Confronting the Colonies (3 page)

As a result, the second case study chosen is Cyprus. The insurgency between 1955 and 1959 forms a particularly fascinating episode in the context of the evolution of strategic intelligence. Firstly, the dates of the insurgency encompass key moments in the evolution of the JIC: 1955
and 1957. It is therefore possible to explore the impact the various reforms had on the effectiveness of the committee's work. To what extent did the committee's extra jurisdiction over imperial matters improve its performance? What impact did the move to the Cabinet Office have? Secondly, the Cyprus insurgency was a complicated tangle. Like Malaya, it posed challenges for interdepartmental intelligence in London and brought together Foreign Office, military, MI5, Colonial Office, Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) and GCHQ interests. This was especially the case given the international involvement of Greece and Turkey—both NATO countries. The overarching context of the Cold War complicated matters further. Cyprus is therefore highly instructive when examining how the JIC balanced a variety of competing interests and diverging understandings in its intelligence assessments.

Other colonial emergencies ensued. An emergency was declared in the Central African Federation (an ill-advised union of Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland) in 1959. The trigger was the apparent discovery of a plot to assassinate certain British officials. The Colonial Office, however, was sceptical and the head of its Intelligence and Security Department did not immediately forward a Special Branch report on the subject to the JIC. As a result, the JIC was criticised for not giving adequate detail on the so-called murder plot in its weekly intelligence output. The Colonial Office (and by extension the JIC) was right. The idea of a murder plot was subsequently debunked by an official government inquiry, known as the Devlin report. Although rejected by cabinet, the report damningly referred to Nyasa-land as a police state and heavily criticised the abuse of power by the local British officials. And yet, MI5 remained convinced that such a plot existed.
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The JIC was more interested a couple of years later when rumours of communist infiltration into Africa surfaced. The prime culprit of propagating this line was Roy Welensky, the prime minister of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland from 1957.Welensky had hoped to deliberately portray his regime as a bastion against encroaching communism on the continent in the hope that the British government would quietly leave him to pursue his racist policies. MI5 did not buy this and reported so to the JIC in 1962. Roger Hollis, its director-general, informed the JIC that communism was not as much of a threat in Africa as first appeared. Downplaying the significance of African ministers travelling
to the Soviet Bloc, Hollis told the JIC that the communists were ‘newcomers in Africa and had a lot to learn'.
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The third case study, therefore, is a different (but equally ill-fated) federation: the Federation of South Arabia. From 1963, British forces became embroiled in a vicious counterinsurgency campaign in Aden and South Arabia. Alongside this Britain grew involved in a covert campaign against Yemeni and Egyptian support from across the border. In what is generally remembered as a failure in recent British history, the United Kingdom was forced to withdraw in 1967 leaving behind a situation which was far from stable.

The JIC was heavily involved. The number of intelligence assessments on the subject greatly surpassed that of previous insurgencies, whilst the committee ambitiously attempted to directly manage local intelligence reform. On top of this, certain JIC members were involved in overseeing covert action. The JIC was growing in confidence and influence. Like Malaya and Cyprus, Aden was a complicated problem. It involved external influence from Egypt and the spill over from a protracted civil war in Yemen. Once again, it fell to the JIC to balance the internal and external factors driving the violence. Importantly however, the committee's role was further complicated by acrimonious debates engulfing Whitehall about the nature of the threat. Amply demonstrating issues of political pressures on the intelligence process, the JIC was thrown into a minefield.

Just two years after withdrawal from Aden, British armed forces were again involved in low-intensity violence. This time it was closer to home on the streets of Northern Ireland. The escalating conflict rapidly rose up the JIC's priority list. Interestingly, similar issues relating to colonial counterinsurgency arose. Intelligence was slow to grasp the significance of developments because of limited engagement with the area prior to 1969. As had so often been the case elsewhere, the JIC had been preoccupied with the Cold War and international communism. Once adequate attention was given, however, the JIC became involved in trying to reform the local intelligence system—just as it had attempted in Aden.
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Unfortunately, much of the JIC's work regarding Northern Ireland remains classified. An absorbing and important tale will no doubt be written if and when historians acquire adequate access to those documents. In keeping with the broader theme of counterinsurgency overseas however, the final case study does not examine the ‘domesticisation' of
operations in Belfast. Instead it considers the covert campaign in Oman. At the same time as the intensification of violence in Northern Ireland, British forces were quietly involved in a successful counterinsurgency campaign against rebels in the Dhofari province of Oman until 1975. Oman, of course, was not a British colony, although the two countries had very close links. This case study is therefore particularly important, for it provides an interesting comparison to the role of British intelligence in the traditional colonial insurgencies. Did the JIC still have the power to try and reform local intelligence actors? Did the JIC still have a role at all? What new competing pressures were shaping intelligence assessment in the post-imperial context of the early 1970s?

Like the earlier colonial counterinsurgencies, the Dhofari campaign must be understood within the context of the management of British decline. Indeed, it was assessed through the prism of Britain's withdrawal from east of Suez. However, Oman's technically non-colonial status serves as a fascinating example of how the role of strategic intelligence had to adapt. As soon as the JIC had acquired some experience in colonial security, it had to evolve yet again. Whitehall's central intelligence machinery had been overtaken by events. Its experience in Dhofar therefore serves as an instructive example of intelligence's transition from colonial insurgencies to the type of post-colonial counterinsurgency which has recently been fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. From an administrative perspective, focus on Oman is also useful. The JIC underwent significant reforms in 1968 and it is important to determine the impact these had on the committee's understanding of insurgencies. Inclusion of Oman in this study therefore allows comparative analysis of the JIC's evolving counterinsurgency role.

Alongside and after Oman, the JIC was also involved in assessing the internal situation in Rhodesia. Seeking independence but insisting on maintaining white-minority rule, Ian Smith, Rhodesia's new hard-line prime minister, issued a Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965. The messy aftermath of the decision was to linger for around fifteen years until the creation of Zimbabwe in 1980. Although the JIC swiftly predicted a ‘passionate reaction' amongst neighbouring black African states, intelligence concluded that no immediate substantial threat to Rhodesia existed from either African nationalist organisations or from externally inspired subversion. There would, however, be a steady increase in externally-inspired terrorist operations. The JIC's main involvement,
however, related to sanctions. The economic sphere had long been neglected by the committee, but regarding Rhodesia intelligence considered the impact of sanctions against the regime. Such assessments demonstrate how the committee's conceptualisation of security was becoming increasingly broad. In the 1950s it extended to incorporate political matters and by the mid-to-late 1960s intelligence had moved into the economic sphere. As JIC veteran Percy Cradock has noted, however, ‘intelligence had a relatively small part to play in the crisis'.
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The four locales chosen represent a coherent analytical field for the study of the JIC and British counterinsurgency. They are representative of the committee's imperial and post-imperial role. When placed against the JIC's administrative context, each case study allows detailed exploration of how the committee's functions evolved. On top of that, each case study represents important themes prevalent across strategic intelligence during these years: from threat internationalisation to managing local intelligence structures.

It would of course be farcical to suggest that insurgencies dominated the agenda of British intelligence during this period. The conventional Soviet threat was obviously Whitehall's primary focus. Yet irregular threats and colonial security did rapidly climb the priority list. Despite this, most scholarly literature focuses purely on intelligence in relation to the conventional threat, whilst imperial historians have tended to overlook issues relating to intelligence altogether. Few attempts have been made in the last ten years to plug this gap, with a notable exception being Philip Murphy's groundbreaking work on Africa.
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Similarly, counterinsurgency literature focuses largely on the tactical or operational level, thereby neglecting intelligence assessment at the Whitehall level and its impact on broader policy. In order to provide a better understanding of such matters, it is important to consider how the British intelligence assessment machinery evolved to encompass irregular threats, the contexts in which such threats were understood and how intelligence impacted upon British policy. Owing to recent releases of top secret archival documents relating to the JIC, the Colonial Office Intelligence and Security Department, MI5 and secretive Cabinet Office committees, such a study is only now possible.

The JIC ‘muddled through' and gradually adapted to find a role in counterinsurgency. In doing so, the committee became involved in three areas: warning, threat assessment and management of the overseas
intelligence apparatus. This transformation of the JIC's peacetime role reveals a great deal of new insight into intelligence assessment and counterinsurgency.

Firstly, the JIC's role represented nothing less than a revolution in management of the empire. Widespread nationalist unrest and the overarching Cold War threat combined to create an important administrative context: it increasingly centralised the management of colonial security and intelligence, giving London an unprecedented role. This trend was aided by American security guarantees in Western Europe. Washington's commitment to Europe ‘effectively freed Britain to concentrate its attention and resources on maintaining the imperial system'.
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American pressure in the aftermath of the post-war spy scandals also provided an impetus for London to cast its eyes over colonial security.
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Centralisation not only included the JIC, but also MI5, which too became increasingly involved in the affairs of empire. Decolonisation and counterinsurgency is not simply a story of local actors isolated from the imperial metropolis. This book is therefore not an account of local intelligence organisations fighting internal political violence in a variety of colonies. That is not to say that local factors were not important; quite the contrary. This book, however, examines them through the Whitehall prism and asks how they impacted upon London's understanding of insurgencies. Neither is colonial intelligence and counterinsurgency simply a story of MI5 riding to the rescue from London. MI5 was not a rogue elephant operating outside of the political system. Accordingly, this book paints a more holistic picture of the rise and demise of Whitehall's imperial central intelligence machinery.

The second theme involves understandings of the nature of security and what constitutes a threat. Between 1948 and 1975, the JIC was at the forefront of a fundamental re-conceptualisation of security. The Cold War context blurred traditional boundaries between military and political spheres, with broader political considerations relating to ideology and subversion becoming increasingly intertwined with military capabilities. From the backrooms of Whitehall, the British intelligence community quietly and gradually recognised the severity of irregular threats posed by non-state actors. In doing so, they facilitated an important shift in Whitehall's strategic culture. Intelligence gradually challenged orthodox understandings of security as narrowly relating merely to the conventional military paradigm. Defining a threat to national security
remains an important and relevant issue today. Debates about the inclusivity of the JIC agenda still resonate across Whitehall.

Thirdly, insurgencies posed specific challenges to strategic intelligence. If they were going to be relevant, the JIC had to adapt. Demonstrating a hangover from the Second World War, intelligence assessment was primarily geared towards conventional threats and a militaristic perception of the Cold War. Counterinsurgency involved a multitude of types of intelligence spanning the interests of an array of Whitehall actors. It transcended traditional departmental boundaries. As such, the evolution of an effective central intelligence machine was an essential development. It had to be able to generate all source intelligence output, which was aware of policy needs and which could objectively balance local and international factors. These challenges (involving organisational, structural and cognitive factors) remain relevant in countering current insurgencies and other irregular threats. Interestingly, however, intelligence to counter irregular threats was still subjected to the same analytical traps as regarding conventional threats. Epistemological issues of mirror-imaging, perseveration and cognitive dissonance applied just as much to the ‘new' threats as they did to ongoing assessments of military confrontation.