ABSTRACT
The British counter-insurgency campaign against the Mau Mau movement is viewed as one of the least glamorous of the post-1945 period, notwithstanding its rank as a ‘victory’. Accurate intelligence on the Mau Mau was lacking, given that the Kenya Police had little representation in the Kikuyu heartland and Special Branch activities were generally limited to Nairobi. The most important development in the utilization of operational intelligence in Kenya involved the use of captured terrorists against their former comrades in what became known as ‘pseudo-gangs’. With little operational intelligence available, Security Force operations tended toward large-scale sweeps of the Kikuyu Reserve and the forest areas of Mount Kenya and the Aberdare mountains in an effort to locate and break up the larger Mau Mau gangs. Throughout the active phase of the Emergency attempts were made to create conditions which would encourage members of the Militant Wing to surrender to the Security Forces.
