A quick look at a lengthy war

During the Japanese occupation of Malaya in WW2, Great Britain and, to a lesser degree, the US had been training and supplying guerillas in order to keep the Japanese off-balance in the region.

After the war, as a part of an attempt at Communist insurrection, many of these former allies turned against the government of the newly established Federation of Malaya. This federation, ran by a British high commissioner, rapidly became the target of sabotage and subversive action. At the same time, many of the Chinese backed (and largely ethnic Chinese) guerilla bands began disrupting village life in many jungle villages and conducting hit-and-run warfare against army outposts, police stations and other government installations. A state of emergency was declared, and Malay and British forces began striking back.

By 1949, an active campaign was initiated and many Communist Terrorists (AKA CT's) were either killed or captured.

Through 1950, the British pacification plan seemed to be working, but by 1951 the terrorists incidents were on the rise again, this time concentrating on terrorizing farmers, burning plantations and assassinating people sympathetic to the British.

Under the leadership of Sir Gerald Templer, the new High Commissioner for Malaya, British forces stepped up efforts to contain the terrorists to remote jungle locations. This was done via a strict food and supply denial program, during which many raids were executed by British forces into these jungle hide-outs to destroy supplies, kill or capture terrorists and generall take the fight to the enemy.

These actions eventually caused many terrorists to surrender, die fighting or starve. As a direct result of this, the Communist command cadre actually moved to Sumatra to avoid capture, making their communications to their units harder then ever before.

In 1955 an amnesty was offered to surrendering terrorists. During this amnesty period, the Communists lost large numbers of fighters to this easy "out", and only a bitter-ender group of but a few hundred continued to fight on in the jungles along the Malay-Thai border until 1960, when the last of them were either captured or killed.