CATEGORY

For more than half a century, the elite units of the Indonesian Armed Forces have been in the forefront of that country's brushfire wars, counter-guerrilla campaigns, counter-terrorist battles, and police actions. They have also dominated Indonesian politics for most of the decades since independence. Now for the first in print, a comprehensive guide to the uniforms and insignia used by the commandos and paratroopers of the Indonesian Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines, and Police. In this illustrated supplement, hundreds of color photographs document the heraldry and rich histories of these special forces, from their origins to the present day. KEN CONBOY heads Risk Management Advisory, a security consultancy in Jakarta. A graduate of Georgetown University and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Conboy also studied at Sophia University in Tokyo and was a visiting fellow at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. A resident of Indonesia since 1992, he is the author of more than two dozen books on intelligence and military history.