Edward Lansdale’s covert campaign against the communist-affiliated Philippine Hukbalahap guerrillas in the early 1950s serves as an example of a successful anti-communist action in the early Cold War. The conflict between the Huk guerrillas and the government of the Philippines flared up when remnants of the anti-Japanese WWII resistance took arms against the government due to frustrations stemming from the disintegration of traditional tenant-landlord relationships and corruption. Due to the simultaneous US campaign in the Korean peninsula, Lansdale was not able to enjoy the provenance of a large budget; however, his use of appropriate covert tactics allowed the Philippine government to turn the tide against the guerrilla insurgency using a minimum of material input.
Lansdale was assigned by the US government to advise Ramon Magsaysay, who had assumed the post of Minister of National Defense. Magsaysay had experience as a guerrilla fighter from the Japanese occupation before and during WWII, but he faced the twin problems of the Huk revolt and a highly demoralized citizenry that collaborated to protect and conceal the Huk fighters from the government’s forces. If anything, the problem of the citizenry represented a greater challenge for the government forces than the actual military action by the Huk revolt. In his book The Huk Rebellion: A Study of Peasant Revolt in the Philippines, Southeast Asia scholar Benedict Kerkvliet analyzed the reasons for peasant support for the Huk revolt. Kerkvliet found that adverse consequences of changes in the social structure of the Philippines had led ultimately to peasants’ support of revolt against the government. In main, the the Philippine peasants had two complaints: firstly, the deterioration of the traditional tenant-landlord relationship had deprived the peasants of their livelihoods; secondly, a flawed and corrupted political system had left the peasants without means to ask the government for aid or protect themselves from strongmen hired by Philippine landlords. When channels such as strikes, petitioning, marches, court action, and political candidacy failed to secure an amelioration of living conditions, the Philippine peasantry unsurprisingly chose to collaborate with the Huk rebels.
The Huks organized themselves into a compartmentalized cell structure at the barrio level. Partially, the Huks derived their organization and tactics from lessons learned from members of the communist Chinese 8th route army. The main lesson learned was the method of concealment among a friendly populace. However, through efforts to improve the transparency of government and alleviate financial hardship for peasants, the tide rapidly turned in the government’s favor during the year leading up to the Philippine elections of 1951, during which the American advisor Captain1 Edward Lansdale utilized one of his most effective covert tactics: the forgery of an message from the Huks to boycott the 1951 election.
In order to see why the forged message proved so useful, we should note the historical background against which the Huk revolt occurred. After the end of WWII, the majority of the local population felt that national elections in the Philippines had been rigged in favor of the urban wealthy and rural landowners. In response to the perceived corruption, the Huks popularized a slogan: “bullets not ballots.’ The meaning of this slogan is obvious: anti-government violence would succeed where a rigged political system had failed. Initially, the revolt succeeded in controlling opinions and discourse, and gained widespread popular support in central Luzon, a region of the main north island of the Philippine chain.
However, advice provided to the Philippine government by Edward Lansdale and the Joint United States Military Advisory Group (JUSMAG) served to quickly turn the tide of the battle between the Huks and the government. As popular support for the Huks waned in 1950 and 1951, one method of shoring up losses and preserving the existence of the movement would have been to participate in the elections of 1951. Through the election process, the Huks might have been able to gain political legitimacy and end their armed battle with government forces.
Unfortunately for the Huks, a loss of political cohesion in their forces led to widespread defections and high levels of government infiltration of the Huk forces. In the run-up to the 1951 elections, Lansdale used procured documents to forge a message to the populace from ‘the Hukbulahap’, instructing a boycott of the elections in accordance with the previously stated ‘bullets not ballots’ policy. However, according to Lansdale, the 1951 election had a key difference from the preceding election: its fairness was monitored by the army. Due to the forged instructions, the Huk’s supporters failed to vote in what eventually was thought to be the fairly administered elections of 1951. Thus, using this tactic, Lansdale effectively isolated the Huks from both their political base and destroyed the basis of their previous moral superiority. The use of the forgery, in this case, proved to be a finishing blow against the Huk revolt.
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