Quote:Hardly true. I'm not sure how you can classify 500,000(MNLA)/3,120,000(Ethnic Chinese) as a handful.
That would have been an enormous army, and indeed not a handful. But I don't think your numbers work. I cannot tell exactly what your source is, but since the wikipedia article gives those two numbers in succession, I'm going to assume that was it. If not, feel free to correct me. The wikipedia article also gives the maximum number of combatants at 8000. The MNLA were, if the wikipedia article is to be believed, almost 2 magnitudes less strong than the half million you give. That moves them from their army vastly outnumbering the British, to being vastly outnumbered by them.
The 500,000 were not the forces of the MNLA, but rather the number of poor ethnic chinese farmers involved, most of whom were then relocated. I don't know where 3.12 million comes from. The Chinese population of Malaysia, as best I can estimate it, was about 2 million during the insurgency.
The British military forces, mostly ethnic Malays, outnumbered the MNLA by over 40 to 1, and even 5-1 just counting British Commonwealth troops. You can try Briggs Plan-type operations when you have a prexisting colonial government, well established, vastly outnumbering the enemy. You can do it when you are seen by the national majority as benevolent protectors against an unpopular foreign power, in this case, China. You can do it when your enemy relies on a small number of people for sustenance, and will have a really hard time if they lose local support.
You cannot do it in the middle of a hostile nation, when your authority is not recognized, and you do not outnumber the enemy. This would be the case in any middle eastern country, unless you're planning to start the 'Jihad' in Oman. (Edited: I always mix up Yemen and Oman. Apologies.) And it would be certainly, even overwhelmingly, the case if you were to maintain this kind of plan in more than one country at once.
Quote: I'm referring to the Briggs Plan, where the US would build new towns , cities and the needed infrastructure then repopulate with known peaceful residents from the insurgent ravaged areas. These areas would need to be geographically isolated from the insurgency, and movement into and out of the secure zones would be strictly controlled. The other part of safe harbor goes to cracking down on States that support terrorism. In this case, we know that Syria and Iran are supplying at least weapons if not fighters. This needs to be better controlled, but then, the US is not so good at border security either.
This is not a plan that the US is capable of following in these countries, given the existing conditions. You cannot re-arrange the the entire human geography of the middle east, not least because it would cost you tens of trillions of dollars. It would be the largest population displacement ever. And, indeed, where would you displace them to? Support for the insurgency in Iraq is not a geographically isolated phenomenon, and there is little reason to believe it would be any different in Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, etc...
At your current levels of expenditure and military deployment, even the palace-and-swimming-pools Green Zone is not safe from the insurgency. Try securing all of Baghdad before extending the plan to the entire middle east. My bet is that even that's not a feasable plan.
Either you need a military effort of colossal magnitude, or you need a less ambitious way of fighting terrorists than bringing them 'Jihad' in 'great measure' using a Briggs Plan strategy. It would simply not work.
-Jester
Afterthought on links provided: If your point is that Iran is supporting the Shi'a in Iraq, then you need not make it to me. I have not disputed this point, although I am unsure what you mean by it.