Elite: The Special Forces of Indonesia 1950-2008

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 time in print, a history of all the commando and airborne formations in the Indonesian Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines, and Police. From battlefields across the Indonesian archipelago and beyond, get a detailed understanding of these units 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.