Siege's End

In an ornate palace overlooking surprisingly modern Kuala Lumpur, the nine hereditary sultans of the federated Malayan states met fortnight ago to hold a thoroughly modern election. By secret vote of his peers, Sir Hisamuddin Alam Shah, 61, Sultan of Selangor, was elected to the five-year rotating kingship of independent Malaya, succeeding the late Tuan-ku Abdul Rahman. Gravely, the new king, who once operated a sporting-goods store and now raises rare orchids in his palace gardens, inscribed his name in a silver-bound book. Last week he went before Malaya's democratically elected Parliament to announce some good news. Come July, the emergency declared twelve years ago to combat Communist subversion and terror will officially end. Said the new king: "Restrictions on our liberty and livelihood [which] have become almost a part of our daily lives" will finally be lifted from the entire country.

It had not been, said the king in the week's understatement, an "easy victory." Faced with a guerrilla army which totaled 12,000 at its peak, Malaya had mustered some 350,000 men, spent $580 million and lost more than 11,000 lives, including civilians. But 6,700 Reds had been killed, 2,675 more captured or forced to surrender. Special tactics had been devised to cope with an enemy that struck and then melted into the jungle. Each time a guerrilla was slain or surrendered, a guerrilla band would descend on an outlying village, coerce some hapless peasant into joining as a replacement. To combat this tactic, the government resettled more than 500,000 villagers, mostly Chinese, in larger communities for mutual protection. By promising independence in 1957, Britain deprived the rebels of their best talking point. Under able Prime Minister Abdul Rahman, Malaya's Alliance Party accomplished a political miracle by teaching Malayans of different races (Malays. Indians, Chinese) and religions (Moslems, Buddhists, Hindus) to think of themselves for the first time as a nation. The party had its reward when it swept last year's parliamentary elections.

Last week the guerrilla forces were down to an estimated 700 stragglers hiding out on the Thailand border. Already blessed with one of Asia's highest per capita incomes ($350 a year), Malaya is laying out some $200 million on highways, harbors and other long-range assets, hopes to make the young nation so prosperous that agitators will have no discontent to build on.

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