Malayan Emergency - Guerrilla War

Guerrilla War

The MNLA commonly employed guerrilla tactics, sabotaging installations, attacking rubber plantations and destroying transportation and infrastructure.

Support for the MNLA was mainly based on around 500,000 of the 3.12 million ethnic Chinese then living in Malaya. These 500,000 have been referred to a 'squatters' and the majority of them were farmers living on the edge of the jungles were the MLNA were based. This allowed the MLNA to supply themselves with food, in particular, as well as providing a source of new recruits. . The ethnic Malay population supported them in smaller numbers. The MNLA gained the support of the Chinese because they were denied the equal right to vote in elections, had no land rights to speak of, and were usually very poor. The MNLA's supply organisation was called "Min Yuen." It had a network of contacts within the general population. Besides supplying materiel, especially food, it was also important to the MNLA as an information gatherer.

The MNLA's camps and hideouts were in the rather inaccessible tropical jungle with limited infrastructure. Most MNLA guerrillas were ethnic Chinese, though there were some Malays, Indonesians and Indians among its members. The MNLA was organized into regiments, although these had no fixed establishments and each encompassed all forces operating in a particular region. The regiments had political sections, commissars, instructors and secret service. In the camps, the soldiers attended lectures on Marxism–Leninism, and produced political newsletters to be distributed to the locals. The MNLA also stipulated that their soldiers needed official permission for any romantic involvement with local women.

In the early stages of the conflict, the guerrillas envisaged establishing "liberated areas" from which the government forces had been driven, with MNLA control being established, but did not succeed at this.