Word: malayans
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Merdeka. Abdul Rahman was so busy politicking that he had taken little military interest in the brutal, bloody guerrilla war that 350,000 British and Malayan troops and home guardsmen were waging against Communist insurgents in Malaya's tangled jungles. But after his 1955 election landslide, the Tunku grew afraid that the British might use the emergency to delay independence, arranged to meet the Communist rebel chieftains in northern Malaya to see if some sort of settlement could be worked out. "My ideas about Communism were determined by that meeting," says the Tunku. "I became convinced that once...
Abdul Rahman made no effort to squeeze the British out of the country, was convinced that Britain's continued economic and military presence was the best possible insurance for Malayan stability. Today a British officer commands the Malayan army, five senior British civil servants hold key positions in Malayan government ministries, and British businessmen control more than half of the rubber industry, repatriate $86 million in profits annually. "It's wonderful how this place has flowered since independence." says one businessman. "We're really much better off. Good old Tunku...
...leaders cool to the federation with promises of favored political positions in the new nation. He shrewdly offered the Borneo territories 70 seats in the federal parliament, against only 15 for far more populous Singapore and 104 for Malaya. He promised tax concessions and a $12 million dollop of Malayan aid annually to the territories, agreed to keep federal hands off Brunei's oil reserves. It was the Tunku's fondest hope that the new nation come into being on Aug. 31, 1963, the sixth anniversary of Malaya's independence...
...puppets," granted political asylum to Brunei Leader Azahari, raved that Abdul Rahman was "round the bend." (Retorted the Tunku: "What can you expect from a pig but a grunt?") Djakarta mobs hanged the Tun ku in effigy, and Sukarno declared a "policy of confrontation" against Malaya. Indonesian jets buzzed Malayan ships in the South China Sea, and army leaders darkly threatened "incidents of physical conflict" along the border of Brunei and Indonesia...
...Tunku's first wife, who died of malaria in 1935-was the mother of his two children, Daughter Kathijah, 29, wife of a Malayan studying in Britain, and Son Xerang, 27, now a major in the Malayan army. His second wife was a white Englishwoman, Violet Coulson, whom he married over the protests of his family; they were divorced...