Resisting Rebellion: The History and Politics of Counterinsurgency

10: The Utility of Amnesty

166 RESISTING REBELLION 166 CHAPTER 10 THE UTILITY OF AMNESTY As Sun Tzu wrote in his Art of War, “To subdue the enemy without fighting is the supreme skill.” A well-implemented amnesty program can be a very powerful instrument toward this end in the hands of any counterinsurgent force. EFFECTIVE AMNESTY To be effective, an amnesty program must be based on a realistic understanding of why people become guerrillas. The reasons for joining a guerrilla band can be complex. Assuming the cause stems always from economic hardship or government brutality can be grossly misleading. Sometimes, especially for very young persons, the real lure is adventure , getting away from a dull routine or a confining family situation. Alternatively, or additionally, the absence of governmental authority— that is, absence of security—can play a main role, opening the way to forced recruitment, a mainstay of the Greek guerrillas of the 1940s and an increasingly common practice of the Viet Cong in the 1960s. In 1951, at the height of the Communist-dominated Huk insurgency in the Philippine Republic, Ramón Magsaysay became secretary of defense. He would henceforth be the dominant figure in the effort against the guerrillas, placing great stress on reducing the Huk ranks through amnesty. But Magsaysay, himself a former anti-Japanese guerrilla , was well aware that some had joined the Huks a decade before, when they were mere boys. Many of them would have had no place to return to nor life to resume if they left the guerrilla organization, their only home. Magsaysay’s solution was to open up virgin lands on some of the southern islands. A guerrilla who accepted amnesty could obtain twenty acres, help from the army to build a house, and a small loan to sustain him until the first crops came in. A house, a piece of land, some The Utility of Amnesty 167 cash: a simple concept, an inexpensive program, an effective weapon. Magsaysay’s amnesty-plus-resettlement turned people who had been threats to the constitutional order into productive and eventually taxpaying citizens. Besides, the new lives of the amnestied former guerrillas showed the remaining Huks that escape from war to peace was indeed possible. In his declarations regarding amnesty, Magsaysay carefully avoided the word “surrender.” What is essential is that the guerrillas stop fighting , not that they abase themselves. As Michael Howard wrote: “[A] war, fought for whatever reason, that does not aim at a solution which takes into account the fears, the interests, and not least the honour of the defeated peoples, is unlikely to decide anything for very long.”1 In like manner, during the guerrilla conflict following the Spanish-American War, when insurgent Filipino commanders would surrender with their men, American officers would hold impressive ceremonies to honor and reassure their former foes. Indeed it was not unusual for the Americans to immediately appoint a surrendered insurgent chief to some provincial or local office.2 In Thailand during the 1980s, groups of surrendered guerrillas received an honorable welcome back to society.3 For counterinsurgents, wisdom consists in making resistance perilous and surrender easy. The counterinsurgents must of course exercise strict vigilance against false defectors, those who may have been sent by the enemy leadership to accept amnesty in order to deceive or disrupt. In Malaya, the British distinguished carefully between surrendered and captured enemy personnel (SEPs and CEPs, respectively). To prove his good faith, a SEP would have to lead government forces to the hideouts of his former comrades, to arms caches, etc.4 The South Vietnamese Chieu Hoi program paid well for returnees to lead ARVN soldiers to weapons caches. Also, as a general rule no amnesty should be available to guerrillas accused of personal criminal acts; instead huge cash bounties should be placed on their heads. This can be an excellent means of spreading suspicion and dissension inside the insurgent ranks. THE CHIEU HOI PROGRAM In South Vietnam, the major amnesty program was called Chieu Hoi (“Open Arms”). The Communist-dominated Viet Cong (VC) guerrillas attracted ambitious but uneducated young men of low status who saw no future 168 RESISTING REBELLION for themselves in Vietnamese society as it then existed. Besides offering such persons promises of an important role in a bright new society, the party assumed in the lives of VC members the functions normally played by the extended family and village.5 Generally, a VC guerrilla’s motives for...