A Weblog of Centrist Voices in American Politics
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A Weblog of Centrist Voices in American Politics | |
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January 04, 2006Malaya, The Model?A commenter, Bobby, has a very good post on his blog looking into a couple recent articles on counterinsurgency strategy, one of which looks at the example of the successful British counterinsurgency in Malaya. From what I know of Malaya based on an ethnically Chinese friend from Malaysia, one of the reasons the Communist insurgency failed is that is was primarily based in the ethnic Chinese community, which was a minority. The British were able to divide and conquer, win the "hearts and minds" of the majority ethnic Malay Muslim population, and crush the Chinese revolt. If we were to emulate the same policy in Iraq, we would stoke the divisions between Sunni and Shia, and invest all power in the Shiites to crush the Sunnis. I think our policy does lean in this direction, though perhaps not as nakedly as with the British in Malaya. In contrast, in Vietnam, we were allied to the numerical minority of Catholic converts like Diem, and alienated from the Buddhists. This did not work in our favor. Posted by rickheller at January 4, 2006 12:15 PMComments
Before we start holding up Malaya as a model, you should understand that some observers believe that the British model involved much represssion and the killing of many Malay civilians. I haven't read Bobby's article yet, but I wouldn't be so quick to start celebrating the British success there. Posted by: Marc at January 4, 2006 02:22 PMI'm not celebrating it, but trying to understand it. I do think the author of the New Republic article is way over-the-top in condemning modern Malaysia as a failure, when it's one of the most economically successful of the Muslim states that isn't an oil sheikdom, and for all its faults, it does have a relatively liberal society compared to other Muslim states. The Malaya counterinsurgency was a recent memory during the Vietnam era, but it could not be reproduced in Vietnam. I'm suggesting that was because it relied on ethnic differences that were not reproducible in Vietnam. But I do think it's useless to talk about the "hearts and minds" of Iraqis. We should be talking abou the "hearts and minds" of the individual communities that make up Iraq, since the country is so diverse. Posted by: rickheller at January 4, 2006 02:55 PM |
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