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Singapore Indonesia's Destabilization Attempts, 1963-66
Indonesia's opposition to the 1963 establishment of the
Federation of Malaysia presented the only known external
threat to
Singapore since Japanese occupation. The opposition of
Indonesian
President Sukarno to the incorporation of Sabah and
Sarawak on the
island of Borneo into the Federation of Malaysia set up
the early
stages of a low-intensity conflict called Confrontation,
which
lasted three years and contributed to Sukarno's political
demise.
In August 1963, Indonesia deployed several thousand army
units to
the Indonesian-Malaysian border on Borneo. Throughout the
latter
part of 1963 and all of 1964 the Indonesian army
dispatched units,
usually comprising no more than 100 troops, to conduct
acts of
sabotage and to incite disaffected groups to participate
in an
insurrection that Djakarta hoped would lead to the
dissolution of
the Federation. In June and July 1964, Indonesian army
units
infiltrated Singapore with instructions to destroy
transportation
and other links between the island and the state of Johor
on the
Malay Peninsula. Indonesia's Kalimantan Army Command also
may have
been involved in the September 1964 communal riots in
Singapore.
These riots occurred at the same time Indonesian army
units were
deployed to areas in Johor in an attempt to locate and
encourage
inactive communists in the Chinese communities to
reestablish
guerrilla bases destroyed by British and Malaysian
military units
during the Emergency. After September 1964, Indonesia
discontinued
military operations targeting Singapore. In March 1965,
however, a
Singapore infantry battalion deployed on the southern
coast of
Johor was involved in fighting against a small Indonesian
force
that was conducting guerrilla operations in the vicinity
of Kota
Tinggi. Indonesia supported Singapore's separation from
Malaysia in
1965 and used diplomatic and economic incentives in an
unsuccessful
effort to encourage the Lee administration to sever its
defense
ties with Malaysia and Britain. In March 1966, General
Soeharto,
who until October 1965 was deputy chief of the Kalimantan
Army
Command, supplanted President Sukarno as Indonesia's de
facto
political leader. Soeharto quickly moved to end the
Confrontation
and to reestablish normal relations with Malaysia and
Singapore.
Data as of December 1989
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