Malayan Emergency

The Malayan Emergency, also known as the Anti–British National Liberation War, (1948–1960) was a guerrilla war fought in Malaya between communist pro-independence fighters of the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA) and the military forces of the Federation of Malaya and Commonwealth (British Empire). The communists fought to win independence for Malaya from the British Empire and to establish a communist state, while the Malayan Federation and Commonwealth forces fought to combat communism and protect British economic and colonial interests. The term "Emergency" was used by the British to characterise the conflict in order to avoid referring to it as a war, because London-based insurers would not pay out in instances of civil wars.

The war began on 17 June 1948, after Britain declared a state of emergency in Malaya following attacks on plantations, which had been revenge attacks for the killing of left-wing activists. Leader of the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) Chin Peng and his allies fled into the jungles and formed the MNLA to wage a war for national liberation against British colonial rule. Many MNLA fighters were veterans of the Malayan Peoples' Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA), a communist guerrilla army previously trained, armed and funded by the British to fight against Japan during World War II. The communists gained support from many civilians, mainly those from the Chinese community. The communists' belief in class consciousness, ethnic equality, and gender equality inspired many women and indigenous people to join both the MNLA and its undercover supply network, the Min Yuen. Additionally, hundreds of former Japanese soldiers joined the MNLA. After establishing a series of jungle bases, the MNLA began raiding British colonial police and military installations.

The British attempted to starve the MNLA using scorched earth policies, including food rationing, killing livestock, and aerial spraying of the herbicide Agent Orange. British units carried out extrajudicial killings of unarmed civilians, in violation of the Geneva Conventions. The most infamous example is the Batang Kali massacre, which the press has referred to as "Britain's My Lai". The Briggs Plan forcibly relocated a million civilians into concentration camps called "new villages". Many Orang Asli indigenous communities were also targeted for internment because the British believed that they were supporting the communists. The widespread decapitation of people suspected to have been guerrillas led to the 1952 British Malayan headhunting scandal. Similar scandals relating to atrocities committed by British forces included the public display of corpses.

British armed forces suffered well over a thousand casualties, making the emergency Britain's deadliest operational theatre since the Second World War. The emergency has often been compared to the Vietnam War, which included similar tactics and terrain. However, the Vietnam War involved large field armies of rival states with over a quarter million combatants and over 100,000 insurgents, whereas the emergency was mostly a low-intensity insurgency; the MNLA never numbered more than 8,000 members at a time. Still, some 11,000 people died in the emergency. Although the emergency was declared over in 1960, communist leader Chin Peng renewed the insurgency against the Malaysian government in 1968. This second phase of the insurgency lasted until the dissolution of the MCP in 1989.