However, before the Brunei People’s Party electoral success, a military wing had emerged, the North Kalimantan National Army (Malay abbreviation TNKU), which saw itself as an anti-colonialist liberation party. Its sympathies lay with Indonesia which was seen as having better ‘liberationist’ credentials than Malaya and Singapore. Its 34-year-old leader A.M. Azahari had lived in Indonesia and was in touch with Indonesian intelligence agents. He had recruited several officers who had been trained in clandestine warfare in Indonesia. By late 1962, they could muster about 4000 men, a few modern weapons and about 1000 shotguns.