Southern Rhodesia, then a self-governing colony of the United Kingdom, sent two military units to fight with the Commonwealth armed forces in the Malayan Emergency of 1948–60, which pitted the Commonwealth against the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA), the military arm of the Malayan Communist Party. For two years, starting in March 1951, white Southern Rhodesian volunteers made up "C" Squadron of the Special Air Service (SAS). The Rhodesian African Rifles, in which black rank-and-filers and warrant officers were led by white officers, then served in Malaya from 1956 to 1958. Of the hundreds of Southern Rhodesians who served in Malaya, eight were killed. "C" Squadron, which was formed especially to serve in Malaya, was the first SAS unit from a British colony or dominion. Several veterans of the conflict, Peter Walls and John Hickman among them, subsequently held key positions in the Rhodesian Security Forces during the Bush War of the 1970s. One former member of C Squadron named Ronald Reid-Daly went on to found the Selous Scouts. Background and outbreak of war The Malayan Emergency was a guerrilla war between the Federation of Malaya—a protectorate of Britain until August 1957, and part of the Commonwealth of Nations thereafter—and the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA), the armed wing of the Malayan Communist Party (MCP). The MNLA sought to topple the Malayan government and force the British out, while the Commonwealth worked to prevent this. The conflict had its roots in the Second World War, in which groups of local ethnic Chinese fought alongside Britain's limited forces in the country against the occupying Imperial Japanese; these Malayan Chinese subscribed to communist political thinking, and called themselves the Malayan Peoples' Anti-Japanese Army. Soon after Japan was defeated, the communist fighters renamed themselves the Malayan National Liberation Army, and began to agitate against British rule. Using the arms that Britain had given them—which they had cached, and then subsequently retrieved—they formed themselves into eight regiments, and began a campaign of Maoist-style rural subversion, their intent being to politicise the villagers and gain popular support, which they could then use to take control of Malayan cities. In March 1948, the MCP called on the Malayan people to rise up against the British. Three months later, on 16 June, MNLA guerrillas killed three British rubber plantation managers in Perak province. The British High Commissioner in Malaya, Sir Edward Gent, declared a state of emergency