(FINAL)
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, nevertheless, has created his bases, from the beginning of his existence, next to his enemies and accessible to them. And they have not been attacked in force and disturbed by the shameful military disabilities of their regional enemies. And al-Baghdadi knew this and he has very well valued it, on having decided to create them this way, with a fine leader «command correct sense» and of the state strategy. Colonel C. M. Woodhouse established that «the art of defeating the guerrillas is the art of getting the people in opposition to them». And in the desert lands of the Islamic State is not necessary to establish how this can be achieved. Already al-Baghdadi is in charge of it, with a zeal worthy of better cause, to make enemies to the death with all that are not of his group or of his pleasure. So now, only motivated, trained and equipped men are absent to do a laborious, but not difficult mission… Already we have seen it. Will they be found by the Iraqis, the Syrians and the air Coalition of 60 countries?
Exemplary and Triumphant Counterguerrilla Campaigns.
In 1.948 the communist Greek guerrilla, in full world postwar period, were on the verge of forming forces semiregulars to openly attack the government. They also wanted to extend the “Steel Curtain” to the South-East of Europe. Their military, not decisive and badly interpreted successes, according to the correlation of forces and the strategic opportunity of the revolutionary communist process, decided them to already face the National Greek Army and to beat it. As did Mao, at the right moment of the Chinese civil war. This way, the Democratic Army of Greece (the DSE or Dimokratikos Stratos Ellados) congregated great part of his guerrilla detachments, which were spreading as a rosary from north to south over Greece, from the Peloponnese up to Macedonia, in the East, to form «regular» units, to which they called «brigades» and «divisions». But this «regular» rebel force, with 12-15 thousand militants, was only the tenth part of the Greek army. Their permanent or temporal bases were allowing them to realize sudden attacks, assaults and ambushes against the governmental authorities, policemen and military men. But, far from them, the bands were lacking sufficient supplies and popular supports for their operations. On the other hand, the guerrilla principal bases, placed in the zone of Vitsi and Grammos, at the northwest of the country, near the border with Yugoslavia, were vital for the revolutionaries for the receipt of the logistic support from this country.
COMMANDERS POSE AFTER AN ENCOUNTER IN MOUNTAIN GREECE…
A Greek Army patrol sweeping in search of Communist guerrillas.
But they were constituting some orthodox, tangible and attainable targets for the heavy fire and the military force at the disposal of Greece. For this time, the break of Titus with Stalin and the Komintern was total and irreversible. And Titus already was not interested in promoting in the neighboring country a revolution that would derive towards “not revisionist positions”. The principal Yugoslavian faucet was closed and immediately afterwards Albania and Bulgaria also stopped their minor helps. Presented this way the clash, in a month of orthodox operations of march, assault, siege and annihilation, the Greek forces advised and supported by the British and with the military help of American material, occupied the mountainous zone of those guerrilla essential bases, in August of 1.949. That constituted a conventional, hard and definite aim, which had to be defended by the Popular Red «army». With it the Greek democrats stemmed definitively a communist insurrection of «national liberation», which was extending, insoluble and menacing, to a civil war from 1.945.
At the end of World War II, the British awarded Chin Peng the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his heroics in leading guerrillas against the Japanese. He became the leader of the Communist Party of Malaya.
The first attempts of the Malay guerrillas to create bases and establish in them the communist administration were in 1.945. The irregulars of the so called Army of the Malay People went out of the refuge of the jungles, where they were hiding of the Imperial Japanese Army. In 1.948 they initiated the military revolt against the British, establishing in isolated communities of Chinese colonists, seated in Malaya. The communists were expecting to attract to their cause the workers of the mines, plantations and estates and extending this way their bases. But their political propaganda was not tuned with the people in general. And, specially, with the not Chinese community, which was the great majority of the Malays. The general Henry Briggs took advantage of their weaknesses and attacked the lines of supply, preventing them from creating big detachments and forcing them to be dispersed. Briggs was possessing battalions of Gurkhas, of Malays, of British and of Chinese and soon realized that these units were too much heavy to operate against the bands. And with a part of them he formed platoons and companies of “guerrillas hunters”. That were penetrating in the surrounding jungles, were living on the ground, were gathering information of all kinds and were scourging, ambushing and attacking to the communist groups.
GENERAL BRIGGS
GENERAL TEMPLER
And his successor, the general Gerald Templer systematicly attacked them, and they already could not consolidated in any place. This way, the Chinese Malay communists never overcame the primitive stage of stray persecuted guerrillas and only could use the isolated assaults as principal tactics. The tenacity and the patience of the British, who did not propose to prevent them from creating directly bases, but to methodically destroy them, rooted out the guerrillas of the inhabited zones and thrown them again to the jungle and, finally, to the surrender. The following pacification of the infected zones by the communist bands, realized with firmness and consideration, with a strong fist sheathed in a velvet glove, consolidated the support of their habitants to the Greek government. The revolt was definitively suffocated in 1.955. The local communists wanted to imitate Mao and to fight an irregular protracted war. But they lacked two strategic means for get it: enough popular support and stable bases.
THE END.