Indonesia’s armed forces (ABRI) had similar revolutionary habits of engage¬ment in the country’s political and economic life, but none of the taste or opportunity for isolationism. In 1950 it also lacked any leader of comparable political stature to Ne Win. The choice of the Japanese-trained officers for leadership, General Sudirman, had died in 1950. The young Dutch-trained colonels to whom the Jakarta government gave the task of building a disci¬plined modem force, Nasution and Simatupang, were sacrificed after the October 1952 affair, an abortive army attempt to prevent political interference in its affairs by abolishing Parliament. Nasution was brought back as Chief of Staff of ABRI in late 1955, after a series of crises had consolidated army support behind him. Jakarta could not, however, control its colonels in com¬mand of wealthy districts outside Java, who resented the growing pressure for military and economic centralization that threatened then soldiers’ livelihood from semi-legal “informal” trade to Singapore, Malaya,' and the Philippines. They also distrusted the growing power of the Java-based PKI after the 1955 election, and Sukarno’s desire to include the communists in government. The growing polarization marked by the resignation in December 1956 of Vice- President Hatta, Sumatran, anti-communist, and pragmatist, also propelled the dissident colonels toward open rebellion.