TRAINING INDIGENOUS FORCES IN

COUNTERINSURGENCY:

A TALE OF TWO INSURGENCIES

James S. Corum

March 2006

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ii
 FOREWORD

This monograph examines the British experience in building and

training indigenous police and military forces during the Malaya
and Cyprus insurgencies. The two insurgencies provide a dramatic
contrast to the issue of training local security forces. In Malaya, the
British developed a very successful strategy for training the Malayan
police and army. In Cyprus, the British strategy for building and
training local security forces generally was ineffective. The author
argues that some important lessons can be drawn from these
case studies that apply directly to current U.S. counterinsurgency
doctrine.
The research for this monograph was carried out while the
author was a visiting fellow of All Souls College, Oxford University.
The author used the superb library and archive of the Rhodes
House Centre for Imperial and Commonwealth History at Oxford
University. The Strategic Studies Institute is pleased to offer this
contribution to the current debate on counterinsurgency doctrine.

DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.

Director
Strategic Studies Institute

iii
 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR

JAMES CORUM is a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army

Reserve and served in Iraq in 2004. He was a visiting fellow at All Souls
College, Oxford University in 2005 and is currently a professor at the
U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Ft. Leavenworth,
Kansas. Dr. Corum is the author of four military history books: The
Roots of Blitzkrieg, 1992; The Luftwaffe: Creating the Operational Air War,
1997; The Luftwaffe’s Way of War, with Richard Muller, 1998; Airpower in
Small Wars, with Wray Johnson, 2003. His most recent book, Quelling
the Beast: A Counterinsurgency Strategy for America, is being published
by Zenith Press in 2006. He has authored dozens of book chapters
and journal articles on military history and counterinsurgency. Dr.
Corum holds an M.A. from Brown University, M. Litt. from Oxford
University, and a Ph.D. from Queen’s University, Canada.

iv
 SUMMARY

Counterinsurgency is manpower intensive, and nearly all major

counterinsurgency campaigns of the last century have relied heavily
on indigenous police and military forces. Indeed, there have been
few counterinsurgency situations in which the indigenous security
forces were not the primary forces employed on the government side
in the conflict, at least in terms of numbers.
Although the importance of training indigenous police and
military forces is understood in counterinsurgency doctrine and
theory, relatively little research has been conducted concerning how
this mission should be carried out. Hopefully, this monograph will
help fill some of the information gap on this vital subject. There
are several major questions that need to be addressed: How can
the supporting or governing power best organize the local police
and military forces for counterinsurgency? What level of training
do security forces need to conduct effective counterinsurgency
operations? What is the role of the police in counterinsurgency? What
is the role of home guards or irregular security organizations? What
kinds of training programs produce effective police and military
leaders?
These are very relevant questions today as the U.S. military revises
its counterinsurgency doctrine. Currently, U.S. forces are engaged
in campaigns against insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, and are
providing advice and support to the Philippine and Colombian
governments in their battles against insurgents. In all of these
countries, the U.S. military is engaged in training and supporting the
local police and military forces for counterinsurgency operations. As
the Global War on Terror continues, the U.S. military will certainly
see many more missions to train and support indigenous security
forces.
Training indigenous security forces is also one of the most complex
tasks in developing an effective counterinsurgency strategy. Building
new forces from scratch is difficult enough. It is often even more
difficult to take indigenous police and military forces with a tradition
of incompetence and corruption and transform them into effective
forces that can find and defeat insurgents without undermining the
legitimacy of the government in the eyes of the population.

v
 This monograph is built around two case studies concerning the
British experience in training indigenous security forces in the Malaya
and Cyprus insurgencies. Although these events occurred 50 years
ago, most of the problems faced in both insurgencies would sound
very familiar to any American soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan. In both
Cyprus and Malaya, the hostility of major ethnic groups was at the
heart of the insurgent movement. In both cases, the degree of success
in counterinsurgency largely was determined by the effectiveness
of the government in winning support among the disaffected part
of the populace. The training, competence, and leadership of the
indigenous security forces in these cases played a central role in the
government’s ability to win civilian support.
The two insurgencies were protracted conflicts. At the beginning
of each conflict, the government’s police and security forces were
undermanned, poorly trained, and poorly prepared to conduct
counterinsurgency. Strategic success in both cases depended on the
government’s ability to recruit, retrain, and reorganize the indigenous
security forces. In Malaya, the British eventually succeeded in building
a highly effective Malayan police and army. As the Malayans became
more capable of handling their own security, the British were able to
withdraw forces and leave behind a stable and democratic nation
that was able to finish off the insurgent movement. In Cyprus, the
British dramatically increased the Cypriot police force and organized
new local security units. However, they failed to adequately train the
police or provide effective leadership. Indeed, the poor discipline
and training standards of the Cypriot Police were major factors in
the British failure to defeat the small insurgent movement.
The two case studies focus primarily upon the role of indigenous
police in counterinsurgency. Soldiers must not forget that, in
counterinsurgency, the line between law enforcement and military
operations often is blurred. In fact, in most counterinsurgency
campaigns, the primary role of the military has been to provide
support and manpower for essentially police operations: search and
cordon operations, roadblocks, and area control operations; and area
search and sweep missions. In many, if not most, counterinsurgency
campaigns, the police have been the major element of force employed
by the government. This was the case in both Malaya and Cyprus

vi
where the police usually operated jointly with the military forces.
Neither the Malaya nor Cyprus insurgencies were characterized by
large-scale combat. In both cases, normal operations more closely
resembled policing on a large scale than conventional warfare.
This is yet another similarity with current operations in Iraq and
Afghanistan and, indeed, with most counterinsurgency operations
of the last century.
This monograph first outlines the role of the Malayan Police in
the context of the insurgency from 1948-60 and the evolution of
the recruitment and training policies of the police. The process of
creating and training the Malayan army and home guards also is
considered. The programs to train the leadership of the Malayan
forces are examined in some detail, and the British policies are
assessed in terms of their effectiveness. The second part of the
monograph provides a brief context for the Cyprus insurgency from
1955 to 1959 and examines the organization, training, and leadership
of the Cyprus Police in counterinsurgency operations. The problems
of police training and discipline are outlined, and the reasons for
poor police performance in the insurgency are assessed.
Some important lessons to be learned from examining the
histories of these two counterinsurgency operations are presented
in the concluding section. First of all, these case studies offer a
comparison of the effectiveness of widely varying strategies as they
relate to indigenous forces. Several lessons relevant to current U.S.
doctrine are outlined. Briefly summarized, the lessons deal with
recruiting security forces from disaffected ethnic elements, the
training of indigenous security force leadership, the role of home
guards in counterinsurgency, the role of civilian police trainers, and
the establishment of ongoing police and military force training.

vii
 TRAINING INDIGENOUS FORCES IN

COUNTERINSURGENCY:

A TALE OF TWO INSURGENCIES

INTRODUCTION

Success in counterinsurgency depends on a number of major

elements, to include establishing the legitimacy of the government
in the eyes of the people, defeating the insurgent forces, providing a
basic level of security for the population, and creating the conditions
for economic growth. Underpinning these tasks is the establishment
of an effective security force.
Counterinsurgency is very manpower intensive, and nearly
all major counterinsurgency campaigns of the last century have
relied heavily on indigenous police and military forces. Indeed,
there have been few counterinsurgency situations in which the
indigenous security forces were not the primary forces employed
on the government side in the conflict—at least in terms of numbers.
Even if foreign forces had to carry the main burden for a time, the
preference of the defending government has been to employ foreign
security forces only as long as absolutely necessary, with the ideal
being the creation of local forces capable of defeating insurgents
with minimal support from foreign forces. Simply put, enabling an
indigenous government to fight its own war is a key element of a
sound counterinsurgency strategy.
Although the importance of training indigenous police and
military forces is understood in counterinsurgency doctrine and
theory, there has been relatively little research concerning how this
mission should be carried out. What lessons can one learn from other
insurgencies? How can the supporting or governing power best
organize the local police and military forces for counterinsurgency?
What level of training do security forces need to conduct effective
counterinsurgency operations? What is the role of the police in
counterinsurgency? What is the role of home guards or irregular
security organizations? What kinds of training programs produce
effective police and military leaders?

 These are very important questions today as the U.S. military

revises its doctrine on counterinsurgency. Insurgency has long
been the preferred means of a militarily weak faction to gain
power. Although most insurgencies have failed for many reasons,
throughout history there have been enough successful insurgencies
to establish this form of warfare as the best option for a nonstate
enemy in undermining the interests of the United States and its allies.
Currently, U.S. forces are engaged in campaigns against insurgents
in Iraq and Afghanistan, and are providing advice and support to
the Philippine and Colombian governments in their battles against
insurgents. Although the U.S. military would prefer not to engage in
counterinsurgency operations, insurgencies are not going away for
the foreseeable future as U.S. allies around the world are undermined
by radical Islamic insurgents or other groups hostile to U.S. interests.
Accordingly, we can expect to be called on to provide advice, training,
and support. The U.S. military will therefore need to develop a more
comprehensive doctrine for such missions.
Soldiers must not forget that, in counterinsurgency, the line is
blurred between law enforcement and military operations. In fact, in
most counterinsurgency campaigns the primary role of the military
has been to provide support and manpower for essentially police
operations: search and cordon operations, roadblocks and area
control operations, and area search and sweep missions. In many,
if not most, counterinsurgency campaigns, the police have been
the major element of force employed by the government. In both
counterinsurgency campaigns examined, the primary indigenous
forces employed were the police, who operated independently in
some cases and, at other times, jointly with the military forces.1 In
counterinsurgency, the police missions range from routine anticrime
operations to fielding full combat forces. In Malaya, for example, the
police forces ran the gamut from elite light infantry units, to security
guards, to cops on the beat. In Cyprus, while the majority of the
forces available were British military, the Cyprus Police still played
a central role in all operations. In counterinsurgency, organizing and
training the indigenous police forces often attains a higher priority
than training the indigenous military.
However, although the roles of the police and military in
counterinsurgency are blurred, there are still important distinctions

between the two forces. Because insurgent membership or activities

in Malaya and Cyprus were considered criminal offenses, the police
retained the primary responsibility for the arrest, detention, and
prosecution of insurgents. In both cases, the police remained the
force on the ground with daily contact with the civilian community,
which was also the group from which the insurgents gained their
recruits and support. The role of the military in both insurgencies
was to conduct larger, manpower-intensive operations and long-
term operations, such as patrols in the deep jungle. Much of the time,
the task of the military was to provide manpower for support of
police-led operations. Although some military units served for long
periods in one district and maintained close relations with the civilian
population, for the most part military units were shifted around the
country to the sectors of most intense action. As the insurgents in
both cases rarely fielded any large units, there was rarely any need
for the military to think in terms of battalion or brigade tactical
operations. The military experience of the two case studies was
dominated by small operations that more closely resembled policing
on a large scale than conventional military operations. This is a
characteristic common to most counterinsurgency operations over
the last century.
I have chosen two counterinsurgency campaigns for close
examination. I chose Malaya 1948-60 because it is a good example
of a successful counterinsurgency strategy and doctrine. The other
case study, the insurgency in Cyprus 1955-59, is an example of
failure in counterinsurgency. While the Greek Cypriots did not get
everything they wanted—namely union with Greece—they did
win their independence from the British after a hard and bloody
campaign. The indigenous police and military forces played a major
role in both counterinsurgency campaigns and, although Britain was
the foreign power fighting both insurgencies, Britain’s approach to
organizing, training, and employing the indigenous security forces
in the two campaigns was very different. In short, these two case
studies offer an interesting comparison in the effectiveness of widely
varying strategies as they relate to indigenous forces. By examining
the organization, content, and effectiveness of indigenous security
force training in Malaya and Cyprus, I hope to derive some lessons

pertaining to training local security forces that will be of value in

revising U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine and strategy.

CASE STUDY MALAYA

Overview of the Malayan Campaign.

The insurgency in Malaya, called the “Emergency,” lasted from

1948-60, and was one of the largest and bloodiest conflicts waged by
British Commonwealth forces after World War II. The insurgency
was born of the post-World War II disorder coupled with the rise of
modern nationalism. The conflict also had a major ethnic dimension
as the insurgent strength was centered primarily in the Chinese
ethnic minority. Indeed, calling the Chinese a minority is almost a
misnomer as they constituted 42 percent of the population of the
six Malayan Federated States and Singapore, with the ethnic Malays
about 40 percent and the rest of the population made up of Indians
and aboriginal peoples.2 Although the largest ethnic group, the
Chinese were mostly excluded from any proportional political power
or influence under the Malayan Federation system that ensured
that all the Federated States were controlled by ethnic Malays. The
Chinese also generally were excluded from positions in the Malayan
civil service. These policies, coupled with Communist efficiency in
organization and propaganda, set the stage for general unrest among
Malaya’s largest ethnic group.
During World War II, the Malayan Communist Party, which
was dominated by ethnic Chinese, took the opportunity to expand
and organize its cadres. The Japanese occupation authorities singled
out the Chinese community for exceptionally harsh treatment and
thousands of Chinese fled to the jungle regions. There they became
willing recruits for the Malayan Communist Party cadres, who had
also sought refuge in the jungle. The Malayan Communist Party
organized thousands of guerilla fighters who received arms and
training from the British army. After the war, the communists—
now well-armed and organized—saw the opportunity to drive the
British out of Malaya through a peoples’ war reminiscent of Mao’s
concepts. The colonial government forces and infrastructure, as
well as the valuable British business interests such as tin mines and

rubber plantations, were targeted in a terrorist and guerrilla war

campaign.
Malaya was a protracted war comprised of thousands of small
engagements. From 1948 to 1951, the insurgent forces expanded
rapidly. In 1951-52 the British finally developed an appropriate
strategy to defeat the guerrilla war. By 1953 the tide had clearly
turned as the Malayan government forces became more effective,
and rebel numbers and influence decreased. The now effective
government forces systematically cleared settled districts of rebels
and hunted down rebel bands in the jungle. With the insurgency
clearly on the wane, the British granted Malaya independence in 1959
but continued to maintain a force there. As in many insurgencies, the
insurgent force in the field never surrendered formally, but rather
dwindled to insignificance. In 1960 the Emergency was declared
over.

The British Response to the Insurgency, 1948-51.

When the British government formally declared the Malayan

Emergency in June 1948, the first response was to throw manpower
at the crisis. With their long experience in controlling colonial
populations, the British viewed insurgency as primarily a police
matter, with the military providing support to the civil authorities.
Steps were taken immediately to expand the Malayan Police force
by recruiting “special constables” and “auxiliary policemen” and
forming special units to operate against the insurgents. Between 1948
and 1951, the Malayan Police was expanded to 50,000 personnel. In
1948-49, the regular police force was expanded to 20,000 men, with
the new police given only a short basic training course. The 30,000
additional police, known as special constables, were not regular
police, trained in routine law enforcement and apprehension of
criminals, but paramilitary forces whose sole purpose was to carry
out counterinsurgency and infantry operations. These men also were
provided with only minimal training.
When the insurgency broke out, the British were still in the
process of organizing an army division in Malaya, composed
primarily of Gurkha battalions that would form an imperial strategic

reserve for the Far East. The British garrison of 13 battalions—

seven Gurkha battalions, three British infantry battalions and one
artillery regiment, and two Malay Regiment battalions—was in no
shape to conduct military operations. The seven Gurkha battalions
were units that Britain had negotiated to keep after most Gurkha
battalions had been turned over to the Indian Army when India was
granted independence. The Gurkha units of the British Army were
in a process of rebuilding, and those in Malaya were understrength,
with a very high proportion of new recruits who had not completed
basic training.3 The other regular British units in Malaya were
scarcely better trained, and some were at half strength.4 The postwar
British military was still in a state of flux, and units contained a high
proportion of short-term national servicemen (conscriptees). The
training level of units in the Far East was low, and none of the British
units were trained for jungle warfare or counterinsurgency.
However, ready or not, the situation required that the army
immediately be committed to the counterinsurgency campaign.
Reinforcements were rushed from Britain and around the empire to
support the Malayan government. Most units rushed to Malaya were
short of basic equipment, key personnel, and even ammunition. The
most urgent requirement, however, was to have enough troops and
police on the ground to provide a basic level of security for the cities,
and to protect some of the Empire’s most lucrative resources: the
tin mines and rubber plantations of Malaya. As well as providing
security, the police and army were to take the offensive against the
rebels to try rooting them out of their jungle strongholds.
In order to provide a basic level of security for the tin mines and
rubber plantations, the mine and plantation owners raised their own
irregular security forces to guard the corporate assets, as well as the
families of the British business community, a group that had been
specifically targeted in insurgent terrorist attacks. These security
guards, mainly raised and mostly financed by the tin and rubber
companies, were dubbed “auxiliary police.” Due to a general shortage
of weapons, the mine and plantation guards were equipped with
whatever weapons were at hand, mostly old shotguns and hunting
rifles. Aside from some ex-military mine and plantation managers
who made an effort to provide some basic weapons training to their
guards, auxiliary police forces essentially were untrained.

 In the early stages of the insurgency, the regular Malayan Police

were an easy target for the insurgents. While the urban police forces
were fairly well-trained and supervised by experienced officers,
the rural police generally were organized into small, vulnerable
detachments under command of Malayan noncommissioned officers
(NCOs). This was a fairly normal practice in the British Empire.
Colonies had some centrally-controlled and professionally-led
police forces to oversee the urban areas, and “native police” who
dealt mainly with the countryside and served more as a symbol
of government presence than anything else.5 As is the norm in
developing countries, the rural police forces were complacent at
best, and more often corrupt, augmenting their police salaries with
small bribes extorted from the rural residents. The rural police, the
first line of government authority in the most threatened regions,
generally were incapable of mounting any kind of energetic action
when confronted by a terrorist or guerrilla threat. Many of these
police detachments simply avoided trouble. Other detachments
surrendered themselves and their weapons without a fight to small
insurgent bands.
Before World War II, Malaya had one of the best colonial police
forces in the British Empire. However, the force was demoralized
and disorganized by the World War when the British police officers
either had been imprisoned by the Japanese, or had fled to the jungle
to fight as guerrillas. Some of the Malayan rank and file had fought
as guerrillas, but most had collaborated. In 1948 the police were in
a process of rebuilding. Normally, Malaya Police officers (the rank
of inspector and higher) were career imperial policemen who had
undergone the full 1-year police training course in Britain before
being assigned to Malaya. The high pay and benefits of the Malayan
Police attracted a high caliber of officer aspirants from Britain who
saw police service as an attractive career. Upon completion of a
thorough United Kingdom (UK) training course, the British officers
of the Malaya Police were given additional training upon arrival
in the country. They were expected to pass Malayan language
examinations within 2 to 3 years of their assignment. All the higher
officer ranks, and most of the mid-level police officers, were British.
In 1948 only 188 Malayans served at the rank of inspector.6

 The need to expand the police force rapidly meant discarding

the previous standards and training programs for officers and for
constables. The 30,000 hastily recruited special constables of the
Malayan Police were organized into small detachments to conduct
counterinsurgency operations in each district. A young Briton
with some military experience and who could pass the colonial
police entrance examination might get a few weeks of training—at
best—and then find himself in Malaya commanding a local police
detachment, of which perhaps only a couple of the Malayan NCOs
might have some proper training.7 For the British officers of the
Malayan Police, things like language requirements and training in
police investigation were ignored in the rush to form units to fight
the insurgents. Basic recruit training for the Malaya Police was cut
to a minimum to man the expanded force and, from 1948 to 1951,
most police training was “on the job.”8 A year into the insurgency,
the Malayan government reported that manpower requirements
were so urgent, no higher police training for officers and NCOs was
taking place. Indeed, it was reported that even basic skills such as
vehicle maintenance and communications training had fallen out,
and that police units urgently needed a vehicle maintenance training
program if police vehicles were to remain operational. Police basic
skill training was found to be deficient in many other areas. For
example, army support for basic signals training had to be urgently
requested.9 However, in the early stages of the insurgency, it was
difficult for the army to provide the police with basic skills training
because of a severe shortage of experienced army personnel and a
low level of training within the army itself.
The only experienced police reinforcements readily available in
1948 were 400 British officers and NCOs of the recently disbanded
Palestine Police. These were quickly committed to Malaya, several
being assigned to top leadership positions. The ex-Palestine Police
had the advantage of experience in counterinsurgency, but no
knowledge of Malaya or the language and local culture—things that
had been an essential part of the training of the regular police before
the insurgency. Another problem was that the Palestine Police had
a long tradition of “strong-arm” police tactics, and many of the
transferred policemen brought this approach with them. Many did
not adapt well to Malayan conditions.

Creation of Specialized Jungle Units.

One of the most important innovations, and a key element of the

success of the British in Malaya, was the establishment of a jungle
training school at Kota Tinggi in 1948. Most of Malaya was covered
in deep jungle, and this provided a superb sanctuary for insurgent
bands. Insurgents could emerge from the jungle at will, raid a
plantation or ambush a police patrol, then slip back to their well-
hidden base camps. While the insurgent leaders felt comfortable in
the jungle, thanks to their experience of living as guerrillas during
the war against the Japanese, the jungle was an alien place for the
police and British troops. Slow and clumsy sweeps through the
jungle by conventional infantry battalions were evaded easily by the
smaller and more agile rebel bands that would slip right back into the
“cleared” areas as soon as the British had passed through. These big
conventional operations gave the impression of immense military
and police activity, but yielded few concrete results in the form of
insurgent prisoners or casualties.10 Luckily, the army had available
Colonel Walter Walker and a few other veterans of the World War
II Burma campaign who had considerable experience living and
fighting in the jungle. Walker (later a general) organized the Jungle
Warfare School with a few officers and NCOs with similar experience
and began teaching small cadres from the army and police in jungle
operations.11
Walker and others who understood jungle warfare knew that the
best way to seek out and destroy small bands in jungle terrain was to
employ small, jungle-savvy, light infantry patrols that could play the
insurgents’ game of raid and ambush on the insurgents’ home ground.
Men trained in the jungle school would return to their units and, in
turn, train them to live and fight in the jungle. The Jungle Warfare
School taught the difficult arts of land navigation in the jungle and
jungle survival, but the core of the program was small unit patrolling
and combat tactics. Combat marksmanship was stressed, and each
course ended with a series of realistic exercises. The Jungle Warfare
School employed a specialist Opposing Forces Section (OPFOR)
of British and Malayan soldiers who were armed and dressed as
communist guerrillas and could also imitate insurgent tactics and

methods. They would ambush the army and police trainees on

patrol and raid the trainee base camps. The course was considered
highly effective from the start, the only problem being the small
initial capacity of the school. As the British became better organized,
whole companies were put through the course.12 However, getting
a thorough jungle training program up and running was a slow
process, and in the early stages of the insurgency, most of the British
army and police units had to learn jungle warfare literally “on the
job.” Many army companies arriving in Malaya went straight into
combat operations without even a training exercise in the jungle.13
In November 1950 the police responded to the requirement to
operate in the jungle by forming special jungle companies, composed
mostly of Malayans with British NCO and officer leadership.
The jungle companies, each about 180 men strong, would deploy
detachments of 10-15 men to operate on long patrols in the jungle
for days at a time. The plan called for 31 companies to be formed
in 1951 and another 14 in 1952. Still, the police were limited by the
shortage of properly trained officers and NCOs to command the
detachments. For small detachments to operate effectively in the
jungle, they required first-rate junior leaders who could operate
independently for days at a time—and good junior leadership was
in very short supply during the first years of the Malaya insurgency.
Only 21 police jungle companies had been formed by August 1951,
when the formation of further units was halted.14 Personnel of the
police jungle companies were to be trained at the Jungle Warfare
Center, but a full training regime came only later, so the first jungle
companies went into action with little preparation and had to learn
on the job.

Intelligence Operations and Training 1948-51.

Effective counterinsurgency operations depend more on accurate

intelligence than any other factor. Government police and military
forces usually have a great firepower advantage over the insurgents
and can defeat the lightly-armed insurgents in combat if they can
find the enemy. The problem is finding an enemy who recognizes
no front lines, who draws logistics support from the civilian

10

populace, and often wears civilian clothes and can blend in among a
sympathetic population. Lacking accurate intelligence, conventional
forces can only blunder about in the hope that the enemy guerrillas
will decide to stand and fight. In the meantime, while conventional
army and police units blunder about the countryside, insurgent
organizers hiding among the population can continue to organize
and propagandize the civilians and maintain the insurgency, even as
their military forces suffer heavy losses in the field. Unless intelligence
can locate and target the insurgents’ underground support network
specifically, or locate small guerrilla bands in the jungle with some
accuracy, an insurgency such as Malaya’s can continue indefinitely.
Insurgents can even increase in power and influence despite
overwhelming conventional power arrayed against them.
For the Malayan Police in the first years of the insurgency, the
most serious deficiency was the shortage of trained officers with
a suitable background for intelligence work. At the start of the
insurgency, the Malayan Police had only the Criminal Investigation
Division (CID), with a small group of officers capable of manning a
Special Branch (British term for a police intelligence organization).
The colonial government had only a small intelligence staff, the
Malayan Security Service, which provided domestic intelligence to
the governor general that mainly concerned Malayan political groups
and labor unions.15 The collection and analysis of intelligence on the
insurgents was directed by the small and overworked CID, which
was also responsible for investigating normal crimes. The CID and
Malayan Security Service did not, at first, coordinate their efforts,
nor did the police effectively coordinate and share information with
the army intelligence staffs. Indeed, there was no police special
branch until August 1950. At that time, a police special branch was
organized to concentrate on collecting intelligence on the insurgents,
while the CID was henceforth only responsible for crime.16
At the start of the insurgency, the police faced other daunting
problems that severely limited their ability to collect intelligence.
There were very few police personnel of Chinese ethnic background,
and almost no Malayan or British intelligence personnel who knew
Chinese. This greatly limited the amount and quality of intelligence
that the police could collect on the insurgents, for almost all of the

11

insurgents belonged to the approximately 42 percent of the Malayan

population that was ethnic Chinese.17 At the beginning of the
insurgency, the colonial government sent only one assistant police
superintendent and 28 civil service cadets to China for language
instruction. But attaining fluency in Chinese was a long process, and
those men would not be available to support the intelligence effort
for a couple of years. In the meantime, the intelligence service had to
rely on the small number of Chinese-speaking personnel already in
the police, or in other branches of the colonial administration. Only
during the third year of the insurgency did the colonial government
make a serious effort to train the police and civil service in the Chinese
language. In July 1951 6-month intensive Chinese language courses
were organized in Malaya’s Cameron Highlands. The first group
of trainees included 20 police and 4 civil servants, and additional
courses were laid on for 1952.18
In addition to the limits on intelligence imposed by a shortage
of linguists and other trained personnel, the police and military
intelligence collection in the early years of the insurgency was
hampered further by the lack of cooperation between the intelligence
agencies. Even had more qualified intelligence personnel been
available, they could not have been used effectively due to the lack
of an intelligence-sharing system between the police and the army.
At the national level, there was no system for coordinating police
and military intelligence, and coordination took place at the lower
levels only if the local police and military officer commanders used
their own initiative to cooperate. Commonly, the inexperienced
junior officers and staffs of the police and military did not cooperate.
When General Briggs took over as military commander in 1950, he
instituted a committee system of military and police cooperation
at every level, and intelligence coordination and collection slowly
began to improve.

The Malayan Army and Security Forces.

In 1948, the Malayan army, a force then subordinate to the British

army, consisted of three battalions of the Malay Regiment, which
had been established in 1933-34. The Malay Regiment had all-Malay
enlisted men, commanded by seconded British officers, and had a

12

solid record. During the defense of Singapore in 1942, the unit had
performed well, holding on while some white British and Australian
units broke and ran.19 When the insurgency broke out, the decision
was made to double the size of the regiment quickly and add three
more battalions by 1950.20 However, the process of expanding the
Malayan army went more slowly than planned, and the strength
goal was not reached until 1953 under General Templer, and then
only because Templer pushed hard to see that the proper equipment,
officers, and training facilities were made available.
Early in the insurgency, the Malaya Federation governments
authorized the establishment of village home guards. These home
guards had no uniforms, received no pay, and had few weapons.
The home guards served purely as a local security force to guard the
villages at night, essentially to stand shifts at the village gate or in
hastily constructed watchtowers. A village home guard detachment
of 60-100 men might have 12 rifles, just enough to arm one shift of
guards. After each shift, the guards would turn the rifles or shotguns
over to the next shift. Early in the insurgency, the army could spare
little in the way of training, rifles, or ammunition for the home
guards. By 1951 an estimated 100,000 Malayans belonged to the
home guards, each member mounting guard for a few hours a week.
While of minimal tactical or operational value, these irregular local
defense units at least served to give the Malayans a greater sense of
security.21
The government’s initial response to the insurgency was to
throw a large amount of manpower at it. The military garrison
was reinforced heavily, and the police and security forces initiated
a massive expansion program. By 1950 the country abounded in
home guards and auxiliary security units. The massive application
of largely untrained manpower worked to stabilize the situation.
Despite an overwhelming advantage in manpower and resources,
this policy made no headway. Indeed, the insurgency continued
to grow, with the active insurgent military force reaching its peak
of 8,000 in 1951. Despite heavy insurgent casualties, the insurgent
forces continued to win support among the population. Increasing
the police and military manpower failed to keep the violence from
escalating. The bloodiest year of the Emergency was 1951, with

13

6,082 recorded incidents in which 533 civilians, 354 policemen, and

124 soldiers were killed, for insurgent losses of 1,078 killed and 322
captured.22 Although the force of active insurgent combatants was
relatively small, the guerrilla forces also received strong support from
the Communist Party organization that held sway over hundreds of
thousands of Chinese rural laborers living in squatter settlements at
the edge of the jungle.
By 1950, the problem of employing large numbers of virtually
untrained police, led by officers and NCOs with little experience
or training, had become a major concern of the government. Rapid
recruitment and the lack of trained police leadership afforded
many new policemen the opportunity to abuse their power and
use their status to extort money from the population.23 The Malaya
Police earned a well-deserved reputation for widespread brutality,
especially in its manner of dealing with ethnic Chinese—all of whom
were viewed as insurgents or potential insurgents. Some observers
saw this attitude stemming largely from the ex-Palestine Police
officers, who brought a ruthless approach to counterinsurgency to
Malaya.24 The 1950 Police Commission to Malaya noted that the
problems of bribery and corruption were present in a high degree
throughout the Malayan government, and especially in the lower
ranks of the police. In fact, the Police Commission viewed police
corruption as a major source of the people’s dissatisfaction with the
government. The many bad policemen served as some of the best
recruiting agents for the insurgents. The commission noted, “The
insidious cancer of corruption eating into the system of government
may render impotent its vital services, including its police force.”25
In the midst of an insurgency and with the need to expand, the
problems of police corruption and brutality had been overlooked.
Cleaning up the police force and establishing a professional ethic
would have to wait for new leadership.

Templer and Young —New Leadership and a New Plan, 1952-54.

Lieutenant General Harold Briggs, military commander in Malaya

from April 1950 to late 1951, was a key figure in the development
of a comprehensive counterinsurgency strategy for Malaya. Briggs
pushed for numerous reforms, including closer police and military

14

cooperation, especially on intelligence collection; and he promoted a

civil affairs strategy to deny the insurgents public support. The key
element of the “Briggs Plan” was a “drain the swamp” approach.
Since the rural Chinese population living on the edge of the jungle was
the primary source of recruits and support for the insurgents, Briggs
proposed moving whole villages of squatters to new government-
built villages complete with clean water, electricity, schools, and
medical clinics. Landless Chinese laborers would receive deeds for
small plots of government land and, more importantly, could now
be kept under much closer supervision by the police and army. It
was an expensive and time-consuming approach to defeating the
insurgency, but it eventually proved successful.26 Briggs was in poor
health, though, and as his plan got underway in 1951, he retired
and returned to England, where he soon died. British leadership
took another blow in October 1951 when General Gurney, the high
commissioner, was ambushed and killed by the rebels while driving
home. At the same time, the government decided to relieve the Malaya
Police commander, Colonel Grey, since both the government and his
subordinates had lost confidence in his leadership.27 In late 1951, it
appeared that the British strategy in Malaya was foundering, and
the British Defence Coordination Committee in London reported:
“The communist hold on Malaya is as strong, if not stronger, today
than it ever has been. This fact must be faced.”28
Colonial minister Oliver Lyttelton traveled to Malaya in 1951
and was disturbed by what he saw. Although the strategy of
throwing manpower at the insurgency had at least stabilized the
situation, the government was making no progress to defeat the
insurgency. Although the Briggs Plan was a good start on a strategy,
the government and military forces required a new leadership
team to make it work, and in early 1952, it arrived. General Gerald
Templer was named as both the high commissioner and the military
commander, combining the civil government and military forces
under one hat.29 The new police commander was one of the top
policemen in the Empire, Sir Arthur Young, Commissioner of the
London Metropolitan Police. Young agreed to come to Malaya for a
year to sort out a demoralized and disorganized police force. Then,
at Templer’s and Lyttelton’s request, he stayed an extra 3 months,
returning to London in mid-1953.

15

 The leadership team of Lyttelton, Templer, and Young proved

exceptionally dynamic and competent. The Briggs Plan was carried
forward energetically. Moreover, Templer and Young insisted on a
complete overhaul of the Malayan police and military training and
leadership, as well as a reorganization of the Malayan military and
police forces. The British government was under heavy political
pressure to end the insurgency and anxious to pull British troops—
many of them conscripted soldiers—out of Malaya as soon as
possible. Despite this, Lyttelton steadfastly supported Templer
when the new high commissioner insisted that London commit to
maintaining a large British military force in Malaya until the new
civil affairs strategy could take effect, and until the Malayan military
and police forces could be trained systematically and prepared to
take responsibility for Malaya’s security. It was a tall order to fight
the insurgency as a prolonged war, and Lyttelton deserves credit
for ensuring that Templer and Young got the troops and resources
they needed, and for garnering political support for a long-term
counterinsurgency strategy.

Training the Police.

Templer and Young agreed that training the Malayan Police and
military forces and providing those forces with good leadership
would be a top priority of the new administration. When Young
arrived, he recalled,

The lack of training was everywhere evident. The pressure of the

Emergency to increase the numbers of police and auxiliaries had allowed
no time to train the thousands of newcomers who were employed almost
exclusively upon guard and static duties. I considered the need for
training as of top priority and arranged for training depots to be set up in
regional areas with a program to complete the training of the force within
12 months so that the police could be progressively employed on active
antiterrorist duties rather than on their existing passive ones.30

Badly-trained and badly-led security forces were inefficient in

counterinsurgency, at best. At worst, they undermined the effort of
the government to win the support of the people. Young, therefore,
insisted that police operations against the communists be cut back

16

while the virtually untrained special constables were pulled out of

action and sent to a 2-month basic training course.31 For overseeing
an ambitious program to retrain the whole Malaya Police force,
Young brought in some of the top policemen and intelligence
specialists in the Empire. Young sent for Superintendent John Kane,
the commandant of London’s Metropolitan Police School, to come to
Malaya and take charge of the police training program. Five highly
experienced officers and 65 of the best NCOs in the Malaya Police
were pulled out of action for 3 months to attend an intensive course
on police operations at the new Police Training School in Taiping.
After the course, these carefully-selected officers and NCOs served
as instructors for the special constables in the new police training
courses Young had organized. Young quickly initiated a systematic
program to retrain the entire police force over an 18-month period.
Young’s ambitious program put an increased burden on the army,
who had to carry out offensive operations and pacification programs
with less police support. Young even requested additional support
from the army for instructors and resources for police training,
including weapons instruction and signals instructors. Despite
complaints from senior army commanders, Templer saw the value
in Young’s strategy and supported the police program.32
Young also made Malayanization of the police leadership a
priority mission. He selected 29 Malayan inspectors and officers
who had been promoted from the NCO ranks to be sent to the UK
police college course in Ryton and Hendon—courses that usually
lasted a year. A new police college for officer training was built at
Selangor, Malaya, and opened in 1952. The school included an 8-
month course for new policemen selected for the officer program
and a 3-month course for officers who had already been promoted to
officer rank but had not been to a proper police course. Other police
officers were sent to 4-to-8-week courses at the Frasers Hill Police
Training Centre and the Federal Police Training Depot at Tanjong
Kling. Chinese language training was increased, and in 1952 46 police
officers, all destined for Special Branch operations, were sent to the
Chinese Language School set up in Malaya’s Cameron highlands.
Full training for the NCOs and enlisted policemen was instituted,
with 596 NCOs taking a 10-week course at Kendong, and 2,594
regular police recruits completing the full training program at the

17

Federal Police Depot at Kuala Lumpur.33 Hundreds of police officers

and enlisted men attended army courses in vehicle maintenance,
communications operations, and weapons repair. Police weapons
instructors were trained by the army.34

Training the Army.

While supporting Young’s police reform and training efforts,

Templer made the expansion and systematic training of the
Malayan army another high priority project. One of Templer’s first
acts as high commissioner was to announce the creation of a new
Malaya Federation Regiment that would be recruited from all of the
Malayan ethnic groups, not just from the Malays, as was the case
with the Malay Regiment. Since independence would likely come
sometime in the next decade, the Malayan armed forces needed a
solid foundation, and that meant properly trained Malayan officers.
Templer stepped up the flow of Malayan officer cadets to Sandhurst.
He personally selected 24 prospective Malayan cadets to be sent
to the full 1-year officer course in the UK, after which they would
return as lieutenants. Templer also sat on the selection board for the
first group of officer cadet applicants for the Federation Regiment.
Consistent with his policy that the Chinese needed to be integrated
fully into Malayan society, he chose six ethnic Chinese to be in the
first group of officer trainees.35
Templer established a new officer school at Port Dickson, Malaya,
where the officers of the Malayan Army could be trained along
Sandhurst lines. In order to get top-quality civilian instructors for
the new officer school, he requested volunteers from the Sandhurst
civilian faculty and found 18 eager to come to Malaya for the new
venture. In early 1953, the Port Dickson officer training college was
opened as the primary military school of the Malayan army.36

Reforming the Security Forces.

While retraining the police, in 1952-53 Young also reduced the

force by 10,000 personnel, cutting mostly special constables who
had been recruited early in the emergency and who had proven
incompetent or corrupt. Fighting corruption in the police force

18

was a major theme of Young’s tenure, and hundreds of police were

dismissed for cause. Young found that many of the special constables
hastily recruited at the start of the insurgency were physically unfit,
illiterate, or otherwise disqualified from effectively carrying out
police duties. These police were weeded out in a more gentle fashion,
being sent to jobs training programs when they were demobilized
from the police.37
By cutting out corrupt and incompetent police personnel, Young
raised the efficiency of the force while saving money to finance his
new training program, an expensive proposition. As a means of
combating the “police state” mentality that had become common in
the police, Young instituted “Operation Service,” a program to change
the perception of the police in the eyes of the civilian population.
Hitherto, the police were seen primarily as an authoritarian arm of
the government, and Young wanted the police personnel and the
general population to understand that the police were also a branch
of government dedicated to public service. Police detachment
commanders, and even individual policemen, were expected to
perform some public service on a daily basis—everything from
helping civilians get care at government health clinics to helping farm
laborers with their applications for a plot of government land.38 The
idea that the police were there not only to arrest miscreants but also
to serve the people at large was a new concept for Malaya, a country
where most people feared the police—usually with good reason.
Young’s concept was to make the police stations the purveyors of
essential public services and have the police recognized as friends,
and not enemies, of the average citizen. Surprisingly, Operation
Service was effective in changing the attitude of the Malayan civilians
towards the police.39
Young also understood the value of good intelligence in
counterinsurgency and believed that no progress could be made
unless police intelligence training was overhauled. One-fifth of the
senior ranks in the Malaya Police, usually men with extensive criminal
investigation experience, were assigned to the Special Branch and a
highly-qualified Special Branch officer, Claude Fenner, was brought
in to establish a Special Branch Training School where all the senior
police officers and all Special Branch personnel would take courses
in intelligence operations and analysis.40 The Police Special Branch

19

Training School was one of Young’s pet projects. He regularly

visited the school, giving talks, and personally selected the senior
faculty.41 In 1952, 77 superintendents and assistant superintendents,
71 inspectors, and 129 detectives passed through the Special Branch/
CID courses.42 Many army personnel also were sent to the Special
Branch School since police and military intelligence operations were
coordinated in joint intelligence centers. The days of army and police
intelligence sections not sharing information were over by 1952,
and much of the credit should go to the Special Branch School. The
Special Branch Training School succeeded not only in providing
officers with the skills necessary for counterinsurgency intelligence,
but also in professionalizing the leadership of the Malayan Police.
For example, the school included courses on the latest investigative
techniques and police equipment.43 Another of Young’s initiatives to
build up the Special Branch was to increase the number of Chinese
linguists in the police. The 46 additional officers that Young ordered
pulled out of operations and sent to study Chinese would, in time,
be exceptionally useful in Special Branch operations.44
That very few Chinese served in the Police or Malayan civil
service, and no Chinese served in the Malaya Regiment, was a major
obstacle in responding effectively to an insurgency centered in the
Chinese community. Although the Chinese were a plurality of the
population of the six federated states and Singapore, the Malaya state
governments were all Malay-dominated. The Chinese were regarded
as outsiders, even though many had been there for generations.
From the Malay point of view, the Chinese were unwelcome
ethnic competitors. Many of the Chinese were in business, and the
education level of the Chinese middle class was higher than that of
the Malays. With British approval, the Malays long had excluded the
Chinese from the Malaya Regiment and from the higher ranks of the
civil service. In addition, the Chinese were not encouraged to join
the Malay-dominated police force. In 1947 there were only 26 ethnic
Chinese officers and inspectors in the entire Malaya Police.45
Little had been done to bring the Chinese into the Malayan
military or police after the insurgency started, which Templer
and Young regarded as a serious problem. Until the Chinese were
brought into the process of government and recruited to fight the

20

communist insurgents, the Chinese community would continue to

view the government with hostility, or at best, indifference. Templer
forced the Malayan Federation governments to admit Chinese to
the civil service and into the security forces.46 In his program to
reorganize the Malayan army forces, Templer put a high priority on
recruiting Chinese for the enlisted and officer ranks. Although the
Malayan Regiment still only recruited Malays, the new Armoured
Car Regiment, the Federation Regiment, and the technical and
support branches of the army were open to all the ethnic groups
of Malaya. The Chinese did not enthusiastically answer the call
to join the army, which remained overwhelmingly ethnic Malay
throughout the insurgency. No more than 15 percent of the Federation
Regiment’s personnel were Chinese, although a higher percentage
of Chinese signed up for the army’s technical and support services.
Although Templer failed to meet his goal of recruiting Chinese for
the Federation Regiment and new units in proportion to their share
of the population, enough Chinese recruits and officer cadets joined
to make the Malayan army credible as a multiracial force.
Under Templer, the foundation was laid for a systematic
expansion of a Malayan army that was well-trained, well-led, and
able to take progressively more responsibility for counterinsurgency
operations. When Templer arrived in early 1952, there were only
four Malayan battalions available for operations, all from the Malaya
Regiment. By mid-1954, there were seven Malayan battalions. Most
of the officers were seconded from the British army, but the new
officer training college was beginning to provide a steady stream of
properly trained Malayan junior officers. Also, the first increment of
Sandhurst-trained Malayan officers had returned and was able to
put a Malayan face on the army leadership. In October 1953, Templer
could form the 1st Federation Division of the Malayan Army.47
When Templer left Malaya to become British Army chief of
staff in 1954, the process of Malayanization of the army and the
counterinsurgency campaign was progressing smoothly. With
better-trained Malayan forces led by competent officers and NCOs,
the British could feel confident enough to withdraw some British
battalions from the country. Not counting the eight Gurkha battalions,
the British army and Royal Marine commitment to Malaya reached

21

a peak of 10 battalions in 1951-52. With the Malayans and some

Commonwealth battalions bearing a larger share of the burden,
British army strength was reduced to four battalions by mid-1954,
but with no decrease in the total number of battalions available for
operations (22).48
Since the police were the main force fighting the insurgency,
Young put a high priority on recruiting Chinese for the regular police.
Young established cordial relations with the Chinese associations of
Malaya and ethnic Chinese political leaders, working to get their
support to recruit Chinese into the police force. In 1952 there were
only 800 Chinese in the regular police force of over 20,000, and Young
hoped to get 2,000 Chinese recruits. He pushed his campaign through
public radio broadcasts and private appeals to Chinese leaders.
Although Young failed to reach his goal, the Chinese recruitment
of the force still had improved significantly. Between April and
October 1952, 505 Chinese joined the Malaya Police.49 By November
1953, the Malayan Police included 1,824 Chinese in a total regular
force of 22,934. Although it would take decades to right the ethnic
imbalance in the police force, a start was made under Young.50
Another part of the Templer/Young reform and reorganization
was a program to improve the efficiency of the home guard. Templer
created a new post of Inspector General of the Home Guard, sending
for Major General Edward de Fonblanque to take charge of the force.
Fonblanque, a competent and energetic leader recently retired from
the army, managed to get some experienced Commonwealth and
British officers assigned to the home guard and ensured that a proper
training camp was set up in each Malayan state. The main thing was
to train the home guardsmen to handle firearms and to carry out
basic security duties. Goals were set to expand the home guard to
240,000 men and to ensure that there was proper supervision of the
force by trained officers.51 Each Malayan state had a home guard
headquarters, staffed by professional officers, to direct the training
programs. Manuals on weapons handling and village security
were produced, and a force that previously had been indifferently
organized was put on a more regular footing. Each of the states
raised “operational sections,” small units composed of the best
home guardsmen, who were paid, given extra training, and made

22

available to go on patrol with the regular police and army units.52

Although Templer’s predecessors refused to arm any part of the
Chinese community, Templer disagreed strongly with this policy.
He placed a high priority on recruiting Chinese into the home guard,
and making the Chinese community fully responsible for defending
their own villages. Many feared that the Chinese would defect
with their weapons to the rebels, but such fears proved groundless.
Surprisingly, 50,000 Chinese willingly joined the home guards, and
by 1954, 150 Chinese villages were protected by their own security
force.53
Though the home guards saw little action in Malaya, they were
still of enormous value in suppressing the insurgency. The home
guards were able to assume many routine security duties, freeing
up thousands of regular police and military personnel for offensive
operations. Moreover, recruiting the Chinese into the home guard
had the very positive political effect of bringing a large number of
the Chinese into the government process and making them part of
the solution to the insurgency.

The Foundation of Success in Malaya.

When Templer left Malaya in 1954, the British strategy was

clearly working. Insurgent strength was down, and violent incidents
less frequent. The British could withdraw forces, confident that the
Malaya Police and army could take over the responsibilities, thanks
to their thorough training and the presence of a cadre of competent
indigenous officers. In the senior leadership of the Police Special
Branch, well-trained Malayan officers were able to take over from
the British personnel without any drop in that branch’s efficiency.54
In fact, the key intelligence side of the counterinsurgency campaign
steadily improved, thanks to the increased presence of Chinese in
the army, police, and home guards. As the security forces became
more representative of the population, the attitude of the Chinese
population towards the government became more positive. As the
reforms in the Malayan security forces took effect, the insurgents
had to operate among an increasingly unfriendly population.
The value of thorough training in defeating an insurgency was
demonstrated clearly in the improved efficiency of the intelligence

23

system after Arthur Young established the Special Branch School.

Within a few months of the start of the intelligence training program,
the military and police forces in the field were able to target specific
rebel bands much more effectively than before. Guy Madoc, who
served as director of the special branch in Malaya, commented on
the value of the intelligence school to the success of the campaign:
“The school was the sluice valve of the Emergency. Defeating the
Emergency depended on intelligence. Intelligence capacity depended
on the output of the school.”55

CASE STUDY CYPRUS

Overview of the Insurgency in Cyprus, 1955-59.

Cyprus was acquired by Britain from the Ottoman Empire in 1879

and spent the next 70 years as a minor colonial backwater. The small
colony, with total population of just over 500,000 in 1950, assumed
an increased importance for British strategy after Britain pulled out
of its colonies and protectorates in the Mideast after World War II.
The British viewed Cyprus as its vital base for forces in the Mideast
as well as its regional center of influence.56 However, trouble long
had been brewing. The overwhelmingly Greek population of Cyprus
(82 percent) was strongly in favor of ending British rule and uniting
with Greece. In 1931 the desire for union with Greece (called “enosis”
in Greek) led to widespread anti-British riots and the suspension of
local government. After World War II, a war in which many Greek
Cypriots loyally served Britain, the sentiment for enosis increased.
A plebiscite sponsored by the Cypriot Church in 1950 resulted in a
vote of 95.7 percent of the Greek Cypriots in favor of enosis.57 The
Greek government supported the cause as well, and tried to bring
the issue to international forums.58 However, the British were deaf
to any suggestion of abandoning Cyprus. The British Chiefs of Staff
insisted that the continuance of the colonial regime in Cyprus was
necessary for British defense. Having abandoned Palestine and
Egypt, the idea of losing their last colony in the Mideast region was
unthinkable. There would be no discussion of enosis or compromise
with the Greek Cypriots.59

24

 Given the degree of British intransigence, Cypriot political

leaders quietly prepared for an insurgency 3 years before it broke
out. Archbishop Makarios was acknowledged as the political as well
as spiritual leader of the Greek Cypriots, and the military leader was
a retired Greek army colonel, George Grivas, who had been born in
Cyprus. Grivas spent 2 years organizing and training cells of guerrilla
fighters around the island before initiating an insurrection. Through
1954, weapons and explosives were smuggled in from Greece. On
April 1, 1955, the insurgency began with a series of terrorist bombings
directed against government and police installations.
In drawing up his “General Plan for Insurrectionary Action” to
drive the British out of Cyprus, Colonel Grivas intended to institute a
campaign of violence and terror specifically directed at the British, “to
draw the attention of international public opinion, especially among
the allies of Greece . . .”60 There was no intention or expectation to
win militarily. “It should not be supposed that by these means we
should expect to impose a total defeat on the British forces in Cyprus.
Our purpose is to win a moral victory through a process of attrition,
by harassing, confusing, and, finally, exasperating the enemy forces
. . .”61 By demonstrating Cypriot resolve and self-sacrifice, “we are
prepared to continue until international diplomacy exercises through
the United Nations, and the British in particular, are compelled to
examine the Cyprus problem . . .”62
Although the insurgent military force (known by the Greek
acronym EOKA) never amounted to more than 200-300 active
fighters, they were able to mount a spirited campaign of bombings,
small ambushes, and assassinations. Although British losses were
relatively light—several dozen military and police personnel killed
each year—the insurgent campaign won worldwide attention as it
continued. Even though the insurgents put few active fighters into
the battle, they were highly effective because of the wide support
they had from the Greek Cypriot population.
For 3 years, the British struggled against small insurgent bands
with occasional successes, won more through luck than through
good planning or tactics. However, losses among the EOKA bands
were replaced quickly by other nationalists, and the fight continued,
quieting down only occasionally during periods of political

25

negotiation. As a point in the history of counterinsurgency, the British

government had the most lopsided ratio of police and military forces
to rebel forces ever seen. At the height of the insurgency in 1956-
57, the British government deployed 40,000 military and security
personnel to Cyprus to control a total population of 400,000 Greek
Cypriots—one British soldier or policemen for every ten Greek
Cypriots. And the total number of active insurgents was never more
than a few hundred. If one views insurgency as a mathematical model
of force application, then the Cypriots did not have a chance. Yet the
Cypriots basically won the conflict. Although they did not get the
hoped-for union with Greece, the British cut a deal with the Cypriots
to grant them independence in 1959, with the government of the
island passing to the Cypriots who had mounted the insurgency.

The State of the Cyprus Police at the Start of the Insurgency.

Despite several years of warnings by Cyprus government officials

of the increased level of Greek Cypriot unrest, the outbreak of the
insurgency in 1955 caught the British government almost completely
unprepared. The Cyprus Police were especially unready for the task
at hand. For decades the Cyprus Police had been, in the words of
the Colonial Office’s chief police advisor, “a Cinderella service in a
Cinderella colony.”63 Cyprus was not a wealthy colony, and, although
it was supposed to be a major strategic asset, the fiscal realities of
Britain before and after World War II required that the colony pay
its own way. This meant that there were few funds to pay, train, or
equip the police.
The British long had tried to police Cyprus on the cheap, and they
got what they paid for. Police in Cyprus always had been poorly
paid, and postwar inflation made things especially bad. In the mid-
1950s, unskilled laborers could earn £25-30 per month, more than the
starting salary for a police constable, £21 per month.64 It was hard
to attract recruits with even a minimum standard of education to a
service in which the police officers earned no more than government
livestock managers or bailiffs. In comparison to other colonies,
pay was also low for the officers who might transfer from Britain
or another colonial police force.65 Simply put, the Cyprus police
did not attract a high caliber of enlisted or officer personnel. The

26

colonial government’s attitude towards police working conditions,

or even basic police equipment, followed the same pattern. Police
stations did not have mess halls, and many were in old, ramshackle
buildings that the government refused to refurbish on the grounds
of economy.66 The quest for budget cutting extended even to a failure
to supply flashlights for the police. Before the insurgency, colonial
officials denied a request for £175 to equip the police with flashlights.67
Indeed, the entire Cyprus Police budget for 1954 amounted to only
£600,000. As one might expect, police morale was low, and the force
had a reputation for incompetence, poor leadership, and corruption.
Policemen stationed in villages had a reputation for avoiding duties
that might require actually confronting criminals, so banditry and
even vendetta killings were said to go unnoticed by policemen
unwilling to risk their lives for a pittance.
On the eve of the insurgency in 1954, the Cyprus Police consisted
of 1,386 men, a disproportionate number (37 percent) drawn from
the Turkish Cypriots (18 percent of the population).68 Police training
consisted of a 6-month basic course conducted in an old castle. Before
the insurgency, there were no higher training or specialist courses
offered for Cyprus Police personnel, which had a tradition of being
more of a gendarmerie than a modern police force. The Cyprus
Police were so backward that a criminal investigation branch was
only created in 1951. A police special branch was formed with three
officers in 1954 after the government became aware that radical Greek
factions were smuggling weapons from Greece. Thus, the police had
little time to study the incipient insurgent organization before the
violence began.69
The insurgent commander, Colonel Grivas, prepared the
insurgency by quietly searching out sympathizers among the Greek
Cypriot policemen. With morale and conditions in the police force
low and desire for enosis high among the Greek population, Grivas
had no trouble recruiting selected policemen from every branch of
the force who would provide the insurgents with detailed intelligence
information. From 1954 to 1958, as many as 20 members of the
Cyprus Police worked as active agents for the insurgents. During the
insurgency, some police officers actually hid wanted EOKA terrorists
on the sound assumption that the last place the British would search
would be the home of a police officer.70

27

 One of the first actions of the insurgents was to cripple the police
special branch, killing selected police personnel including two of
the three Greek Cypriot policemen assigned to Special Branch. In
June 1955, EOKA dramatically assassinated a Greek police sergeant
who had just been assigned to the Special Branch. The message to
the police was loud and clear: EOKA had full inside knowledge
of police operations and could target key personnel at will.71 If a
Cypriot policeman wanted to live, his best option would be to do as
little as possible against the insurgents. Thus, in the first 3 months
of the insurgency, the regular police effectively were crippled, and
the military had to take over most of the basic police duties on the
island.
Exacerbating the problem was the colonial government’s policy
of trying to fight an insurgency on the cheap. In protest over their
ludicrously low pay, Greek Cypriot policemen began resigning
from the force at the start of the insurgency. Those remaining were
compelled to work longer hours and perform extra shifts for no
additional pay. It was the last straw for police morale. With morale
already low and the cost of living increasing, the police considered
their working conditions to be intolerable. In June and July 1955,
many Greek policemen refused to draw pay in protest of their work
conditions. In August, many Greek Cypriot policemen submitted
their resignations from the force. The government, already concerned
over the personnel hemorrhage, took disciplinary action against 12
policemen and refused to allow the others to resign.72 Henceforth, no
policeman under 55 years of age would be allowed to resign.73
Since Greeks were refusing to join the police, almost all
new recruitment into the regular police came from the Turkish
community. Still more men were needed, so a force of 400 Auxiliary
Police was raised quickly among the Turkish Cypriots. The already
low standards of the police force were lowered even further to
allow the recruitment of Turks, who generally had a much lower
education level than the Greeks, but were considered reliable and
loyal by the colonial government. Many of the Auxiliary Police were
Turkish farmers or laborers who viewed police work as a means of
income during the slack part of the agricultural year. With virtually
no training, the Auxiliary Police were sent into action and generally
employed in guard and security duties.74

28

The British Respond.

With the situation clearly beyond the government’s ability

to control it, the hapless governor was fired in September 1955.
Recently retired Field Marshall Sir John Harding, formerly Chief
of the Imperial General Staff, was appointed Governor General of
Cyprus.75 Harding immediately called for army reinforcements, and
by October 1955 two infantry battalions had been sent, which raised
the army garrison to over 12,000.76 The military force on the island
would continue to grow throughout 1955-57.
Harding wanted to get the police back into the fight to free up the
army for offensive operations against EOKA, so he greatly expanded
the size of the Auxiliary Police. This action was against the advice
of experienced colonial officials who knew that overreliance upon
a Turkish police force would alarm the Greek Cypriot population
and likely lead to open conflict between the island’s ethnic
communities.77 By 1956, the Auxiliary Police had been expanded to
1,417 personnel. Distaining advice from some of the civilian officials
with long experience in Cyprus, Harding preferred to employ the
Turkish Cypriots to suppress the insurgency. In September, a new
police force, the Special Mobile Reserve, was recruited exclusively
from the Turkish community. The Special Mobile Reserve was to
serve as riot police and received considerably more training than the
Auxiliary Police. By 1956, the force had grown to 569 personnel.78
Because so few policemen met the minimal qualifications to serve
as officers or NCOs, the leadership for the new police forces would
be provided by importing police from Britain. British policemen
who came to Cyprus would receive a promotion in rank as well
as double credit towards their pensions. The colonial government
hoped to recruit young, aggressive police NCOs for the campaign,
but what they mostly got were older, lower-ranking policemen
close to retirement. Many saw a tour in Cyprus primarily as an
opportunity to improve their pensions. From 1955-59, a total of 400
UK policemen would serve on Cyprus. They did their best but were
not considered very effective because they arrived knowing nothing
of the language or local conditions and could barely communicate
with their subordinates, if at all.79 The UK Police unit in Cyprus also

29

developed a reputation for poor discipline. The first commander of

the UK Police Unit expressed dismay at the caliber of police sent
out from Britain and maintained that some of the UK county police
forces dumped their unwanted personnel on Cyprus.80
Harding refused to worry about the long-term effects of recruiting
police from the Turkish community, and failed to ensure that the
police had training or competent leadership. Expert advice from the
outside generally was ignored. General Templer visited the island
just after the start of the insurgency in April 1955 and called for a
thorough overhaul of the police force.81 Little was done that year.
The Cyprus Police Commission, composed of several senior police
chiefs in Britain, visited Cyprus in February and March of 1956 and
came up with a detailed and critical study of the police. Many of the
criticisms concerned the poor conditions and low pay that had pushed
the Greek Cypriots out of the force. The top UK policemen especially
were concerned about the poor quality of the newly raised Auxiliary
Police, who had received “little, if any, training.”82 The Commission
also expressed concern about the low personnel quality and training
of the hundreds of special constables—almost all Turkish—recruited
since the start of the insurgency. The Cyprus Police Commission
recommended that the Auxiliary Police and the special constables
be disbanded as soon as possible.83 Ignoring such advice, Harding
even expanded the Auxiliary Police, a force that reached a peak of
1,594 men in 1958. The Police Mobile Special Reserve also expanded
from 569 to 580 in the next year.84
Many of the Cyprus Police Commission’s specific recommen-
dations addressed the need for a comprehensive program to train
the police and provide professional indigenous police leadership.
They noted that the Cyprus Police training program was completely
inadequate. There was not only a lack of basic training for the
police enlisted men, but there was also no special branch course or
courses for higher officers. Unlike Malaya, there was no police cadet
program.85 Because of the lack of adequate mid and senior leadership
in the Cyprus Police, the Commission recommended that sergeants
be promoted from the ranks and sent to the UK for 2 years of police
training in order to provide the Cyprus Police with competent
indigenous leadership.86 The Commission recommended that a new

30

police school be opened with the capacity to train 240 policemen

in a 6-month basic course and the capacity to train 100 officers in
advanced and special courses. Plans were proposed to establish a
new police school that would open in 2 years.87 In contrast to Young’s
approach in Malaya, there was no sense of urgency in training local
police leaders. The problem of reforming the police, training the
rank-and-file, and developing professional police leadership was
seen essentially as something to be dealt with after the insurgency
was defeated. In the meantime, the Cyprus Police would remain a
poorly trained, poorly led force, which would have a major impact
on the Britain’s failure to suppress the insurgency.
Harding did not see the insurgency as a prolonged war, but
rather as a campaign to be completed victoriously by inflicting a few
sharp blows against EOKA. He was confident that, with his ample
resources, he could finish EOKA quickly. On January 1, 1956, he
announced that EOKA’s days were numbered.88 Despite the recent
example of Malaya with its sophisticated civil/military strategy, on
Cyprus the governor general preferred a heavy-handed approach
to counterinsurgency that would bludgeon the population into
compliance with British rule. His willingness to employ firepower
upset some of the colonial officials and senior officers. For example,
Harding had more than a dozen naval vessels at his disposal to
patrol the island’s shores and interdict arms shipments from Greece.
Immediately upon his arrival, Harding issued orders to shoot on sight
any Greek vessel appearing off the coast of Cyprus, an act that drew
protests from the commander of the Royal Navy’s Mediterranean
Fleet, who sensibly pointed out that such actions would cause serious
problems with Britain’s NATO ally.89
With his massively expanded police force—up from 1,397
personnel in 1954 to 5,878 in 1956—Harding succeeded in freeing
up military manpower to conduct large-scale operations in the
mountains and rural districts of Cyprus where many of the rebel
bands were based. Military reinforcements continued to flow into
the island, and by early 1956, more than 20,000 army troops were
on Cyprus. With the thousands of Royal Navy and Royal Air Force
personnel on the island, plus the Cypriot security forces, Harding
had approximately 40,000 military and police personnel under his

31

command to oppose about 200 insurgents. However, lacking an

effective special branch to provide intelligence and employing an
overwhelmingly Turkish police force that was alienated from the
Greek population, British intelligence on the rebels was consistently
poor. It was a war of the blundering elephant versus the gnat. Small
guerrilla bands, supported by the rural population, regularly evaded
the regime of strict controls, district searches, and massive sweeps.
The massive British use of manpower also failed to interdict EOKA’s
arms smuggling or inhibit offensive actions against the British. The
occasional British successes in destroying small EOKA units tended
to come more through chance contacts with patrols than through
any clear intelligence information. Despite Harding’s prediction of
a quick decisive victory, throughout 1956 the program of bombings,
assassinations of police and British officials, and attacks on military
convoys increased.

The Police and the Greek Population.

If Harding carefully had planned to alienate the entire Greek

population of the island and push the moderate Greeks into full
support of EOKA, he could not have done better than by his policy
of unleashing a horde of untrained, poorly-led Turkish police on the
population. Communal violence, rare in Cyprus before the insurgency,
flared up in 1956 and increased throughout the insurgency. When
the Turks rose against the Greeks, usually in response to an EOKA
killing of a Turkish policeman, the all-Turkish Special Mobile Reserve
and Auxiliary Police routinely stood by as Turkish mobs assaulted
Greek civilians and ransacked their property.90 The Cyprus Police
were not merely passive about their duty to protect all Cypriots from
lawbreaking. During a series of searches in Famagusta, the Auxiliary
Police were accused of looting Greek homes. While Harding
dismissed claims of police and military abuse as Greek propaganda,
his own officers saw the issue rather differently. The district police
commissioner of Famagusta noted that many of his policemen had
come from the lowest level of Turkish society and “are known not to
have been beyond criminal activities in the past.” Of the allegations
of police looting, he commented, “I myself have little doubt that
there is substance in a fair proportion of them.”91

32

 While it is difficult enough to keep well-trained and well-

disciplined police and intelligence officers from abusing prisoners
and detainees in counterinsurgency campaigns, Harding’s policy of
employing poorly-trained policemen guaranteed a culture of prisoner
abuse during interrogations. Many reports of the insurgency include
British observers’ accounts of abuse of Greek detainees by the Cyprus
Police.92 British journalists on the island nicknamed the Cyprus Police
and intelligence personnel “HMTs” for “Her Majesty’s Torturers.”93
The poor standard of leadership throughout the Cyprus Police
added to the discipline problems. Although Harding ordered his
police to operate according to the law, he did little to ensure proper
behavior of the security forces. In reality, the British administration’s
policy was to deride any criticism of the police automatically and
characterize accusations of misconduct by the security forces as part
of an orchestrated insurgent plan to discredit the security forces.94
Such confrontational tactics did not go over well with the British
journalists, especially those who personally witnessed incidents.
British and international press coverage became increasingly
negative about British policy and behavior throughout the course of
the insurgency.
The abusive behavior of the Cyprus Police was a godsend to the
insurgents, who made the actions of the security forces a central
theme in their international propaganda campaign. Claims of British
police abuse were made by the Greek media and brought to world
attention with the support of the Greek government. There was
enough evidence of police and military brutality to lend credence
to the charges. In 1956 the Greek government brought the issue of
security force abuses in Cyprus before the European Commission,
forcing an international investigation of British police and military
actions.95 Although some of the allegations were refuted later, the
political damage to the British government was severe.
British and international journalists also reported in detail
on the communal riots in Cyprus and described how the Cyprus
Police stood by as Turkish mobs attacked Greeks. Such actions
undermined British legitimacy, and the images of the communal
violence were broadcast around the world in graphic detail. British
newspapers began to criticize the Harding regime—and with good

33

cause.96 The failure of the British government to respond to credible

allegations haunted the debate over Cyprus policy. In time, criticism
of the Cyprus administration found its way to the House of Lords,
as well as the United Nations (UN) and the European Civil Rights
Commission.97
Field Marshall Harding left Cyprus and retired in November
1957, convinced that his strategy had worked. He was wrong. A year
later the Greek Cypriots and British negotiated a deal to give Cyprus
independence in 1959. Harding’s strong-arm tactics, combined
with a policy of throwing large numbers of poorly-led and poorly-
trained police at the insurgency, had been a spectacular failure.
More than anything else, the end of British rule was brought about
by international political pressure, fuelled by the effective use of the
media by Greek Cypriots and the Greek government. Grivas’ long-
term strategy—to simply stay in the field and harass the British with
small attacks—failed to inflict any serious damage on the British
forces, but was successful in keeping the attention of the international
media focused on Cyprus.
Security force misbehavior played a key role in mobilizing world
opinion against Britain. In the end, the insurgents were grateful for
Harding’s strategy. Colonel Grivas, the insurgent leader whom the
British never caught, declared that the first act of the new government
after Cypriot independence should be to raise a statue to Field
Marshal Harding, “since he had done more than anybody else to
keep alive the spirit of Hellenic resistance in Cyprus.”98

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

A study of the two counterinsurgency campaigns offers some

important practical insights and lessons concerning the best
means of standing up and training effective indigenous police and
military forces. While every insurgency has its unique aspects,
there are also circumstances that often are repeated in other
insurgencies. This conclusion offers a few general insights to help
understand the nature of counterinsurgency operations, as well as
some specific recommendations to change U.S. military doctrine
and policy for training indigenous police and military forces in
counterinsurgency.

34

Keeping the Endstate in View.

The two case studies emphasize the importance for the military
and political leadership to focus on the endstate rather than on the
immediate goals. For the first 3 years of the Malaya insurgency, the
attention of the British government and military high command
was focused on short-term fixes to suppress the insurgency. When
Templer and Young arrived in early 1952, they changed the strategic
focus towards attaining the desired endstate—building professional
and well-led security forces to serve a democratic post-independence
Malayan state. Such forces would be able to provide effective security
for the Malaysian state and people, and would also be representative
of the major ethnic groups of the nation. Professional and well-led
security forces are a key element in building a democratic state.
Although the focus on the endstate in Malaya required an
expensive, long-term strategy, it was also a success. Despite political
pressure to accomplish a quick fix that would enable the British
military to remove forces from Malaya, the Colonial Office had
the moral courage to support the long-term strategy proposed by
Templer and Young. In Malaya, Templer and Young understood
that they were fighting a prolonged war that required a long-term
commitment. In 1953, even though the situation was noticeably
improving, Templer cautioned against declaring victory too soon.
At a press conference he declared, “I’ll shoot the bastard who says
this emergency is over.”99 Templer believed that any premature
withdrawal of British forces could undermine the program oriented
to patiently and systematically enabling the Malayans to fight their
own war—but only when they were properly trained for it.
In Cyprus, Field Marshal Harding and the British High Command
failed to understand the insurgent strategy of prolonged war, and
the British strategy was therefore oriented to the quick solution.
Little thought was given as to what the Cyprus government and
police might look like, or what political conditions would exist, after
the insurgency. The short-term fixes not only failed to suppress the
insurgency, they also failed Cyprus in the long term. In the short term,
Harding’s strategy increased the level of communal violence on the
island. In the long term, when Cyprus was granted independence by

35

the UK, it was left with a badly-trained, badly-led police force that
was unable to help stabilize the new nation.

Training the Police as the Primary Counterinsurgency Force.

In both Cyprus and Malaya, insurgent combat forces normally

were organized into small groups that hid among a sympathetic
civilian population, or operated in close proximity to sympathetic
civilians who provided support. In Cyprus, the largest insurgent
force fielded was 20 to 30 men. In Malaya, there were only a few
operations in which any large rebel force was encountered, and
anything resembling large-scale combat was exceptionally rare.
Normally, the Malayan guerrillas lived and fought in small units of
10-40 men. Both conflicts were characterized by the large number of
small combat actions and incidents.
In Cyprus and Malaya, because of the small unit nature of the
conflicts, the primary front-line counterinsurgency force was the
police. What determined government success or failure in counter-
guerrilla operations was not force size or firepower, but intelligence.
In Malaya, the rebels found that large army units blundering about
with little detailed intelligence were far less dangerous than small
police and army units armed with good intelligence. In Cyprus,
small insurgent bands routinely evaded sweeps by large army forces
that lacked detailed intelligence.
Police are the most appropriate force in combating small
insurgent bands that receive support from elements of the civilian
population because it is the job of the police to work among the
civilian populace. In counterinsurgency campaigns, military units
and special police strike units, such as the police jungle companies in
Malaya, are routinely shifted around to different sectors, according
to the needs of the moment, while police remain on the ground
dealing with civilians on a daily basis and, hopefully, building a
detailed intelligence picture of the insurgent strength, organization,
and support in each local sector. Effective counterinsurgency relies
on good human intelligence, and no military unit can match a good
police unit in developing an accurate human intelligence picture of
their area of operations.

36

 There are some key similarities with the insurgencies in Cyprus

and Malaya and current insurgencies such as Iraq. In Cyprus and
Malaya, the insurgents fought primarily as small groups that
received support and shelter from disaffected elements of the civilian
population. This is similar to Iraq, where insurgents rarely operate
in large groups that can be targeted and attacked with superior
Coalition firepower. In Cyprus and Malaya, the main issue for the
government forces was not defeating the enemy in battle but, rather,
simply finding the enemy. This is also characteristic of operations in
Iraq. Success in the two case studies was dependent on the quantity
and quality of human intelligence, and not on the size of forces
engaged or their ability to employ firepower.
The Cyprus and Malaya case studies dramatically demonstrate the
central role of police in counterinsurgency. In Malaya, a key element
in turning the situation to the government’s favor was the program
to reform and retrain the police and make it a more professional body
that could interact with the civilian population more effectively (and
thus gain good intelligence), and act efficiently on the intelligence it
received. In Cyprus, the British failed to address the serious flaws in
the Cyprus Police. As a result, the relationship between the police to
the civilian population was poor. Consequently, British intelligence
on the Cyprus insurgents was consistently weak.
In Iraq, as in Malaya and Cyprus, the police are on the front lines
every day. Arguing from historical precedent, the effectiveness of
the Iraqi police will be one of the key factors in the success or failure
of the insurgency. If the Coalition nations succeed in standing up a
competent and professional Iraqi police force that can gain the trust
of most of the Iraqi civilians, then the insurgents have no long-term
chance. If, on the other hand, we keep large military forces in Iraq
but fail to build an effective Iraqi police force, we cannot expect to
suppress the insurgency in the long term.

The Limitations of “On the Job” Training in Counterinsurgency.

Both the Malaya and Cyprus counterinsurgency campaigns

emphasized putting plenty of manpower into the field. In Malaya,
however, even a vast manpower advantage only got the British so

37

far. Deploying a large number of minimally-trained police helped

stabilize the government’s position from 1948 to 1951, but even a
significant manpower advantage did not prevent the insurgent force
from growing and government casualties from increasing. Ultimately,
the British realized part of their strategy was counterproductive:
that poorly-trained and led police and security forces were inclined
toward corruption and abusive behavior towards the population,
tendencies that undermined the government’s goal to win over the
people. In Malaya, the answer was a comprehensive program to
retrain the police force and raise its professional standard. Although
it was expensive and required pulling large numbers of police out of
operations for months, within a year the program paid off in much
higher level of police effectiveness and far better relations with
the civilian population. This, in turn, notably improved the police
intelligence collection from the civilian population.
In Cyprus the police force also was increased dramatically
during the insurgency, growing from less than 1,400 men at the
start to almost 6,000 within 2 years. However, unlike Malaya, there
was little attempt to provide any systematic training to the auxiliary
police and special constables after the start of the insurgency. Nor
was there any serious attempt to retrain the regular police for the
complex duties of counterinsurgency. The result was a corrupt,
abusive, and largely ineffective police force that further alienated the
civilian population.
Unfortunately, to date the U.S. and Coalition effort to build a
national police force in Iraq resembles the Cyprus model rather than
the Malaya model. The Iraqi Police, a force notorious for corruption
under Saddam Hussein, were reorganized hastily in 2003, and police
personnel who had served under the old regime given only short
retraining courses. New police personnel were given only 8-week
courses before being sent into the field (in contrast to a 6-month
course given to basic police recruits in Malaya at the height of the
insurgency). Such brief and ad hoc training programs have done
little to counteract the culture of incompetence and corruption from
the old regime, and poorly-trained and led police have performed
poorly in counterinsurgency operations. At this time, the Iraqi Police
remain one of the weakest links in the counterinsurgency battle.100

38

Without a systematic and comprehensive professional training

program lasting for 18 to 24 months, the Iraqi Police will remain only
marginally effective.
U.S. military doctrine needs to spell out clearly the limitations
and dangers of employing minimally-trained indigenous security
forces in counterinsurgency operations, or even to conduct basic
police duties. While it might be necessary to stand up ad hoc security
forces at the start of an emergency, U.S. policy should be to institute
a comprehensive program of police and security training as quickly
as possible. When conducting operations to stabilize a country,
American and coalition partners should have a comprehensive plan
for police training ready before intervention begins, as well as ample
funds and specialist personnel allocated for the task. Moreover,
plans for police training need to envision a several-year program to
systematically build police institutions and leadership.
Plans to stand up and train a foreign police and military force
need to include a transparent and fair system of vetting personnel,
especially the officer applicants. The vetting process needs to
include an examination of the applicant’s background and political
affiliations, as well as past activities to include possible human
rights violations and links to criminal groups. The standard for
officer applicants should be set high, even if this slows the process of
building a police force. It is better to suffer from a shortage of officers
than to have sufficient numbers, but many of those incompetent or
corrupt. A corrupt police and military culture is of enormous benefit
to the insurgents.
Planning guidance and doctrine for building indigenous military
and police forces must ensure that the pay, benefits, and living
quarters are adequate. This is especially important for the police,
who have the greatest opportunity for corruption in the nature of
their duties and contact with the civilian community. Police pay,
housing, benefits, and work conditions have to be high enough
to attract a high quality of police recruit and to serve as a shield
against the temptation towards accepting the petty corruption that
undermines the public’s confidence in the police and government.
Good pay and attractive benefits must be combined with a strict
code of conduct that allows for the immediate dismissal of police

39

personnel for corruption. Ensuring that the police pay and benefits
are attractive will be an expensive proposition for U.S. and allied
nation planners. This is, however, necessary as a means to prevent
the wholesale corruption of the police and security forces. In the
long run, it is cheaper to spend the money up front to build effective
police and security forces than to spend less and end up with corrupt
and abusive forces that alienate the population.

An Interagency Approach to Police Training.

When Sir Arthur Young arrived in Malaya, he resisted the

suggestion that the Malayan Police should be placed under army
command. While the police would routinely coordinate their
operations with the district military commands and conduct joint
operations with the army, Young insisted that the police needed
to keep their identity as a separate institution. Young feared that
the Malayan Police had already become too militarized, and that
returning to police basics was necessary to reestablish the identity
of the police as a force to serve the whole population. Although the
police continued to carry out many military-style operations, after
1952 a new emphasis was placed on containing routine crime and
providing social assistance to local people, actions geared to win the
trust of the civilians.
To reform the force, Young made sure that the primary instructors
at the new police schools and courses would be policemen, not
soldiers. To ensure a high quality of instruction, he brought a team
of first-rate senior policemen from the UK to supervise the police
training program, with an emphasis on basic police skills for all
recruits. While the army assisted the police training program by
providing instruction in weapons and tactics and in setting up
special courses in communications and vehicle maintenance, the
British army role was that of a supporting force.
This interagency approach to police training worked well in
Malaya, and should serve as a model for U.S. efforts to build and
train foreign police forces. The current U.S. Army counterinsurgency
doctrine makes the military police a lead agency for training national
police forces.101 This is not an effective approach. The U.S. Army

40

military police do not have the experience or trained personnel to

handle many vital aspects of civilian policing, such as big city police
operations or operations against organized crime. On the other hand,
the U.S. Department of Justice already has expert personnel in those
fields.
I strongly recommend that U.S. counterinsurgency strategy and
doctrine be revised to give the U.S. Department of Justice the lead
role in building and training foreign police forces. The Department
of Justice is best suited to hire senior police trainers with extensive
experience in big city law enforcement. In addition, the Justice
Department has Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and other
personnel with extensive experience in operations against organized
crime—law enforcement operations that are especially relevant to
counterinsurgency, as many insurgent groups, in Iraq for instance,
more closely resemble Mafia gangs than traditional military
organizations.
The military police should still have a large role to play in training
foreign police forces, but army and joint doctrine should be revised to
emphasize the military police role as a supporting force, rather than
a lead force in the effort. The military police are well-suited to train
foreign forces in many basic police skills, and to provide trainers for
weapons handling, small unit tactics, and communications. Training
in the higher level police skills such as civilian criminal investigation
procedures, antiorganized crime operations, and police intelligence
operations is best taught by civilian experts.
This approach is workable. It will require a significant expansion
of the Justice Department’s division for international law enforcement
assistance, as well as a commitment of the U.S. Army military police
to provide personnel and resources to support police training
programs organized and led by the U.S. Justice Department. This
strategy will also require a much higher degree of coordination and
planning between the Department of Defense and the Department
of Justice than exists today. However, building and training effective
national police forces is so important to success in counterinsurgency
that we need to overcome interagency friction as we make the Justice
Department one of the lead agencies in counterinsurgency.

41

Training the Police and Military Leaders.

The military has long known that you cannot have an effective
army without effective leaders. The same is also true for the
police. The Malaya and Cyprus insurgencies illustrate the central
importance of trained leadership to police and military effectiveness.
The effectiveness of the indigenous security forces in Cyprus and
Malaya was directly related to the quality of the officer leadership.
In Cyprus, the police leadership ranged from mediocre to bad. The
problems of police incompetence and corruption were never solved.
In Malaya, the effectiveness of the Malayan security forces increased
sharply after the large-scale officer training programs were initiated,
and officers with full professional training returned to the field. In
the police, the extensive program for officer training, which included
training Malayans in the UK police courses, worked to curb the
problems of corruption and abuse within the Malayan Police ranks.
The problem of poor officer training is evident in Iraq and in other
nations the United States has aided in combating insurgencies. In
Iraq, before the U.S. invasion of 2003, the army officer corps suffered
from a poor training system at all levels. As of this writing, the new
Iraqi army still suffers from poor officer leadership. Officers who had
their training under the old regime (most of them) lack a grounding
in leadership basics and the skills of command. Many have proven
incompetent in combat operations. Even the brightest and most
dedicated Iraqi officers lack the skills necessary for effective staff
operations or higher command.102 In the Iraqi Police, the problems of
poor officer leadership are also evident.
Applying the very successful approach of General Templer and Sir
Arthur Young to the issue of Iraqi leadership training makes a great
deal of sense. Building an effective leadership cadre for the Iraqis,
or any small nation facing insurgency, requires a comprehensive
program of officer and staff training. Currently, few Iraqi officers
have been trained in U.S. professional courses—certainly not enough
to provide a cadre of qualified commanders and staff officers.103
It is doubtful whether the Iraqis can build truly effective military
and police forces and be able to take over the counterinsurgency
campaign in their own country, unless the current lack of effective

42

officer leadership is addressed. For the Iraqi military, this means a

program to send dozens of field grade officers to U.S. staff colleges
for the full 1-year courses, and a large number of company grade
officers to the U.S. officer basic and advanced courses (normally 5 to
6 months). As in Malaya, the Iraqi forces contain many men who are
potentially good officers and leaders. What the Iraqis lack is solid
professional training. A program to send 50-100 of the best Iraqi field
grade officers to U.S. staff colleges every year for several years would
enable the Iraqi military to build its force upon a highly-trained
professional cadre. Sending a much larger number of company grade
officers to the shorter U.S. branch qualification courses would ensure
competent officer leadership at the lower levels.
There are, of course, some negative short-term drawbacks to a
comprehensive officer training program such as one proposed for the
Iraqi military and police. The Malaya experience is a good illustration
of these problems. The Malaya Police training program necessitated
pulling large numbers of police out of offensive operations and
sending them to courses that lasted from 8 to 16 weeks. The best of
the indigenous police leaders were unavailable for unit command
and staff duties at the height of the insurgency, when they were sent
to professional courses lasting from 6 months to a year. During this
period, the British army had to continue to maintain large forces in
Malaya and carry the burden of offensive operations—an approach
not appreciated by the British government at the time. The British
training program was also expensive. Sending dozens of Malayan
police and military officers back to Britain for complete courses, and
building and staffing top notch military and police training schools
in Malaya cost millions of pounds.104 The exact same objections
could be made about any comprehensive U.S. program to train Iraqi
officers.
However, the benefits of a comprehensive program far outweigh
the costs. Again, the Malaya experience provides a useful illustration.
Once a solid leadership cadre for the Malayan Police and army was
trained, the British were able to reduce their military forces quickly
and turn the main burden of the conflict over to the Malayan army
and police, assured that both the police and army had an officer cadre
fully trained to the British standard. The confidence that, with solid

43

leadership, the Malayan forces would be effective was justified fully.

The cost of sending Malayan police and military officers to British
professional programs and of setting up first rate officer schools in
Malaya was justified in the improved effectiveness of the Malayan
security forces.
There were other benefits to the program. Malayan officers trained
in the British schools had a strong credibility when they returned to
the Malayan forces, and passing through the British schools became
a requirement for rapid advancement. Training a carefully selected
group of Malayan officers in the UK ensured that the future leaders
of the military and police would be well-disposed to Britain and
continue to maintain close links with the UK after independence. If
the goal of the United States is to build a democratic and stable Iraq,
it would certainly be a long-term advantage to have a large number
of Iraqis in leadership positions who have lived in the United States,
directly experienced police and military operations in a democracy,
and who had developed close personal ties in the United States. The
financial costs would not be high. The U.S. schools and programs
already exist, and places could be found for a few dozen Iraqis a
year without requiring any expansion or new infrastructure. We are
talking in terms of millions of dollars, not billions.
The Malaya experience provides a good model for training
indigenous police leadership. In the early 1950s, the UK had some
of the best police training programs in the world, and the same
level of training could not be replicated in Malaya. In the UK police
colleges, the Malayan Police officers were trained in the most modern
investigative and forensic techniques, and then experienced modern
police operations first-hand during their required attachment to a
UK county police force. During their period with a UK police force,
Malayan officers also were able to see how the police operate in a
democracy. Today, the larger U.S. police forces, the FBI, and agencies
of the Justice Department offer a range of superb law enforcement
training programs. Police officers from Iraq, or from other allied
nations, could get a level of professional training unavailable in a
developing nation, and also get to see first-hand how police forces
function in a democracy.
As with setting up basic police training programs within
a country, the Justice Department should be given the lead in

44

managing a program to train a significant number of Iraqi and other

allied nation mid- to senior-level police officers. Police leadership
in counterinsurgency is an exceptionally complex task, and officers
trained in the New York City detectives’ course, or trained in an FBI
course on organized crime, would be invaluable assets for a police
force such as Iraq’s. As with the military training course, no new
infrastructure is required, and the primary cost would be to pay
and maintain the foreign officers during a 6 to 12-month course in
America. The Justice Department can train foreign police officers
in its own schools, or contract with larger police departments to
train officers in special courses. A comprehensive foreign police
training program in the United States would be extremely important
in improving the effectiveness of a police force facing insurgency.
Moreover, training some of the police leaders in the United States
supports the goal of helping democratize developing nations.

Incorporating Disaffected Ethnic Groups into the Security Forces.

In both cases studied, the insurgency was concentrated within one

highly disaffected ethnic group. In both cases, most government and
security force leaders commonly viewed the whole of the disaffected
ethnic group as “the enemy” and were reluctant to recruit security
forces from among the disaffected groups, preferring to rely on the
“trusted” ethnic groups. In both cases, this approach alienated any
moderate or pro-government sentiment within the disaffected ethnic
population.
In Malaya, Templer and Young understood that such an attitude
was counterproductive in the long term. Against considerable
resistance from the Malay-dominated state governments and from
within the British police leadership, Templer and Young made a
concerted effort to reach out to elements of the Chinese population,
personally consulting with Chinese associations and business groups
to drum up Chinese recruits for the Malay Police and army. Both
set goals for recruiting ethnic Chinese into the police and military.
Against the protests of the Malayan State governments, Templer
insisted on setting up a large number of Chinese home guard units
as a means of giving trusted elements of the Chinese population a

45

stake in their own security. The effort to recruit Chinese into the
Malayan security forces paid off handsomely in both the short and
long term. In the short term, the hostility of the Chinese community
towards the Malay-dominated government was reduced, and this
helped defeat the insurgency. In the long term, the Malayan Police
came to be seen as an arm of the government that was above race
and ethnicity as it was transformed from a virtually all-Malay force
into a relatively well-integrated force. During urban race riots in the
1960s, the impartial approach of the Malaysian Police and its good
relationship with the population made a big difference in quelling
trouble with minimal violence.105
In Cyprus, Harding’s employment of untrained, poorly disciplined
Turkish police auxiliaries against the Greeks, coupled with the threat
of Turkish mobs unrestrained by the police, forced the whole Greek
community to unite against the British. Even the most moderate Greek
Cypriots came to see EOKA as the only defense against an abusive
police force. The British solution of employing indigenous security
forces from a hostile ethnic group proved counterproductive.
The British had a window of opportunity at the start of the
insurgency in Cyprus to address the valid complaints of police
pay and working conditions presented by the then mostly Greek
police force. By swift action and a program to improve the lot of
the policemen, the British government likely would have retained
the loyalty of many of the Greek police. A more “Greek face” on
the police force would have certainly lessened the tensions between
the British and Greek community and forestalled many of the later
police abuses that undermined the British policy.
The ethnic problems at the core of the Malaya and Cyprus conflicts
are clearly relevant to current U.S. counterinsurgency dilemmas.
Most insurgencies the United States and its allies face today have a
strong ethnic component (Iraq, Philippines, Afghanistan) and, given
the tensions in developing nations today, this will certainly be a
central issue in future insurgencies. U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine
needs to stress the requirement of seeking out moderate groups and
factions within hostile, or potentially hostile, ethnic groups, and
ensure that places are found within all branches of the military and
security forces for their recruits. Moreover, the U.S. military should

46

be willing to use its aid and support programs as a lever to ensure

that appropriate leadership positions in the security forces are given
to members of disaffected ethnic groups and withhold aid if host
nation governments refuse to cooperate. We can expect that policies
to incorporate disaffected ethnic groups into the military and police
forces will become a major issue of contention and will be resisted by
most host nation governments. However, despite the friction it will
engender, furthering the inclusion of all major ethnic groups of a
country in the security forces is worth the short-term political price.
Even moderate success in recruiting from disaffected ethnic groups
provides an enormous payoff in terms of building the image of
legitimacy of the security forces and in quieting the often legitimate
fears of such ethnic groups per their relationship with the national
government.

The Use of Home Guards in Counterinsurgency.

The Malayan Campaign illustrates the important role irregular,

part-time security forces can play in supporting the government
campaign. In Malaya, over 200,000 villagers eventually were enrolled
and organized into home guard units that served primarily to guard
the villages at night. The home guards, with only basic arms and
minimal equipment, were very useful in freeing up a large number
of regular police and military personnel from basic security and
guard duties, which enabled the better-trained and equipped forces
to concentrate on the complex operational tasks.
The Malaya case study provides a useful model for employing
militia and other irregular forces in counterinsurgency. Templer
took an eclectic mix of loosely-organized local forces and quietly
instituted some centralized control and supervision. He brought in
a team of experienced officers and set up a district and state home
guard organization with a small training center in each state. The
central home guard command issued doctrine, provided training
guidance, and set standards. The state and district commands
ensured that some rudimentary training was provided, and that
local commands performed to standard. The efficiency of the home
guards was improved without sacrificing their local character.

47

 One of the reasons the home guard program worked in Malaya

was that the British did not demand too much from part-time forces
with minimal training. The home guards were responsible for only
the most basic duties, usually guarding the villages at night, or
providing point security for mines and plantations. With additional
training, some of the best home guards were able to provide
supporting manpower for police patrols and operations. However,
at no time were the home guards given a lead role in operations or
assigned complex tasks.
When a nation is faced with instability and disorder, there is an
inevitable response for local citizens to establish militias and irregular
forces for their own security. It is politically unwise, perhaps even
impossible, for any national government to ignore the issue of local
militias, which are based on the natural desire for local security. The
issue is, therefore, controlling and managing the process. General
Templer’s program to organize the local home guards offers a good
doctrinal model for controlling the process and providing a useful
outlet for local groups to participate in their own security.

ENDNOTES

1. There is relatively little written about the subject of police and

counterinsurgency. On the British use of police, there are several important works,
including David Anderson and David Killingray, eds., Policing and Decolonisation:
Politics, Nationalism and the Police, 1917-1965, Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 1992. For an overview of the Malayan Police during the insurgency, see
Government of Malaya, The Federation of Malaya and its Police, Kuala Lumpur:
Government of Malaya, December 1952.
2. On the Malayan population and ethnic groups, see Lucian Pye, Guerrilla
Communism in Malaya: Its Social and Political Meaning, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1956, pp. 12-13; T. H. Silcock and E. K. Fisk, The Political Economy
of Independent Malaya, Berkeley: University Of California Press, 1963, pp. 16-17.
3. In 1948 the Gurkha battalions in Malaya had an average of only 300 men. On
Gurkha training and readiness in 1948, see Raffi Gregorian, The British Army, the
Gurkhas and Cold War Strategy in the Far East 1947-1954, Hampshire: Palgrave, 2002,
pp. 46-50, 61. The poor state of training of the Gurkha units early in the campaign
is documented in J. P. Cross and Buddhiman Gurung, Gurkhas at War, London:
Greenhill Books, 2002, pp. 190-191, 201, 203,209.
4. Gregorian, p. 56.

48
 5. Anderson and Killingray, pp. 2-5. For details on police training and
organization in the British Empire in the 1940s and 1950s, see Sir Charles Jeffries,
The Colonial Police, London: Max Parrish, 1952.
6. British Documents on the End of Empire, Series B, Vol. 3, Malaya, Part 2. A. J.
Stockwell, ed., London: HMSO, 1995, Doc. CAB 129/48, “Malaya Cabinet Memo
by Mr. Lyttelton” (Secretary for the Colonies), November 20, 1951, pp. 318-348.
7. An account of this era comes from Derek Franklin, a young man of middle
class background in 1953. After his 2 years of national service in the army, he
joined the Kenya Police during the Mau Mau rebellion when police officers were
needed urgently. He received only a few weeks of training in the local language and
conditions before being assigned to command a Kenya Police unit. His experience
was fairly typical of the era. Franklin went on to serve in three other colonial police
forces. See Derek Franklin, A Pied Cloak: Memoirs of a Colonial Police Officer, London:
Janus, 1996.
8. In 1949-50, the Singapore Police reported that there was no coordinated
system of training police personnel after they left basic training at the police
depot. Young Papers, “Report of the Police Mission to Malaya,” March 1950;
and “Singapore Police Force Organization,” June 1949, Rhodes House, Oxford
University.
9. Young Papers, “Memo by Creech Jones on UK financial assistance to
Malaya,” June 8, 1949, pp. 102-114.
10. A typical example of British operations in the early period was the
North Malay Sub-District in which large unit operations in the second quarter
of 1949 yielded one enemy kill and no captures or surrenders. See John A. Nagl,
Counterinsurgency Lessons From Malaya and Vietnam: Learning to Eat Soup with a
Knife, Westport: Praeger, 2002, p. 78.
11. Major Scott McMichael, A Historical Perspective on Light Infantry,
Leavenworth: U.S. Army Combat Studies Institute, Research Survey No. 6, 1987,
p. 125. See also Gregorian, pp. 61.
12. The difference in training between the early and later stages of the
insurgency is dramatic. Later in the insurgency, whole units were put through the
course. When the 1st Battalion Royal Australian Regiment arrived in 1959, every
company went through the full 1-month course. See Peter Denis and Jeffrey Grey,
Emergency and Confrontation: Australian Military Operations in Malaya and Borneo
1950-1966, St. Leonards, Australia: Allen and Unwin, 1996, pp. 151-152. A good
description of the Jungle Warfare Centre curriculum is found in Richard Miers,
Shoot to Kill, London: Faber and Faber, 1959, pp. 30-35.
13. Anthony Short, The Communist Insurrection in Malaya 1948-1960, London:
Frederick Muller, 1975, p. 138. In some units, there was an informal training course
in jungle warfare taught by Burma veterans. For a description of one such training
program, see Arthur Campbell, Jungle Green, Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1953,
pp. 10-24.

49

 14. Government Report, “Malaya: A Review of Development in 1952, Part I,” MS

British Empire, 486, 3/1. Rhodes House, Oxford University.
15. The Malayan Security Service was a small group but could at least
function as the nucleus of an expanded intelligence service. By the start of the
insurgency, the Malayan Security Service had complied brief dossiers on leading
Chinese communists and other political figures. The Malayan Security Service also
translated captured communist documents and manuals. Some of the records of
the Malayan Security Service are found in the Rhodes House Centre for Imperial
and Commonwealth History at Oxford University. See MS Ind. Ocean S 254
Report: “Threat of Communism in Malaya and Singapore,” June 26, 1947; and MS
Ind. Ocean S251/1948, “Malayan Security Service Supplement Number 10,” 1948,
Rhodes House, Oxford University.
16. Richard Clutterbuck, Riot and Revolution in Singapore and Malaya 1945-1963,
London: Faber and Faber, 1973, pp 178-179.
17. A. J. Stockwell, “Policing during the Malayan Emergency, 1948-60:
Communism, Communalism and Decolonization,” Policing and Decolonisation:
Politics, Nationalism and the Police, 1917-65, David Anderson and David Killingray,
eds., Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992, pp. 105-125, particularly p.
107.
18. “The Situation in Malaya,” Cabinet Memo by Oliver Lyttelton, November
20, 1951, CAB 129/48, British Documents on the end of Empire, A. J. Stockwell, ed.,
Series B, Vol. 3, Malaya, Part II, London: HMSO, 1995, pp. 310-347.
19. Karl Hack, Defence and Decolonisation in Southeast Asia: Britain, Malaya and
Singapore 1941-1968, Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2001, pp. 110-111.
20. Gregorian, pp. 63-64.
21. A good description of the home guards system is found in John McCuen,
The Art of Counter-Revolutionary Warfare, London Faber and Faber, 1966, pp. 159-
160.
22. John Scurr, The Malayan Campaign 1948-60, London: Osprey, 1986, p. 22.
23. John Newsinger, British Counterinsurgency from Palestine to Northern Ireland,
London: Palgrave, 2002, p. 48.
24. Richard Stubbs, Hearts and Minds in Guerrilla Warfare; The Malayan Emergency
1948-1960, Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 72-73.
25. Report of the Police Commission to Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, March 1950,
Papers of Sir Arthur Young, Rhodes House, Oxford University. On the negative
perception of the police by the public, see Hack, p. 127.
26. On the Brigg’s Plan, see Victor Purcell, Malaya: Communist or Free, Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1954, p. 65.
27. See footnote 2, British Documents on the End of Empire. Malaya Part 2. CAB
Papers 129/48.

50

 28. Ibid. British Defence Coordination Committee, November 15, 1951, CAB
Papers, pp. 310-315.
29. Templer had a good background to lead a counterinsurgency campaign.
He served in Palestine during the 1930s revolt, served as a division and corps
commander in World War II, and then as director of the British military government
in Germany. Few in the British military had a similar civil/military background.
On Templer’s background, see John Cloake, Templer: Tiger of Malaya, London:
Harrap, 1985.
30. Sir Arthur Young, “Malaya 1952: Narrative Report, 1967,” Young Papers,
Rhodes House, Oxford University.
31. Letter, Sir Arthur Young to Hugh Fraser, Officer Administering the
Government, Kuala Lumpur, December 22, 1951, Sir Arthur Young Papers, Rhodes
House, Oxford University, MS Brit. Emp. S.486.
32. Cloake, p. 234.
33. Government Report, “Malaya: A Review of Development in 1952, Part I” MS
British Empire 48, 3/1, Rhodes House, Oxford University, pp. 25, 31-32.
34. Ibid. pp. 32-34.
35. Cloake, p. 246.
36. Ibid., p. 247.
37. Young, “Malaya 1952: Narrative Report.”
38. Purcell, pp. 212-213.
39. Hack, p. 127.
40.Young, “Malaya 1952: Narrative Report.”

41. Cloake, pp. 234-235.

42. Government Report, “Malaya: A Review of Development in 1952, Part I,
MS Brit Emp. 486, 3/1, Rhodes House, Oxford University, p. 34.
43. Nagl, p. 92.
44. Sir Arthur Young, “A Review of Development in 1952, Part I,” Circa late
1952, Young Papers, Rhodes House, Oxford University, MS Brit Emp. 486 3/1. p.
32.
45. Coates p. 43.
46. Purcell, pp. 229-230.
47. Gregorian, pp 171-172.
48. Gregorian, p. 172.
49. Purcell, p. 255.
50. Stockwell, pp. 114-117.
51. Cloake, pp. 249-250.

51
 52. “The Emergency in Malaya,” Army Quarterly, April 1954, pp. 46-65.
53. Coates, pp. 120-121.
54. Clutterbuck, pp. 179-180.
55. Nagl, p. 93.
56. Good overviews of Britain’s relationship with Cyprus and the origins of the
insurgency are found in Robert Holland, Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus 1954-1959,
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. For a good general history of the insurgency, see
Nancy Cranshaw, The Cyprus Revolt, London: Allen and Unwin, 1978; and Charles
Foley and W. I. Scobie, The Struggle for Cyprus, Stanford: Hoover Institution Press,
1975.
57. Leontios Ierodiakonou, The Cyprus Question, Stockholm: Almquist and
Wiksell, 1971, p. 21.
58. Holland, p. 32; Ierodiakonou, pp. 21-22.
59. In 1954, Colonial Minister Henry Hopkinson declared in Parliament that
Britain would never agree to self-determination for the people of Cyprus. Robert
Holland, “Never, Never Land: British Colonial Policy in and the Roots of Violence
in Cyprus, 1950-54,” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Vol. XXI,
No. 3, September 1993, pp. 148-175, especially pp. 148, 153,154.
60. George Grivas, Guerrilla Warfare, Athens: Longmans, 1964, pp. 5-10.
61. Ibid.
62. Ibid.
63. David Anderson, “Policing and Communal Conflict: The Cyprus Emer-
gency 1954-1960,” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, September
1993, pp. 177-207, especially pp. 182-183.
64. Cyprus Police Commission Report, March 1956, Doc. NA 378, Rhodes House,
Oxford University, para 114.
65. Ibid.
66. Cyprus Police Commission Report, para 9.
67. Ibid., para 10.
68. Anderson, “Policing and Communal Conflict,” p. 182.
69. Ibid., para 29.
70. For a good view of the campaign from the insurgent viewpoint, see The
Memoirs of General Grivas, Charles Foley, ed., London: Longmans, 1964. Grivas
provides considerable detail on how he subverted the police force. On the
infiltration of the police, see Anderson, “Policing and Communal Conflict,” pp.
184-185; Foley and Scobie, pp. 104-105.
71. Holland, Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus, p. 60.
72. Anderson, “Policing and Communal Conflict,” p. 185.

52
 73. Cyprus Police Commission Report, para 74.
74. Anderson, p. 191.
75. Holland, Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus, p. 80.
76. Ibid p. 100.
77. Ibid p. 60.
78. Anderson, p. 190.
79. Anderson, pp. 194-197.
80. Anderson, p. 196.
81. Ibid., p. 187.
82. Cyprus Police Commission Report, para 197.
83. Ibid., paras 198-200.
84. Anderson, p. 190.
85. Cyprus Police Commission Report, paras 117, 136, 138.
86. Ibid., paras 140, 149.
87. Ibid., paras 103-106.
88. Cranshaw, p. 153.
89. Holland, Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus, p. 101.
90. Anderson, p. 193.
91. Ibid.
92. John Newsinger, pp. 97, 101; Charles Allen, The Savage Wars of Peace,
London: Michael Joseph, 1990, pp. 148-149; Charles Foley, Island in Revolt, London:
Longmans, 1962, pp. 130-132.
93. Foley, p. 132.
94. David Anderson, “Policing and Communal Conflict: The Cyprus
Emergency, 1954-60,” Policing and Decolonisation. Politics, Nationalism and the Police,
1917-65, David Anderson and David Killingray, eds., Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1992 pp. 187-217, particularly p. 204.
95. Thomas Ehrlich, International Crises and the Role of Law: Cyprus 1958-1967,
Oxford University Press, 1974, pp. 16-17.
96. Foley, p. 219.
97. Ibid., pp. 140-141.
98. Holland, p. 210.
99. Purcell, pp. 93-94. As Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Harding irritated
Templer in May 1953 with a premature announcement of success in Malaya,
“Thanks to General Templer’s inspired leadership the battle against the terrorists
was nearly won.” Purcell, pp. 93-94.

53

 100. Several major studies published before the war and immediately after the
fall of Baghdad assessed the Iraqi police as thoroughly corrupt and inefficient. See
The Fund for Peace, Iraq as a Failed State, Report #1, September 2003, p. 15. See also
U.S. Institute for Peace, Establishing the Rule of Law in Iraq, April 2003, at http://www.
U.S.ip.org/pubs/special reports/sr104.html. Other articles and reports have noted the
problems of poor leadership in the Iraqi Police. See Tom Squitieri, “Long Way to
go Before Iraqis Take Over Security,” USA Today, December 14, 2004. When the
police in Mosul came under attack in November 2004, three-fourths of the 4,000-
member force ran away. Most of the ICDC battalion in Mosul also ran, but not
before looting their base of weapons and equipment. For a mid-2005 assessment,
see also Eric Schmitt, “Iraqis Not Ready to Fight Rebels on Their Own, U.S. Says,”
New York Times, July 21, 2005.
101. U.S. Army FM 3-07.22 Counterinsurgency, p. 3.5. One mission of the
military police is to set up a host nation police academy.
102. Christine Spoler, “Iraqi Soldiers Deserting New Army,” Chicago Tribune,
December 9, 2003. See Mark Bowden, “When Officers Aren’t Gentlemen . . .,” Wall
Street Journal, February 8, 2005, p. A-18; Eric Schmitt, “U.S. May Add Advisors to
Aid Iraq’s Military,” New York Times, January 4, 2005; Eric Schmitt, “Iraqis Not
Ready to Fight Rebels on Their Own, U.S. Says,” New York Times, July 21, 2005.
103. In the 2004-05 academic year, only one Iraqi officer attended the U.S. Army
Command and General Staff course at Ft. Leavenworth. In the 2005-06 academic
year, there is again just one Iraqi officer. In December 2004, there were only two
Iraqi officers at the U.S. Army Infantry Officers Advanced course.
104. Templer’s 1952 proposals to build an adequate Malayan Army required
an extra British grant of 8 million pounds for 1953-54. See John Coates, Suppressing
Insurgency: An Analysis of the Malayan Emergency, 1948-1954, Boulder: Westview
Press, 1992, pp. 121-122.
105. Ibid.

54