207 communists had completely destroyed their political opponents and created a framework for a radical reshaping of the social and economic structures of the country.

The PCR and its affiliates conducted a land reform that dealt a heavy blow to large landowners in early 1945, won through fraud and intimidation the parliamentary elections in the fall of 1946, dissolved and arrested the leadership of their liberal and agrarian foes in the summer of 1947, forced the king to abdicate and proclaimed a people’s republic on 30 December 1947 and decreed a vast confiscation and nationalization of property and industrial enterprises in June 1948. 654 This brutal reshaping of a country was bound to lead to a significant degree of opposition.

One has here to engage with the dual problem of the magnitude of collaboration with and the resistance to communist rule in early post-war Romania. Collaboration or at least abeyance to governmental policy seems to have characterized the majority of the population. While one can indeed explain this through the war-weariness of the citizens, through fear of reprisals or an effective intimidation of the masses by the government, economic and social explanations need also to be considered. Indeed, interwar Romania had a deeply divided economy and society. Wealthy elites with business interests in heavy industry, oil production, finance and large agricultural estates controlled the economic and political destinies of the nation. The growing, but still relatively small industrial working class was battling the small wages and the prolonged effects of the

Great Depression. 655 Over 70% of the population was still rural and occupied in

Georgescu, Vasile Luca had spent the war in Moscow and were perceived, at least initially, to be the more aggressive and less pragmatic of the two factions. The groups would fight for control of the party for many years, until the internal group gained Stalin’s favour and won in 1952. See for this the standard work on the internal dynamics of the PCR Vladimir Tismăneanu, Stalinism for All Seasons. A Political History of Romanian Communism, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. 654 Stephen Fischer-Galati, Twentieth Century Romania, New York: Columbia University Press, 1991. 655 Of particular significance in this regard are the works of the communist intellectual and party leader Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu, Problemele de bază ale României, Bucharest: Editura de stat, 1946; Un veac de framîntari sociale, 1821-1907, Bucharest: Ed. Politică, 1969 and Sub trei dictaturi, Bucharest: Ed. Politică, 1970. 208 agriculture, with a vast majority of them tending small subsistence farms. In the countryside, morbidity, child mortality and illiteracy were significantly higher than those in other European nations and approaching the levels seen in African and Asian colonies.656 It is therefore unsurprising that underprivileged Romanians, who were by no means few, were willing to give a chance to a regime that ruled in the name of their class and promised the rectification in their favour of all the ills of the country.657

In terms of the opposition to the communists, passive resistance is hard to quantify. For decades, exiled Romanians and foreign scholars argued that the majority of the people were opposed to the Moscow-backed government and its reforms. In the last two decades many local analysts and scholars voiced similar opinions, but hard data simply cannot be collected in order to provide a definite answer to this question and the evidence remains anecdotic or grounded in scattered materials on public opinion in the documents of the Securitate (the Romanian secret police from 1948 until 1989).658

What can be ascertained with a greater certainty is that dozens, if not hundreds of armed or subversive groups comprising a few thousand individuals were formed in the years after 1944 and engaged in active resistance, propaganda and defiance of the regime. Other thousands were part of the support networks these guerrillas relied on for food, lodging and information. Many more individuals without formally belonging to these groups engaged in demonstrations or vocal disagreement with the policies of the

PCR/PMR, risking their careers and liberty. When the pattern of reform reached the countryside and Soviet-style collectivization began in earnest in 1949, thousands of peasants mounted violent, sometimes armed riots against the local communist

656 Bogdan Murgescu, România i Europa: acumularea decalajelor economice (1500-2010), Iași: Polirom, 2010. 657 Stephen Fischer-Galati, The Socialist Republic of Rumania, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1969, 32. 658 See for a critique of the theory of vast resistance to the regime and a large number of victims Florian Banu, “Câteva considerații privind istoriografia Securității”, 192-193. 209 authorities. An even larger number of citizens, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, were deemed to be suspect by the government and were deported, given compulsory residences or spent time in prison or work camps. 659 Although only some of these groups can be analysed from the perspective of counterinsurgency studies, it is important to highlight the significant opposition to the communist transformation of the country in order to better understand how a virtually hopeless struggle lasted for so long against such strong odds.

5.2 A typology of rebel groups

In the growing literature of armed anti-communist resistance in Romania a relative consensus has been formed concerning the outlook and ultimate fate of the guerrillas. According to most authors, they were small groups of up to 20 armed individuals, generally living in remote rural areas, preferably with mountainous terrain.

They relied to a great measure on the networks of family and friends in local villages, providing them with shelter, food, information, physical and moral comfort.660 They were formed mostly of local anti-communist peasants, led by charismatic figures recruited from former notabilities, notaries, teachers and army officers. A good number of them were city-folk who took to the mountains to add their efforts to the armed resistance and they included students, lawyers and traders. 661 A table, detailing the name, leaders, composition, type, period and area of operations of most groups

659 For a work of synthesis, advocating for a large-scale opposition to the regime, see Presidential Commission for the Analysis of Communist Dictatorship in Romania, Final Report, Bucharest, 2006. 660 Presidential Commission for the Analysis of Communist Dictatorship in Romania, Final Report, 332. 661 Monica Ciobanu, "Reconstructing the History of Early Communism and Armed Resistance in Romania”, 1464. 210 mentioned in this analysis can be found at the end of the chapter, with the entries in the order in which the groups were first mentioned.

Politically, many had not been affiliated before or during the war, while others had been liberals, members of the National Peasants Party, social democrats, and some were even former communists.662 A good number of them, though not the majority, were legionaries (members of the Romanian fascist movement, the Iron Guard or the

Legionary Movement); they did, however, tend to be the leaders of many of the most dangerous guerrilla groups, therefore enabling the government to portray the armed rebels as fascist enemies.663 Armed with light weapons, mostly pistols, rifles, grenades and occasionally automatic weapons, the guerrillas may have had a modicum of military training due to many of them serving in the army during the Second World War. Most of their attacks were attempts at sabotage, strikes against local communists and local party buildings or confrontations with the armed forces of the regime.664

Ultimately, their fate was sealed by a combination of intelligence work from the authorities, involving the creation of an informative network in the area, the use of torture and intimidation, infiltrators and “counter-gangs” with surgical operations when the groups’ location was discovered. Disillusionment and discouragement coupled with betrayal also accounted for the capture of some of the rebels, some going down fighting,

662 Ghiță Ionescu, Communism in Rumania 1944-1962, 132. 663 According to a 1951 Securitate document, of 804 captured partisans 88 were former members of the National Peasant Party, 79 of the Ploughmen Front (surprisingly, the head of this formation was prime- minister Dr. Petru Groza), 15 former members of the National Liberal Party and – most surprisingly – 42 former members of the Romanian Communist Party, see Dennis Deletant, Teroarea comunistă în România. Gheorghiu-Dej și statul polițienesc, 1948-1965, Iași: Polirom, 2001, 178. 664 Report of the General Directorate of the Securitate, October 21st 1948 in Consiliul Național pentru Studierea Arhivelor Securității, “Bande, bandiți și eroi”. Grupurile de rezistență și Securitatea (1948- 1968), Bucharest: Ed. Enciclopedică, 2003 (quoted as BBE), Doc. 2, 46-49. 211 some taking their own lives while many others ending before a firing squad or spending long years in labour camps and prisons.665

To a large degree this image is accurate and one has to partially agree with

Dorin Dobrincu’s assessment: “Romanian anti-communist armed resistance was mostly a fight for survival rather than a fight for a vision. The phenomenon was more akin to pre-modern social banditry than with modern guerrilla movements”.666 However, this view, relegating in a sense the Romanian guerrillas to the ranks of Eric Hobsbawm’s

“primitive rebels”, needs to be amended, not only because the insurgents were strongly ideological in their anti-communist positions, but because the reality of their struggle and the government’s reaction to it was considerably more complex.667

Armed resistance to the communist rule was to spring from many directions and quarters, but despite the common sentiment, most of the groups were spontaneous and there never was a coordinated action. Elements inside the Romanian general officers corps, under the command of General Aurel Aldea had tried in 1945-1946 to form a

National Resistance Movement to oversee the disparate rebel groups and to organize an armed insurrection. 668 The action was short lived, due to vigilant action of the communist-controlled intelligence services and those connected with it were arrested in the summer of 1946. However, some isolated officers in units across the country came

665 Florian Banu, “Metode utilizate de Securitate pentru lichidarea grupurilor de rezistență din munți (1948-1958)”, in Consiliul Național pentru Studierea Arhivelor Securității, Mișcarea armată de rezistență anticomunistă din România, 1944-1962, Bucharest: Kullusys, 2003, 301-316; Andrei Miroiu, „Wiping out : Romanian Counterinsurgency Strategies in the Early Communist Period” in Journal of Slavic Military Studies, Vol. 23, No. 4 (2010). 666 Dorin Dobrincu, Rezistența armată anticomunistă din România, 831. For the low threat also see Dennis Deletant, Teroarea comunistă în România, 181. 667 Eric Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels. Studies in archaic forms of social movement in the 19th and 20th centuries, New York: Praeger, 1963. 668 Declaration of Gheorghe Kintescu, June 1946 in Radu Ciuceanu, Octavian Roske, Cristian Troncotă (eds.), Începuturile mișcării de rezistență în România, Bucharest: Institutul Național pentru Studiul Totalitarismului, 1998-2001 (quoted as IMRR), Vol. II, Doc. 11, 40-41. 212 into contact with rebels and supported them with weapons and ammunition.669 This, as well as the size and organization of some rebel groups in a sense justified the disorientation of the intelligence agencies, which were still looking for a possible unified command of the partisans as late as 1949.670

The group around General Aldea had been in contact nevertheless with intelligence agents of the British and American missions to Bucharest, which opens up the subject of the foreign involvement in anti-communist armed resistance in Romania.

Quite unsurprisingly, the first foreign power who fought the new regime in

Bucharest had been Nazi Germany, in the final months of the Second World War.

Immediately after 23 August 1944, Berlin released from the internment camps the thousands of members of the legionary movement who were kept in Germany since their failed attempt to wrest power from Ion Antonescu in January 1941.671 Forming a fascist government in exile based in Vienna and placed under the leadership of legionary leader Horia Sima, the Nazis initiated a program of training crack teams of legionary paratroopers. Groups of 6-8 men received guerrilla, sabotage and radio- communication training at a special warfare school in Austria and were inserted by special air missions in mountainous regions of the country in the winter of 1944-

1945.672 Imprecise air-drops, adverse weather conditions, poor training and bad morale compromised most of these missions more than any action taken by government forces against them. The missions ended in nearly complete failure, with surviving legionaries

669 Georges Diener L`Autre Communisme en Roumanie. Résistance populaire et maquis 1945-1965, Paris: L`Harmattan, 2001, 82. 670 Report of the General Directorate of the Securitate, May 7th 1949 in BBE, Doc. 7, 73. 671 In late January 1941 the Iron Guard tried to oust Ion Antonescu from power and install a purely fascist regime. Their coup failed, especially after the Germans supported Antonescu, who was considered to be a more serious and capable ally. The leadership of the Iron Guard and thousands of members were taken to Germany, though, and kept in internment camps as an alternative to any power shift in Romania. 672 Perry Biddiscombe, “Prodding the Russian Bear: Pro-German Resistance in Romania, 1944–5” in European History Quarterly, Vol. 23, (1993), 193–232. 213 surendering or being quickly captured. Very few were able to hide themselves and join local guerrillas and virtually no sabotage actions were attempted.673

For a much longer period, virtually into the 1950s, Western intelligence tried to contact and help subversive and armed groups working against the authorities in

Bucharest. 674 The British Intelligence Service used former policemen to gather information and contact rebel groups in Moldova.675 The American OSS mission to

Bucharest, led by the Frank Wisner who would eventually rise to lead CIA’s National

Clandestine Service, moved as soon as it arrived in early September 1944 to secure contacts among the political and military leaders who would pose a challenge to the

Stalinist takeover of the country.676 Perhaps the most successful of their actions was to effectively penetrate the Special Information Service (Serviciul Special de Informații,

SSI), the country’s main foreign intelligence service. Inside the SSI, officers who had coordinated information collection on the Eastern Front and were implacable enemies of the Soviet Union created a special covert unit. This unit, seemingly protected at the highest level by General Nicolae Rădescu, prime minister between November 1944 and

March 1945, passed information to the American OSS and was bent on helping any anti-communist insurrection in the eventuality of open conflict between the Western allies and Moscow.677 However, the communist penetration of the service, coordinated

673 Filon Verca, Parașutați în România vândută, Timișoara: Marineasa, 2000. 674 Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes. The History of the CIA, New York: Doubleday, 2007, especially chapter 1. 675 Siguranță note, 25 July 1945 in IMRR, Vol. II, Doc. 89, 272. 676 M. Fătu, “Conspirația antistatală a P.N.Ț. din anul 1947” in Consiliul Securității Statului, Studii și documente, Vol. I, 1969, 27-28. 677 The belief in an imminent conflict between the West and the Soviet Union was crucial for many of the rebel groups. This led in some cases to particularly delusional views such as the fact that in 1948 local resistance groups believed that Western forces would land in Dobrogea to fight the Soviets and their task would be to hamper the retreat of the communist forces, see Marian Cojoc (ed.), Rezistența armată din Dobrogea 1945-1960, Bucharest: Institutul Național pentru Studiul Totalitarismului, 2004 (quoted as RAD), 20. 214 by Emil Bodnăraș, a GRU agent, led to the discovery and capture of this group.678

American officers had also tried to directly contact some of the rebels. A document from an agent infiltrated in a guerrilla group from Bukovina details the visit of an

American lieutenant Hamilton to Vatra Dornei, his contacts and promises of help to the guerrillas, such as radio transmitters. The rebels would provide him with military plans regarding resistance.679 The outcome of such contacts was however not positive, as this group was soon annihilated.

Once the Cold War had truly begun, the CIA organized paratrooper teams made up of Romanian exiles from Western Europe. Gordon Mason, chief of the CIA base in

Bucharest from 1949 to 1951, endorsed the strategy. The agents were to cooperate with and convince the partisans to sabotage factories and railroads. In case of war, they were supposed to prompt the partisans to skirmish with the Soviet troops. The agents were recruited in refugee camps, trained in signals in Italy and obtained parachute lessons and practice in Germany. In an action that highlighted the failure of these missions, one such group was launched on 18-19 October 1951 in the Negoiu Mountains. The members were captured within a month and executed in 1952.680 The story of other groups was similar. In 1951 near Brașov a group of 2 was dropped and soon captured.

On 1-2 October 1952 near Târgu Cărbunești in Oltenia, a two-member group was inserted and almost a year passed before they were captured. Another 3 agents were sent in June 1953 in the Apuseni Mountains; they were captured almost immediately and an attempt was made to use them as double agents. Another group of 3 agents was dropped in the Oradea-Satu Mare region, one was killed in a gunfight with the Securitate, while

678 Mihai Șerban, De la Serviciul Special de Informații la Securitatea Poporului 1944-1948, Bucharest: Ed. Militară, 2009, 122-137. 679 Note of infiltrated agent Roman, 8 May 1946 in IMRR, Vol. I, Doc. 113, 194-196. 680 Dennis Deletant Teroarea comunistă în România, 177. 215 two others were captured and were later executed.681 Probably to deter such missions, the Romanian armed forces made public the introduction of night fighter jets at this time.682 The program thus ended in failure, spelling an end to direct Western action against communism in Romania. While in some cases, such as in Albania or Soviet

Armenia the infiltration of British-trained spies and guerrillas was hampered by the information coming from double agents such as Kim Philby, there is so far no evidence of this in the Romanian case. The documents available so far do not hint to operational intelligence coming from the Soviets.

Moving towards a description of the actual partisan groups, one has to emphasize again their disconnect from each other, their small size and limited fighting capacity, as well as their tendencies to live in close proximities of the region of origin of many members of their group. Very few were urban-based and those who were aimed mostly to leave the country through the force of arms rather than challenge the authorities permanently. A 1972 Securitate analysis mentions that in 1949 rebels tried to leave the country by hijacking planes. One of the actions failed, another succeeded in

December, with four air pirates boarding an internal flight, shooting the armed agent on board and forcing the crew to redirect the aircraft to Belgrade in Yugoslavia. In 1950 and 1954 two large groups, one of 17 and one of 20 also tried to hijack airplanes. The first group was arrested before boarding. The second group managed to board the plane and to kill the guard, but was unable to force open the door to the pilots’ cabin; the pilot managed an emergency landing, leading to the capture of all the hijackers.683

681 Cristian Troncotă Istoria Securității regimului comunist din România, Vol. I 1948-1964, Bucharest, 2003, 196-197. 682 Mircea Carp, Basil Ratziu “The Armed Forces” in Alexandre Cretzianu (ed.) Captive Rumania, 367. 683 Securitatea, No. 1 (1972), 92-93. 216 Most of the rural groups were based in mountainous, heavily forested and difficult terrain. Some of the members led extremely isolated lives, either completely alone or with very few others in mountain huts, subsisting on small game and few provisions that could be procured from the villages. These supplies were so important, that in some cases the authorities tried to cut the food supply of the guerrillas, by evacuating all isolated households from the mountains and trying to force their opponents to seek closer contact with the villages.684 Others were kept in hiding in the isolated homes of friendly villagers; they were in comparatively better conditions, but under constant threat of discovery.685 It is no surprise that areas such as Bukovina, the

Apuseni and the Făgăraș mountains, the area of Maramureș or the forests of the Banat were the main hotbeds of armed resistance against Romanian communism. It is in a sense more interesting to note that even areas with less inviting terrain for guerrilla actions, such as the hilly Dobrogea and central Transylvania, the plains to the north of

Bucharest or those of Oltenia were also home to some of the rebels. However, a number of these groups would fall in the category of subversive action, with many choosing to foment rebellion by distributing manifestos instead of military action.686

The subversive groups, as the Securitate documents called them, were often made of former militants from the National Liberal and National Peasant parties and their youth organizations, sometimes in alliance with legionaries and willing to plan for insurrection, conduct propaganda and disrupt elections through attacking communist

684 Report of Mehedinți Militia, 1 November 1949 in Nicolae Chipurici, Tudor Rățoi (eds.), Rezistența anticomunistă din sud-vestul României. Opresiune și rezistență. Documente, Vol. I, Craiova: MJM, 2004 (quoted as RASV), Doc. 229, 272. 685 See for a comparison between the two ways of hiding Jurnale din rezistența anticomunistă. Vasile Motrescu, Mircea Dobre 1952-1953, Bucharest: Nemira, 2006. 686 See for instance the actions of the Capotă-Dejeu group, Introduction by Cornel Jurj and Denisa Bodeanu in Denisa Bodeanu, Cosmin Budeancă (eds.), Rezistența anticomunistă din România. Grupul “Capotă-Dejeu” (1947-1957), Cluj-Napoca: Argonaut, 2006 (quoted as RACD), 11-12. 217 representatives. 687 Other groups, never mounting any significant action against the authorities, cannot be counted among the rebels, despite their opposition to the regime.688 Among them were, for instance, the 20 high school students in the town of

Făgăraș who were alleged to be members of “Frățiile de cruce” (Brotherhoods of the cross) – a legionary organization. They were all students at the “Radu Negru” High

School, the place where the leader of the Legionary Movement Horia Sima (1906-1993) finished his secondary studies.689

Nevertheless, a number of them were armed and willing to attack communist authority figures or to defend themselves against those bent on capturing them. In some cases, these attacks were brazen, violent and extremely spectacular. For instance, a group operating in the Southwest of the country (the region of Mehedinți) attacked the local party authorities in July 1949 during a local ball, shooting and killing a party member who had previously given speeches against the opponents of the regime. To cover their retreat they threw grenades at the partygoers, wounding another 6 people.

Two months before, the same guerrillas shot a local president of Frontul Plugarilor (an agrarian party affiliated to the communists). 690 On the night of 3/4 August, these partisans tried to set fire to the ammunition depot of the local Border Guards Regiment but were prevented to do that by vigilant sentries.691 Just three weeks later, on the night of 24/25 August, the guerrillas kidnapped two party members in the village of Titerlești and took them to the mountains. They were both beaten, one of them to death. The rebels also ambushed three Militia officers who came to the rescue of the party

687 M. Fătu, “Conspirația antistatală a P.N.Ț. din anul 1947”, 9, 13, 21-22. 688 Florian Banu, “Mişcarea de rezistenţă armată anticomunistă din România - între negare şi hiperbolizare” in Cosmin Budeancă, Florentin Olteanu, Iulia Pop (eds.), Rezistenţa anticomunistă – cercetare tiinţifică i valorificare muzeală, Vol. I, Cluj-Napoca, Argonaut, 2006. 689 Order of General Pintilie, 18 April 1951 in Adrian Brișcă, Radu Ciuceanu (eds.), Rezistența armată din Munții Făgăraș. Grupul Ion Gavrilă-Ogoranu 1949-1955, Bucharest: Institutul Național pentru Studiul Totalitarismului, 2007 (quoted as RAMF), Doc. 37, 125. 690 Note of Mehedinți Militia, 2 August 1949 in RASV, Doc. 156, 191-193. 691 Note of Mehedinți Militia, 5 August 1949 in RASV, Doc. 157, 193. 218 members; two were captured, interrogated and released.692 Other guerrillas, operating in the nearby Banat, gained fame through the much-publicized murder of Lazăr Cernescu

(Lazăr de la Rusca in subsequent communist propaganda and literary works). Cernescu, a local party activist, had served as an informer for the Securitate and was captured by the partisans near Domașnea on 8 November 1948. Dragged to the woods, he was executed, his body being discovered only months afterwards.693

In the opposite corner of the country, Bukovina, partisans with training in the special guerrilla schools established by the Germans in the summer months of 1944 mounted for a number of years brazen attacks and raids both against Romanian communist troops and authorities and over the border, inside the Soviet Union itself.

For instance, during their fight against the Red Army the group led by Vladimir

Macoveiciuc allegedly killed 61 Soviet soldiers.694 Another strong political group was led by Silvestru Harsmei, made of up to 12 guerilla refugees from Soviet-occupied

Bukovina. They operated in 1949 in the same forested, mountainous terrain between

Romanian and Soviet Bukovina as Macoveiciuc, attacking border guard’s posts and taking their weapons.695

However, the picture would not be complete if one would not recognize that some of these groups were of a particularly nefarious nature. Former army officer

Gavrilă Olteanu led in the months after 23 August 1944 a paramilitary militia calling themselves the “Iuliu Maniu Guards”, after the name of a prominent Transylvanian political leader, a former prime-minister of the country. This group was guilty of the

692 Report of Mehedinți Militia, 25 August 1949 in RASV, Docs. 173-174, 204-208. 693 Dorin Dobrincu, Rezistența armată anticomunistă din România, 535. 694 Securitate document, March 9th 1949 in Adrian Brișcă, Radu Ciuceanu (eds.) Rezistența armată din Bucovina, Bucharest: Institutul Național pentru Studiul Totalitarismului, 1998, (quoted as RAB), Vol. I, Doc. 41, 235. 695 Dorin Dobrincu, “Grupuri minore din rezistența anticomunistă bucovineană (1948-1961)” in Codrii Cosminului, No. 12, (2006), 181. 219 systematic murder of Hungarian civilians in the aftermath of the retreat of German and

Hungarian forces from central Transylvania. 696 Baptized in 1945 “Avram Iancu’s

Haiduks”, they wanted to continue their fight against the internal foes, among whom they numbered the communists and, quite unsurprisingly given the connections of many of their members with the legionary movement, the Romanian Jews.697

Some of the groups who claimed to be politically motivated guerrillas were little more than highway robbers. A Bukovinian group used to rob intercity buses in 1949.

The political aspect of this group was highlighted by the confiscation of party membership cards from the travelers they robbed. The previously mentioned guerrillas led by Silverstru Harsmei also robbed stores in Romania and the Soviet Union.698 In western Romania, the group led by Teodor Șușman, undoubtedly a politically-motivated rebel, also robbed local forestry industry offices, state businesses and agricultural cooperatives. These partisans were not shy in kidnapping their personal enemies from their homes and murdering them in the woods.699 In the same region, the Apuseni

Mountains, the guerrillas led by former Army Major Nicolae Dabija robbed the Tax

Office in Teiuș on 22 December 1948, shooting the manager in the head. This was prompted by the need to get money to pay for food and weapons, as the local peasants were not very enthusiastic to support the group for free.700 This halfway course between banditry and political action was also one characteristic to some of the rebel groups from Maramureș, who mounted just small actions between March and June 1949,

696 Letter of Gavrilă Olteanu to Iuliu Maniu, 11 August 1945 in IMRR, Vol. I, Doc. 13, 54-57. 697 Letter to Prime Minister Groza, 15 August 1945 in IMRR, Vol. I, Doc. 17, 60. 698 Dorin Dobrincu, “Grupuri minore”, 180, 182. 699 Cornel Jurj and Cosmin Budeancă introduction to Denisa Bodeanu, Cosmin Budeancă (eds.), Rezistența armată anticomunistă din România. Grupul “Teodor Șușman” (1948-1958), Cluj-Napoca: Argonaut, 2004 (quoted as RATS), 27-28, 32-33. 700 Liviu Pleșa, “Implicarea militarilor în mişcarea de rezistenţă armată. Cazul maiorului Nicolae Dabija (1948-1949)” in Cosmin Budeancă, Florentin Olteanu, Iulia Pop (editori), Rezistenţa anticomunistă. Cercetare tiinţifică i valorificarea muzeală, Vol. I, Cluj-Napoca, Ed. Argonaut, 2006, 105-124; also Adrian Brișcă, Puica Buhoci Rezistența armată din Munții Apuseni. Gruparea maiorului Nicolae Dabija, 1948-1949, Bucharest: Institutul Național pentru Studiul Totalitarismului, 2007 (quoted as RAMA), Doc. 1, 51. 220 threatening members of the Communist-affiliated political parties, stealing weapons and clothes in non-violent armed robberies.701

The anti-communist armed resistance in post-war Romania was thus a complex phenomenon, led by various groups of different strengths, composition, ability and willingness to wage armed struggle. The following sections of this chapter examine the governmental responses to the challenges posed by the guerrillas, starting with an analysis of population control through deportations.

5.3 Population control, revolts and deportations

It is beyond the scope of this thesis to provide a full discussion of the broad series of measures and institutions devoted to population control in communist

Romania. Firstly, like all Stalinist regimes, overt population control was at the heart of the process of socialist transformation. The first two constitutions of the People’s

Republic of Romania (proclaimed on 30 December 1947) issued in 1948 and 1952 clearly stated that the country is a “dictatorship of the proletariat”. This entailed the subordination and control of all those who opposed or could oppose the working class.

The PMR penetrated all structures of organized life, being not only territorial, and thus having representatives in all localities, but also occupational and therefore having a separate chain of command in all state-run economic enterprises. In addition, the means

701 Camelia Ivan Duică introduction to Camelia Ivan Duică (ed.), Rezistența anticomunistă din Maramureș. Gruparea Popșa 1948-1949, Bucharest: Institutul Național pentru Studiul Totalitarismului, 2005 (quoted as RAP), 20-21. 221 of mass-communication were not only state-owned and operated, but they were directly put in the service of government propaganda. The police and intelligence services operated under the control of the party, indirectly since their takeover in 1944-1945 and directly after 1947.702

Secondly, it is fairly hard to distinguish whether some population control measures were specifically targeting the armed rebels, or were just part of the larger process of bringing the whole country under the will of the party. For instance, the legionaries were under the special supervision of the Securitate even if they had no intention whatsoever to mount any specific anti-regime actions. 703 This surveillance continued for decades and extended towards the generation of their children, even though the targets did nothing more than tell stories of the past and sing songs about the long years spent in prisons and work camps.704 In other instances, in areas where armed rebels were operating, local authorities had to reaffirm their power by destroying posters announcing that war with Western powers was imminent and Anglo-American paratroopers were bound to arrive within days.705 In 1948 the party issued a list of 47 songs the population was forbidden to sing, but this, like the other cases discussed above, cannot be wholly interpreted as population control measures specifically targeting partisans.706

Therefore, this section will focus on the large-scale measures for establishing population control over groups who had rioted against the regime or were considered bound to do so. The first categories targeted for deportation were peasants rioting

702 For a good survey of the period see Stelian Tănase, Elite și societate: guvernarea Gheorghiu-Dej, 1948-1965, Bucharest: Humanitas, 1998. 703 Consiliul Securității Statului, Buletin intern pentru aparatul Securității Statului, (BIASS) No. 1 (1968), 35-40. 704 Liviu Ţăranu, “Consideraţii privind evoluţia Mişcării Legionare în timpul democraţiei populare” in Sangidava, No. 2, Târgu-Mureş: Ardealul, 2008, 201-205. 705 Note of local gendarmes from Mehedinți, 6 February 1948 in RASV, Doc. 7, 54-55. 706 Table of forbidden songs, 23 September 1948 in RASV, Doc. 82, 122-123. 222 against the collectivization of their property. 707 While in early 1945 the communist government of Dr Petru Groza tried to enlist the support of the poor farmers by completely dismantling the last remnants of large agricultural estates and redistributing land to the peasants, within four years the tables had turned. Led by Ana Pauker, the leader of the “external” group of the PMR, the authorities initiated in the summer of

1949 the collectivization of agriculture, following the well-tested Soviet pattern. The initial expectations were that thousands of collective farms, comprising millions of peasants would be formed within the next two years.708

The peasant’s response to this policy meant a rude awakening for the authorities.

Virtually everywhere collectivization was opposed and in the areas with partisan activity, such as the counties of Arad and Bihor, organized armed revolts took place.709

The Securitate identified the “Independent Romania Organization” as a subversive group operating in the region of Bihor. Apparently the riots were organized by this group, with the date of 1 August 1949 pre-established as beginning of the rebellion. The

“Vlad Țepeș II” Oradea-based group was also involved in the organization of the riots.

This rebel organization had sympathizers or even members infiltrated in the local

Securitate and Militia battalions.710 Even in the assessment of the intelligence service, this denoted poor intelligence work of the Securitate, poor political leadership of the local Party organizations and ignorance of the legitimate demands of poor local peasants. As early as late July, crowds of between 300 and 600 people rioted in the county villages, attacking authorities and sometimes killing them. Local government

707 On the larger topic of collectivization and resistance see Dorin Dobrincu, Constantin Iordachi, Transforming Peasants, Property and Power: The Collectivization of Agriculture in Romania, 1949– 1962. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2009. 708 See for this policy and Ana Pauker’s role in it Robert Levy, Ana Pauker. The Rise and Fall of a Jewish Communist, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. 709 Synthesis of the peasant riots in the Bihor-Arad region, 12 August 1949 in Dan Cătănuș, Octavian Roske (eds.), Colectivizarea agriculturii în România. Represiunea, Vol. I 1949-1953, Bucharest: Institutul Național pentru Studiul Totalitarismului, 2004 (quoted as CAR), 107. 710 Ibid., 108. 223 and party offices were devastated and documents concerning collectivization were burned.711

To destroy resistance, the reaction was prompt and ruthless. Two special commands were organized, in Arad and Oradea. The troops were ordered to arrest between 10-15 rich peasant families from each rioting village. The Oradea command received for this operation 3 Securitate battalions and one Border Troops battalion. Arad

Command had 2 Securitate and 1 Border Troops battalions and a Border Troops company. Securitate platoons and Militia officers were to move into rioting villages, while other platoons would provide mobile patrols between the villages. The ensuing operation was brutal. On the night of 2/3 August 10 people were killed in the rioting villages, mostly executed while “trying to escape”. Their families were rounded up the same night and deported by train the next morning.712 111 people were arrested in the four rioting villages in the county of Arad. Altogether, 33 people were deported. Only for this particular task were deployed 315 Militia troops and 65 Securitate agents (a ratio of over ten to one). The deported could take clothes, as much food as they could carry and different small household objects. 39 officers guarded the train on its way to

Dobrogea, near the town of Medgidia.713 Overall, 12 peasants were executed in Arad and 16 in Oradea. Purging themselves, the authorities had two Securitate officers, a captain and a lieutenant identified as traitors for leaking information to the subversive groups.714

The peasant revolts from Transylvania were far from unique. The next summer, when the collectivization process resumed, six Wallachian villages to the north of

711 Ibid., 111-113. 712 Plan of Arad Command for quelling local riots, 2 August 1949 in CAR, Doc. 4, 74-76. 713 Docs. 5,6,7 in CAR, 76-87. 714 Synthesis of the peasant riots in the Bihor-Arad region, 12 August 1949 in CAR, 115-118. 224 Bucharest rose up against the communists. A whole Securitate battalion and two additional companies were necessary to subdue the rebels. 715 During the riots the government’s troops used deadly force, with one rebel killed and four others shot and wounded. 716 Following these incidents, it became governmental policy to combine brutal repression with deportations whenever the authorities believed peasants would oppose the creation of collective farms. In April 1950, 44 people from the county of

Bistrița were selected for deportation because they opposed the Romanian version of the kolkhozes.717 Resistance in the county of Cluj seemed to be even stronger, as in the same month 145 people from this area were to be deported.718 In all of these cases the government was able to impose its view. However, the powerful, violent reaction of many peasants against collectivization led to a slowing of the process and eventually its halt. In no small measure, the elimination of the “external” group of the Romanian communists, who all fell from power in 1952, was due to the perception that their policies were harmful towards the larger interests of the party. Indeed, in 1951-1952, during the height of repression of those resisting collectivization, in the whole country there were 34,738 arrests and 439 public trials.719 After the mid-1950s and coupled more strongly with industrialization, collectivization was restarted, albeit with less violence and at a much slower pace, eventually ending only in 1962.

The lessons learned during this process led the Romanian communists to the belief that preventive action is needed whenever a certain segment of the population might be inclined to revolt or support partisan activity. Mass internal deportation was to play a central part from now on in dealing with dangerous communities. The most

715 Operative synthesis of the Ministry of the Interior, 10 July 1950 in CAR, Doc. 38, 205-206. 716 Doc. 39, 12 July 1950 in CAR, 206-207. 717 Table made by Bistrița Securitate, 14 April 1950 in CAR, Doc. 26, 144-161. 718 Document of Cluj Securitate, 17 April 1950 in CAR, Doc. 27, 162-186. 719 The most arrests were in Hunedoara Region, 16146. See Report of the Ministry of the Interior, 1 December 1961 in CAR, Doc. 130, 413-419. 225 prominent of these took place in the early summer of 1951 when 40,000 people were deported from Banat to the Bărăgan, a barren region in the east of the country, close to the Danube, in the course of one day. Some of the deportees had been forcibly moved a number of times before: Romanians from Bessarabia were moved to Banat than deported to Bărăgan. Aromanians from Greece moved to Southern Dobrogea in the

1920s, to the Banat in 1940 and to the Bărăgan in the 1950s.720 The main reason for this action was the suspicion that the local communities would collude with Tito’s regime in the case of conflict between Yugoslavia and the rest of the Soviet camp. About 970 of the ethnic local Serbs had been partisans in Tito’s armies during the war and had maintained close relations with their former comrades living in the neighbouring country.721

Deportations were carried out according to Decision 200/1951 of the Romanian government that called for the forcible movement of the population living in a 25 km belt close to the Yugoslav border. The deportation plan was finalized by the Securitate on 14 November 1950 and identified 40,320 people as “security risks”. They comprised

1,330 foreign citizens, 8,477 Romanian refugees from Soviet-occupied Bessarabia,

3,557 Macedonians, 2,344 people who collaborated with the German army in World

War II, 257 Germans, 1,054 “supporters of Tito”, 1,218 people with relatives abroad,

367 who had supported anti-communist guerrillas, 731 “enemies of the socialist regime”, 19,034 rich peasants and innkeepers, 162 former big landlords and bourgeois and 341 convicted criminals. However, a different research suggests that 9,413 of the deportees were ethnic Germans. Of the people who left the Banat, 629 died in the

Bărăgan. Over 10,000 Army and Militia troops took part in the deportations and in

720 Viorel Marineasa, Valentin Sămânță, Daniel Vighi, Deportarea în Bărărgan. Destine, documente, reportaje, Timișoara: Mirton, 1996, 9. 721 Miodrag Milin, “Încă o dată despre geneza Bărăganului” in Silviu Sarafolean (ed.), Deportații în Bărăgan 1951-1956, Timișoara: Mirton, 2001, X. 226 addition to the trains 6,211 trucks were also used. As even this huge mobilization was insufficient, some families waited under the open sky for two or three days to be deported and most of them, upon arrival, were just abandoned on an open field.722

All deportations were organized by the local party committees and were conducted by officers of the Militia, who arrived at their target’s homes at 1 AM.723

Inventory commissions, who paid for them in cash, immediately seized the goods of the deported.724 Some of the deported found out about the imminence of their dislocation and had their luggage prepared. One person, upon being notified of his impending deportation, committed suicide. During the searches, weapons and ammunition were found at some of the richer peasants, but no arrests for partisan activity were made.725

Each train used for deportation was huge, with 60-62 carriages, largely because each carriage was carrying only one family and their goods. They were allowed to take food, furniture, horses, a cow, their own horse-drawn cart and a pig.726 In total, 66 trains with 2,622 carriages transported on 18 June 3,537 families, while another 3,276 families were still awaiting embarkation.727 Upon arrival in the barren plains of the Bărăgan, the deported were to be employed as farm hands at state-owned farms. In order to emphasize that the move was permanent, the authorities forced them to create new communities and to build new houses. By necessity, these houses were initially just hovels, which quickly became unsuited for living in the local climate, characterized by very little water in dry season but extreme humidity once rains began.728

722 Ibid., XIII-XV. 723 Viorel Marineasa, Deportarea în Bărărgan, 45. 724 Synthesis of the Sânicolau Mare Regional Organization of the PMR in ibid., 72-74. 725 Report of the Timișoara Committee of the PMR, 2 July 1951 in ibid., 78-80. 726 Testimonies of Ana Babeți and Gina Sterian in Smaranda Vultur, Istorie trăită – istorie povestită. Deportarea în Bărăgan (1951-1956), Timișoara: Amarcord, 1997, 146-147, 192. 727 Special bulletin of the Timișoara Regional Securitate, 20 June 1951 in Viorel Marineasa, Deportarea în Bărărgan, 81-84. 728 Interview with Valeria Munteanu in Smaranda Vultur, Istorie trăită, 210-211. 227 The Securitate admitted in its internal documents that the action of the local party leadership as the deportees reached the Bărăgan was extremely disorganized and unable to cope with the necessities of those relocated. The deportees had to pay for their food and the construction materiel for their new homes. Therefore, a big difference was noted between the poor and the rich among them, the latter having the resources to pay for what they needed.729 Building a house was compulsory; those who refused or were slow in doing so were prevented from getting jobs at local farms, seriously hurting the possibility of feeding their families. In a sign that the action was disorganized, some of the deported were allowed to build their new houses wherever they pleased, as the area was extremely large and sparsely populated. In the new localities, those arrived from

Banat had the opportunity to meet others who were enduring the same fate; some of the engineers responsible for the building of the villages were also people deported from other cities.730 Others were families of the partisans, who had been deported from their regions to put psychological pressure on the guerrillas and to remove one of their sources of support.731

Many perished in the harsh winters of the Bărăgan because of hunger, cold, desperation and low-quality medical care. The villages built by the deportees were left by most of them after an amnesty in 1956 and were demolished by the authorities in

1964, in an effort to erase the memory of a period of repression.732

729 Synthesis of the Securitate, 9 August 1951 in Viorel Marineasa, Deportarea în Bărărgan, 87-97. 730 Interview with Gligor Talianu in Smaranda Vultur, Istorie trăită, 242-245. 731 See for some of these deportations, involving between two and three members of the families of the identified rebels Order of the “Gangs” Sector I Teregova, 7 December 1951 in RASV, Doc. 295, 345- 346. 732 Smaranda Vultur, Istorie trăită, 7. 228 5.4 Intelligence and intelligence operations

The following section details intelligence and intelligence operations in the campaign against anti-Communist partisans in Romania. In comparison with the analysis of intelligence operations in Malaya and Algeria, this and the following section on military operations rely almost entirely on primary source documents, thus being more firmly anchored in a historical methodology. The raw data provides a more in- depth approach, allowing a closer understanding of the realities of anti-partisan warfare.

In the same time the reader can feel at times that the events and groups discussed in the following pages are random, compared to the unified narrative concerning the MCP and

FLN. However, this is mostly due to the small scale, scattered nature of the Romanian rebel groups, which led to a fragmented response from the authorities.

While the British action in Malaya and the French campaign in Algeria were also waged primarily by the conventional armed forces of the two imperial powers,

Romanian counterinsurgency was, much like its Soviet correspondent, the province of the intelligence services of the communist regime. 733 There is virtually no trace of involvement of the regular Romanian army units in dealing with the partisans, except for the very limited role, in 1945-1946, played by the army intelligence branch. There can be many explanations for this fact, ranging from the uncertainty that the political leaders had concerning the loyalty of the army, which was continuously purged of

“bourgeois” elements for a decade after 1944 to the fact that the army units were simply too large to be effectively used against the partisans.

733 For a list detailing the partisan groups mentioned in this section see table 1 at the end of the chapter. 229 However, a more powerful argument is that the intelligence services were much better equipped to deal with the problem and, after their takeover by communist agents the party could be assured of their loyalty. A few main agencies were involved in the fight against the anti-communist rebels immediately after 1944. Most prominent of these was, in the early years, Siguranța Statului (State Security), the main internal intelligence agency of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Kingdom of Romania for many decades. Its role was mainly intelligence gathering and had to resort to police and the gendarmes when it wanted to move against a particular target. The intelligence service of the prime-minister, Serviciul Special de Informații (SSI) operated as a dual foreign and internal espionage agency, boasting 1,083 employees, 44 information centres in Romania and 26 foreign residences in 1944.734 It was instrumental in the first years of communist rule in dismantling subversive groups, especially those gathering political or military leaders.735 The regular police, renamed in 1949 in Soviet fashion

Miliția (Militia), was always a militarized force in Romania, and had intelligence- gathering abilities and missions at a local level. It was always used as support to more seasoned troops or in a main strike role when there was no time to summon reinforcements. The local gendarmes played a similar role and their tradition of working in villages enabled them to be among the best informed concerning the moves of the partisans.736 They also had a tactical strike role, which is highlighted by the fact that in

October 1945, 36 “intervention platoons” were formed by the Gendarmerie to tackle the problem of armed rebel groups. Also working against subversive groups was the

734 Serviciul Român de Informații, Cartea albă a Securității, Vol. I 23 August 1944 – 30 August 1948, Bucharest, 1997, 18. 735 This passage is based on Cristian Troncotă, Istoria serviciilor secrete românești. De la Cuza la Ceaușescu, Bucharest: Ion Cristoiu, 1999. 736 See for instance Note of Mărășești Gendarmes, 1 August 1948 in RASV, Doc. 45, 84-86. 230 Detective Corps under Alexandru Nicolschi; operating within it was a strike force designated as “Mobile Brigade”.737

Except for the Militia, the other agencies were all merged into Direcția

Generală a Securității Poporului (General Directorate of People’s Security, Securitate), an organ of the Ministry of Internal Affairs created on 30 August 1948, some immediately, some significantly later, like the SSI, which was not wholly absorbed until

1951. From now on until the capture of the last armed rebels in the late 1950s and the early 1960s, the Securitate played the main role, aided in its tactical missions by the

Militia. The most important elements in this fight were always the local and regional offices of the Securitate, with the central command being rarely involved in the actual campaigns against the partisans. The central leadership did indeed provide general guidance, approved some of the larger initiatives and sent officers to inquire where inefficiencies and wrongdoings were signalled, but overall the level of responsibility and action was almost always local or regional.738

The level of threat was not considered to be high enough to necessitate an overall command, and only in 1952 a special structure, the “Gangs” Service was created within Securitate`s 3rd Division, under Lt. Col. Pavel Aranici. 739 Even after this coordination service was created, the action remained mostly local. There were good reasons for this to be the case, some related to the weakness of the rebels but most because of the strength of the counterinsurgents. In terms of the information network,

737 Florian Banu, “ Securităţii - structuri de poliţie politică din România în perioada 23 august 1944-30 august 1948” in Aurel Pentelescu, Gavril Preda (eds.), Clipe de viaţă. Comandorul dr. Ilie Manole la 60 de ani, Ploieşti, Karta-Graphic, 2007, 456-484. 738 For a general discussion on Securitate’s beginnings, organization and role in the repression, see Marius Oprea, Bastionul cruzimii. O istorie a Securității (1948-1964), Iași: Polirom, 2008. 739 Luminiţa Banu, “Utilizarea reţelei informative în reprimarea rezistenţei armate anticomuniste” in Gheorghe Onișoru (ed.), Mi carea armată de rezistenţă anticomunistă din România. 1944-1962, Bucureşti: Kullusys, 2003, pp. 317-333. 231 the Securitate had 42,187 informers as early as 1948.740 In terms of strength, Securitate was heavily armed and manned in comparison with the partisans, being able to use entire companies and even combined forces of multiple battalions in large-scale operations. It may not have boasted the 165,000 troops, its own artillery and aviation attributed to it by exiled observers, but it was overwhelmingly strong in relation to its armed opponents.741 In addition to that, it was always able to coordinate its actions between regional units hunting the same guerrillas and to elicit the help of the Militia in the process. In the Mehedinți area, for instance, where the strong partisans led by former army Colonel Ion Uță were operating, such cooperation was instrumental in finally defeating them.742

A legitimate question that arises in the case of a country occupied at the end of the Second World War by the USSR, which maintained a force of at least two divisions on its territory until 1958, was what role did the Soviet Union play in the Romanian counterinsurgency? As discussed in the second chapter, simultaneously with the

Romanian campaign, Moscow was fighting a much larger counterinsurgency in its western borderlands, in Ukraine, the Baltic States and in Polish territories. Indeed, the cooperation against the rebels sometimes preceded the establishment of formal relations between Romania and the USSR. This was the case in Bukovina, where the elements of anti-Soviet partisans emerged, as previously discussed, even before 23 August 1944. As early as 12 September 1944, Romanian authorities were cooperating with the NKVD against guerrillas, surrendering them to the Soviet army. 743 One would therefore

740 Dennis Deletant, Teroarea comunistă în România, 101. 741 See for the higher number, also used by Dennis Deletant, Alexandre Cretzianu (ed.) Captive Rumania. For a correction, Florian Banu, “Câteva considerații privind istoriografia Securității”. 742 Report of Mehedinți Militia, 1 November 1949 in RASV, Doc. 229, 273. 743 Report of the Siguranță section in Câmpulung Moldovenesc 18 November 1944 in RAB, Vol. I, Doc. 14, 160. 232 legitimately expect Soviet involvement in Romanian COIN in the following years, but interestingly this was not necessarily the case.

Indirect involvement, through the control of the party and Securitate leadership, was of course evident. The members of the “external group” of the PCR/PMR are widely considered to have been Soviet agents. Emil Bodnăraș, in charge of Romanian intelligence since late 1944, was an agent of Glavnoe Razvedîvatel'noe Upravlenie

(GRU, Soviet Military Intelligence) since the 1930s. Gheorghe Pintilie, the head of the

Securitate from 1948 to 1963, was an NKVD agent. 744 To illustrate the degree of control and infiltration of Soviet agents one need look no further that Gheorghe

Pintilie’s wife, Ana Toma, herself an NKVD agent. Ana Toma was first the wife of

Sorin Toma, editor in chief of the party’s official daily magazine “Scânteia”, and afterwards the romantic interest of Constantin Pârvulescu, number three in the party in

1944.745 In addition to that, the intelligence services were staffed with many officers with dual citizenship and allegiance, Romanian and Soviet.746

But in addition to this indirect influence, the Soviet Union had, through its

“advisors” placed inside the Romanian intelligence agencies, a direct measure of influence on anti-partisan activity. The chief Soviet intelligence official in Romania between 1944 and 1947 was Dmitri Georgievici Fedicikin, as a main representative of the Foreign Intelligence Division (INU) of the NKGB. After the founding of the

Securitate he was succeeded by Alexandr Saharovski (1949-1953), who in 1956 became chief of the First Main Directorate of the KGB.747 One source asserts that Saharovski

744 An analysis of these networks can be found in Marius Oprea, Bastionul cruzimii. 745 Dennis Deletant, Teroarea comunistă în România, 98. 746 Nationalist Romanian historiography often writes in xenophobic tones on this topic, trying to portray Securitate’s abuses as the work of officers of Russian, Ukrainian, Jewish and Hungarian descent. See for this the book of Cristian Troncotă, himself a former Securitate officer, Istoria serviciilor secrete românești. De la Cuza la Ceaușescu. 747 Dennis Deletant, Teroarea comunistă în România, 97, 98. 233 was sent together with another agent, Patrakeev, following a letter of the Romanian authorities’ specifically requesting help in the struggle against the armed groups.748

Until the historians will be fully able to access the archives of the Soviet intelligence services it will be hard to provide a definitive assessment on the impact of the advisors on the conduct of anti-artisan operations in Romania. Some analysts have noted that their traces are few even in the Romanian primary sources, due to the fact that they destroyed the documents before leaving. 749 Memoirs of high-ranking

Securitate officers are fairly silent on the topic, mainly acknowledging the “good advice” received from the Soviet agents.750 The published primary sources, though, speak of a local involvement of advisors detached with regional units. In the summer of

1945 a document from Transylvania describes the contact and collaboration between the head of Năsăud Gendarmerie and an NKVD captain and delegate for the region in apprehending suspected rebels. The Soviet Captain was ordering the arrest of persons and seemed to have more information than his Romanian counterpart.751 Later on in the year, the Soviets were showing interest in the organization led by Gavrilă Olteanu (the

Haiduks) and were keen to interfere. 752 In some cases, local authorities valued the cooperation of their Soviet colleagues. For instance, the local intelligence officials from

Botoșani asked Bucharest to convince Soviet partners to keep Major Tarasov, a Soviet officer, in the area for his knowledge and abilities in the problem of the Haiduks.753

However, as previously mentioned, the documents at our disposal do not provide a full picture in this regard and the role of the Soviet advisors in relation to Romanian counterinsurgency cannot be fully understood at the moment.

748 Jurnale din rezistența anticomunistă, 14. 749 Serviciul Român de Informații, Cartea albă a Securității, 7. 750 Consiliul Național pentru Studierea Arhivelor Securității, Pseudomemoriile unui general de Securitate, Bucharest: Humanitas, 2007. 751 Notes of Năsăud Gendarmerie, 31 July and 1 August 1945 in IMRR, Vol. I, Docs. 10-11, 51-52. 752 Note of the Ministry of the Interior, 11 October 1945 in IMRR, Vol. I, Doc. 30, 72. 753 Note of 2 November 1945 in IMRR, Vol. II, Doc. 111, 288. 234 Written rebel communications over long distances were made impossible early on through a vastly developed system of censorship of correspondence. In the mid-

1950s the “F” Division of the Securitate was entirely dedicated to the purpose of controlling correspondence. In April 1956, for instance, this Division had 277 employees.754 This is one of the few instances when advanced technological means were used against the rebel groups. Previously, listening and photography equipment had been installed in the house of General Aldea as he was trying to organize the previously mentioned National Resistance Movement.755 But these means were quite sophisticated and after the elimination of urban resistance were no longer employed directly.

Therefore, as the Romanian partisans were mostly small, scattered groups dwelling in forested areas and being nearly completely dependent upon the local communities for food and many times shelter, the main approach of the authorities was to create powerful local information networks. These networks were the backbone of a strategy that called for the uncovering of the whole structure of the local rebel organization. Through the use of informers local Militia and Securitate officers were supposed to uncover the identities of the guerrillas and their helpers, to penetrate these groups and to create the conditions for mounting swift and decisive blows to arrest and destroy the entire rebel group.756 These information networks varied greatly in numbers and the complexity of their operations. Against subversive groups operating in urban settings, such as those of anti-communist university students, one intelligence officer could control an entire operation with just two informers per faculty.757 In rural settings,

754 Liviu Ţăranu, “Controlul corespondenţei în anii ‘50” in Dosarele Istoriei, nr. 11(99)/2004, 52-54. 755 Report of SSI, 5 November 1945 in IMRR, Vol. I, Doc. 39, 81. 756 See for the need to recruit informers from the local hostile elements who might harbor knowledge of the rebels Address of Teleorman Securitate, 11 June 1951 in CAR, Doc. 80, 283-284. 757 Siguranță note of 3 December 1946 in Serviciul Român de Informații, Cartea albă a Securității, Doc. 259, 335-336. 235 where partisans were particularly strong and dangerous, dozens of informers were needed.758

By 1949, the central Securitate command was dissuading local commanders of using large numbers of troops for dealing with insurgents. Instead, they were ordered to seriously double-check all intelligence, to create an information network among the relatives of the maquis, to get the support of poor peasants for their actions, to recruit as informers shepherds, forest workers, local guards and to cooperate with the Militia

(without revealing sensitive information to it).759 When this proceeded smoothly, the task of the authorities was very easy, such as in the 1949 action in Maramureș when, tipped off by an informer, a Securitate officer and two Militia soldiers arrested in Săliște an armed rebel in the house of his host without any resistance.760

The payoff was great in the case of some of the teams sent by the CIA, for instance in the arrest of a group of three foreign-trained paratroopers in the region of

Beiuș in the Apuseni Mountains in late April 1953. The group, made of locals who had left for the West a few years before, was captured not through the massive combing of the mountains and forests that followed the report of landings, but through informative action. A Securitate informer, a friend with the family of one of the paratroopers who had been identified by intelligence as a possible returned insurgent was able through multiple conversations with the parents of the rebel to make them reveal his return. The

Securitate arrested the three paratroopers and spread the rumor that they were never able

758 See for instance RATS, 38-39. 759 Order of the General Directorate of the Securitate to the Pitești Regional Securitate, 15 September 1949 in BBE, Doc. 10, 85. 760 Report of Maramureș Securitate Service, 3 April 1949 in RAP, 47-48. 236 to capture them, in order to “turn” them and relay through them false information to the

CIA.761

In time, the composition of the informant networks became larger and larger.

Against the guerrillas led by Silvestru Harsmei the authorities created networks of informers among the categories suspected to be helpers of the group, especially relatives, former convicts, lovers and potential lovers and persons employed in jobs including work in the forests. Patrols and checkpoints were also initiated; undercover

Militia officers were infiltrated as workers in the stores that might sell goods to the partisans.762 By the end of anti-partisan operations in the early 1960s, the Securitate had, according to its own estimations, 500,000 informers.763 While obviously most of them had nothing to do with anti-guerrilla operations, the number gives a dimension of the seriousness put into extracting intelligence from the population.

This approach did not always come naturally. Like in many counterinsurgencies, the emphasis on building an informant network came after the frustration caused by conventional military approaches. In addition to the regular patrols and sweeps, in some cases the Securitate officers had to literally dig for information. In a testimony from

1973, Major General Pavel Costandache recalled how for the capture of the “Arsenescu gang” three undercover Securitate officers dug a tunnel during the night to approach a safehouse without being detected and gather information on the group.764 These actions had extremely limited success and called for different approaches. For instance, in

Bukovina the frustration with the capture of just one rebel in months of searches led the authorities to call for a strategy with less emphasis on ambushes and wide operations

761 BIASS No. 3 (1968), 58-60. 762 Dorin Dobrincu, “Grupuri minore”, 183. 763 BIASS No. 2 (1968), 5. 764 Securitatea, No. 3 (1973), 7. 237 which seldom worked but with more attention to information and the recruitment of informers.765

Torture played a significant part in extracting intelligence. The relatives and friends of the known rebels were especially exposed to extremely cruel treatments at the hands of the interrogators, both to instill fear in the guerrillas and compel them to surrender and to extract information as soon as possible. A significant, though yet unknown number of those subjected to these treatments perished at the hands of the interrogators. This procedure was, of course, completely illegal, as admitted by internal investigations during the late 1960s, when the political winds had changed and the ranks of the secret service were purged.766 While some may object to the use of term “illegal” when discussing the deeds of intelligence agencies of dictatorships, historical examples seem to point out that when these regimes last a long time, legal concerns come back to the fore, if only for internal power-plays. One could also emphasize the fact that in present-day Romania, surviving members of Securitate were and are prosecuted for their crimes against political prisoners and partisans, using the law existing at the time of their actions.

Poor professional training of the Securitate officers often led to the alienation of informers, their exposure as agents or simply to the collection of useless intelligence.767 This led to an extremely slow pace of finding anything about the rebels and explains why some groups lasted for so long. 768 Sometimes torture did yield immediate and spectacular results, such as in the case of the partisans led by Gligor

Cantemir in the county of Arad, where torture was applied systematically to those

765 Report of the Suceava Militia, 11 July 1951 in RAB, Vol. II, Doc. 33, 69. 766 BIASS No. 2 (1968), 6. 767 See for a lengthy discussion of the poor professional standards of the time Cristian Troncotă, Istoria serviciilor secrete românești. 768 Luminiţa Banu, “Utilizarea reţelei informative în reprimarea rezistenţei armate anticomuniste”. 238 suspected of being his contacts. Information thus extracted led not only to the arrest of

Cantemir, a prominent legionary who had been part of the teams parachuted by

Germans after August 1944, but also to the capture of other 70 legionaries affiliated with him and suspected of entertaining rebellious actions.769

An interesting example of the organization and functioning of information networks is the case of anti-partisan operations in southwest Romania between 1948 and 1951. Despite the fact that most of the inhabitants were not sympathetic to the authorities and refused to volunteer information, there were local informers who had identified armed groups of up to 5 guerrillas patrolling the mountains, dealing with local shepherds, trying to obtain information and recruits.770 Among the best informers the local officers had were women and children, who provided regular and accurate details of their spotting of and meeting with partisans. They also revealed that guerrillas were receiving food from local peasants and were transporting them to their mountain hideouts using horses.771 These reports were combined by the intelligence officers with the results of their surveillance of a large group of relatives of the known partisans.

Another category of locals under close supervision was widows and women of “loose morals” supposed to be frequented by the partisans.772

Betrayal played a great part in the elimination of some rebel groups. As information came directly from an inner source, it was much easier for the governmental forces to locate the guerrillas. For instance, two members of the Gavrilă group from the Făgăraș Mountains who had managed to escape pursuit at the beginning of December 1950 were hiding in a village in the Timișoara Region (Pădureni).

769 Dorin Dobrincu, Rezistența armată anticomunistă din România, 507-508. 770 Report of Mehedinți Militia, 1 November 1949 in RASV, Doc. 229, 274; Note of Cloșani Gendarmes, 20 August 1948 in RASV, Doc. 61, 96-97. 771 Note of Padeș Gendarmes, 14 September 1948 in RASV, Doc. 78, 116-117; Note of Ponoarele Militia, 25 September 1949 in RASV, Doc. 208, 235. 772 Note of “Gangs” Sector I Teregova, 10 December 1951 in RASV, Doc. 297, 346-348. 239 Betrayed by one of the locals whom they approached, the partisans were attacked in their hideout by a 6-man squad of the local Militia who shot them both dead, but not before they managed to kill the team leader. Those who harbored them were arrested.773

The betrayal of the hosts led to the downfall of many in the Apuseni-based rebel group of Major Dabija, surprised in their hideouts and killed in gun-battles with the

Securitate.774

Perhaps the most risky approach that the Romanian communist forces took when dealing with the partisans was infiltration, the placing of an agent working for the government within a particular guerrilla group. It is interesting to note that, despite the certain risks, the payoffs were estimated to be so great that the tactic was consistently used, in a wide variety of regions and against both rural and urban armed or subversive groups. Ideally, a covert agent who might or might not have been an intelligence officer was tasked to approach individuals within the support network of a partisan group, declaring their willingness to help the guerrillas or be one of them. Once inside the network or after being accepted in the armed group, the agent would identify its members, discover their hideouts and their strengths and make all efforts to attract the guerrilla into traps and ambushes of local governmental forces. When agents were allowed enough time, they could provide a wealth of information, such as those operating in the armed groups from Dobrogea, who were giving extremely detailed reports on the composition and actions of the rebels. 775 The following examples highlight the variety of infiltration actions and detail success and failure.

Infiltration was employed as soon as anti-governmental groups and structures were identified after 1945. The “Haiduks” of Gavrilă Olteanu were infiltrated early on

773 Note of Office 522, 16 January 1951 in RAMF, Doc. 23, 97-98. 774 Liviu Pleșa, “Implicarea militarilor în mişcarea de rezistenţă armată”. 775 Report of Constanța Regional Siguranță, 12 July 1948 in RAD, Doc. 8, 56-59. 240 by agent “A. Roman”, who was in reality SSI Captain Nicolae Dumitrescu; using his position as liaison between the group and General Aurel Aldea, who was a leader of the

National Resistance Movement, the agent sent numerous and detailed reports on the organization for almost a year. 776 Agent “Iancu”, working for the Siguranță, was infiltrated in the Bucharest chapter of the “Haiduks”, reporting on their meetings and contacts. 777 When both the Haiduks and the National Resistance Movement were destroyed through mass arrests in late May 1946, agent Roman was also imprisoned with his contacts and acted as an undercover agent in jail.778

In the same period, intelligence officers were infiltrated among the anti- communist officers of the Sinaia-based Mountain Battalion and were reporting that in collusion with officers of the British Military Mission, the pro-rebel officers of this unit were stockpiling weapons and prepared the organization of guerrilla formations to trap

Soviet units to the West of the Carpathians in case war broke out. Although the plot had been discovered by leaked information in November 1945, the agent that destroyed the group was infiltrated only in May 1946; a reserve officer in this unit, he already had the trust of the officers. The agent uncovered the structure of the organization and its links to other units and the Royal Guard Battalion in Bucharest.779

The elimination of brothers` Paragină legionary gang from the Vrancea

Mountains in the night of 17-18 October 1949 was accomplished through the infiltration of a Securitate informer and a Securitate undercover sergeant major. It took months to get the two into the gang, as initially they had to be portrayed in the local community as runaways and political opponents of the communists. They were verified by the

776 Note of “A. Roman”, 14 October 1945 in IMRR, Vol. I, Doc. 33, 75. 777 Informative note, 12 September 1945 in IMRR, Vol. II, Doc. 95, 279. 778 Document of 1 June 1946 in IMRR, Vol. II, 30. 779 Document of 5 June 1946 and Note of SSI, 17 June 1946 in IMRR, Vol. II, 46, 64-65. 241 insurgents through moving them repeatedly from trusted person to trusted person, through interrogatories, and even mock executions. After weeks of trials they were accepted in the group and taken to the mountain camps, where the group mustered 18 fighters, mostly former intellectuals and petty bourgeois. The insurgents would collect taxes from the villages nearby, conduct attacks on isolated police and party officials and conduct anti-communist propaganda. After gaining the confidence of the leaders of the group, the undercover Securitate agents were able to relay information as to the group location. The guerrillas were surrounded and captured without resistance.780

The destruction of Traian Cristea’s group in 1956 was also achieved through infiltration. Operating against local officials in the Răcari region, just a few kilometers to the northwest of Bucharest, the group was made of seven members and was housed by former elements of the rural bourgeoisie. The Bucharest Securitate used a turned agent, a student arrested for anti-communist activities. He became the lover of Traian

Cristea’s sister and through her, after weeks of having his loyalty tested by the guerrillas he became acquainted with the rebel who “recruited” him to write political manifestos.

The entire rebel group was arrested without resistance.781 In 1957, “Action 29” was mounted against a legionary group from Dobrogea. The gang was infiltrated by one former classmate of one of the members, a Securitate agent, who helped not only in the discovery of all the members of the group, but also of sympathizers from Galați, Brașov and București. All the rebels were arrested in 1959.782

In the Apuseni, infiltration was much sought after in the case of the group led by

Major Dabija. The chosen infiltrator paraded himself as an escaped convict and, after

780 BIASS No. 3 (1968), 50-57. However, a pro-legionary blog (http://garziledecebal.blogspot.com.au/2011/11/grupul-ion-paragina-vrancea.html, last consulted 18 February 2013) based on an interview with a member of the group (Mihai Timaru) asserts that the capture was after a fierce gunfight with numerous people killed, among them five Securitate troops. 781 BIASS No. 3 (1968), 61-65. 782 Testimony of Col. Victor Burlacu in Securitatea, No. 3 (1973), 12-13. 242 being accepted in the group, tried to place notices on the group activities in secret hideouts in trees.783 However, the agent – retired army Lt. Col. Iancu Bocan found it impossible to send back information.784 Col. Bocan was a happy case despite his failure.

For those whom the partisans discovered to be working against them, the fate was cruel.

When the Bukovinian partisans of Vladimir Macoveiciuc learned that two police agents had been placed among them in December 1945, they killed both of them with axes and then hacked them to pieces.785 These discoveries happened either through accident, poor work of the covert agents’ or, in one particularly important case for intelligence work, when one of the agents was simply unreliable. During the summer of 1951 the

Securitate attempted to infiltrate four informers in the Northern Făgăraș group led by

Ion Gavrilă, among them captured Bukovinian partisan Vasile Motrescu. Once inside the group, he revealed that the other three were traitors; the partisans executed the three on 14 September 1951.786 Motrescu’s action was not unique. The Securitate arrested in

December 1950 a member of the Șușman group from the county of Cluj and tried to turn him in an infiltrated agent, however when returned in the gang he revealed his capture to his comrades.787

Despite these failures, enough victories could be reported to vindicate those officers who thought infiltration was worthwhile. Years after the previously mentioned incident concerning the Șușman group, in the summer of 1954, three of his partisans were discovered through the use as informer of the sister of two of them. One was

783 Proposal of the Câmpeni Securitate Office to the Turda Regional Office, 21 February 1949 in RAMA, Doc. 4, 55. 784 Statement of Lt. Col. Iancu Bocan, 5 March 1949 in RAMA, Doc. 11, 66. 785 Report of the Regional Police Inspectorate Northern Moldova, 10 January 1946 in RAB, Vol. I, Doc. 20, 175. 786 Report of the Sibiu Militia, 16 September 1951 in RAMF, Doc. 61, 163-164 and fn. 33-36. For the larger history of the Gavrilă group see Dorin Dobrincu, “Rezistența armată anticomunistă din Munții Făgăraș - versantul nordic. Grupul carpatic făgărășan/ Grupul Ion Gavrilă (1949/1950-1955/1956)” in Anuarul Institutului de Istorie «G. Bariţiu» din Cluj-Napoca, tom. XLVI, 2007, p. 433–502. 787 RATS, 29. 243 killed; another was sentenced to death and executed. The third member, a woman, was given a life sentence.788 In the case of the Popșa group from Maramureș, the authorities penetrated both the support and propaganda network and the group itself. The legionary

“Young Nest” in Sighet, who were planning on joining the local guerrillas, had been infiltrated with an informer in November 1948, as soon as the Securitate found out about its existence. This allowed the authorities to place an agent within the partisans themselves in April 1949, and in just a few days the information received led to two gunfights, one involving a whole Securitate platoon on 1 May and the second on 2 May, when the group was surrounded and effectively destroyed. 789 A Securitate non- commissioned officer infiltrated among them in 1950-1951 liquidated all the partisans led by Andrei Ghivnici single-handedly.790 Securitate Major Grigore Mândruț infiltrated the subversive group from the Cluj County led by Iosif Capotă; he had an important role in their capture.791

A more complete story of a destruction through infiltration can be told in relation to the “White Guard”, an organization led by Leonida Bodiu and operating in

Bistrița-Năsăud. They referred to themselves as members of the National Christian

League and for some reason the Securitate was calling them “White Guard”, which was an invented term for a supposed counter-gang operating in the area. Leonida Bodiu, an army lieutenant, had been captured at Stalingrad and returned as battalion commander in the Russian-organized “Tudor Vladimirescu” Division. Captured by the Germans in

January 1945, he was contacted by legionary elements for a possible mission but he refused. He returned to the country in June 1946, was arrested and tried for desertion.

788 Ibid., 46-47. 789 “The history of the Popșa Group and its capture”, report by Maramureș Securitate, 31 May 1949 in RAP, Doc. 24, 68-71. 790 Dorin Dobrincu, “Grupuri minore”, 181. 791 RACD, 25-26. 244 Not arrested during his trial, he went underground when he heard he was convicted to

25 years of hard labour. The organization formed around him was supposed to act only upon the eruption of a war between the West and the Soviet Union. Cooperation between the Securitate and the Army intelligence service in trying to infiltrate the group with former military officers did not amount to much. In September 1948 an information network coordinated both by Securitate and Army Intelligence was built up in the villages where the organization was known to be operating. Some of the Army officers blew their own cover in the process, by calling their sources to official meetings in the local town halls. Acting on a carefully elaborated plan, 30 Securitate strike teams totalling 156 men went into action on the night of 12/13 February 1949 in four villages, arresting 22 suspected members of the organization. However the mission was a failure, as 29 of those known to possess weapons escaped to the mountains. Bodiu was eventually captured after a government agent infiltrated the group, a former good friend of his; this agent lured him in a trap on 21 March 1949. In July, under the pretext of trying to escape while revealing the location of some weapons, Bodiu and two other members of the rebel group were shot and killed by the Securitate. Other 63 people were tried and convicted to prison terms for being members of or helping the rebel group.792

The Romanian counterinsurgents also attempted the use of counter-gangs in the fight against the anti-communist rebels. This approach, which mirrors contemporary developments in Malaya and Algeria, features the formation of crack teams of intelligence officers operating in disguise as locals or trying to pass themselves as rebels, in order to approach the real guerrillas, gain their confidence and eventually

792 This entire fragment is based on Oana Ionel, “Anihilarea organizaţiei „Garda Albă” de către Securitate (1949)” in Cosmin Budeancă, Florentin Olteanu, Iulia Pop (editori), Rezistenţa anticomunistă. Cercetare tiinţifică i valorificarea muzeală, Vol. I, Cluj-Napoca, Ed. Argonaut, 2006, 142-158. 245 attack and destroy them. Early in the struggle, a counter-gang was used to destroy the previously mentioned Sinaia group of army officers plotting insurrection in the spring of 1946. After the infiltrated agent had provided ample information concerning the composition, intentions and capabilities of the rebels, the authorities planned that a crack team of Siguranță officers in disguise as tourists would operate from a mountain cabin known to be frequented by the rebels and another would make the arrests in

Sinaia. Top priority was given to the discovery of weapons caches.793 During the very successful operation, 12 active and reserve officers were arrested and two other runaway rebel officers who had been members of the National Resistance Movement were arrested. Two major supply depots were discovered, with tens of thousands of rounds, dozens of artillery shells, a hundred grenades, 14 guns and 2 machine-guns.794

In other instances, success was more problematic or was completely absent. In the fall of 1949, the Mehedinți local command authorized the formation of a counter- gang composed of 12 Militia officers who patrolled the area of partisan activity disguised as forest rangers. On 24 September, they fell on three guerrillas, who managed to escape after a shootout. 795 Similarly problematic was the activity of counter-gangs in the region of Făgăraș. The Securitate “group Mandea” who managed to infiltrate the partisans led by Ion Gavrilă was not even meant to act against them, but against a similar partisan group on the south slopes of the Făgăraș Mountains.796 Later the same year, 1952 a counter-gang with officers disguised as tourists were sent on their

793 Siguranță’s plan for the arrest of the “Armed Group Sinaia”, 24 June 1946 in IMRR, Vol. II, Doc. 49, 73-75. 794 Document of 28 June 1946 in IMRR, Vol. II, 79-80. Subsequent documents point to the discovery of other large weapons deposits. 795 Report of Mehedinți Militia, 1 November 1949 in RASV, Doc. 229, 270. 796 Informative Report on the Problem of the Gangs in 1951, 15 February 1952 in BBE, Doc. 23, 130- 131. 246 tracks, without much success, despite the fact that the guerrillas used to attack tourist cabins in the mountains.797

However, failure did not dissuade the authorities from trying again and there were instances when the approach was massively successful, especially in the later stages of the struggle. In the case of the remnants of the Leon Șușman group from the

Apuseni, the counter-gang approach worked after both the informative network and the infiltration approach had produced results. To wipe out the group in 1957 the Securitate used 22 informers against them and intercepted the correspondence of the family and close relatives. After successfully inserting an agent in the group, a team of 10 officers was placed in the area under the cover of being members of a geological team; a company of Securitate troops stationed in the area supported the counter-gang. Through the infiltrated agent, the officers found out about a meeting of the group in the house of their supporters and surrounded it. In the ensuing gunfight one partisan was killed, three were wounded and captured; however, the commander of the Securitate team was also shot dead.798

5.5 Military operations

As the Romanian counterinsurgents faced very mobile, lightly armed opponents who above all avoided to openly challenging them, by necessity some of the features

797 Report on the Problem of the Gangs, 16 September 1952 in BBE, Doc. 26, 152-155. 798 See for the entire operation Dorin Dobrincu, “Anticommunist Resistance Groups in Central Transylvania – the Apuseni Mountains (1948-1957)” in Revue Roumaine d`Histoire, Vol. 45, (2006), 245-265. 247 experienced in contemporary COIN campaigns elsewhere were absent in this case.799

The technological advantage that governments usually enjoy in COINs was insignificant after the defeat of the urban subversive groups. Heavy artillery or aviation were not useful against the small partisan groups, who learned early on to move mostly at night and to make the best of the mountainous, forested areas which the rebels tended to roam. In only one case the partisans mounted an attack on a village with the intention to occupy it and use it as a liberated, safe permanent base, and in this case the authorities sent in heavy forces. In this case, a group from the Turda County led by air commodore Diamandi Ionescu occupied in August 1949 the village of Muntele Băișorii, taking over the town hall, removing communist portraits and flags and burned documents. The representatives of the local authorities were sequestered in a house.

Within hours, trucks of governmental troops with artillery made their way to the village, but the guerrillas managed to escape.800

The small size of the opponents and the danger they posed were the main causes why Romanian COIN was entirely conducted by the police and the intelligence agencies rather than the army. Despite this, as it will be shown in this section, there were cases when massive forces, ranging to thousands of troops and many battalions were used in certain anti-partisan operations.

Usually, the teams who made the arrests when a rebel or subversive element had been identified by intelligence and no significant resistance was expected were quite small. Arrests took place at night. Initially made by a team of four, this was increased to six in 1949 and provisions were made for the reconnaissance of the target’s house

799 The groups mentioned in this section are detailed in table 1 at the end of this chapter. 800 Dorin Dobrincu, Rezistența armată anticomunistă din România, 457. 248 before proceeding to the capture.801 When miscalculations were made and too small teams were sent, the decision could misfire badly. The Macavei brothers, partisans working with Major Dabija in the Apuseni, proved particularly hard to capture.

Resisting arrest for gold trafficking (which was the reason for them joining the guerrillas) they wounded four gendarmes in July 1948. In October the same year,

Alexandru Macavei killed two gendarmes who tried to arrest him.802 When resistance was expected or when the numbers of those expected to be captured was significant far larger formations were sent in. In the early 1950s sometimes the Securitate sent a whole company to make arrests in the villages supporting the partisans led by Teodor

Șușman.803 In the summer of 1950, when villages to the north of Bucharest erupted in anti-collectivization riots, the government sent in for pacification and arrests a

Securitate battalion and two additional companies.804 For the arrest of Iosif Capotă, the leader of a subversive group who was deemed to be armed and dangerous, an entire

Securitate battalion surrounded the village of Brăișor on the night of 6 to 7 December

1957, an intervention team catching the target unawares and preventing him from taking poison.805

These targeted actions, following a flux of intelligence, were the culmination of more traditional approaches to dealing with partisans. These comprised, like in many other examples throughout history, patrols, checkpoints, searches and sweeps through the areas with guerrilla activity. When informant action produced little or no results in the case of the Bukovina-based partisans led by Constantin Cenușă in 1950, the regional

801 In 1951 the number of those arrested as members of subversive groups, rebel gangs and illegal religious groups was 3488, Florian Banu, “Securitatea şi arestarea „duşmanilor poporului” (1948- 1958)” in Stela Cheptea, Gh. Buzatu (eds.), Convergenţe istorice i geopolitice. Omagiu Profesorului Horia Dumitrescu, Iaşi, Casa Editorială Demiurg, 2009, pp. 416-426. 802 Liviu Pleșa, “Implicarea militarilor în mişcarea de rezistenţă armată”, fn. 16. 803 RATS, 34. 804 Operative synthesis of the Ministry of the Interior, 10 July 1950 in CAR, Doc. 38, 205-206. 805 RACD, 28. 249 Militia divided its forces at checkpoints, with 12 teams of 3 Militia NCO`s blocking strategic points in the different routes assumed to be used by the partisans. The anti- partisan squads were armed with rifles and some had hand grenades.806 As this came to naught, in the fall of the same year the authorities decided the formation of more ambush points on the mountain routes.807 When fixed solutions again disappointed, the

Militia switched to mobile tactics, with patrols in three villages tasked with scouting the areas and watching the houses of those suspected to support the partisans.808

Similar approaches were taken by the Operative Group Făgăraș (a task force specially set to deal with the Gavrilă group) in April 1954, combining the use of a counter-gang comprising officers disguised as tourists with patrols and ambush groups, as well as sweeps through the forests.809 In 1948-1950 patrols were regularly mounted in the Vlădeasa Mountains, with very little success.810 Sometimes, these tactics were reactive and hasty, such as the action of the Mehedinți Militia after the partisans had kidnapped and killed two local party leaders on 24/25 August 1949. The Militia organized patrols, cordon and sweep operations involving well over 50 officers, again with no success.811

However, the reason why patrols and checkpoints were never abandoned was that there were indeed cases when simple patrols and searches could score massive hits against the partisans, especially if they could call on support in case they stumbled upon

806 Action plan of the Rădăuți County Militia for the pursuit and liquidation of partisans, 2 May 1950 in RAB, Vol. I, Doc. 76, 313. 807 Informative report of the Securitate, 21 September 1950 in RAB, Vol. I, Doc. 96, 365. 808 Militia action plan for the destruction of the Cenușă group on Easter 1951, 23 April 1951 in RAB, Vol. II, Doc. 17, 54. 809 Plan of the Operative Group Făgăraș, April 1954 in BBE, Doc. 37, 221. 810 RATS, 24-25. 811 Report of Mehedinți Militia, 28 August 1949 in RASV, 209-212. 250 their opponents.812 In the summer of 1949, near the Crucea village in Dobrudja, during a routine patrol, the Militia chief of the village’s station and one Militia soldier were informed of a villager that was producing illegal alcohol. The search of his house revealed armed rebels, who ran after opening fire on the two Militia officers. After a prolonged chase including gunfights and horseback racing, the reinforcements came to the scene; they were made of other Militia officers and armed local communists and the rebels were pinned down. One of the fugitives was mortally shot and the other two surrendered.813 In the spring of the same year, checkpoints scored a big hit in south- western Romania. After 6 guerrillas were discovered in the village of Izverna on 27

March, local Militia established watching posts. On 31 March 3 partisans were seen by watchmen and a gunfight erupted, leaving the guerrillas dead. The government’s forces were made of seven Militia officers, seven forest rangers and three civilians.814

Sweeps, involving the combing by a large number of troops of relatively large and difficult areas, mostly forested and with many possible hideouts were another feature of Romanian COIN. They could take place during daytime, but they were also employed during the night, such as the 4 a.m. raid on Christmas night 1950 mounted by mixed Securitate-Militia squads descending on objectives in the Bukovina villages of

Putna and Straja and searching the suspected houses for partisans. 815 Sweeps of company-size Securitate forces were quite common, such as in the case of late August and early September 1952 when a battle group of these dimensions was dispatched

812 See for the deployment of a special Militia strike team in Bukovina in 1949, permanently stationed at the county headquarters and ready to deploy immediately when the partisans were sighted the document Action plan of the Rădăuți County Militia for the liquidation of the partisans, 13 July 1949 in RAB, Vol. I, Doc. 60, 286. 813 Report of the chief of the Crucea Militia station, 21 July 1949 in RAD, Doc. 16, 91-92. 814 Report of Mehedinți Militia, 25 August 1949 in RASV, Docs. 173-174, 204-208. 815 Common Securitate-Militia plan, 20 December 1950 in RAB, Vol. II, Doc. 9, 39. 251 against the Gavrilă group who had just attacked shepherd layers in the region of

Făgăraș.816

Large-scale operations were also mounted. More often than not, they were the product of the frustration of superior command after the rebels had escaped from engagements or were simply too stealthy or too well hidden. After the attack of

Gavrilă’s partisans on a cabin in the Negoiu Mountain and a gunfight with a squad of four Securitate officers in early November 1953, a huge sweep through their areas was ordered. The authorities gathered no less than six Securitate battalions, an independent company and 50 specially trained dogs that combed the forests under the general command of the director of the Stalin (Brașov) Regional Securitate, colonel Ambruș.817

In a similar operation tracking the scattered remains of the Teodor Șușman group, who had been defeated in a gunfight in July 1952, the Securitate used more than 2500 officers and troops as well as police dogs.818

The previously mentioned operation of July 1952 followed a successful ambush, which was another preferred option of the government’s forces. A Securitate company who knew that they were going to cross a particular river surprised the Șușman partisans, numbering seven fighters. In the gunfight and the ensuing pursuit two rebels were killed and the other scattered, never to form a combat unit again.819 Ambushes were employed in Bukovina against the notoriously elusive guerrillas of Constantin

Cenușă. In one particular case, 15 teams of up to 6 Securitate officers were to guard the houses from where the partisans might be helped.820 In this case they were unsuccessful, but the next year, a Militia squad in one of the ambush points captured partisan Vasile

816 Report on the Problem of the Gangs, September 16th 1952 in BBE, Doc. 26, 152-155. 817 Order of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, 4 November 1953 in BBE, Doc. 33, 204-205. 818 RATS, 45. 819 Ibid., 43. 820 Securitate operations plan, 1 October 1950 in RAB, Vol. II, Doc. 1, 30. 252 Motrescu.821 Unlike the reactive sweeps, which seldom produced any results, ambushes mounted after previous contact had been made with the guerrillas could result in victory for the government’s forces. In a south-western Romanian village on 13 May 1949 two armed partisans attacked a local Militia officer. The next night the Militia organized an ambush at the house of the brother of one of the guerrillas; the partisan appeared and died after a short gunfight with two Militia officers.822

Perhaps the most successful operations were those mounted by the authorities whenever they possessed information regarding the location of armed rebels or their supporters. These “informed strikes” allowed the counterinsurgents to gather forces better suited to apprehending or subduing the guerrillas. Sometimes, the killing of the leader of the group in shoot-outs with the government’s forces was enough to destroy an entire group, like in the case of the group led by Vasile Cămăruţă which operated between 1949 and 1950 in the Baia County in Moldova.823 In other cases, such as that of the National Resistance Movement and the “Haiduks” which had been thoroughly infiltrated by government agents, coordinated strikes led to the destruction of the organizations through simultaneous arrests on 28 May 1946, which resulted in 30 members captured without resistance. 824 The following paragraphs present different

“informed strikes” against the partisans and their outcome.

In 1949, the Securitate recruited an informer connected with some of the young members of the Popșa group operating in the region of Maramureș. He relayed the location of the group in a house of a miller and six Securitate and Militia agents were sent against them. The house was surrounded and the rebels opened fire on the

821 Report of the Suceava Regional Directorate of the Securitate, 29 June 1951 in RAB, Vol. II, Doc. 29, 66. 822 Report of the judge of Broșteni, 14 May 1949 in RASV, Doc. 116, 156-158. 823 Dorin Dobrincu, Rezistența armată anticomunistă din România, 307-308. 824 SSI note of 31 May 1946 in Serviciul Român de Informații, Cartea albă a Securității, Doc. 213, 292- 293. 253 government’s troops with automatic weapons and grenades. After a thirty-minute gunfight one rebel was killed, three captured and one managed to escape.825 In the same year 1949, in Dobrogea, the Securitate used information from captured partisans to find out about the hideout of another two members of the group in the village of Bătlăgești.

After a gunfight with automatic weapons and grenades the two were captured.826 In the

Apuseni Mountains, the group led by Ștefan Popa was attacked by 200 Securitate troops from the Sibiu Battalion on 8 March 1949. Three partisans were killed and two captured.827

1950 saw a series of coordinated, informed strikes against the guerrillas operating in the Făgăraș Mountains. Tipped off by informers, a joint Securitate-Militia team of 29 men attacked the partisan group led by Ion Gavrilă in the village of Râușor during the night of 14-15 November. A serious gunfight resulted in the death of a

Militia sergeant major (a political officer who volunteered for the action); another NCO was seriously wounded, while four partisans were apprehended, one of them slightly wounded.828 In a follow-up operation in the neighboring village of Părău two other partisans armed with an automatic rifle, a rifle, a handgun and a grenade were surprised by the governmental troops, who shot and killed one of them and captured the other.829

The next month a particularly gruesome operation took place in the same region, which highlights many features of Securitate’s modus operandi. In order to capture one isolated partisan (Toma Pirău), the officers kidnapped his half-brother, who was blackmailed to reveal the location of his kin. On December 18 he revealed the hideout of his brother, who was hiding in the house of an uncle. Again, a joint Securitate-Militia

825 Telegram of Oradea Regional Securitate, 1 May 1949 and Report of Oradea Regional Securitate, 3 May 1949 in RAP, Docs. 15 and 16, 52-54. 826 Report of Constanța Regional Securitate, 21 July 1949 in RAD, Doc. 17, 92-93. 827 Note of the General Securitate Directorate in RAMA, Doc. 15, 71. 828 Note of the Stalin Regional Securitate, 15 November 1950 in RAMF, Doc. 3, 39-40. 829 Telegram of the Stalin Regional Securitate, 15 November 1950 in RAMF, Doc. 6, 43. 254 team of 20 men was formed and dispatched to the indicated place, which was completely surrounded. A squad of six men stormed the objective, finding only the uncle, who was compelled to take the team to the barn. The partisan, who was in the barn, opened fire on the communist troops, killing a lieutenant. The entire detachment attacked the barn for an hour and a half, during which another NCO was mortally wounded. After the shooting stopped, unwilling to risk any more lives, the team dispatched the parents of the partisan in the barn, who confirmed that their son was dead.830

The Ion Gavrilă group was seriously weakened by “informed strikes” in the summer of 1954. On August 6th two platoons discovered and surrounded two members of the group who were killed in a gunfight; the troops had previous knowledge of their whereabouts and had been led through by guides. Almost two weeks later a squad of eight Securitate troops, informed by two local shepherds, discovered and attacked two other partisans, one of them presumably Ion Gavrilă, who managed to escape after mortally wounding a soldier. In this as well as in other actions the technical limitations of the weapons of the government troops are obvious, some of them quickly blocking after a few shots (and maybe also proving the stress or the lack of training of the soldiers).831 The next day, 20 August, Gavrilă and four other guerrillas were surprised during a sweeping operation through the forest. While he and three others were able to escape, Ioan Iloiu was wounded and captured.832

830 Report of the Făgăraș Securitate, 18 December 1950 in RAMF, Doc. 21, 94. The author of the report, Securitate Captain Teodosiu Ioan does not mention the following, but the editors of the volume claim in a footnote that before the team left they burned the property. 831 Report of Military Unit 0199, August 1954 and Report of Military Unit 0487, August 1954 in BBE, Docs. 39 and 40, 229-232. 832 Report of Military Unit 0106, August 1954 in BBE, Doc. 41, 233-234. 255 5.6 The elimination of rebel groups

While the previous sections have examined intelligence and specific military operations used by the Romanian communist authorities, this section deals with the destruction of particular groups, highlighting the success of the counterinsurgency campaign but also its limitations.

Geographical features played a significant part in the conflict, more often than not being an advantage to the guerrillas. However, there were instances when the struggle was made particularly desperate for the partisans by the configuration of the terrain. The mostly legionary groups operating in Dobrogea, for instance, had to face the reality that their region was an operational zone of the Red Army after 1944,

Constanța – the region’s centre and the most important maritime port of the country having the largest garrison of Soviet troops in the country. The geographical features – plains and very small, easily accessible mountains meant that armed resistance was extremely difficult and that clashes with the government’s forces were particularly lethal.833

In one such instance a future leader of the Romanian Foreign Intelligence

Service, Nicolae Doicaru, made his name. Doicaru personally took part in the mission that led to the discovery and death of Gogu Puiu on 18 July 1949. An informer tipped off the Securitate concerning a meeting of rebels in the village of Cobadin. A team of officers fell on the village, arrested people suspected to be hosts and one of them revealed the location of Puiu, the recognized leader of resistance in Dobrogea. After a fierce gunfight in which he wounded an officer, the rebel escaped to another part of the

833 RAD, 12-13. 256 village where he was again surrounded and was eventually killed by a grenade explosion.834

Sheer mental exhaustion led to the surrender of some guerrillas. Constantin

Cenușă, who had avoided numerous attempts to capture him, negotiated his surrender and that of his last remaining partner through letters sent to local Securitate NCO’s through a priest who acted as an intermediary.835 The authorities were keen on finally apprehending them, so two informers, one a forestry worker and the other a forest guard contacted the partisans, intermediated a meeting between the two partisans and three

Militia NCO`s who tried to persuade them to surrender. The partisans asked for a few days to collect their things, meet the wives and they were granted their wishes, the

Militia pulling out the squads that were guarding the mountain roads. On 30 August

1951 the two partisans surrendered to a team of seven Militia and Securitate officers.836

Informant action led to the collapse of a subversive group from Câmpulung

Moldovenesc. The Group of “Young Partisans”, numbering 13 high-school students, was formed in the early 1950s and armed themselves by stealing weapons and ammunition from the local hunting association. Before mounting any attacks they were arrested by the Securitate in the summer of 1954.837 Treason and the use of informers led to the destruction of an armed group called “King Michael’s Partisans – the Secret

Army” operating in 1948-49 as a subversive organization in the Cluj-Gherla-Turda area and then as an armed resistance group in the area Gherla-Dej. Up to 150 people had joined the organization; some were leading a normal existence in their villages, being a support network for the armed guerrillas living in the forests. While the support network

834 Report of the Director of Constanța Regional Securitate, Captain Nicolae Doicaru, 18 July 1949 in RAD, Doc. 15, 90. 835 RAB, Vol. II, Docs. 36-40, 78-83. 836 Report of the Suceava Regional Militia, 27 August 1951 and Report of the Suceava Regional Militia, 30 August 1951 in RAB, Vol. II, Docs. 42 and 44, 84, 86. 837 Dorin Dobrincu, “Grupuri minore”, 186-187. 257 was discovered through treason, the armed partisans were apprehended through an informer, a neighbour of the leader of the group. Hunted down and forced to surrender on 8 October 1949 after the Securitate officers threatened to kill his brother, the leader of the rebels and his son were immediately taken to the woods, killed and buried on the spot.838

The previously mentioned partisans led by Major Dabija were finally defeated through a mixture of intelligence work, conventional military operations and treason. In early March 1949 Securitate troops captured partisan Traian Ihuț, who testified about the location of the partisans on Muntele Mare and about their strength. The local

Securitate leadership decided to attack the partisans immediately. A joint Securitate-

Militia wipe-out operation started in the morning of 4 March. A company of 80 troops from the Cluj Securitate Battalion and led by the commander of regional Securitate, colonel Mihai Patriciu, charged the peak 1201 where two strongholds of the partisans were situated. A gunfight started at 6:20 and lasted for close to two hours, followed by hand-to-hand combat and the burning of the strongholds. The Securitate troops had three dead and three wounded, while eleven partisans were killed, including two females who were college students. 839 Major Dabija and two other partisans managed to escape this time. The Securitate troops that led the assault had been divided in two platoons, the first led by Traian Ihuț who knew the area. The second platoon was disoriented and during the fight disobeyed orders and mistakenly fired on the first platoon. In a classic military operation, they used grenades to burn the strongholds and then fired automatic rifles at them. The location was not completely surrounded and this

838 Dorin Dobrincu, “Rezistenţa armată anticomunistă şi rezistenţa greco-catolică în centrul Transilvaniei. Organizaţia «Partizanii Regelui Mihai – Armata Secretă» (1948-1950)” in Ovidiu Bozgan (ed.), Biserică, Politică, Societate, Bucharest: Editura Universităţii din Bucureşti, 2007. 839 Report of the Cluj Regional Militia, 3 March 1949 and Report of the Cluj Regional Militia, 5 March 1949 in RAMA, Docs. 7 and 8, 61-62. Another document of 5 March 1949 gives a different number for the partisans assessing that the group was formed of 26 individuals, of which 12 were captured and 7 killed. 258 is why the three partisans including Dabija were able to escape.840 Major Dabija was finally captured on 22 March, being betrayed by a local villager in whose barn he was sleeping. The informer brought three other villagers and a Militia officer and together they caught Dabija in his sleep and brought him to the local Militia office.841 On 28

October 1949, 7 members of the group, including Major Nicolae Dabija were executed in Sibiu. In addition to them, the Securitate killed 13 other members in April 1950, their deaths being recorded as due to pulmonary diseases.842

The end of the group led by Teodor Șușman came very slowly and was a mixture of sheer desperation for the rebels and good, albeit painfully slow informative work of the authorities. Teodor Șușman committed suicide while hunted down by government troops in December 1951. After a long and complex informative action, the last two members of the group, two of Șușman’s sons, were discovered in a barn by

Securitate troops on 2 February 1958. Unable to capture them and after an inconclusive two-hour gunfight, the governmental forces burned the barn down, resulting in the deaths of the two. To showcase the frustration of the authorities, at a following trial 17 people were convicted to long prison terms for having aided the group members.843

Such trials were common in the case of partisans and their helpers. Massive reprisals were also something quite common. Previously mentioned rebels Iosif Capotă and Alexandru Dejeu, who had never mounted any armed attack were sentenced to death and executed in Gherla on 2 September 1958. Their helpers got sentences between 8 years in jail and forced labour for life.844 No less than 14 people who had belonged to Toma Arnăuțoiu’s group fighting in the Argeș County were executed in

840 Report of Staff Sergeant Octavian Voicu, 6 March 1949 in RAMA, Doc. 14, 69. 841 Report of the Cluj Regional Securitate, 24 March 1949 in RAMA, Doc. 37, 103. 842 Liviu Pleșa, “Implicarea militarilor în mişcarea de rezistenţă armată”. 843 RATS, 36, 49-50. 844 RACD, 30. 259 1959.845 These executions were part of the vast process of destroying any political opposition of the PMR. It is estimated that between 1952 and 1965 (therefore excluding the violent years 1945-1951) there were 129 death penalties for political opponents, of which just 34 for the legionaries. 75 sentences were carried out. In the same period

31,000 people were arrested and convicted for political crimes.846

These legal actions had another, darker counterpart. As previously mentioned, the Securitate also carried illegal, summary executions of captured rebels. When the government troops re-occupied the village held for a few hours by the guerrillas led by

Diamandi Ionescu, they shot as reprisals six villagers who had helped the rebels.847 In

Mehedinți, on the night of 27/28 March 1948 two persons arrested for destroying local telephone networks were taken for a reconstitution, apparently tried to escape and were shot by their escort.848 In one of the most egregious cases, that eventually raised the suspicions of the central Securitate command, the commander of Turda Regional

Securitate, frustrated by the inability of his subordinates to find local partisans, ordered in August 1950 the summary execution of three rich peasants suspected of helping the guerrillas. Lying to his superiors about the murders, which he presented as deaths in gunfights, the commander was questioned and severely reprimanded, not for killing innocents but for misrepresenting the truth.849

845 Dennis Deletant, Teroarea comunistă în România, 180. 846 BIASS No. 2 (1968), 5. 847 Dorin Dobrincu, Rezistența armată anticomunistă din România, 459. 848 Document of gendarmes from Mehedinți, 28 March 1948 in RASV, Doc. 10, 57-58. 849 Report of Securitate Major Kovacs Mihail, 20 August 1950 and Report of Securitate Major N. Dumitrescu, 22 August 1950 in CAR, Docs. 47-48, 220-228. 260 5.7 Conclusions

The defeat of the anti-communist guerrillas in Romania was a long and arduous task for the authorities. It lasted for more than a decade and a half, employed vast numbers of people in most of the regions of the country and required the acquisition of a number of skills which, at least initially, were totally lacking among the officers of the new intelligence and police structures of the new “people’s democracy”. Unlike other campaigns, which targeted coherent or even unified political forces, Romanian counterinsurgents faced a very diffused adversary, small and uncoordinated, which could not be dealt with in a coherent manner and under a unified military leadership.

Instead of creating unique structures for defeating their opponents, in this case the authorities had to rely on local or at most regional forces, commands, troops and information networks. To a far larger degree than in other cases, the anti-guerrilla efforts meant a learning process for lower-ranking officers and NCO’s of the Securitate and the Militia. In a sense, this is also a factor explaining the length and difficulty of the campaign, as well as the mistakes and many of the brutal and inefficient approaches adopted early on by the counterinsurgents.

This chapter shows that, despite the small scale of the Romanian anti-communist armed rebellion and its low level of danger, the problems faced by the authorities were very similar with those of counterinsurgents everywhere, including in the far greater conflicts fought in Malaya and Algeria. Romanian authorities had to prevent the rebels from gaining the support of large sections of the population and therefore, in addition to spreading their control to the tiniest localities, they also had to mount a sustained and difficult population control program. While this, for obvious reasons, was easier than in

261 the colonial counterinsurgencies, the problem of finding the guerrillas, which is the task of intelligence, was as difficult as in the other cases, despite the fact that both the authorities and the rebels shared the same language, race and culture and therefore one could have expected a faster gathering and processing of information. Finding the enemy also raised the same problems and approaches as in the Western campaigns: patrols through difficult terrain, cordons, sweeps, ambushes, checkpoints, informed strikes, arrests and assaults on guerrilla strongholds. By showing that these aspects were common to Algeria, Romania and Malaya, despite the vast differences in geographical settings, cultural and social aspects, the size and political views of both the rebels and the government, the research allows us to say that there is indeed such a thing as a coherent study of counterinsurgency from the perspective of strategic studies.

Population control took a very specific and targeted form in Romanian COIN, mostly because the entire population of the country was subjected, after the communists took power, to what the authorities intended to be full control of public and even private lives. It was this degree of control, which took years to achieve, which was mostly responsible for keeping armed rebellion subdued, local and of low intensity. When population control specifically targeted sections of the population that were revolting or were suspected to be on the brink of rebellion, the usual approach of deporting large groups of people was adopted. Tens of thousands of people underwent forced relocation from their homes to fairly unhospitable regions in south-eastern Romania, losing their homes and many of their material goods, as well as suffering serious psychological trauma. Although the fact that no direct military pressure on the authorities meant that relatively little direct and deadly violence was inflicted on the deported, those resettled faced harsh conditions in their new areas. Lack of food, of proper housing materials and

262 bad medical conditions meant that many perished needlessly during the years of deportation.

In terms of intelligence, the nature of the guerrillas and the land in which most of them operated made the task of local agencies fairly difficult and lengthy. It took a long time to build the information networks in the areas where rebels operated and along the way personnel changes, excessive torture or simple mistakes that blew the cover of agents and informants, led to waste months and years of hard work. However, good informants led many times to success even for lower-ranking officers and NCO’s.

The discoveries of hiding places through informants or betrayals, as well as the use of infiltration were among the most efficient tactics employed by local intelligence or law enforcement officers. Less useful were counter-gangs, which by themselves never produced good results.

Classic military operations such as sweeps, cordons, patrol and ambushes were all employed, usually with extremely limited success unless previous information had been obtained regarding the location of the guerrillas. In direct combat, the rebels had little chances even against small numbers of government troops, although the latter often failed to make good use of their numbers because of poor training, low quality weapons and less-than competent leadership. The combination of population control tactics through the deportation of their families with constant intelligence work and continuous military presence in their areas often put a strong psychological strain on the guerrillas. The lack of help from many locals, coupled with the increasingly distant prospect of the beginning of a war between the capitalist West and the communist East also factored in many rebels’ decision to surrender, sometimes splintering a specific group and even leading, through betrayal, to the capture of their comrades.

263 Although the numbers of those directly involved in armed struggle against the

Romanian communists was small, the reaction of the authorities was overall brutal and sometimes murderous. A few hundred partisans, family members and members of their support networks were killed either in battle with government forces, in summary executions, in executions masquerading as “escaping arrest” or recorded as deaths through pulmonary diseases and in front of firing squads after being sentenced to death.

Tens of thousands endured interrogations, sometimes involving torture. Tens of thousands were deported, or sent to prison for lengthy prison terms for helping the rebels or plotting uprisings. Spread over a decade and a half, the intensity of repression may not seem great compared with similar campaigns fought by either the Western powers or the Soviet Union. However, there is no escape from the conclusion that

Romanian counterinsurgency was also a very brutal affair, often pursued illegally and with total disregard to the rights of the population. In a sense, it amounted to a government waging war on many of its own citizens.

264

Table 1

Table summarising key partisan groups in Romania (1944-1961)

(This table has been compiled from the collections of documents quoted in this chapter and from Adrian Brișcă, “Rezistența armată anticomunistă din România 1944-

1962” on www.miscarea.net/Brisca.htm, last consulted 1 April 2014; though the website is a neo-legionary propaganda channel, the author is a respected historian of the phenomenon).

Name of the Leader Period of Area Type Size of group operations (guerrilla/subversive) the group

National Gen. Aurel 1945-1946 Bucharest Coordination structure Unknown Resistance Aldea Movement

Ion Uță group Col. Ion Uță 1947-1949 Banat- guerrilla 20 Mehedinți (S-W Romania)

Macoveiciuc Vladimir 1944-1947 Bukovina guerrilla 47 group Macoveiciuc (N-E Romania)

Harsmei Silvestru 1949-1951 Bukovina guerrilla 12 group Harsmei (N-E Romania)

265 Avram Gavrilă 1944-1946 Central guerrilla Unknown Iancu’s Olteanu Romania Haiduks

Teodor Teodor 1947-1958 Apuseni guerrilla 7-8 Șușman group Șușman (N-W Romania)

Dabija- Maj. Nicolae 1948-1949 Apuseni guerrilla Over 20 Macavei Dabija (N-W group Romania)

Independent Nistor 1948-1949 Oradea (N- subversive 4 Romania Bădicianu W Organization Romania)

Vlad Țepeș II Victor Lupșa 1947-1950 Vrancea guerrilla Unknown and Brașov (Central Romania)

Arsenescu Col. Ghorghe 1949-1961 Făgăraș guerrilla 16 group Arsenescu (Central Romania)

Vasile Vasile Early Bukovina Lone guerrilla 1 Motrescu Motrescu 1950s (N-E Romania)

Cantemir Gligor 1947-1952 Arad (W guerrilla Unknown group Cantemir Romania)

Gavrilă group Ion Gavrilă 1950-1956 Făgăraș guerrilla Over 20 (Central Romania)

Sinaia group ? 1945-1946 Sinaia guerrilla, not yet 14 (Central active Romania)

Paragină Ion and 1948-1953 Vrancea guerrilla Over 20 group Cristea (Central- Paragină eastern Romania)

Cristea group Traian Cristea Mid 1950s Răcari (S subversive-guerrilla Unknown Romania)

Popșa group Vasile Popșa 1948-1949 Maramureș guerrilla 9 (N-W

266 Romania)

“Young Nest” ? 1948-1949 Sighet (N- subversive less than W 10 Romania)

Ghivnici Andrei 1946-1951 Bukovina guerrilla 5-6 group Ghivnici (N-E Romania)

Capotă-Dejeu Iosif Capotă, Mid-1950s Cluj subversive 23 group Alexandru (Central- Dejeu Western Romania)

“White Leonida 1948-1949 Bistrița- subversive-guerrilla Over 20 Guard” Bodiu Năsăud

Leon Șușman Leon Șușman 1948-1957 Turda guerrilla Less than group (Central- 10 Western Romania)

Diamandi Air 1949-1950 Apuseni guerrilla 20 Ionescu group commodore (N-W Diamandi Romania) Ionescu

Dobrogea Gogu Puiu 1947-1949 Dobrogea guerrilla Over 20 guerrillas (S-E Romania)

Cenușă group Constantin 1944-1952 Bukovina guerrilla Less than Cenușă (N-E 10 Romania)

Cămăruță Vasile 1949-1950 Bukovina guerrilla Unknown group Cămăruță (N-E Romania)

Arnăuțoiu Lt. Toma 1949-1958 Făgăraș guerrilla Less than group Arnăuțoiu (Central 20 Romania)

267

Chapter 6

Comparisons and conclusions

This thesis attempted an analysis of classical counterinsurgency in Malaya,

Algeria and Romania focusing on three essential elements of governmental response to armed rebellions: population control, intelligence and military operations. The main premise behind choosing these dimensions was that contemporary governments faced with armed rebellions have three main tasks. Firstly, it is to prevent the transformation of the conflict into a civil war by allowing the insurgents to attract vast sectors of the civilian population to their side and the best avenue for doing so is through population control. Secondly, it is to find the enemy and uncover its cells, structures and modus operandi, which is the task of intelligence agencies. Thirdly, the objective is to eliminate the armed rebels – a task that is considered in the framework of military operations.

Defining modern and contemporary insurgencies as the actions of political armed movements aiming to overthrow the established central government or to significantly alter national policies according to the agenda of certain groups, means that they can be analysed as a specific political and social phenomenon rather than disparate historical events. Therefore, and especially once historical and strategic investigations have uncovered specific and repetitive patterns both in insurgencies and governmental responses to them, it follows that these patterns could and should be analysed and possibly the best path for doing so is comparative research. Previous

268 authors have provided analyses of more than one counterinsurgency campaign, but more often than not they stuck to one particular culture of fighting armed rebels (be it

British, American or French). It was the belief of this researcher that in order for the study of counterinsurgency to advance within the general realm of strategic studies and social sciences, comparisons between different cultures, states and societies embroiled in asymmetric warfare are essential, as similarities and differences can reveal much about the realities, possibilities and predicaments of guerrilla warfare.

The choice of period was not difficult, as the immediate post-war years witnessed the “classical age of COIN”, which to a very large degree, as discussed in the first two chapters, shaped subsequent theory and practice from the rice fields of

Vietnam in the late 1960s to the snowy peaks of the Hindu Kush in present days. Two of the case studies also were easy to choose, as Malaya and Algeria constituted the training grounds for specific approaches to COIN and also for influential authors such as Robert Thompson, Frank Kitson, Roger Trinquier or David Galula. Moreover, established narratives of the campaigns in Malaya and Algeria permeate both contemporary academic literature and army field manuals on asymmetric warfare and an analysis and a comparison between the two served to amend these narratives, especially given the fact that, quite surprisingly, these campaigns had never been analysed comparatively before by authors who had a working ability in English and

French. The choice of Romania, as previously discussed, is appropriate both for theoretical reasons and in the light of the results. For a comprehensive comparative approach, it is not sufficient to choose similar societies fighting similar conflicts, as the

United Kingdom and the French Republic were at the end of the Second World War

(reasonably established parliamentary democracies, old colonial powers, massively industrial economies confronting enemies far away from the metropolis who also were

269 utterly different in language, race, religious beliefs and culture from the counterinsurgents). Adding Romania into the mix broadened the scope by including a dictatorial regime ruling a small, predominantly agricultural country devastated by war that fought enemies with identical racial, ethnic, linguistic, cultural characteristics and historical experiences.

The rest of this chapter contains a comparison between the three case studies focusing on the three dimensions analysed in the thesis, a brief analysis concerning the relevance of the findings for contemporary campaigns, final conclusions and a discussion concerning the prospective research for the future.

In all of the three examined cases population control policies were successful, with the possible exception of Algeria, where in the late stage of the conflict the authorities lost control not so much over the Muslim majority, but rather over the

European settlers. Even in this case, the government was victorious in the sense in which it prevented the transformation of an armed rebellion into a conventional and symmetric civil war, which had been for a time the goal of the FLN. In Malaya, the early preventive arrests campaign and large-unit manoeuvres had stopped the MCP from reaching out to most of the country’s population, but in the long run the strategy of population control was, likewise, responsible for preventing the escalation of the conflict. In Romania there had never been a real danger of the country sliding into civil war as the insurgents were too few, too scattered to contemplate a unified uprising against a regime still backed by tens of thousands of Soviet troops in addition to its own large forces. Nevertheless, in this case too population control kept restive social categories in check and prevented serious help trickling down to the guerrillas.

270 The most striking aspect of the strategies of population control that needs to be kept in mind is the government’s policy of dislodging vast numbers of civilians from their areas into settlements under government control, thus enforcing large-scale internal deportation programs. In Malaya the British colonists resettled virtually half of the target population (the ethnic Chinese) or up to 15% of all inhabitants of the country.

In addition to the 10,000 who were deported to China, a million people were moved from their homes, be they squatter settlements or older villages, which were often destroyed by the armed forces. In Algeria the French government forcibly resettled up to 2.5 million Muslim Algerians, up to 40% of the country’s population, among who were 400,000 nomads whose way of life was completely destroyed. In Romania the communist authorities did not have to move large numbers of citizens for a few simple reasons: the military situation did not require such policies as the guerrillas were not dangerous enough; the government exercised a much higher degree of territorial and societal control anyway; and many political opponents who could have allied themselves with the insurgents were already arrested in the tens of thousands.

Nevertheless, hundreds of members of families of guerrillas were selectively deported to exercise pressure on their relatives. When the situation demanded, like in the case of villages too close to the Yugoslav frontier, the communist authorities had no qualms in deporting 40,000 people in a matter of days.

Deportations were always harsh and brutal affairs. To describe them in terms of

“hearts and minds” policies, as it has until recently been done at least in the case of

Malaya is to grossly misrepresent reality. Houses and ways of life were destroyed, sometimes forever. Livelihoods were threatened and nearly anyone deported suffered, in addition to psychological trauma, serious economic losses which were seldom compensated at their market value, if ever. In Malaya the “New Villages” were, at least

271 in the early years of their existence, forced labour camps in all but name. In Algeria, even when the settlements were not surrounded by barbwire and patrolled by the army, they were devised in such a manner as to crush intimacy and to destroy the traditional social pattern of Muslim families and community. Romania did not have to put its deported population in work camps, as those were already filled by other political prisoners; instead the communist government followed the Russian model by dumping the dislocated citizens in the middle of an inhospitable plain, very hot and dry in summer with few water sources, very wet and prone to flooding in autumn and spring and cold and covered by snow in winter.

In all of these cases, at least for a number of years, health and hygiene conditions were appalling and one could not help to think that the governments were responsible for enormous suffering and an untold number of deaths among its own peaceful citizens. This situation, in addition to food control, which was a most prominent tactic in Malaya but was present in the other cases as well, served to physically and psychologically break the population’s will to resist, if it even existed in the first place. By the time improvements to the lot of the deported were made, through better sanitation, health service, electrification, schools and roads and even land repartitions, it is likely that the civilian population had learned the hard way what determined governments can do when they feel threatened. In some cases, such as

Romania, these improvements never came, but instead, after years of misery, the deported (who, for the most part, were never convicted for any crime) were allowed to return home.

In addition to this direct, physical control over populations perceived to be inclined to help the guerrillas, the governments also mounted intense legal and psychological warfare campaigns against the population at large. Special emergency

272 legislation was issued in Malaya and Algeria, with Paris and London virtually ceasing to act as democratic powers. Basic rights like freedom of movement, of free speech, habeas corpus, the right to a fair and speedy trial were “legally” disposed with.

Hundreds of people were sentenced to death and executed in Malaya and thousands suffered the same fate in Algeria for breaking the emergency laws. In Romania the communist government did not need to dispense with democratic practices, as the country had never really enjoyed them at least in regard to the rights of common citizens. But even in this case the government broke its own laws, holding people for years without trial, condoning torture and summary executions and extrajudicial killings.

Psychological warfare was most elaborate in Malaya and Algeria, where special military-run institutions ran vast programs of indoctrination, black propaganda, and poster, radio and film campaigns to rally the population to its cause. Persuasion, bribe, threats and brainwashing were used against both enemies and the population at large.

Million of leaflets were dumped over the jungles of Malaya, accompanied by voice aircraft persuading the rebels to surrender. In the towns and villages, like in Algeria, posters and films were the main propaganda channels for the government. In the

Romanian case, one cannot identify much in the way of a specific psychological warfare campaign targeting rebel-infested areas, except the issuing of lists of forbidden songs and the publication of literary works and press materials directly critical of the guerrillas. In this case, psychological warfare was waged at the national level, aiming to change the mental patterns away from the conservative, nationalist, agrarian Romania of the pre-war years into a progressive, industrial and internationalist country of the future.

It has to be noted here that the material as well as the personnel and institutional efforts involved in the population control policies were enormous, at least in Malaya

273 and Algeria. The special Chinese departments and the Chinese Home Guards in the

British colony and the SAS in Algeria employed tens of thousands of people and spent vast sums of money to achieve their goals. Even in the much more limited case of

Romania, whenever it mounted a massive internal deportation operation the government mobilized tens of thousands of troops, thousands of trucks and dozens of trains. Indeed, a government needs to be rich and resolute, not only ruthless, in order to mount a successful population control campaign during an insurgency.

Intelligence organization for counterinsurgency was quite different in the three cases. The British in Malaya, after a short period of experimentation at the beginning, preferred to concentrate authority for the collection, analysis and distribution of intelligence in the hands of the civilian Special Branch, helped by army intelligence officers attached to it. The French had what seemed to be a disjointed intelligence effort, with army intelligence, ministry of the interior information services as well as both the internal and external civilian metropolitan intelligence services involved in

Algerian problems. The Romanians, again after an initial period, in which multiple intelligence agencies dealt with insurgents in a fairly uncoordinated manner, concentrated these efforts under the aegis of the Securitate, albeit the efforts were still mostly local and the People’s Militia still played an important role in gathering information on the ground.

The reasons for this, especially in the light of the military success that the three governments enjoyed, seem to have been justified by the nature of the opponent and the geographical characteristics of the conflict. The British fought against the most coherent and politically organized opponent of the three cases, without internal frictions and obeying the orders of a central command. Furthermore, the area of operations was very similar, basically mountainous jungle and it made perfect sense to concentrate

274 intelligence efforts under one service. Putting everything under the civilian Special

Branch also helped in showing that the Malayan conflict was not a serious war. In the

Algerian case, the FLN was not as united, with the external command often at odds with the internal one, which was also divided, sometimes along ethnic lines between Arabs and Berbers. Furthermore, unlike the MCP or the Romanian insurgents, the FLN operated not only in Algeria, but also in other countries and on other continents. The

French had to find their enemies in the middle of deserts, in mountain hideouts, in fertile valleys, on the streets of big cities in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia but also in

France, Germany and the United States. It would have been too difficult to run the campaign under only one intelligence service. As the efforts were mostly rural and local, again it made sense for the Romanian government to entrust the fight against the partisans to the Securitate. The reason it did not wholly revert to the Militia is connected to the political stance of the partisans, which were far more than common bandits, but also because the Securitate had bigger resources and a larger institutional ability to deal with the collection and analysis of intelligence.

One advantage that all three governments enjoyed from the start was the fact that the rebels did not mount a pre-emptive decapitation strike against intelligence agents working in contested areas. In other cases, such as Aden in the 1960s but most prominently in Dublin during the “Bloody Sunday” of 21 November 1920, local guerrillas dealt heavy blows to the intelligence services by assassinating undercover agents. In the three cases analysed in this thesis this was not the case, most likely because of the inability of the insurgents to identify in advance such targets.850

850 See for the assassination of British agents in Ireland by the IRA counter-intelligence branch led by Michael Collins, T. Bowden, “Bloody Sunday – A Reappraisal” in European History Quarterly, Vol. 2, (1972), 25-42. 275 Advanced technology was not really significant in the fight against a relatively unsophisticated but elusive adversary. Except for the use of precision aerial photography to identify enemy movements and camps in Malaya and Algeria and the use of listening devices in urban settings in all of the three cases, technology had to make place for traditional, human intelligence collection. Informers and informer networks were the bedrock on which the intelligence campaigns were based in classical counterinsurgency. Their recruitment and formation required a steady, painful and long effort by specialized intelligence officers, who in Algeria and Malaya had to battle with their own inability to communicate in the native languages and who in Romania were marred by their own lack of education. These predicaments explain to a degree why it was so difficult to recruit and run good informers and to form efficient and lucrative informer networks. The nature of the adversary and its operations accounts for the other problems of gathering intelligence. More often than not, the informers had to be recruited in the local communities or among the deported, in the hope that they would provide intelligence on the support network of the guerrillas. This support network had organizational coherence in both Malaya and Algeria (the Min Yuen and the OPA, respectively) and was the main target of intelligence efforts in all the three cases. It’s targeting, if successful, allowed intelligence officers to identify most of the members of the network and the identities of the guerrillas, their habits, patterns of operations and, if especially lucky, locations. The process was lengthy and arduous and in many cases could be marred by intelligence officers or informers blowing their own covers in the process.

A far more difficult task was the infiltration of agents and informers inside the guerrilla groups per se. The British had some success among the couriers of the MCP running correspondence between the guerrilla camps in the jungle and the support

276 network in the resettlement camps, but were seldom able to insert agents in the fighting formations. The French had a similar experience in Algeria, penetrating support networks in rural and urban areas but seldom achieving intelligence from the armed rebel formations. They were, however, more capable in penetrating the FLN cells operating outside Algeria, most notably in metropolitan France. Through cooperation with other intelligence agencies, like those of federal Germany, weapons smugglers were identified and eliminated. The Romanian Securitate had more success in infiltrating guerrilla groups and support networks, which can be explained in cultural terms, as both the rebels and the authorities did not differ in language, outlook or ethnicity. Furthermore, most Romanian armed rebels operated close to the villages or native places of some members of their groups, so it was easier for the authorities to try to “turn” a relative or a friend of the guerrillas.

In gathering human intelligence interrogation of civilians, suspected enemy helpers, surrendered and captured enemy personnel played a prominent role. Language and cultural differences impeded French and British efforts, as the authorities had few officers who could speak Arabic or Chinese and had to rely instead on interpreters and further along the line on educating metropolitan officers or recruiting native speakers.

Also, especially when conducting a massive interrogation in a cordoned locality, the officers had to make special efforts not to blow the cover of their informers and had to do far more interrogatories for the sake of appearances. However, in all three cases the most problematic aspect, at least from the vantage point of the present, is the brutal and sometimes inhumane methods used during interrogation. It has been established for a long time that French officers routinely tortured suspected terrorists during the Battle of

Algiers and it has became apparent in the last decade and a half that this was normal practice in the rural areas throughout the conflict. Thousands were killed in the process.

277 Romanian Securitate followed both a national and Soviet tradition in beating and torturing those it subjected to interrogations, with many victims dying because of the wounds or being summarily executed. Despite the fact that for decades the British portrayed their interrogation practices in post-war colonial warfare as clean and humane, proof began to emerge recently that torture, including the removal of nails, was a part of the process in Malaya, mirroring far more gruesome practices during the parallel campaign fought in Kenya against the Mau Mau. Ethical and legal issues can and should be raised in these matters. Together with similar problems concerning the approach towards population control through deportations they show that there are good reasons to consider classical counterinsurgencies “dirty wars”.

The third element of this research was the study of military operations in the three chosen conflicts. It is interesting to note that despite the fact that geography, culture, ethnicity and organization were vastly different between the insurgents the options of the authorities were similar. Nor did it matter that the government could deploy hundreds of thousands of troops, like the French in Algeria, or mostly operate at platoon or company strength like in Romania. In all cases the task of eliminating the rebels led the armed forces to consider and mount similar operations.

First, the analysis of the three campaigns makes the case that large-scale, conventional operations against armed rebels are not useless approaches ordered by incompetent or reactionary officers unwilling to adapt to a new style of warfare, as some of the counterinsurgency literature has portrayed. In the initial stages, raids with large military units, convoys, large patrols and massive checkpoints prevented the rebels from establishing liberated zones in order to contact and radicalize the population. Later on, the massive presence of governmental forces, albeit an arduous and expensive process, served to show the flag and insure the local population of the military

278 superiority of the authorities over the rebels. While seemingly inefficient in terms of enemies captured or killed, constant patrolling, checkpoints, cordons and sweeps maintained constant pressure on the guerrillas, who kept feeling that they are being hunted down by a determined adversary. The British in Malaya, once they established the Police Jungle Force and brought Aboriginal scouts in combination with Sarawak

Rangers and other Special Forces into the fold showed how large units can be very efficient against elusive rebels. Similarly, the French “Commandos de chasse” were instrumental in defeating the last large formations of the FLN in 1959-1960. Even the

Securitate, who had no particular reason to use large formations, did so with success when the strongholds of the maquis had been identified or when it had to quell peasant riots.

Some specific large-units approaches were particularly useful or sought after. In addition to the previously mentioned Special Forces operations, the French used large formations up to battalion and regiment size in their strategy of quadrillage, which ensured territorial control and posed serious problems to any FLN large formations trying to move through the country. Forces as large as infantry divisions guarded the electrified barriers on the frontiers with Morocco and Tunisia, sealing off the rebels in the country from those from abroad, in a manner that was later applied by the British during the conflict in Oman.

Perhaps the most efficient in terms of enemies apprehended or killed in all the three cases were ambushes and informed strikes, or targeted operations. When governmental officers became aware of locations, hideouts or routes and times for the passage of guerrillas, they were able even on short notice to deploy troops to the indicated locations and in numerous cases they were successful. Even when an operation was botched and allowed some or all the guerrillas to escape it put serious

279 pressure on them, sometimes leading to their break-up, as witnessed in the case of the

Romanian maquis. In cases when enemies were killed or captured, intelligence recovered could lead to other victories.

This research does not allow the drawing of definite conclusions on the role of counter-gangs in counterinsurgency. Much touted by some experts for their success in

Kenya, the case of the Q squads in Malaya is hard to judge and their efficiency cannot be measured until the full archives of the conflict will be available for study. In Algeria very large scale counter-gangs were used in a number of cases by the French, to the point in which they resembled more ethnic militias allied with the government than special, stealthy anti-guerrilla units meant to look and operate like their opponents.

While efficient in their initial phase, they were plagued by betrayals and usually collapsed quickly or passed altogether to the side of the FLN. It bears though keeping in mind that the “Commandos de chasse” resembled many of the characteristics of counter-gangs that were used in other conflicts. The Romanian Securitate did employ in a few cases counter-gangs, but in only one of these and only with intelligence coming from other sources did one of these units score a victory against the partisans.

The analysis of military operations also highlights the particular role of specialization of the forces and the utility of specially trained formations for the defeat of armed insurgency. The British drew a lot of success from their ability to use imperial troops in Malaya, as in addition to the Malay troops and the previously mentioned

Sarawak Rangers London was able to extract resources from the Commonwealth

(especially Australia), but, more importantly in terms of jungle warfare, from Fiji and

Kenya. The French raised massive numbers of Algerian soldiers for their units, varying in roles from cooks and construction workers to especially efficient members of the

“Commandos de chasse”. They also had no particular need to create special

280 counterinsurgency units, as the colonial infantry regiments and the parachute regiments had already acquainted themselves with asymmetric warfare in Indochina. However, they did display an appetite for innovation in raising horse cavalry regiments for operations in particularly inhospitable terrain. There was no particular reason for

Romanian counterinsurgents to do the same, mostly because of the small size and the inability of their opponents to pose serious threats. Moreover, the Romanian case showed that even lightly armed law-enforcement officers with a modicum of training but good information can be efficient when the guerrillas were not particularly numerous or well armed.

How can these findings be paired with the insights coming from contemporary counterinsurgency campaigns, which to such a large degree were fought based on prescriptions derived from previous studies of classical COIN? It is still early for profound academic assessments of Western, especially American, COIN efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially with the latter conflict still ongoing. While leaks of official secret documents as well as declassified ones have made some primary sources available, and innumerable memoirs, journalist accounts and a wealth of digital and online data exist as well, the most sensitive and important archives are sealed and will remain so for decades to come. In the absence of these, most of the inferences are bound to carry a significant degree of speculation.851

851 Among the best existing accounts of the two conflicts in the framework of the post 9/11 period one feels the need to mention Peter W. Galbraith, The End of Iraq. How American Incompetence Created a War Without End, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006; Thomas R. Mockaitis, Iraq and the Challenge of Counterinsurgency, Westport: Praeger, 2008; Thomas E. Ricks, The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008, New York: Penguin Press 2009; Andrew T.H. Tan, U.S. Strategy against Global Terrorism. How It Evolved, Why It Failed, and Where It is Headed, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009; Seth G. Jones, In the Graveyard of Empires. America’s War in Afghanistan, New York: W.W. Norton, 2009; Farhana Schmidt, “From Islamic Warriors to Drug Lords: The Evolution of the Taliban Insurgency” in Mediterranean Quarterly, Vol. 21, No. 2 (2010), 61-77; Jason Bourke, The 9/11 Wars, London: Allen Lane, 2011; Frank Ledwidge, Losing Small Wars. British Military Failure in Iraq and Afghanistan, London: Yale University Press, 2011; Steven Carlton-Ford, and Morten G. Ender, (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of War and Society. Iraq and Afghanistan, London: 281 However, a few points can be made, in light of the research conducted in this thesis. The first concerns the very choice of describing the campaigns in Iraq and

Afghanistan as counterinsurgency conflicts somehow similar to those fought in the immediate post-war period. This seems entirely debatable, if not altogether false in anything except tactical terms. In Malaya, Algeria and Romania established governmental structures, if not regimes, faced insurgencies that erupted while the country was more or less peaceful. In both Iraq and Afghanistan an invading coalition which in both cases totally dealt away with previous structures of power was confronted not by new insurgents, at least initially, but by the remnants of the previous regimes which had never been completely defeated. In both cases it was less of an insurgency and more of a continuation of the invasion war.

Secondly, the resources put forward by the occupying powers, although impressive in aggregate terms, were no near as big as those that colonial powers could and did muster against their communist and nationalist opponents. Both in terms of troops per population and per inhabited territory to be covered the numbers put together by the United States and its allies were vastly inferior to what the French had in Algeria or, if we include the Chinese Home Guard, what the British had in Malaya. If this came initially from an exaggerated confidence in firepower and technology and later from internal political considerations, it mattered little as it resulted in the same thing: the inability of the occupying forces even to exert complete territorial control over Iraq and

Afghanistan. This was complemented by an aversion to put boots on the ground everywhere, at any time of day and night, especially in populated areas, no matter how

Routledge, 2011; Gian Gentile, Wrong Turn. America’s Deadly Embrace of Counterinsurgency, New York: The New Press, 2013. 282 isolated they were.852 Inefficient as these tactics are in terms of enemies captured and killed during patrols or by checkpoints, cordons and sweeps, they show that the government is serious about controlling the whole territory of the country. Even when this was attempted, it was too little, too late and it never covered the whole of Iraq and

Afghanistan.

Thirdly, it is laudable in moral terms that the Western coalitions did not attempt population control through deportations, although it is less clear that this was done because it is illegal and immoral or because of a misinterpretation of what the “hearts and minds” policy devised in previous COIN actually meant on the ground. It is also entirely possible that the coalitions never had the enormous material resources to even attempt such a strategy. In other areas, especially in the use of torture during interrogations, summary assassinations, death squads, the occupying powers fared, from a moral perspective, as badly as their colonial and communist predecessors who fought armed rebels.853

The above points serve to prove that the works of David Kilcullen, John Nagl,

John Mackinlay, Thomas Mockaitis, Montgomery McFate and others who helped, directly and indirectly, in the writing and implementation of contemporary Western

COIN doctrine suffer from historical and theoretical errors of interpretation. Misreading and perhaps even favourably rewriting the historical record, especially in regards to the brutality of previous COIN campaigns has been a characteristic of the new COIN school. This theoretical failure accounted to some extent for the once hailed as great

“surge operation” in Iraq under David Petraeus, which provided just a temporary fix to

852 Even David Kilcullen inadvertently points this out in the introduction to his Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla, Melbourne: Scribe, 2013. 853 See for this, among many, Seth G. Jones, Hunting in the Shadows. The Pursuit of Al Qa`ida since 9/11, New York: W.W. Norton, 2012; Jeremy Scahill, Dirty Wars: the World is a Battlefield, New York: Nation Books, 2013. 283 the complicated local situation and failed when repeated in Afghanistan.854 One final example in this regard could be the sympathetic treatment David Galula’s theories received in FM 3-24, despite a chequered record and ultimate irrelevance in the general economy of the Algerian campaign.855 Perhaps, as one author suggests, Western powers should admit that at the present stage they are not very good at waging COIN and that theoretical lessons should be given many second thoughts.856

In conclusion, the aim of this research was to produce a comparative discussion of COINs fought in Malaya, Algeria and Romania between 1944 and 1962 focusing on population control, intelligence and military operations. The focus was on these three because they are the three dimensions which account in a great measure for victory or defeat in military campaigns and are permanent elements in any asymmetric campaign, whereas the political conditions, structures of society, types of government, technology, types of rebel groups, geography, international conditions, the organization, culture and learning abilities of the governmental forces can and do vary enormously. While the latter factors can explain the outlook and outcome of particular campaigns, it is the other three dimensions that are constant aspects of every campaign.

Ultimately, this thesis is not an explanation of victory or defeat in COIN, which is the historical product of many overlapping factors and, like in any kind of conflict, depends upon far more than just the application of a set of correct “strategies”.

However, the thesis discusses how counterinsurgents fared in these three crucial elements of COIN during their campaigns. The study shows that, to a large degree, the contemporary understandings of the “textbook” campaigns in Malaya and Algeria is all

854 James A. Russell, “Counterinsurgency American style: Considering David Petraeus and twenty-first century irregular war” in Small Wars & Insurgencies, Vol. 25, No. 1 (2014), 69-90. 855 Douglas Porch, Counterinsurgency, 178-198. 856 Andrew T. H. Tan, “Counterinsurgency since 9/11 and its future” in Defence Studies, Vol. 14, No. 3 (2014), 245-265. 284 too often simplified, the result of select, biased sources or have simply not been comprehensive enough. The choice of Romania shows that small campaigns fought by a government entirely different from the British and French imperial powers encountered the same problems and featured the same approaches, thus demonstrating that there is indeed a coherent, unitary object of study in the academic pursuit of understanding

COINs. However, the Romanian case also shows that an authoritarian government, with little to worry from public opinion, ignoring internal and international law and being able to control the flux of information on the rebellion both inside and outside the country can be a more effective counterinsurgent than democratic, accountable governments.

The arguments of this thesis point to the fact that there is no unique solution to such a complex phenomenon as modern rebellions short of outright massacre and/or deportation of restive populations and that such option cannot be entertained by a democratic society. Moreover, this author argues that systematic, state-organized violence against civilian populations, irrespective of their status as rebels or not, was the hallmark of the three campaigns under study. Especially in terms of population control, the British, Romanian and French governments conducted thorough programs of deportations, indoctrination, brainwashing and intimidation towards vast sections of the populations deemed to be close to the rebels, which in the case of Algeria amounted to

40% of the entire population of the country. The positive measures to improve the lot of the locals, undertaken in a “hearts and minds” framework, pale when compared with the degree in which central governments destroyed a way of living for local populations and subjected them to long-time imprisonment and control.

Violence was also amply manifested in the military approaches to the insurgencies. In Clausewitz’s words, violence was truly limitless when political and

285 strategic necessity called for it to be so.857 In some cases, special regulations created a legal framework that allowed authorities a fairly free hand in ordering executions.

Torture during interrogations was widespread in some of the cases and extra-judicial executions were quite common. Military units destroyed the houses of civilians, killed their livestock and burned their crops.

If any lessons are to be learned from classical COINs, they are of a tactical nature. Unlike many authors dealing with military aspects of COIN, this thesis did not argue against large-scale manoeuvres, raids, constant patrols and sweeps through the territories with a rebel presence. At the very least, while time and resources consuming, these tactics help in “showing the flag” thus ensuring the presence of governmental authority in remote areas. When vigorously and systematically pursued, they deny the rebels easy movement and the ability to operate in strength. In certain cases when the rebels choose to pursue more conventional tactics or to possess a standard military organization, large scale manoeuvres can deal decisive blows to the guerrillas.

The thesis does indeed argue that the best results are obtained through “informed strikes”, when government units locate through good intelligence the guerrillas and are able to move swiftly against them. In this regard, while special units are useful and desirable, there are instances when regular law-enforcement troops can perform as well as the best-trained commandos.

In terms of intelligence, the findings point to the organization of a good information network in the rebel areas and in the rebel support organization as the best possible avenue. When combined with infiltration – which is most of the time risky and depends on luck – it can destroy local guerrillas. Technology played a fairly limited role

857 Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989, Book 1, Chapter 1, Section 23. 286 in these campaigns, but this says very little about present-day concerns. The record of counter-gangs is mixed: some were very successful, whereas others were destroyed or

“turned” by the guerrillas; many of them achieved nothing.

In all of these cases the armed forces, the intelligence structures and local authorities persevered in the fight and sometimes won on the ground, highlighting the fact that governments which stay the course (whether or not this means using a great deal of violence and systematic breaking of law) can count on their subordinate structures in campaigns against rebels which cannot wholly escalate to symmetric civil wars. Such governments would eventually win, if their will or electoral base does not falter.

To sum up, the thesis has argued that classical COIN campaigns have little to offer from a broader strategic perspective for present-day campaigns. However, there might be useful case-by-case strategic and tactical lessons, especially in regards to intelligence organization, collection and the link between intelligence and military operations. Moreover, classical population control was not a benign “hearts and minds” policy, but instead a set of approaches that usually caused great social disturbances and their application would nowadays create insurmountable legal and moral problems and therefore their relevance is exclusively historical.

How could this research be broadened in order to test and improve its conclusions is a legitimate question. The first avenue would be methodological, through a more thorough and critical examination of primary sources related with historical campaigns, especially in regards to Malaya and Algeria. The gradual opening of archives will perhaps one day extend to the documents of French and British intelligence services, much as it has been for those of the Romanian secret police. The

287 second would be a geographical and temporal expansion of research towards covering other continents, more non-colonial campaigns and the entire period of the Cold War.

All of these would be worthwhile directions and avenues of scholarship.

288 Bibliography

Official documents, memoirs and government publications

Aussaresses, Paul Services spéciaux Algérie (1955-1957), Paris: Perrin, 2001

Bodeanu, Denisa and Budeancă, Cosmin (eds.), Rezistența armată anticomunistă din România. Grupul “Teodor Șușman” (1948-1958), Cluj-Napoca: Argonaut, 2004

Bodeanu, Denisa and Budeancă, Cosmin (eds.), Rezistența anticomunistă din România. Grupul “Capotă-Dejeu” (1947-1957), Cluj-Napoca: Argonaut, 2006

Brișcă, Adrian and Ciuceanu, Radu (eds.) Rezistența armată din Bucovina, Bucharest: Institutul Național pentru Studiul Totalitarismului, 1998, Vol. I and II

Brișcă, Adrian and Buhoci, Puica (eds.) Rezistența armată din Munții Apuseni. Gruparea maiorului Nicolae Dabija, 1948-1949, Bucharest: Institutul Național pentru Studiul Totalitarismului, 2007

Brișcă, Adrian and Ciuceanu; Radu (eds.) Rezistența armată din Munții Făgăraș. Grupul Ion Gavrilă-Ogoranu 1949-1955, Bucharest: Institutul Național pentru Studiul Totalitarismului, 2007

Buzzell, Colby My War. Killing Time in Iraq, London: Corgi Books, 2006

Campbell, Arthur Jungle Green, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1953

Cătănuș, Dan and Roske, Octavian (eds.), Colectivizarea agriculturii în România. Represiunea, Vol. I 1949-1953, Bucharest: Institutul Național pentru Studiul Totalitarismului, 2004

Centre de Doctrine d’Emploi des Forces, “Les Sections Administratives Spécialisées en Algérie : Un outil pour la stabilisation”, Cahier de la recherche doctrinale, 2005

289 Centre de Doctrine d’Emploi des Forces, L’Emploi des forces terrestres dans les missions de stabilisation en Algérie, Cahier de la recherche doctrinale, 2006

Chipurici, Nicolae and Rățoi, Tudor (eds.), Rezistența anticomunistă din sud-vestul României. Opresiune și rezistență. Documente, Vol. I, Craiova: MJM, 2004

Ciuceanu, Radu; Roske, Octavian; Troncotă, Cristian (eds.), Începuturile mișcării de rezistență în România, Bucharest: Institutul Național pentru Studiul Totalitarismului, Vol. I-II, 1998-2001

Consiliul Național pentru Studierea Arhivelor Securității “Bande, bandiți și eroi”. Grupurile de rezistență și Securitatea (1948-1968), Bucharest: Ed. Enciclopedică, 2003

Consiliul Național pentru Studierea Arhivelor Securității Pseudomemoriile unui general de Securitate, Bucharest: Humanitas, 2007

Consiliul Securității Statului, Studii și documente, 1969

Consiliul Securității Statului, Buletin intern pentru aparatul Securității Statului, 1968

Consiliul Securității Statului, Securitatea, 1969-1989

Cojoc, Marian (ed.), Rezistența armată din Dobrogea 1945-1960, Bucharest: Institutul Național pentru Studiul Totalitarismului, 2004

Daumantas, Juozas Fighters for Freedom: Lithuanian Partisans versus the USSR, 1944- 1947, Toronto: Lithuanian Canadian Committee for Human Rights, 1975

Department of Information, Federation of Malaya, Handbook to Malaya and the Emergency, Singapore, May 1955

Director of Operations, Malaya, The Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya, 3rd edition, 1958

Duică, Camelia Ivan (ed.), Rezistența anticomunistă din Maramureș. Gruparea Popșa 1948-1949, Bucharest: Institutul Național pentru Studiul Totalitarismului, 2005

Éveno, Patrick and Planchais, Jean (eds.), La guerre d’Algérie, Paris : Le Monde, 1989

Ferdi, Said « Algérie : les débuts de la guerre d’Algérie » in Chaliand, Gérard Les guerres irrégulières, XXe-XXIe siècle. Guérillas et terrorismes, Paris : Gallimard, 2008

290 Final Report of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania, Iași: Polirom, 2005

Follows, Roy with Popham, Hugh The Jungle Beat. Fighting Terrorists in Malaya 1952-1961, London: Cassell, 1990

Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955-1957, Vol XVIII Africa, Washington, 1989

Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, Vol. XXI Africa, Washington, 1995

De Gaulle, Charles Mémoires d’espoir, Vol. I Le Renouveau 1958-1962, Paris: Plon, 1970

Harbi, Mohammed and Meynier, Gilbert (eds.), Le FLN. Documents et histoire 1954- 1962, Paris : Fayard, 2004

Ioanid, Radu; FSB (eds.), Lotul Antonescu în ancheta SMERȘ, Moscova, 1944-1946, Iași: Polirom, 2006

Jauffret, Jean Charles (ed.), La guerre d’Algérie par les documents Tome I L’avertissement 1943-1946, Vincennes : Service Historique de l’Armée de Terre, 1990 ; Tome II Les portes de la guerre : des occasions manquées a l’insurrection 10 mars 1946-31 décembre 1954, 1998

Jurnale din rezistența anticomunistă. Vasile Motrescu, Mircea Dobre 1952-1953, Bucharest: Nemira, 2006

Lawrence, T.E. Revolt in the Desert, London: Jonathan Cape, 1927

Maidin, Rashid The Memoirs of Rashid Maidin. From Armed Struggle to Peace, Petaling Jaya: SIRD, 2009

Marineasa, Viorel; Sămânță, Valentin; Vighi, Daniel Deportarea în Bărărgan. Destine, documente, reportaje, Timișoara: Mirton, 1996

Melnik, Constantin Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Algeria, RAND D10671-1- TSA, 1964

Merle, Robert Ben Bella, London: Michael Joseph, 1967

291 National Security Council, “National Strategy for Combating Terrorism”, February 2003

National Security Council, “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq”, November 2005

Peng, Chin My Side of History, Singapore: Media Masters, 2003

Pik, Fong Chong The Memoirs of a Malayan Communist Revolutionary, Petaling Jaya: SIRD, 2008

Presidential Commission for the Analysis of Communist Dictatorship in Romania, Final Report, Bucharest, 2006

Rocard, Michel Rapport sur les camps de regroupement et autres textes sur la guerre d’Algérie, Paris: Mille et une nuits, 2003

Serviciul Român de Informații, Cartea albă a Securității, Vol. I 23 August 1944 – 30 August 1948, Bucharest, 1997

Stewart, Brian Smashing Terrorism in the Malayan Emergency. The Vital Contribution of the Police, Selangor: Pelanduk Publications, 2004

Stockwell, A.J. (ed.), Malaya, London: HMSO, 1995

Sunderland, Riley Antiguerrilla Intelligence in Malaya, 1948-1960, RAND RM-4172- ISA, 1964

Sunderland, Riley Army Operations in Malaya, 1947-1960, RAND RM-4170-ISA, 1964

Thompson, Robert Make for the Hills. Memories of Far Eastern Wars, London: Leo Cooper, 1989

Verca, Filon Parașutați în România vândută, Timișoara: Marineasa, 2000

« Le récit de Si Azzedine » in Gérard Chaliand, Les guerres irrégulières, XXe-XXIe siècle. Guérillas et terrorismes, Paris : Gallimard, 2008

292 Books and articles

Ageron, Charles-Robert Histoire de l’Algérie contemporaine, Vol. II De l’insurrection de 1871 au déclenchement d la guerre de libération, Paris : PUF, 1979

Aggoun, Nacéra “Psychological Propaganda during the Algerian War. Based on a Study of French Army Pamphlets” in Martin S. Alexander, Martin Evans, J.F.U. Keiger (eds.), The Algerian War and the French Army, 1954-62. Experiences, Images, Testimonies, Houndmills: Palgrave, 2002

Alastos, Doros Cyprus Guerrilla. Grivas, Makarios and the British, London: Heinemann, 1960

Alcorn, Ray The Malayan Emergency, 1948 to 1960, 1990

Aldrich, Richard J. The Hidden Hand. Britain, America, and Cold War Secret Intelligence, Woodstock: The Overlok Press, 2002

Allen, W.E.D.; Muratoff, Paul Caucasian Battlefields. A History of the Wars on the Turco-Caucasian Border, 1828-1921, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953

Alwyn-Foster, Nigel “Changing the Army for Counterinsurgency Operations” in Military Review, November-December 2005, 2-15

Ambler, John Steward The French Army in Politics 1945-1962, Ohio State University Press, 1966

Andaya, Barbara Watson; Andaya, Leonard Y. A History of Malaysia, Honolulu: University of Hawai`i Press, 2001

Andrade, Dale; Willbanks, James H. “CORDS/Phoenix. Counterinsurgency Lessons from Vietnam for the Future” in Military Review, Vol. 86, No. 2, (2006)

Axworthy, Mark; Scafeș, Cornel; Crăciunoiu, Cristian Third Axis, Fourth Ally. Romanian Armed Forces in the European War, 1941-1945, London: Arms and Armour, 1995

Bailey, Bill “Hearts and Minds, Pseudo Gangs and Counter Insurgency: Based upon Experiences from Previous Campaigns in Kenya (1952-60), Malaya (1948-60) &

293 Rhodesia (1964-1979)” in the Proceedings of the 1st Australian Counter Terrorism Conference, Edith Cowan University, Perth Western Australia, 30th November 2010

Banu, Florian “Metode utilizate de Securitate pentru lichidarea grupurilor de rezistență din munți (1948-1958)” in Gheorghe Onișoru (ed.), Mișcarea armată de rezistență anticomunistă din România, 1944-1962, București: Kullusys, 2003

Banu, Florian “Mişcarea de rezistenţă armată anticomunistă din România - între negare şi hiperbolizare” in Cosmin Budeancă, Florentin Olteanu, Iulia Pop (eds.), Rezistenţa anticomunistă – cercetare tiinţifică i valorificare muzeală, Vol. I, Cluj-Napoca, Argonaut, 2006

Banu, Florian “ Securităţii - structuri de poliţie politică din România în perioada 23 august 1944-30 august 1948” in Aurel Pentelescu, Gavril Preda (eds.), Clipe de viaţă. Comandorul dr. Ilie Manole la 60 de ani, Ploieşti, Karta-Graphic, 2007

Banu, Florian “Câteva considerații privind istoriografia Securității” in Caietele CNSAS, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2008)

Banu, Florian “Securitatea şi arestarea „duşmanilor poporului” (1948-1958)” in Stela Cheptea, Gh. Buzatu (eds.), Convergenţe istorice i geopolitice. Omagiu Profesorului Horia Dumitrescu, Iaşi, Casa Editorială Demiurg, 2009

Banu, Luminiţa “Utilizarea reţelei informative în reprimarea rezistenţei armate anticomuniste” in Gheorghe Onișoru (ed.), Mi carea armată de rezistenţă anticomunistă din România. 1944-1962, Bucureşti: Kullusys, 2003

Barber, Noel The War of the Running Dogs. How Malaya Defeated the Communist Guerrillas 1948-60, Glasgow: Fontana, 1972

Bartov, Omer The Eastern Front 1941-1945. German Troops and the Barbarization of Warfare, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985

Beckett, Ian F.W.; Pimlott, John (eds.), Armed Forces and Modern Counter-Insurgency, London: Croom Helm, 1985

Beckett, Ian F.W. “Robert Thompson and the British Advisory Mission to South Vietnam, 1961-1965” in Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol.8, No.3 (1997), 41-63

294 Beckett, Ian F.W. Modern Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies. Guerrillas and their Opponents since 1750, London: Routledge, 2001

Bendara, Mohammed “La guerre psychologique dans la guerre d’Algérie” in The Journal of Sophia Asian Studies, No. 29 (2011)

Bennett, Huw “The Other Side of the COIN: Minimum and Exemplary Force in British Army Counterinsurgency in Kenya” in Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol. 18, No. 4, (2007), 638–664

Bennett, Huw “Minimum Force in British Counterinsurgency” in Small Wars & Insurgencies, Vol. 21, No. 3, (2010), 459–475

Bensahel, Nora “Preventing Insurgencies after Major Combat Operations” in Defence Studies, Vol. 6, No. 3 (2006), 278–291

Berstein, Serge La France de l’expansion, Vol. I La République gaullienne 1958-1969, Paris : Seuil, 1989

Betz, David J. “Insurgency and Counterinsurgency” in Denemark, Robert A. The International Studies Encyclopedia, Vol. VI, Singapore: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010

Biddiscombe, Perry “Prodding the Russian Bear: Pro-German Resistance in Romania, 1944–5” in European History Quarterly, Vol. 23, (1993), 193–232

Black, Jeremy War since 1945, London: Reaktion Books, 2004

Blaufarb, Douglas S. The Counterinsurgency Era: U.S. Doctrine and Practice. 1950s to the Present, New York: The Free Press, 1977

Blaxland, Gregory The Regiments Depart. A History of the British Army, 1945-1970, London: William Kimber, 1971

Braithwaite, Rodric Afgantsy: the Russians in Afghanistan, 1979-89, New York: Oxford University Press, 2011

Branch, Daniel Defeating Mau Mau, Creating Kenya. Counterinsurgency, Civil War and Decolonization, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2009

295 Branch, Daniel; Wood, Elisabeth Jean “Revisiting Counterinsurgency” in Politics & Society, Vol. 38, No. 1 (2010), 3-14

Branch, Daniel “Footprints in the Sand: British Colonial Counterinsurgency and the War in Iraq” in Politics & Society, Vol. 38, No. 1 (2010), 15-34

Branche, Raphaëlle “Des viols pendant la guerre d’Algérie” in Vingtième Siècle. Revue d'histoire, No. 75, (2002), 123-132

Branche, Raphaëlle “La torture pendant la guerre d’Algérie” in Harbi, Mohammed; Stora, Benjamin (eds.), La guerre d’Algérie, Paris: Pluriel, 2010

Boot, Max “The New American Way of War” in Foreign Affairs, Vol. 82, No. 4 (2003), 41-58

Bouton, Terry “A Road Closed: Rural Insurgency in post-Independence Pennsylvania” in The Journal of American History, Vol. 87, No. 3 (2000), 855-887

Bowden, T. “Bloody Sunday – A Reappraisal” in European History Quarterly, Vol. 2, (1972), 25-42

Broxup, Marie “The Basmachi” in Central Asian Survey, Vol. 2, No. 1 (1983), 57-81

Von Bülow, Mathilde “Myth or Reality? The Red Hand and French Covert Action in Federal Germany during the Algerian War, 1956-61” in Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 22, No. 6 (2007), 787-820

Von Bülow, Mathilde “Franco-German Intelligence Cooperation and the Internationalization of Algeria’s War of Independence” in Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 28, No. 3 (2013), 397-419

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Cann, John P. Counterinsurgency in Africa. The Portuguese Way of War, 1961-1974St. Petersburg, FL.: Hailer, 2005

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Cerutti, Pierre André ; Damaisin D’Arès, Jean-Christophe Les têtes chercheuses du général Challe. Les commandos de chasse, spécialistes de la contre-insurrection, Sceaux: L’esprit du livre, 2011

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Chin, Warren “British Counter-Insurgency in Afghanistan” in Defense & Security Analysis Vol. 23, No. 2 (2007), 201–225

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Clayton, Anthony The Wars of French Decolonization, London: Longman, 1994

Clayton, Anthony Frontiersmen: Warfare in Africa since 1950, London: UCL Press, 1999

Cline, Lawrence E. “Egyptian and Algerian Insurgencies: A Comparison”, in Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol.9, No.2 (1998), 114-133

297 Cloake, John Templer Tiger of Malaya. The Life of Field Marshal Sir Gerald Templer, London: Harrap, 1985

Clutterbuck, Richard The Long Long War. Counterinsurgency in Malaya and Vietnam, New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1966

Clutterbuck, Richard Guerrillas and Terrorists, London: Faber and Faber, 1977

Clutterbuck, Richard Conflict and Violence in Singapore and Malaysia, 1945-1983, Boulder: Westview Press, 1985

Coates, John Supressing Insurgency. An Analysis of the Malayan Emergency, 1948- 1954, Boulder: Westview Press, 1992

Cohen, William B. “The Harkis: History and Memory” in Lorcin, Patricia M.E. (ed.), Algeria&France 1800-2000. Identity. Memory. Nostalgia, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2006

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Comber, Leon Malaya’s Secret Police 1945-60. The Role of the Special Branch in the Malayan Emergency, Singapore: ISEAS Publishing, 2008

Cornaton, Michel Les camps de regroupement de la guerre d’Algérie, Paris: L’Harmattan, 1998 (1967)

Corum, James S. “Rethinking US Army Counter-insurgency Doctrine” in Contemporary Security Policy, Vol.28, No.1 (2007), pp.127–142

Corum, James S. Bad Strategies. How Major Powers Fail in Counterinsurgency, Minneapolis: Zenith Press, 2008

Crane, Conrad C. “Phase IV Operations: Where Wars are Really Won” in Military Review, Vol. 85, No. 3 (2005)

Crenshaw Hutchinson, Martha Revolutionary Terrorism. The FLN in Algeria, 1954- 1962, Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1978

Cretzianu, Alexandre (ed.), Captive Rumania, New York: Praeger, 1956

298 Cross, James Eliot Conflict in the Shadows. The Nature and Politics of Guerrilla War, London: Constable & Company, 1964

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Dobrincu, Dorin; Iordachi, Constantin Transforming Peasants, Property and Power: the Collectivization of Agriculture in Romania, 1949-1962, Budapest: Central European University Press, 2009 (Romanian edition 2005)

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