ADVANCING 

STRATEGIC THOUGHT 

SERIES

Puncturing the 

Counterinsurgency 

Myth: Britain and 

Irregular Warfare in 

the Past, Present, 

and Future 

 Andrew Mumford

U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE

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Advancing Strategic Thought Series

PUNCTURING THE 

COUNTERINSURGENCY MYTH:

BRITAIN AND IRREGULAR WARFARE

IN THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE

Andrew Mumford

September 2011

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ISBN 1-58487-509-7
iii

FOREWORD

The British “way” of counterinsurgency warfighting has often been held up by academics and military 

practitioners alike as a model worthy of replication by 

other national militaries, including the United States. 

In this insightful and provocative monograph, Dr. 

Andrew Mumford posits that the popular perception 

of British counterinsurgency efficacy from Malaya 

onwards has certainly not been supported by the historical record of consistent tactical errors in the early 

phases of campaigns and long-term strategic obfuscation. Mumford takes the body of experience accumulated by the British in the past 60 years and uses it as 

a rich empirical base from which to rethink issues of 

immense strategic salience, such as the state of counterinsurgency education in the British military system; the utility of a “hearts and minds” strategy; and 

the nature of coalition-based irregular warfare. Sluggish British military lesson-learning, as seen through 

Mumford’s “10 myths of British counterinsurgency,” 

provides today’s strategists the opportunity to understand the value of lesson transferral and the problems 

of strategic inertia. 

From the standpoint of the questionable British 

performance in Iraq, this monograph fundamentally 

assesses the arguable myth that surrounds British 

competency at counterinsurgency warfare, hopefully 

sparking a debate about the “mythology” of recent 

British counterinsurgency warfighting.

 DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.

 Director

 Strategic Studies Institute 

v

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ANDREW MUMFORD will be Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of 

Nottingham, United Kingdom, beginning in September 2011. He is convenor of the British International 

Studies Association’s (BISA) Insurgencies and Small 

Wars working group. Dr. Mumford is the author of 

The Counter-Insurgency Myth: The British Experience of 

Irregular War (2011) and co-editor of International Law, 

Security and Ethics: Policy Challenges in the Post-9/11 

World (2011). He is Reviews Editor of the journal Civil 

Wars and has previously been a Research Fellow at 

the International Center for the Study of Terrorism at 

Pennsylvania State University.

vii

SUMMARY

Britain’s numerous counterinsurgency campaigns 

in the post-World War II era have resulted in a generally accepted academic assessment that this volume of 

experience equates to competence in the realm of irregular warfare. However, the British response to the 

complexities of 21st century insurgencies, particularly 

in their decentralized and globally networked form, 

has threatened to expose this competency as a colonial-era myth. Quantity of counterinsurgency combat 

experience has not equated to outright quality. 

We cannot understand the British process of relearning counterinsurgency since the beginning of the 

War on Terror unless certain axiomatic elements are 

first exposed. This monograph sets forth 10 myths of 

British counterinsurgency performance and learning. 

First among these is the allegation that the British have 

always been fast learners. However, the early phases 

of nearly every campaign in the classical era were 

marred by stagnancy, mismanagement, and confusion. Indeed, this trend reveals a second painful myth 

regarding British counterinsurgency conduct, namely, the alleged British perceptivity in COIN strategic 

planning. The preponderance of template solutions, 

however, arguably stemming from the over-hyped 

Malaya blueprint, has contributed to a process of biased selectivity when it comes to imbibing doctrine 

and disseminating a lesson-learning program. Simply, 

Mumford concludes on the basis of such myths as the 

two above that the British scorecard in counterinsurgency campaigns is not as impressive as recent credulous historiography would have us believe.

1

PUNCTURING THE 

COUNTERINSURGENCY MYTH:

BRITAIN AND IRREGULAR WARFARE

IN THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE

INTRODUCTION

Britain’s irregular warfare experience in the postWorld War II era presented the military with numerous insurgent challenges where the casus belli ranged 

from communism (in Malaya), to tribal supremacist 

land struggles (in Kenya), to socialist-inspired nationalism (in Yemen), to the nationalist fight for an alternative union (in Northern Ireland). It was generally 

accepted that, as the War on Terror morphed into a 

protracted counterinsurgency (COIN) campaign, the 

large volume of British irregular warfare experience 

has equated to competence in COIN operations. Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster’s (in)famous Military Review

article in 2005, which admonished American thinking 

and performance in Iraq, encapsulated the entrenched 

British mindset of superiority when it came to COIN.1

“Take a leaf out of our book,” Aylwin-Foster seemed 

to imply, “as we know best.” 

However, the British response to the complexities 

of 21st century insurgencies, in its decentralized and 

globally networked form, has exposed this competency as a colonial-era myth. Quantity of COIN combat 

experience has not equated to outright quality. This 

author holds that conventional academic and military 

perceptions of British performance in the realm of irregular warfare are highly suspect. This study sets 

forth 10 myths regarding British COIN performance, 

and then seeks to invalidate them by critically assess-
2

ing the efficacy of the British “way” of COIN, from the 

much-vaunted, yet over-hyped Malayan Emergency 

through the withdrawal of British combat troops from 

Iraq in 2009.

MYTH #1: THE BRITISH MILITARY IS AN 

EFFECTIVE LEARNING INSTITUTION

According to John Nagl, the British succeeded in 

Malaya—in contrast to the American failure in Vietnam—because the British army had an organizational 

culture akin to a so-called “learning institution,” 

whereby the army quickly adapted to COIN conditions and changed tactics accordingly.2

 The array of 

operational activity, ranging from limited to total war, 

that the British army has experienced has arguably 

led to a greater degree of pragmatism in its military 

outlook. A dogmatic adherence to rigid military doctrine has been absent, which, when compared to the 

generation-long postmortem on the failure of U.S. 

strategy in Vietnam, perhaps explains more than most 

other factors why an almost mythic reputation has descended upon the British. However, this does not explain, nor should it obscure, the languid application of 

appropriate irregular warfare tactics and the absence 

of swift strategic design. When it comes to COIN, the 

British are slow learners. 

The early phases of nearly every campaign in the 

classical era were marred by stagnancy, mismanagement, and confusion. The military was 2 years into the 

Malayan Emergency before it conceived of a cohesive 

civil-military strategy in the form of the Briggs Plan. 

The crucial early years of the troubles in Northern Ireland were marked by displays of indiscriminate force 

and an inability to modulate the response.3

 The Direc-
3

tor of the United Kingdom (UK) Defence Academy 

also concedes that, in relation to Northern Ireland, 

“[I]t is easy in the light of the later success . . . to forget the early mistakes and the time it took to rectify 

them.”4

 As Lieutenant General Sir John Kiszely rightly 

observes, the Malayan Emergency was, “a much lauded counterinsurgency campaign, but often overlooked 

is the fact that in the early years . . . the British Army 

achieved very little success.” In COIN terms, therefore, 

the British have been consistently slow to implement 

an effective strategy and achieve operational success. 

Moreover, the vast body of campaign experience has 

not translated into a cogent COIN lesson-learning 

process within the British military. The very need to 

re-learn COIN in the post-September 11, 2001 (9/11) 

conflict environment has undermined assertions as to 

the British military’s being an effective learning institution. Such amnesia has created an imperative for the 

armed forces now to hone their lesson-learning abilities while simultaneously adapting to the intricate 

challenges of sub-state and transnational post-Maoist 

insurgent violence in the third millennium.

MYTH #2: BRITISH CIVIL-MILITARY COIN 

PLANNING IS STRATEGICALLY PERCEPTIVE

This myth points to a painful element of British 

COIN conduct, namely, the short-circuiting of context. The preference for template solutions, arguably 

stemming from the Malaya blueprint (or Templer solutions, as they should perhaps be known; more on 

this later), has contributed to a process of tendentious 

selectivity when it comes to interpreting doctrine and 

disseminating a lesson-learning program. As far back 

as when the first pieces of Emergency Legislation 
4

emerged in 1948, the campaign in Malaya proved that 

some things had not changed in the way Britain dealt 

with threats to its national security interests. Detention without trial, the forced relocation of elements of 

the local populace, and controversies surrounding excessive use of force, have a long heritage. It is essential 

to put contemporary debates surrounding these issues 

in their historical context in order to observe the historically derivative nature of British strategic design 

vis-à-vis COIN.

What is clear is that understanding the mercurial 

and complex nature of contemporary transnational 

jihadi insurgency does not lend itself to any facile 

template. Jihadist soldiers are not mere replicas of the 

more geographically bounded, communist-inspired 

Cold War enemy. Insight into the context of a conflict’s origins and the insurgents’ motivations is essential if both the psychological and the martial aspects 

of COIN operations are to be effective and nuanced. 

Again, this blindspot has marred British strategic 

perceptions. Political posturing in the wake of the 

withdrawal from Iraq has masked the COIN failings, 

which only serves to stifle meaningful reflection upon 

the state of strategic planning for the war. Such a lack 

has led to severe strains in UK civil-military relations 

on the subject of COIN. With the use of a single civilmilitary commander now increasingly anachronistic 

(indeed, they were the exception and not the rule in 

the British experience), there is an imperative for clear 

lines of communication and access of commanders 

on the ground to the highest echelons of government 

(both back home and within the host nation) if future 

COIN strategy is to be effectively executed. This concept is increasingly important in the present era of 

globalized post-Maoist insurgency.
5

MYTH #3: THE BRITISH MILITARY HAS 

FLEXIBLY ADAPTED TO THE DEMANDS 

OF COIN

As Theo Farrell has observed, the process of British military transformation to gain facility in networkcentric warfare and to satisfy the demands of contemporary strategy is conditioned by resource constraints, 

domestic politics, and military culture.5 However, 

none of these three elements is conducive to quick 

adaptation in the British case. The military culture of 

the British Army is essential to the success of COIN 

lesson-learning, especially given the inherent aversion 

of the army to formalized doctrine. Pragmatic flexibility on a campaign-by-campaign basis has necessarily 

been evident given the absence of codified strategic 

guidance (the recent exception to this was the publication in October 2009 of the British Army Field Manual, 

Vol. 1 Pt. 10, Countering Insurgency).6 Essentially, COIN 

lesson-learning for the British has been an ad hoc process, not historically continuous. The transmission of 

lessons, particularly during the late colonial era, occurred in large part due to the deployment of personnel who brought with them residual notions of the best 

operational practices, based upon previous COIN experiences—often outdated or inappropriate—in other 

theaters. This reliance on the transfer of COIN lessons 

from dated personal experience, especially among senior officers (for example, Captain [later General Sir] 

Frank Kitson from Kenya to Northern Ireland) was 

encouraged, if not necessitated, by the lack of an authoritative doctrinal underpinning.7

Yet, in the technologically-fixated, nuclear-armed 

mindset that dominated Cold War military thinking, 
6

COIN was not deemed an appropriate or even relevant form of warfare requiring significant thought 

or adequate training. Despite the army’s plethora of 

combat experience in low-intensity scenarios, COIN 

fell to the bottom of the British strategic pile. Still, this 

only partially explains the relative ambivalence with 

which the British military has adapted to COIN in 

the “Long” War on Terror. A fear exists in Western 

military circles that the current emphasis on COIN is 

a temporary fad and that an undue focus on low-intensity and peace support operations undermines the 

ability to conduct potential future conventional wars.8

Despite these concerns, however, there is a discernible 

need to adapt to the utility of a dual-use force. Preparing for COIN operations can still be achieved with 

a degree of flexibility that does not ignore traditional 

high intensity warfare training. 

MYTH #4: THE BRITISH MILITARY HAS AN 

INGRAINED EDUCATIONAL APPROACH TO 

COIN

There is a basic, indeed inescapable, reality that 

COIN is inherently difficult to learn. It is a unique form 

of warfare, posing its own complex strategic problems and requiring challenging tactical adaptation. 

This is a hurdle not unique to the British Army, as the 

American, French, Russian, and Israeli militaries have 

attested. Consequently, a reliance on training maneuvers is rendered largely irrelevant. COIN requires a 

much higher degree of education within the military 

as to the distinctive threat posed by this form of conflict. This education must engender a heightened level 

of historical consciousness pertaining to past strategic and tactical successes and failures in COIN, and 

it must increase understanding of the contemporary 

insurgent threat. 
7

Although progress has been made over the past 

decade and despite the seeming ubiquity of COIN-related courses at the staff colleges, there is some indication that the British military still has a way to go before 

COIN becomes an ingrained element of armed forces 

learning. A 2009 study sample of 114 officers at the 

Joint Services Command and Staff College revealed 

that more than two-thirds “had no knowledge of fundamental COIN principles.” The study concluded that 

there was “a lack of general awareness amongst junior 

officers of military doctrine underpinning the types 

of operations being routinely conducted in Afghanistan.”9

 It must be noted, however, that the military 

cannot learn COIN without first understanding the 

nature of insurgency itself. This is a time-consuming 

process, requiring as much emphasis on nonkinetic 

elements such as cultural learning as it does on the 

kinetic training itself. This demands of military commanders a set of characteristics and leadership skills 

different than regular warfare, fostering the imperatives of cultural sensitivity and emotional intelligence 

as key tools in the contemporary COIN toolbox. The 

relative absence of these qualities within the British 

armed forces perhaps explains the next myth, regarding British performance in Iraq.

MYTH #5: IRAQ REPRESENTED THE ZENITH 

OF 60 YEARS WORTH OF MODERN COIN 

LEARNING

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki removed British troops from the planning and execution of Operation CHARGE OF THE KNIGHTS in April 2008 to rid 

Basra, the epicenter of British-controlled Multi-National Division South-East, of the proliferating influ-
8

ence of the Mahdi Army militia of Shia cleric Muqtada 

al-Sadr. This insulting gesture epitomized the degeneration of faith in British COIN competency. In September 2007, keen to ensure a peaceful withdrawal to 

their Contingency Operating Base at Basra Airport, 

the British commanders had negotiated a deal with 

the insurgents: all British troops would withdraw 

from the city, and previously detained Mahdi Army 

members would be released. The fulfillment of both of 

these provisos understandably led to claims that the 

British bowed to insurgent demands, even if the result was a reduction in violence against British troops. 

Nouri al-Maliki’s furious reaction was thus to cut the 

British out of all responsibilities for restoring the security situation in this key southern city. British embarrassment was exacerbated by the relative success of 

the U.S.-Iraqi operation, Operation CHARGE OF THE 

KNIGHTS, in dampening the potency of the Mahdi 

Army in Basra.

Moreover, this operation encapsulated the frustrations that had been increasing even within the American military command at the performance of their 

British allies. In mid-2007, U.S. General Jack Keane, 

one of the architects of President Bush’s troop surge 

strategy, outspokenly criticized the British military 

performance in Basra, stating that he was “frustrated” 

by the “disengagement” of British troops.10 After the 

British had pulled back from Basra Palace to the airport in September 2007, a dejected senior U.S. intelligence official interpreted this action as “a British 

defeat in the south.”11 Thomas Ricks concurred, arguing that the withdrawal represented a remarkable 

turnaround for the British, who in the early phase of 

the insurgency “had felt rather superior to the clumsy 

Americans,” but who had now fallen “almost silent” 
9

since the Petraeus-implemented surge had radically 

reformed the situation in the American-occupied 

provinces.12 On this reversal of fortunes, Hilary Synnott, the leading British political coordinator in Iraq 

during the early phases of the insurgency, had warned 

that “extol[ing] the merits of the British approach” to 

countering insurgents in southern Iraq “implied that 

the British could manage such challenges better than 

the United States. . . .” Synnott also noted that praise 

for the British COIN effort in 2003-04 was an irritant 

to American military commanders, who “proved remarkably sensitive on this point.”13

Prominent within these debates lay the weight 

of the British historical experience. The lessons from 

Northern Ireland in particular were interpreted by 

the Americans and British alike as having great utility for the British military in Iraq, able as they were to 

rely upon decades of familiarity with unconventional 

warfighting. Optimistic constructions of a characteristic British way of COIN certainly shaped expectations 

not only of what the British military would achieve in 

Iraq. They also encouraged jaundiced perceptions of 

American military culture in the realm of asymmetric 

warfare.14 Such intra-alliance divisions between the 

British and the Americans over COIN in Iraq arguably traced their roots to the nature and balance of the 

coalition.15 A perception emerged among the British 

military that American suzerainty over the whole of 

Iraq, restricting the independent ability of the British 

to forge separate civil-military solutions in Multi-National Division (South-East) (MND(SE), prevented the 

unfettered application of a distinctly British Way. As 

a consequence of this coalition structure, one British 

army officer complained, “British military policy became confused and suffered as it sought to serve the 
10

Americans.”16 However, such an interpretation overlooks the fact that the insurgent campaign in Iraq was 

sui generis, totally alien to the British historical experience.

Moreover, the conflict environment, coalition organization, political restrictions, and the insurgents’ 

global links all ensured that the decades-old faith in 

British COIN competence would be brought into question. Although General David Petraeus felt compelled 

to state that “the significance of the United Kingdom’s 

contribution should not be underestimated,”17 his 

gesture is perhaps overly politic. At best, the British 

military achievements in Iraq did not match the expectations of 2003. Reduction of insurgent violence in 

Basra came initially at the price of ceding control of 

the city to the Mahdi Army, and was later achieved 

by the Coalition without major British military input. 

The British military mission in Iraq will hardly mark 

a glorious first chapter in the history of that nation’s 

21st century COIN campaigning.

MYTH #6: THE BRITISH CAN DO COIN ALONE

The bruising experience in Iraq has demonstrated 

that the British political establishment has no stomach 

for protracted irregular wars. The desire to undertake 

such missions in the future in company with others, 

let alone on a unilateral basis, has been further diminished by recession-induced reductions to the Ministry 

of Defence budget since the Iraq withdrawal. Militarily speaking, single state COIN campaigns are now of 

decreased relevance. Junior coalition partner status 

had become a strategic norm for Britain in the postCold War world, as demonstrated in the first Gulf 

War and again in Kosovo and Afghanistan. Yet Iraq 
11

presented an unprecedented strategic scenario for the 

British military inasmuch as it was the first time it had 

to operate as a junior partner in a COIN coalition.

Coalition-based campaigns are likely to be the 

norm for the foreseeable future, given the spatial and 

temporal freedom granted to an open-ended Islamist 

jihad and the shared conglomeration of threats from 

near and far enemies alike. Indeed, in his introduction to the British Defence Green Paper (February 2010), 

then-Defence Minister Bob Ainsworth openly declared 

the need for the British military to plan for long-term 

coalition commitments: “Increasing globalisation ties 

our security to that of our allies. . . . Therefore we must 

increase co-operation with our international partners 

to deliver defence more efficiently and effectively.”18

For these international partners, the real challenge to 

effective coalition functioning is internal political intractability on the part of all partners involved. There 

is a clear imperative to adopt appropriate government structures—domestically (through interagency 

cooperation), within the coalition itself; and within 

the host nation where operations are being conducted 

(via simultaneous programs of strengthening governance structures and economic and humanitarian assistance).

MYTH #7: THE BRITISH “DON’T TALK TO 

TERRORISTS”

Margaret Thatcher, in characteristically defiant 

mode, famously asserted that “we don’t talk to terrorists” when asked about the possibility of negotiations with the Irish Republican Army (IRA). This 

quip has given rise to the key myth that dialogue 

with insurgent opponents has had no role in British 
12

COIN practice. In fact, within 3 years of the outbreak 

of the Irish troubles in 1969, the British government 

had undertaken direct covert negotiations with the 

IRA, and sanctioned indirect talks via intermediaries 

with that organization. The first secret talks with the 

IRA came when Labour Party leader Harold Wilson, 

with the permission of Prime Minister Edward Heath, 

attended a meeting with the leadership of the Provisional IRA whilst on a visit in Dublin in March 1972. 

Yet perhaps the most meaningful secret contact came 

with the extraordinary meeting between six IRA leaders, who were helicoptered in by the Royal Air Force, 

and the Northern Ireland Secretary William Whitelaw 

in London on July 7, 1972. Consistent public claims 

that no talks were occurring belied a significant set 

of back-channel messages that had been exchanged 

between the British military and intelligence officials 

on one hand, and intermediaries and key IRA figures 

on the other. Ultimately, secret dialogue with the IRA 

leadership would establish itself as a hallmark of British political management during the bloody height of 

violence in the 1970s.

Yet secret negotiations were in no way unique to 

Northern Ireland. Rather, they were present throughout British COIN campaigns, having been conducted in 

previous colonial conflicts. In Malaya, for example, in 

December 1955, a back-channel message conduit was 

opened with the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) 

in the jungle-edge town of Baling on the Thai border. 

The MCP revealed that it wished to end its struggle 

with the granting of amnesty to the MCP as well as 

political legitimacy for the MCP’s program at the next 

election. Not surprisingly, the government delegation led by Chief Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman later 

dismissed these requests on the basis of back-channel 
13

information he had received from the British beforehand. As a consequence, negotiations disintegrated, 

and no deal was reached.19 Yet the conduct of this 

meeting in itself demonstrated a willingness to ensure 

a managed political end to the conflict, and reveals a 

historical legacy of the British opening a back-channel 

conduit with insurgents in efforts to attain a negotiated settlement. The Malayan initiative was, of course, 

long before the controversies surrounding the secret 

talks with the IRA in the 1970s and bargaining with 

the Mahdi Army in Basra in 2007.

MYTH #8: “HEARTS AND MINDS” AND 

“MINIMUM FORCE” ARE SACROSANCT 

ELEMENTS OF THE BRITISH WAY OF COIN

The center of gravity for COIN campaigns has habitually been the population of the country involved, 

ensuring that plans for any military assault upon the 

enemy are couched in terms of protecting the civilian 

population and preserving their trust. For this reason, 

the notion of minimum force has become integral to the 

theoretical construct of British COIN thinking. However, in practice the British have continuously deviated from such doctrine. A long-standing assumption 

that British COIN campaigns have traditionally rested 

on an effort to win civilian hearts and minds must be 

seen as a colonial-era myth, especially given the regularity with which insurgent suspects were brutally 

treated during periods of detention and interrogation.

The introduction of internment without trial for 

IRA suspects between 1971 and 1975 revealed a dark 

lineage to British COIN conduct. The ill-treatment at 

the hands of the British inside internment camps was 

typified by the so-called “five techniques” of interro-
14

gation by the security forces. These methods included 

wall-standing, hooding, continuous white noise, food 

denial, and sleep deprivation. Such techniques had 

been honed in colonial counterinsurgencies in previous decades, notably during the suppression of the 

Mau Mau insurgency in Kenya between 1952 and 

1960. This experience has become the focus of recent 

critical historiographical study exposing the regular 

practice of beatings, reprisals, and death sentences 

dealt to insurgents.20 Indeed, the five techniques were 

later codified in a 1965 report by the Joint Intelligence 

Committee, entitled “Joint Directive on Military Interrogation in Internal Security Operations Overseas,” 

which stated that a successful interrogation requires 

a psychological attack upon the prisoner.21 To this 

extent, an element of brutality towards prisoners, 

whether guilty or not, had been institutionalized in 

the British Army for a considerable time even before 

recent similar allegations in Iraq emerged. Widely 

publicized incidents in Iraq, such as the death in British custody of Basra hotel clerk Baha Mousa in 2003 

and the subsequent court-martial of the first-ever 

British soldier convicted of war crimes in relation to 

Mousa’s death, seriously undermined British efforts 

to ingratiate themselves with native Iraqis and their 

attempts to reinforce the perceived legitimacy of their 

occupation of southern Iraq.22

The implementation of torture during detention 

and interrogation in Northern Ireland left bitter legacies. The intelligence dividend was negligible, and the 

social and political backlash against the treatment of 

detainees proved to be a catalyst to greater violence. 

The rules proscribing the use of torture were not 

strictly observed during the occupation of Iraq, with 

the ill-treatment of detainees becoming an all-too-
15

frequent event. History has thus repeated itself in a 

brutal fashion; however, it has usefully served to expose the comfortable but false mantras regarding the 

sacrosanct nature of minimum force doctrine in British COIN practice. 

MYTH #9: THE MALAYAN EMERGENCY IS THE 

ARCHETYPAL COIN CAMPAIGN

The British response to the 1948-1960 Malayan 

Emergency is widely considered to be the first modern 

COIN and is often regarded by scholars and practitioners alike as the archetype of a successful operation.23

Yet we must question the notion of Malaya as an exemplar of COIN success. British victory must be judged 

in the context of the effects of several external factors, 

namely, the fortuitous economic dividend resulting 

from the Korean War (as Richard Stubbs quipped, 

“trying to organise a revolution is not easy in times 

of full employment”24); the misapplication of guerrilla 

warfare tactics by the MCP; and the utter absence of 

any MCP weapons, funding, or training from outside 

sources. A managed British political withdrawal, in 

the context of decolonization, was always an essential 

condition for ensuring indigenous compliance with 

the peace terms. A counterinsurgency campaign taking 12 years to eradicate an isolated insurgent group 

is not a glowing achievement and is hardly deserving 

of the academic salutations it has garnered. 

In 1948, the British army still appeared to have a 

World War II mindset in Malaya, relying on a conventional approach of large sweeps through the jungle 

that were detected long in advance by the guerrillas. 

The thick jungle of Malaya, which covered around 

80 percent of the entire country, rendered traditional 
16

army weaponry and tactics useless. The British air 

monopoly meant little until the Special Air Service 

began to use parachute jumps as a means of troop deployment, as close combat became the only means of 

fruitful engagement with the enemy.25

It was not until May 1950, nearly 2 years into the 

campaign, that a comprehensive strategy in the form 

of the Briggs Plan, was conceived. The essence of the 

plan was the insight that the insurgency could be defeated if the terrorists were cut off from their support 

base. This could be achieved via a more coherent and 

systematic resettlement campaign that removed rural 

inhabitants from the base areas, leaving the insurgents 

to fend for themselves and lacking a recruitment pool. 

Entirely new Resettlement Areas were constructed, 

with new huts built for squatters who were granted 

the land deeds for their plot. However, it must be remembered that they functioned as a tool for population control and coercion. Despite being depicted as 

a central tenet of the hearts and minds campaign, the 

movements of those re-housed in Resettlement Areas were severely restricted outside the barbed wire 

perimeter fence. The forcible resettlement of hitherto 

rural and isolated squatters into self-contained social 

units, where the political framework was defined by 

the government, resulted in a coercive acquiescence 

towards the British agenda for Malaya.26

By mid-1951, progress in clearing areas of insurgents via the adoption of the so-called “oil spot 

strategy” was slow, and political hopes of a military 

success had faded. However, the campaign was to be 

energized by the appointment as joint civil-military 

leader of General Sir Gerald Templer. Upon his arrival in Malaya, he openly committed himself to the 

central tenets of the Briggs Plan as the mainstay of 
17

his own tenure in office. However, Templer succeeded where Briggs’s own plan was floundering due to 

Templer's injection of urgency into the campaign. Yet 

inspirational leadership has its flipside, and Templer’s 

no-nonsense approach in some quarters created a negative backlash as some communities resented increasingly stringent food rations, curfews, and detentions 

that Templer had instigated. Malaya was to employ 

an equal distribution of carrots and sticks. During 

Templer’s tenure between 1952 and 1954, insurgent 

incidents fell from 500 to fewer than 100 a month.27

But one of the main questions is the extent to which 

Templer can personally take credit for this outcome. 

His bold leadership style and his realization that there 

should be an intricate marriage between normal and 

emergency government activities strengthened British 

confidence and helped build a more coherent COIN 

campaign. John Nagl states, “It is difficult to overstate 

the impact that Templer . . . had on the course of the 

Emergency.”28

Arguably, however, the opposite is true: it is easy

to overstate Templer’s role. His high profile and blustering style may have made him the personal embodiment of success. However, Templer was, to a significant extent, improving and modifying tactics already 

established by Briggs. Templer has been credited with 

too much. For example, the MCP’s own strategic overhaul, decided upon in October 1951, which would 

alter insurgent tactics from guerrilla attacks to political education, were not made public until December 

1952. The lull in insurgent violence between these 

dates (from 6,000 incidents in 1951 to 3,700 in 1952) 

was thus wrongly perceived as the result of Templer’s 

strong and effective leadership, when, in fact, it resulted from the Communists’ change in strategy.29
18

The U.S. Army and Marine Corps Field Manual (FM) 

3-24, Counterinsurgency, praised British conduct during the Malayan Emergency for providing “lessons 

applicable to combating any insurgency.”30 Yet, ultimately, the lessons of the Malayan Emergency are exaggerated. Although it laid the foundations for future 

campaigns, we can witness during the Malayan Emergency the appearance of a protracted and slowly developing strategy that allowed an increasingly isolated and dwindling band of insurgents to prolong their 

uprising for 12 years before they finally capitulated. 

By the official end of the MCP uprising in 1960, the 

blueprint for future British counterinsurgencies had 

been written, but its efficacy in ending the insurgency 

has been overstated, and its applicability to future insurgencies is limited. 

MYTH # 10: THE BRITISH MILITARY ARE THE 

ULTIMATE COIN PRACTITIONERS

When analyzing the meta-historical evolution of 

British COIN warfighting in the post-World War II 

era, we see a picture emerging of slow British learning, a slow-acting military strategy, and a succession 

of deficient insurgent opponents who have exploited 

the inadequacies of the British approach. Reflecting 

on the past insurgent opponents facing the British, we 

can conclude that despite engendering a perception of 

an effective COIN approach, the British have actually 

come up against a set of insurgent groups organizationally weak, strategically incompetent, or lacking in 

internal and external support. This perhaps explains 

why the arguable failure of British COIN in Iraq must 

be judged in relation to the insurgent enemy, who was 

well-organized, strategically driven, tactically brutal, 

and well-supported from within and outside Iraq.
19

Sympathetic observers have noted that during the 

classical COIN period of the mid-20th century, “the 

British approach had yielded more success than that 

of any other nation faced with internal conflict. . . . 

Nothing like an Algeria or Vietnam tarnishes the British record.”31 The absence of a catastrophic COIN 

failure, however, should not obscure the drawn-out 

strategic inertia that came to characterize consecutive British campaigns. That weakness is perhaps an 

outcome more indicative of the lack of preparedness 

and efficiency on the part of the insurgent opponents 

the British have faced; the Malayan Races Liberation 

Army (MRLA), Mau Mau, and even the IRA were certainly not as tactically savvy or strategically endowed 

as the National Liberation Front (NLF) in Algeria or 

the Vietcong in Vietnam.

The British experience of irregular conflict from 

Malaya to Afghanistan has demonstrated that, despite the highly politicized nature of COIN warfare, 

the efficacy of the military aspect of the counterinsurgency remains paramount to operational and strategic success. If the military cannot succeed in reducing insurgent violence, then no manner of political 

measures will arrest the worsening security situation. 

The level of external support insurgent groups receive 

has proved itself to be a critical enabler of their success. An absence of external funding and weaponry 

has stunted insurgencies and fatally undermined their 

potency, as was the case with both the MRLA in Malaya and the Mau Mau in Kenya. External insurgent 

support appears to be more important to the effectiveness of an insurgent group than the level of internal 

support it receives among its own population, as demonstrated by the vibrancy of the Egyptian-backed National Liberation Front (NLF), which fought the Brit-
20

ish in South Arabia (now Yemen) between 1963 and 

1967. A militant group without weapons is irrelevant, 

yet an armed group lacking popular support is still an 

armed group. Its threat to security remains.

Another striking feature about the British experience is that each campaign begins with an unflattering 

tale in relation to intelligence capabilities. From Malaya to Iraq, British intelligence has failed to foresee 

the outbreak of an insurgency and has been woefully 

unprepared for it. There are obvious difficulties in cultivating human intelligence (HUMINT) on insurgent 

groups often drawn from narrow and closed segments 

of a society. For this reason alone, insurgencies are difficult to see coming. Yet British intelligence capabilities, at the top and on the ground, did not, and arguably still do not, have the capacity to anticipate the 

emergence of substate insurgent threats. On the bright 

side, however, from these consistently inadequate origins emerges an encouraging picture of British intelligence finally adapting to the threat and positioning 

itself as an indispensable counterinsurgent tool. Once 

the insurgency is recognized, the role played by the 

intelligence agencies, and their military intelligence 

counterparts, has been integral to operational successes in every campaign.

THE VALUE OF THE BRITISH EXPERIENCE

So what conclusions can we reach about the British COIN experience? After the withdrawal from Iraq, 

the British COIN establishment stands at a crossroads. 

The underwhelming performance in and around 

Basra contrasted with the American display of striking strategic vision and tactical ability in the realm 

of COIN. The publication of Field Manual (FM) 3-24, 
21

Counterinsurgency, the rise to prominence and influence of the COIN-savvy General Petraeus, the inculcation of COIN learning at all levels of the American 

military, and the ubiquity of COIN thinking in the 

United States across the academic-military divide, 

have all contributed to a quantum leap of American 

fluency in irregular warfare. The American military 

should no longer hold up Malaya or Northern Ireland 

as exemplars of COIN warfare. It can now look at Anbar province and the Surge as the new ideal case studies in COIN textbooks. The Americans have learned 

the hard way in Iraq, and, like the British before them, 

it has been a slow and painful process. However, the 

combination of British ineptitude in Basra and the 

eventual American moxie in central and western Iraq 

has largely debunked the canard relating to British 

competence in COIN. No longer can we believe that 

COIN is the British army’s default mode. 

British thinking in the run-up to the campaigns 

in Afghanistan and Iraq was arguably shaped by the 

formative experiences in Northern Ireland. They had 

molded the military’s low-intensity doctrine, versed a 

generation of officers in the nuances of urban population pacification, and demonstrated the difficulties of 

combining a coercive COIN endeavor with a campaign 

to win hearts and minds not only within the same city, 

but on the same street. The British ability in Northern Ireland during Operation BANNER to seek and 

maintain an “acceptable level of violence,” combined 

with the over-hyped colonial successes, especially in 

Malaya, ensured that British thinking on the issue of 

countering insurgencies earned respect within foreign 

militaries and was exported as a rare example of how 

a state army can subdue a substate enemy without 

compromising strategic goals. However, setting aside 
22

the matter of the British performance in Basra, its actions in Afghanistan since the resurgence of the Taliban in 2006-07 has done much to sully its reputation in 

foreign eyes. Indeed, the picture emerging from Helmand seems to be one of a struggling and stretched 

military, searching for a modest level of strategic clarity and operational potency.32 Afghanistan now continues as the primary testing ground of new-found 

American confidence in the realm of COIN, while 

Helmand province remains the crucible in which the 

British military might salvage its reputation. Yet, after 

8 years into Operation HERRICK, the signs are again 

pointing to a slow lesson learning experience, especially in exploiting the lessons from Iraq regarding 

insufficiency of military resources and reconstruction 

efforts and a too-slowly-developing strategy. We are 

seeing a reprise of such deficiencies as the protracted 

inability to reduce the strength of the Taliban and to 

interdict their underground avenues of support and 

finance, namely, the Afghan poppy harvest and heroin trade.

COIN is now a far more complex endeavor, given 

the harsh operational environment, the deficiencies of 

host-country governance, and the rise of global instant 

news media coverage. Previous lip service to hearts 

and minds and minimum force has now transformed 

into myriad strategic initiatives that are often applied 

simultaneously: peace support, stability and reconstruction, and humanitarian relief. COIN is arguably 

the medium-term future of warfighting. There is thus 

a pressing need for continued study of insurgencies as 

an evolving concept, that is, in their past, present, and 

potential future modes, in order to continually update 

the best means of countering them. The body of experience accumulated by the British in the past 60 years 
23

represents a rich empirical base from which to begin 

such study, but it is only the starting point in what 

must necessasrily be a never-ending process. The 

snail’s pace of past British military lesson learning provides future strategists the opportunity to appreciate 

the value of lesson transfer and the pitfalls of doctrinal 

inertia. The popular perception of high British COIN 

efficacy from Malaya onwards certainly has not been 

validated by the pattern of tactical errors displayed in 

the early phases of their COIN campaigns. After the 

dismal performance in Iraq, the British military, and 

especially their political masters, have a long way to 

go to rebuild a narrative of high British competence in 

COIN warfare.

ENDNOTES 

1. Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster, “Changing the Army for 

Counterinsurgency Operations,” Military Review, November/December 2005, pp. 2-15.

2. John Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam, New Ed., Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005, p. xxii.

3. Rod Thornton, “Getting it Wrong: The Crucial Mistakes 

Made in the Early Stages of the British Army’s Deployment to 

Northern Ireland, August 1969 to March 1972, Journal of Strategic 

Studies, Vol. 30, No. 1, 2007, pp. 73-107.

4. Lieutenant-General Sir John Kiszely, “Learning About 

Counterinsurgency,” Military Review, March-April 2007, pp. 6-7.

5. Theo Farrell, “The Dynamics of British Military Transformation,” International Affairs, Vol. 84, No. 4, 2008, p. 783.

6. British Army Field Manual (FM), Countering Insurgency, Vol. 

1 Pt. 10, Army Code 71876, October 2009.
24

7. Hew Strachan, “British Counter-Insurgency from Malaya 

to Iraq,” RUSI Journal, Vol. 152, No. 6, 2007, p. 10.

8. As a retort to the so-called “COINdinistas” within American military circles who promote focusing military training on irregular warfare, see Gian Gentile, “Freeing the Army from the 

Counterinsurgency Strait-Jacket,” Joint Forces Quarterly, Vol. 58, 

No.3, 2010, pp. 121-122.

9. Claudia Harvey and Mark Wilkinson, “The Value of Doctrine: Assessing British Officers’ Perspectives,” RUSI Journal, Vol. 

154, No. 6, 2009, pp. 24, 27.

10. “US ‘frustrated’ with UK in Basra,” BBC News website, 

August 22, 2007, available from news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/

middle_east/6958395.stm.

11. Thomas Ricks, The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the 

American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008, New York: The 

Penguin Press, 2009, p. 177.

12. Ibid., p. 277.

13. Hilary Synnott, “Statebuilding in Southern Iraq,” Survival, 

Vol. 47, No. 2, 2005, pp. 40-41.

14. Aylwin-Foster, “Changing the Army for Counterinsurgency,” pp. 2-15. Also see Andrew Garfield, “Succeeding in Phase 

IV: British Perspectives on the US Effort to Stabilize and Reconstruct Iraq,” Foreign Policy Research Institute report, September 

2006; and James K. Wither, “Basra’s not Belfast: The British Army, 

‘Small Wars’ and Iraq,” Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol. 20, Nos. 

3 and 4, 2009, pp. 611-635.

15. Even the General Staff’s report of British stability operations in Iraq felt compelled to document U.S.-UK friction over the 

utility of Britain’s previous counterinsurgency experience. See 

“Stability Operations in Iraq,” Army Code 71844, p. 8, para. 19.

16. Colonel Alastair Campbell, “Assessing Britain’s Legacy: 

The UK Withdrawal from Iraq,” RUSI Commentary, available 

from www.rusi.org/research/studies/menap/commentary/ref:C494B92

95ACCE1/.
25

17. Ministry of Defence, “US Commander thanks UK for contribution to Iraq and Afghanistan,” February 6, 2009, available 

from www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/DefenceNews/DefencePolicyAndBusiness/UsCommanderThanksUkForContributionToIraqAndAfghanistan.htm.

18. Defence Secretary’s introduction, “Adaptability and Partnership: Issues for the Strategic Defence Review,” Cm 7794, London, UK: The Stationery Office, February 2010, p. 6.

19. For a record of the Baling talks, see The National Archives, 

Kew, London, p. CO 1030/29.

20. In particular, see David Anderson, Histories of the Hanged: 

Britain’s Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire, London, UK: 

Orion, 2006; and Caroline Elkins, Britain’s Gulag: The Brutal End of 

Empire in Kenya, London, UK: Jonathan Cape, 2005.

21. The National Archives, Kew, London, UK, CAB 164/1175, 

Joint Intelligence Committee report: Joint Directive on Military 

Interrogation in Internal Security Operations Overseas, February 

17, 1965.

22. Rachel Kerr, “A force for good? War, crime and legitimacy: The British army in Iraq,” Defense and Security Analysis, Vol. 24, 

No. 4, 2008, p. 401.

23. John Newsinger, British Counterinsurgency: From Palestine 

to Northern Ireland, Basingstok, UK: Macmillan, 2002, p. 31. Also 

see John Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife.

24. Richard Stubbs, Hearts and Minds in Guerrilla Warfare: The 

Malayan Emergency, 1948-1960, Singapore: Eastern Universities 

Press, 2004, p. 126.

25. Andrew Mumford, “Unnecessary or Unsung? The Utilisation of Airpower in Britain’s Colonial Counter-Insurgency Campaigns,” Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol. 20, No. 3, 2009, pp. 641-

643.

26. John Coates, Suppressing Insurgency: An Analysis of the Malayan Emergency, 1948-1954, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992, 

p. 93.
26

27. Kumar Ramakrishna, “Transmogrifying Malaya: The Impact of Sir Gerald Templer, 1952-54,” Journal of Southeast Asian 

Studies, Vol. 32, No. 1, 2001, p. 79.

28. Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, p. 89.

29. Stubbs, Hearts and Minds in Guerrilla Warfare, pp. 159-160.

30. US Army and Marine Corps Field Manual (FM) 3-24, Counterinsurgency, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2007, p. 235.

31. Thomas R. Mockaitis, “The Phoenix of Counterinsurgency,” Journal of Conflict Studies, Vol. 27, No. 1, 2007, pp. 8, 11.

32. For a critical overview, see Warren Chin, “British CounterInsurgency in Afghanistan,” Defense and Security Analysis, Vol. 23, 

No. 2, 2007, pp. 201-225.
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