Mau Mau Uprising more mobile formations that delivered what he termed "special treatment" to an area. Once gangs had been driven out and eliminated, loyalist forces and police were then to take over the area, with military support brought in thereafter only to conduct any required pacification operations. After their successful dispersion and containment, Erskine went after the forest fighters' source of supplies, money and recruits, i.e. the native Kenyan population of Nairobi. This took the form of Operation Anvil, which commenced on 24 April 1954. By 1954, Nairobi was regarded as the nerve centre of Mau Mau operations. Anvil was the ambitious
Mau Mau Uprising of atrocity and excess on both sides, a dirty war from which no one emerged with much pride, and certainly no glory." Historian Daniel Goldhagen describes the campaign against the Mau Mau as an example of eliminationism, though this verdict has been fiercely criticised. The total number of deaths attributable to the Emergency has been a source of dispute: Caroline Elkins claims it is "tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands". Elkins numbers have been challenged by the British demographer John Blacker, who demonstrated in detail that her numbers were overestimated, explaining that Elkins' figure of 300,000 deaths "implies that