New Zealand and Malaysia’s Second Communist Emergency, 1968–1989
Very little has been written in New Zealand about the Communist insurgency in Malaysia between 1968 and 1989. This is surprising because the conflict lasted for more than two decades and formed part of the wider Cold War struggle in Southeast Asia. It was not simply an echo of the earlier Malayan Emergency, nor a minor security disturbance after decolonisation. It was a renewed armed campaign by the Communist Party of Malaya and its military wing, the Malayan National Liberation Army, against the Malaysian state.
The first Malayan Emergency had officially ended in 1960, after twelve years of British, Commonwealth, and Malayan counter-insurgency operations. However, the Communist Party of Malaya had not been destroyed. Its leader, Chin Peng, and the surviving Communist forces withdrew across the border into southern Thailand, where they regrouped, rebuilt their organisation, trained new cadres, and waited for an opportunity to resume the armed struggle. That opportunity came in 1968.[1]
On 17 June 1968, Communist guerrillas ambushed a Malaysian security forces convoy travelling from Kroh to Betong in northern Peninsular Malaysia, killing seventeen members of the security forces. The date was deliberate. It marked the twentieth anniversary of the outbreak of the first Malayan Emergency in 1948. For the Communist Party of Malaya, the ambush signalled that the war had not ended in 1960, it had merely entered a new phase.[2]
Over the following twenty-one years, the renewed insurgency involved ambushes, assassinations, sabotage, road mining, attacks on police posts, border infiltration, intelligence operations, and sustained jungle warfare. The fighting was carried out by Malaysian forces, including the Malaysian Army, Police Field Force, intelligence agencies, and specialist units such as VAT 69 Commando, often with Thai cooperation along the border. The conflict finally ended on 2 December 1989, when the Hat Yai Peace Agreement was signed between the Communist Party of Malaya, the Malaysian Government, and Thai authorities.[3]
New Zealand was not absent from this history. For almost the entire duration of the conflict, New Zealand maintained a formed infantry battalion in the region, first at Terendak Camp in Malaysia, and then, from late 1969, at Dieppe Barracks in Singapore. New Zealand soldiers trained in jungle warfare, exercised across the Malaysian peninsula, and remained part of the regional defence architecture that had grown out of the first Malayan Emergency, Confrontation, and the wider Cold War in Southeast Asia.[4]
Yet the New Zealand story is not straightforward. New Zealand was present in the region, but it did not fight Malaysia’s second Communist insurgency in the same way it had contributed to the first Malayan Emergency or to Confrontation. The renewed insurgency was overwhelmingly a Malaysian internal security campaign. New Zealand’s contribution was indirect, through forward presence, training, readiness, deterrence, regional reassurance, and the preservation of jungle warfare skills.
This distinction matters because some veterans from that era continue to argue that their service deserves formal recognition that has not yet been accorded to them. Their concern should not be dismissed. They served in Southeast Asia during a real and active insurgency, in a security environment shaped by Communist violence and regional uncertainty. But proximity to a conflict is not the same as direct operational participation in it. The New Zealand story therefore needs to be told carefully, with neither exaggeration nor dismissal.
The War Malaysia Fought
The CPM had used the intervening years to rebuild. The jungles of southern Thailand provided sanctuary and training grounds. The MNLA organised itself around three main regiments. The 8th Regiment occupied the Sadao area, providing transit routes linking Thailand, Bangkok, Hanoi, Beijing, and Peninsular Malaysia, while conducting violence and sabotage along the Kedah and Perlis border. The 10th Regiment was established partly as a Malay-led unit to broaden the CPM’s ethnic appeal beyond its predominantly Chinese membership, though it largely failed to secure broad Malay support. The 12th Regiment, operating from the Betong Complex together with the CPM Central Committee, directed assault units deep into Perak, Pahang, and the west coast states. By the end of 1969, MNLA units had crossed the porous Malaysia-Thailand border and reoccupied previous jungle bases in Kedah, Kelantan, Perak, and Pahang.[5]
The threat was genuine and persistent. During the 1970s, Communist activity included ambushes, assassinations, road mining, attacks on police posts, and sabotage. In 1975 alone, Communist attacks killed more than fifty policemen. The MNLA also struck symbolic targets, including Kuala Lumpur Airport and the National Monument, which commemorated the defeat of the first Emergency. The CPM’s factionalism complicated but did not eliminate the threat: a Revolutionary Faction broke away in 1970, and a Marxist-Leninist faction split off in 1974, producing three separate armed organisations operating simultaneously in the jungle.[6]
The Malaysian Army regarded this second phase as a serious internal security challenge, noting that, for 21 years, it had been actively engaged in skirmishes with the armed wing of the Communist Party of Malaya.
Malaysia’s response combined sustained military pressure with civil and developmental strategies. Army brigades mounted intensive search-and-destroy operations in the affected states. Border operations were conducted in close cooperation with Thailand. The KESBAN programme, an acronym for Security and Development, applied lessons from the first Emergency by pairing military pressure with rural development and population security, denying the insurgents their political and logistical base.[7]
Specialist units played a central role. The VAT 69 Commando, formed on 23 October 1969 and modelled on the British 22nd Special Air Service Regiment, was built for jungle tracking, counterinsurgency, and small-team operations against Communist Terrorists. Drawn initially from the Police Field Force after a rigorous selection process supervised by British SAS and later New Zealand SAS instructors at Fort Kemar in Perak, VAT 69 became one of the most effective tools in Malaysia’s counter-insurgency armoury. Before 1989, its primary task was conducting operations against MNLA insurgents in the Malaysian jungle, often in close cooperation with the elite Senoi Praaq tracking unit.[8]
The conflict declined through the 1980s as the CPM lost momentum, suffered from internal divisions, and became strategically isolated. China had ended its backing when it established diplomatic relations with Malaysia in 1974. On 2 December 1989 the Hat Yai Peace Agreement was signed between the CPM, the Malaysian Government, and Thai authorities, formally ending more than four decades of Communist armed struggle in Malaya and Malaysia. It was, overwhelmingly, a Malaysian achievement.[9]
The New Zealand Presence
New Zealand was not absent from this history, but its role was fundamentally different from what it had been during the first Emergency or Confrontation. During the first Malayan Emergency, New Zealand had contributed aircraft, Special Air Service troops, naval forces, and support personnel to the Commonwealth effort. During Confrontation, New Zealand troops had served in Borneo and on the Malay Peninsula. These campaigns had deeply embedded Malaya and Malaysia in New Zealand’s post-war military experience and professional identity.
By 1968, New Zealand still had a formed infantry battalion in the region, part of the Far East Strategic Reserve and later the ANZUK force. After 1971, this presence fell within the framework of the Five Power Defence Arrangements, which involved New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom, Malaysia, and Singapore. The battalion trained in tropical conditions, conducted jungle warfare exercises in Malaysia, and remained a visible sign of New Zealand’s continuing commitment to regional stability.[10]
New Zealand also maintained an indirect connection to Malaysia’s counter-insurgency capability. The New Zealand SAS assisted with training additional VAT 69 squadrons, contributing specialist expertise to one of the conflict’s most effective fighting formations.[11]
The key distinction, however, is that New Zealand’s regional presence was not the same as operational participation in Malaysia’s second insurgency. Unlike the earlier campaigns, this was not a Commonwealth counter-insurgency effort in which New Zealand combat units were committed as active participants. The fighting was conducted by Malaysian forces, with support from Thai border cooperation, and the defeat of the CPM was overwhelmingly a Malaysian achievement.
Available evidence indicates that New Zealand infantry forces were generally kept out of areas of known Communist Terrorist activity. That said, New Zealand’s involvement was not uniform across all personnel or all activities. Occasional company-level training activities brought elements of 1 RNZIR into direct contact with 69 Commando, one of Malaysia’s most operationally active counter-insurgency formations, whose primary task was conducting operations against MNLA insurgents in the Malaysian jungle. These exercises placed New Zealand infantry soldiers in a professional context directly shaped by the ongoing insurgency and were something more than the routine regional training that characterised most of the NZFORSEA period. At the closer end of that spectrum, New Zealand SAS personnel involved in training additional VAT 69 squadrons at Fort Kemar in Perak operated alongside a formation engaged in active counter-insurgency operations. Their proximity to the conflict was qualitatively different from that of the wider battalion presence. The Malaysian Army’s own history records no New Zealand combat role in the Second Emergency, and that distinction holds. New Zealand’s contribution operated across a spectrum, from the general forward presence and deterrence of the infantry battalion, to company-level training relationship with 69 Commando, to the closer instructional engagement of the SAS at Fort Kemar, but it remained throughout a contribution of presence, training, reassurance, and the preservation of hard-won jungle warfare skills rather than direct operational participation in the insurgency itself.[12]
The Medal Question
It is partly because of this ambiguity that some New Zealand veterans of the era have felt overlooked. Their frustration is understandable. They served forward in Southeast Asia during a real and active insurgency. They trained under conditions shaped by that insurgency, in a security environment where Communist Terrorists remained dangerous. They maintained the regional relationships and readiness that formed a genuine part of New Zealand’s Cold War posture in the Indo-Pacific. That service was not trivial, and it should not be dismissed.
This frustration is not unique to New Zealand. Australian veterans of Rifle Company Butterworth, the rotating Australian infantry company based at Royal Malaysian Air Force Base Butterworth between 1970 and 1989, have raised similar concerns about how their service has been classified and recognised. Their case has been the subject of repeated review in Australia, including by the Defence Honours and Awards Appeals Tribunal. The Australian example is not a direct parallel because Rifle Company Butterworth had a defined air-base security task, whereas New Zealand’s post-1974 presence was centred on NZFORSEA and regional training. Even so, it illustrates the same wider problem: service in Malaysia and Singapore during the later Communist insurgency does not fit neatly into simple categories of war, peace, combat, or routine overseas duty.[13]
The current official position draws a firm line. The New Zealand Operational Service Medal for Southeast Asia service covers qualifying service up to 31 January 1974, including Far East Strategic Reserve and ANZUK service. The later NZFORSEA period, from 1974 to 1989, remains excluded on the grounds that NZFORSEA did not have an operational role and that personnel were not exposed to operational threats except in fleeting circumstances.[14]
A proposed New Zealand Humanitarian Aid and Disaster Relief Medal Bill has added a further layer to the debate, but it does not appear to resolve the post-1974 recognition issue. Its Singapore and Malaysia exception applies only to the period 1969 to 1975 and only where the deployment meets the Bill’s humanitarian aid, disaster relief, or emergency-support purpose.[15]
The tension in this debate reflects something genuine. The veterans’ argument is not that they fought the Second Emergency in the sense that Malaysian soldiers and VAT 69 Commandos fought it, in the jungle, in contact, over years of ambushes and operations. Their argument is that their service formed part of the regional deterrence and commitment that underpinned Malaysia’s ability to wage that conflict, and that this contribution has been undervalued. That argument deserves a fair hearing. But it should be assessed on its actual merits, as a case for recognition of forward Cold War service, rather than conflated with claims of direct combat participation that the historical record does not support.
Conclusion
Malaysia’s second Communist Emergency of 1968 to 1989 was not a minor aftershock of the first Malayan Emergency. It was a long, serious, and ultimately successful internal security campaign fought by Malaysia’s own forces against a reconstituted Communist insurgency. New Zealand was present in the region throughout, and that presence was not accidental or insignificant. New Zealand soldiers served in the shadow of a real conflict, maintained strategic relationships, exercised in the jungle, and preserved military capabilities that mattered to regional stability.
But presence is not the same as participation. New Zealand did not fight Malaysia’s second Emergency. The defeat of the CPM was a Malaysian achievement, earned by Malaysian soldiers, police, and intelligence officers, and by specialist formations such as VAT 69 Commando, over more than two decades of difficult and dangerous operations in the deep jungle. New Zealand’s contribution was to stand ready, to reassure, and to sustain the regional commitment that helped make Malaysia’s effort possible.
That is a real and honourable contribution to the history of this conflict, and it is strong enough to stand on its own without exaggeration. For New Zealand veterans of the era, and for those who seek to have their service properly recognised, the most honest and effective case rests on exactly this ground: that they were present in the shadow of the war, prepared and committed, and that their service in South East Asia during the Cold War deserves to be properly understood and appropriately acknowledged.
Notes
[1] The Malaysian Army’s Battle Against Communist Insurgency in Peninsular Malaysia 1968–1989 (Kuala Lumpur: Malaysian Ministry of Defiance, n.d.), 1, 6.
[2] The Malaysian Army’s Battle Against Communist Insurgency, 6
[3] The Malaysian Army’s Battle Against Communist Insurgency, 6–7, 76, 83–84, 97; A. Navaratnam, The Spear and the Kerambit: The Exploits of VAT 69, Malaysia’s Elite Fighting Force, 1968–1989 (Kuala Lumpur: Utusan Publications & Distributors, 2001), 9–10; Cheah Boon Kheng, ‘The Communist Insurgency in Malaysia, 1948–90: Contesting the Nation-State and Social Change,’ New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies 11, no. 1 (June 2009): 132–52.
[4] New Zealand History, ‘New Zealand Military Base in Singapore,’ accessed 8 June 2026; New Zealand Malaya Veterans Association, ‘History of New Zealand’s Involvement in Malaya/Malaysia,’ accessed 8 June 2026.
[5] The Malaysian Army’s Battle Against Communist Insurgency, 6, 13, 17, 19.
[6] Armed Conflict, 1975–76 (London: Institute for the Study of Conflict, 1976), 203–5; The Malaysian Army’s Battle Against Communist Insurgency, 17–18; Armed Conflict, 1977–78 (London: Institute for the Study of Conflict, 1978), 326–27.
[7] The Malaysian Army’s Battle Against Communist Insurgency, 7, 76, 83–84, 97; Karl Hack, ‘The Second Emergency, 1968 to 1989,’ in The Malayan Emergency (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021); Weichong Ong, ‘Between Safe Havens in Cross-Border Insurgency: Malaysia and the Second Emergency, 1968–1989,’ Small Wars & Insurgencies 31, no. 1 (2020).
[8] A. Navaratnam, The Spear and the Kerambit, 9–10.
[9] Cheah Boon Kheng, ‘The Communist Insurgency in Malaysia, 1948–90,’ 132–52.
[10] New Zealand History, ‘New Zealand Military Base in Singapore’; New Zealand Malaya Veterans Association, ‘History of New Zealand’s Involvement in Malaya/Malaysia.’
[11] Peter Adamis, RCB and Communist Insurgency in Malaysia 1968–1989 (Abalinx & Associates, 2025),
[12] The Malaysian Army’s Battle Against Communist Insurgency, 1–7. The volume records Commonwealth support in general terms for the earlier Emergency period but does not identify New Zealand units engaged in operations during the 1968–1989 phase.
[13] Peter Adamis, RCB and Communist Insurgency in Malaysia 1968–1989 (Abalinx & Associates, 2025).
[14] New Zealand Defence Force, ‘Expanded Criteria for NZOSM for Service in Southeast Asia,’ 3 November 2021, accessed 8 June 2026, https://www.nzdf.mil.nz/media-centre/news/expanded-criteria-for-nzosm-for-service-in-south-east-asia/.
[15] New Zealand Humanitarian Aid and Disaster Relief Medal Bill, draft bill, 2026, accessed 8 June 2026, https://img.scoop.co.nz/media/pdfs/2605/New_Zealand_Humanitarian_Aid_and_Disaster_Relief_Medal_Bill.pdf.
