Divine Spears

IN A NATION where the military has played an influential social and political role since its founding, perhaps no unit has wielded more power – and seen more combat – than Kopassus, Indonesia’s Special Forces. And perhaps nowhere did it experience more challenging assignments than in the mountains and jungles of East Timor.

     Here, two Kopassus teams – codenamed nanggala, a Sanskrit term for “divine spear” – are documented in detail during the earliest phase of the East Timor campaign. Coming when Fretilin insurgents were at their most powerful, these Special Forces teams took on assignments ranging from airborne assaults to psychological warfare. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in unconventional warfare, contemporary Indonesian history, the struggle of Timor Leste, and the brushfire wars that have swept the Indonesian archipelago.

KEN CONBOY is currently country manager for a private security and risk consultancy in Jakarta. Prior to that, he served as deputy director at the Asian Studies Center, an influential Washington-based think tank, where his duties included writing policy papers for the US Congress and Executive on economic and strategic relations with the nations of South and Southeast Asia. The author of nearly twenty books about Asian military history and intelligence operations, Conboy’s most recent title The Cambodian Wars has been called “riveting and brilliantly researched”. Conboy, a graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and of Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies, was also a visiting fellow at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. He has lived in Indonesia since 1992.