Interestingly, one of the unnamed British officers invokes the Malayan insurgency as a comparison of their activites in Iraq.

The Malayan insurgency was a ‘low intensity’ war, in which the concept of ‘countergangs’ (pdf) was developed further by people like General Frank Kitson.

What few details that have dripped out into the major media outlets, appear to suggest these lessons (and those of the British in Aden, Kenya, Cyprus and Northern Ireland) were also being used in Iraq.

The manual advocates the use of “paramilitaries, pervasive surveillance, censorship, press control and restrictions on labor unions [and] political parties”.