Ferret Force

Ferret Force
Active	July to December 1948
Country	United Kingdom
Type	Counterinsurgency
Role	Long Range Patrol
Size	Company
Engagements	Malayan Emergency
Commanders
Notable commanders	Lieutenant-Colonel Walter Walker

Ferret Force was a counter-insurgency unit formed by the British and Malayan authorities as part of their response to the communist insurgency during the Malayan Emergency. The unit only existed for six months, but was to help establish doctrine for British operations in the jungle.

During World War II, the Special Operations Executive (or SOE) formed teams composed of British operatives and Malayan guerillas to combat the Japanese. Initially, SOE operations in the Far East were under the control of a unit known as GS I(k). This designation was changed in 1944 to Force 136.

Initially, resistance to the Japanese forces which conquered Malaya were organized by the Communist-formed Malayan Peoples' Anti-Japanese Army or MPAJA. The MPAJA, and the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) in general, drew its support from the ethnic Chinese population living in Malaya. With British support for guerrilla operations in the Far East beginning in earnest, they were eventually able to support Lim Bo Seng's partisans in resisting the Japanese.

At the end of the war Force 136, like SOE in general, was disbanded. However, the MPAJA and the MCP did not disband. Instead, after a series of purges, they reemerged as the Malayan Peoples' Anti-British Army (MPABA), later renamed the Malayan Peoples' Liberation Army and the MCP. Between 1945 and 1948, tensions between the British and the MCP rose. As the British tried to repair the Malayan economy, the MCP, organized protests against labor conditions in the country. The protests became more effective, so the British responded with harsher measures. This in turn caused the protesters to become more militant, culminating in the beginning of organized violence with the assassination of three European plantation managers at Sungai Siput, Perak.

When the Emergency was declared in June 1948, the British were short of units with which to take on the Communists, especially units which were trained to fight in the jungle sanctuaries which the MCP and MNLA had established. As part of the solution, small counter-insurgency units to deal with jungle-based communist insurgency were formed. One of the units formed was Ferret Force.

Lieutenant Colonel Walter Walker, GSO1 of Malaya District Headquarters, in Kuala Lumpur, sought permission to form a counter-insurgency unit to combat the MCP guerrillas. A veteran of the Burma Campaign, he sought to utilize the experience available from the recently demobilized Force 136. This unit would be known as Ferret Force.

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Wikipedia