Saturday, April 05, 2003
"HEARTS AND MINDS"
We've heard a great deal about the need to win over the hearts and minds of the Iraqis. When was that expression first used?
In the context of a guerrilla war, it seems that the general term "winning over the hearts and minds" was coined by a British general, during the guerrilla upheaval in British colonial Malaya in the late 1940s and the 1950s.
What developed there was a particularly brutal, jungle conflict fought between a quarter of a million British and Commonwealth troops and the Malay Special Constables against, amazingly, only some five thousand mostly ethnic Chinese communist insurgents. (Brian Lapping, "End of Empire," 1985, 169.) But aided by the dense tropical jungles and intimate knowledge of the ground and the people, those five thousand communists often seemed like many more than that.
The struggle had gone increasingly sour for the British by the early 1950s. In one notorious incident, frustrated Scots Guards killed twenty-four ethnic Chinese villagers at Batang Kali in Selangor in December 1948. (Lapping, 168.) After Churchill's Conservatives defeated Labour in October 1951, the lame duck Colonial Secretary James Griffiths said that, "It [Malaya] has become a military problem to which we have not been able to find the answer." (Lapping, 169.) However, the incoming Churchill government appointed as Britain's top official in Malaya not a civil servant, but General Sir Gerald Templer, a former Director of Military Government in Western Germany. He turned out to be a fortune choice:
Templer was a tense, nervous man with a crisp manner and a high-pitched voice, who seemed to have buzzing engines within, driving him into constant physical, mental and social activity. He barked orders and jabbed people in the stomach with his cane. He insisted on seeing everything for himself, travelling to parts of Malaya no Governor had ever visited before. Stories about him abound. When he arrived at Government House and the entire staff stood in line to meet him, he inspected them, briskly saying a few words to some, and then announced that he was going to inspect the staff quarters. An official quietly told him that Governors did not normally inspect the staff quarters, especially without warning. "Well, this one does," said Templer. He found that many of the staff lived in shacks in a kind of shanty town behind Government House. He ordered that the lot be bulldozed within a fortnight and replaced with modern sanitary dwellings. A second story concerns his attempts to make the administration more vigorous. He ordered no golf on weekdays. His reputation caused his order to be obeyed without question near his headquarters. But a District Officer in a remote up-country post could not believe that it was meant to apply to him. He played, word got back, and within days he found himself on an airliner back to Britain. (Lapping, 169.)
Templer was given virtually dictatorial powers by Churchill's government, and as the functions of government were re-organized, so too was the military campaign. Templer famously remarked that, "The answer [to the uprising] lies not in pouring more troops into the jungle, but in the hearts and minds of the people." (Lapping, 174.) He demanded that newly built villages, where ethnic Chinese were resettled away from the jungles and beyond the reach (and influence) of the guerrillas, look inviting.
He sought to make sure that they had facilities such as running water, medical centres and schools (largely financed by lotteries which, with Government encouragement, the Chinese ran themselves). He made sure that Chinese could acquire title to the land they occupied, thus giving them a permanent stake in the villages. Above all, he involved the Chinese ex-squatters in the government of the villages, so that, by the time he left in 1954, two hundred village councils, most of them popularly elected, were imposing limited local taxes and spending the revenue on road-making and other works. (Lapping, 174.)
Once enough Chinese in any village decided to come over to the Government's side against the guerrillas, restrictions on them were lifted, they were brought into the Home Guard and were then armed. The British became certain that the way to convince the Chinese that the Communists' propaganda was false was above all to show them that the British would indeed do what the guerrillas said they would never do - "place both the powers of local government and guns in villagers' hands." (Lapping, 176.)
When it came to getting independence, the Malays had never been as keen as their neighbors in Indonesia or in Vietnam. However, when the Malayan Chinese Communists took to fighting, supposedly for Malayan independence, the quarter of million Malays in the police and army enthusiastically sided with the British in the fight against them. They joined the British in particular because the Malays feared the ethnic Chinese and also because as Muslims the Malays "opposed the godlessness of Communism." (Lapping, 176.)
Interesting. . .
¶ by Robert, Saturday, April 05, 2003
We've heard a great deal about the need to win over the hearts and minds of the Iraqis. When was that expression first used?
In the context of a guerrilla war, it seems that the general term "winning over the hearts and minds" was coined by a British general, during the guerrilla upheaval in British colonial Malaya in the late 1940s and the 1950s.
What developed there was a particularly brutal, jungle conflict fought between a quarter of a million British and Commonwealth troops and the Malay Special Constables against, amazingly, only some five thousand mostly ethnic Chinese communist insurgents. (Brian Lapping, "End of Empire," 1985, 169.) But aided by the dense tropical jungles and intimate knowledge of the ground and the people, those five thousand communists often seemed like many more than that.
The struggle had gone increasingly sour for the British by the early 1950s. In one notorious incident, frustrated Scots Guards killed twenty-four ethnic Chinese villagers at Batang Kali in Selangor in December 1948. (Lapping, 168.) After Churchill's Conservatives defeated Labour in October 1951, the lame duck Colonial Secretary James Griffiths said that, "It [Malaya] has become a military problem to which we have not been able to find the answer." (Lapping, 169.) However, the incoming Churchill government appointed as Britain's top official in Malaya not a civil servant, but General Sir Gerald Templer, a former Director of Military Government in Western Germany. He turned out to be a fortune choice:
Templer was a tense, nervous man with a crisp manner and a high-pitched voice, who seemed to have buzzing engines within, driving him into constant physical, mental and social activity. He barked orders and jabbed people in the stomach with his cane. He insisted on seeing everything for himself, travelling to parts of Malaya no Governor had ever visited before. Stories about him abound. When he arrived at Government House and the entire staff stood in line to meet him, he inspected them, briskly saying a few words to some, and then announced that he was going to inspect the staff quarters. An official quietly told him that Governors did not normally inspect the staff quarters, especially without warning. "Well, this one does," said Templer. He found that many of the staff lived in shacks in a kind of shanty town behind Government House. He ordered that the lot be bulldozed within a fortnight and replaced with modern sanitary dwellings. A second story concerns his attempts to make the administration more vigorous. He ordered no golf on weekdays. His reputation caused his order to be obeyed without question near his headquarters. But a District Officer in a remote up-country post could not believe that it was meant to apply to him. He played, word got back, and within days he found himself on an airliner back to Britain. (Lapping, 169.)
Templer was given virtually dictatorial powers by Churchill's government, and as the functions of government were re-organized, so too was the military campaign. Templer famously remarked that, "The answer [to the uprising] lies not in pouring more troops into the jungle, but in the hearts and minds of the people." (Lapping, 174.) He demanded that newly built villages, where ethnic Chinese were resettled away from the jungles and beyond the reach (and influence) of the guerrillas, look inviting.
He sought to make sure that they had facilities such as running water, medical centres and schools (largely financed by lotteries which, with Government encouragement, the Chinese ran themselves). He made sure that Chinese could acquire title to the land they occupied, thus giving them a permanent stake in the villages. Above all, he involved the Chinese ex-squatters in the government of the villages, so that, by the time he left in 1954, two hundred village councils, most of them popularly elected, were imposing limited local taxes and spending the revenue on road-making and other works. (Lapping, 174.)
Once enough Chinese in any village decided to come over to the Government's side against the guerrillas, restrictions on them were lifted, they were brought into the Home Guard and were then armed. The British became certain that the way to convince the Chinese that the Communists' propaganda was false was above all to show them that the British would indeed do what the guerrillas said they would never do - "place both the powers of local government and guns in villagers' hands." (Lapping, 176.)
When it came to getting independence, the Malays had never been as keen as their neighbors in Indonesia or in Vietnam. However, when the Malayan Chinese Communists took to fighting, supposedly for Malayan independence, the quarter of million Malays in the police and army enthusiastically sided with the British in the fight against them. They joined the British in particular because the Malays feared the ethnic Chinese and also because as Muslims the Malays "opposed the godlessness of Communism." (Lapping, 176.)
Interesting. . .
¶ by Robert, Saturday, April 05, 2003
