Confronting the Colonies (36 page)

Successfully warning of an impending insurgency is an inherently difficult task. It will continue to challenge intelligence analysts well into the twenty-first century as irregular threats dominate the security agenda. Warning of insurgencies is more focused on the detection of trouble brewing rather than predicting the conventional bolt from the blue. Yet identifying trends of popular discontent is particularly challenging, as is predicting if, when and how they may erupt into violence. It is then equally challenging to predict the nature and levels that violence will then take. Similarly, differentiating between random acts of civil disobedience or low level violence, and the beginnings of a widespread and organised insurgency is also highly problematic. This is particularly the case if it develops incrementally. Although the cumulative body of information may be significant, the receipt of small increments over time facilitates assimilation of this information into the analyst's existing views.
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These difficulties are not going away. Indeed, as recently as 2011, the JIC failed to offer warning of the uprisings across the Arab world.
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Yet on top of this already challenging task for intelligence analysts, the JIC was faced with further problems—structural, cognitive and political—which impeded intelligence assessment and the ability to provide warnings of brewing trouble. In structural terms, limited funds and lack of a formal warning system rendered individual judgement important in setting agendas and spotting impending violence. This difficult task was further stymied by under-developed relations with the Colonial Office. Without effective integration, the JIC, whose members were already overstretched by spiralling priorities, was isolated from developments. The central intelligence machinery was thus unable to exercise the necessary initiative. Accordingly, it often took a dramatic event and a relevant policy context to ensure JIC coverage of an issue—by which time it was often too late to provide warning. Some of these structural factors were alleviated as the JIC increased integration with the Colonial Office, moved to the Cabinet Office and better considered political and irregular threats. Others, however, such as a lack of explicit responsibility regarding warning remained until relatively recently.

By contrast, coordinated warning is now strongly emphasised within government. The Cabinet Office possesses a horizon scanning staff based in the National Security Secretariat. Taking priorities agreed by the National Security Council as a catalyst, the horizon scanning staff ensure focus on key areas whilst theoretically allowing scope for consideration of new and emerging issues—as insurgencies would once have been. Indeed, a bi-annual report specifically on countries at risk of instability is now issued.
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Moreover, the National Security Council is now the ‘lead driver' of the JIC agenda. This makes sense, for an interdepartmental approach to agenda setting and issue framing will alleviate the problems of having one particular department dominate—as happened when the JIC resided beneath the chiefs of staff. Moreover, harmony with NSC priorities will ensure that the committee remains policy relevant.
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It is, however, too soon to judge the impact of these moves.

Structural improvements can only achieve so much. As Richard Betts has noted, ‘Intelligence can be improved marginally, but not radically, by altering the analytic system'. The use of intelligence ‘depends less on the bureaucracy than on the intellects and inclinations of the authorities above it'.
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As such, cognitive factors further impeded the committee's performance: they amplified the structural weaknesses. Interestingly, such factors were similar to those hindering intelligence warning of
conventional attacks. For example, mirror imaging is an epistemological failure identified by former GCHQ Deputy Director Doug Nicoll in his influential 1982 report on JIC performance.
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This ethnocentric phenomenon can also be applied to JIC underestimation of the subversive Egyptian threat to Aden and South Arabia. A further conventional, and indeed generic, trap into which the JIC occasionally fell was subtle politicisation. One demonstrable example from within these pages involves Ministry of Defence unwillingness to criticise their colleagues seconded to the Sultan of Oman, thereby hindering the ability to warn of the deteriorating violence in Dhofar. Similarly, intelligence analysts needed to be better aware of cognitive closure and the impact of overarching threat frameworks. For example, a more open mindset would have helped provide warning of the Cypriot violence.

A further cognitive challenge related specifically to the politics of colonial security—and JIC intelligence assessments must be viewed within this context. Colonial territories were by definition different from western democracies and from the political system of the imperial metropole itself. As Martin Thomas has admirably shown, colonial territories were naturally unstable. Popular discontent was inevitable because colonial authorities lacked democratic legitimacy and accountability.
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Therefore, colonial intelligence and security automatically became somewhat politicised as a means of maintaining the status quo and ensuring the continuation of British authority. Not only was intelligence analysis a political issue, but the formal declaration of emergency itself was ultimately a political act. It was used by colonial administrators to preserve power in relatively weak or unstable territories. If intelligence permeated the colonial government, as Thomas argues, then it could easily be politicised so as to advance British interests and increase imperial influence over colonial peoples. This therefore created an extra challenge for the JIC in London, which was somewhat removed from the realities of colonial intelligence and security. The JIC had to evaluate colonial intelligence reports, consider their sources and ascertain if they had been written for a particular political purpose. This layer of analysis—specific to colonial insurgencies—naturally complicated the JIC's warning role.

Moreover, flaws in local intelligence across all four case studies further impeded the JIC's strategic warning ability. Structural, organisational and cognitive failings at the local level decreased the flow of accurate and
timely intelligence from the periphery to the centre. One can argue that the JIC could only be as good as the information it received, that it was a tragic victim of local ineptitude. This is fair to an extent, for local intelligence systems were often in a tatterdemalion state prior to the insurgencies studied here: but it does not reveal the whole story. From the backrooms of Whitehall, the JIC did acquire jurisdiction to advise on the reform of colonial intelligence organisation. This responsibility was supposed to leap into action once requirements had escalated beyond the capabilities of the local command. To be fair however, this could well have happened too late for the JIC to provide warning. Yet the JIC did also possess oversight of its regional assessment bodies, the JIC (Far East) and JIC (Middle East). Regarding Malaya however, bureaucratic confusion over the functions and responsibilities of the JIC (Far East) hampered its ability to inform the JIC in London of forthcoming insurgency. Local intelligence was important, but its inadequacies were compounded by Whitehall.

Failures are complex and difficult to avoid. In this case, lack of explicit success was the result of a complex interplay between structural, cognitive, political and local factors. However, the JIC should not be judged too harshly by Cold War criteria for failing to predict an uprising as if it were a surprise conventional attack. The two are quite different. The committee deserves credit for gradually improving its ability to monitor colonial territories for irregular threats. It deserves some praise for recognising the importance of the unconventional threat to colonial security. The JIC's broadening of traditional conceptualisations of security alerted consumer attention to the potential for unrest at a time of nationalist agitation and imperial decline.

These issues remain highly relevant today. With a warning function now explicitly enshrined within the JIC's responsibilities, important questions are beginning to be asked about the performance of intelligence in the aftermath of the coalition's invasion of Iraq. To what extent did intelligence alert ministers to the brewing insurgency? Fascinatingly, the questioning of former JIC chairman John Scarlett by the Iraq Inquiry in 2009 is not altogether dissimilar to that faced by his predecessor William Hayter during the Malayan insurgency. Separated by sixty years, the only real difference between the two episodes is the public forum. Indeed, the idea of being hauled up in front of a televised public inquiry would no doubt have been a horrifying anathema to
Hayter and his contemporaries. In order to answer questions about whether intelligence provided ministers with enough warning about the post-conflict situation in Iraq, similar issues to those regarding earlier insurgencies must be taken into account.

Intelligence was indeed asking questions about whether or not an insurgency was brewing.
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Warning of impending insurgencies, however, remains a difficult task today. Whilst certain structural impediments have been alleviated through closer departmental integration and the strengthening of the Assessments Staff, cognitive challenges remain. One particularly important challenge is the ability to understand the relationship between internal Iraqi security and the broader so-called Global War on Terrorism, and the impact on priorities and issue-framing this created. Warning is perhaps more difficult in the post-imperial age. Iraq is not a British (or indeed American) colony and therefore the United Kingdom had fewer assets in place and less information available. Indeed, in the face of criticism that intelligence offered no sufficiently thorough assessment or monitoring of post-invasion Iraq, John Scarlett emphasised the committee's reliance on the quality of incoming intelligence. Limited intelligence leads to limited assessments.
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This is the same line used by Hayter over half a century earlier. Recent years have also seen further challenges to the provision of warning. Globalisation and technological innovation have impacted upon popular movements in ways impossible during the 1950s and 1960s. Intelligence is therefore forced to monitor a broader range of sources. According to former Cabinet Secretary Gus O'Donnell, the joint intelligence organisation needs more open source capacity to enable it to do so effectively.
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In February 2003, the committee did successfully warn that the post-Saddam security situation in the south would be ‘unpredictable'. Popular support for the new administration could not be taken for granted.
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Two months later, the JIC added that there was a significant risk that Iraqi groups competing for influence would resort to violence against each other.
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This, however, can be criticised as being too little too late. Interestingly, intelligence assessments had to grapple with the same issues of factional violence when considering Aden. The JIC warned that popular resentment at slow reconstruction efforts could also lead to violence.
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Similar concerns about the lack of civil developments featured heavily in JIC assessments of Dhofar.

Strategic intelligence assessments of the threat were also vital after violence had broken out. JIC reports reveal fascinating insights into how London understood these post-1945 insurgencies. They were not isolated incidents, but formed part of a broader theme or trend. They were not deemed to have been instigated locally, but controlled and manipulated by international actors. Sensitive to the various policy contexts, the JIC quickly grew aware of the external forces impacting upon colonial issues and the strategic management of empire. Consequently, a key characteristic of threat assessments relating to insurgencies was a deliberate internationalisation and contextualisation of internal security. Fulfilling its interdepartmental remit, such assessments were useful in aiding consumer appreciation of the broader implications of local developments by supplementing the tactical local intelligence reports. Indeed, analysis of the JIC between 1948 and 1975 reveals that Whitehall consistently sought to understand counterinsurgency campaigns within the broader regional context.

Internationalisation of local security presented serious dangers. These included cognitive closure, the misunderstanding of local intricacies and specificities, and the denial of local actors' agency in unrest. This was certainly the case regarding the Cold War, which initially provided the most obvious framework through which to appreciate colonial threats. On the one hand it was crucial to understand any connections between insurgencies and international communism. As such, by 1957 the JIC used the Cold War dimension to claim an increasing interest in, and jurisdiction over, imperial security. The committee frankly warned that communist disorders, including in colonial territories, formed part of a larger Cold War framework and could not be considered in isolation. Yet on the other hand, assessments ran the risk of bluntly forcing any development into a preconceived and rigid mindset.

The international Cold War dimension threatened to oversimplify the more nuanced interplay between local and regional forces. This was the case regarding intelligence assessments of Malaya. Similarly when considering Cyprus, the committee initially looked to place the violence within the broader context of international communism—yet this proved to be at the expense of the more potent internal right-wing nationalist threat. This was significant. As David French has recently argued, ‘The “Malayan Model” of counter-insurgency laid great emphasis on the
need to defeat political subversion, not just the guerrillas. But if the British did not understand, or take seriously, the political aims of their opponents, their counter-insurgency strategy was likely to go awry'.
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The same was true at the Whitehall level. Had Colonial Office intelligence been better integrated earlier, all-source assessment may have focused less on the internationalism of the Cold War and paid more attention to internal agency and political aims. Inaccurate threat assessments left decision-makers unclear about the causes of the violence, thereby leading to flawed responses. Cognitive closure gave the insurgents a head start and created a faulty framework through which broader foreign, colonial and defence policy was formulated. In practice, this was one of the great weaknesses of the JIC.