General A H Nasution and was now the Commander of the Army General Reserve (Caduad), a strategic force unit which would be on standby, ready to be called into battle at any time. Ali received the position of Assistant to the Caduad Chief of Staff. In 1963, Caduad would change its name to the Army Strategic Command Kostrad. Confrontation During the Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation that had begun in 1963, Kostrad had been expected to play a vital role by virtue of Suharto being appointed Deputy Commander of the Alert Theater Command (Kolaga), a battle command headed by Air Marshal Omar Dhani and which had been formed for the purpose of fighting a war against Malaysia. The Army however was not enthusiastic about Confrontation and dragged its feet. Ali, now the Intelligence Assistant at Kostrad would become involved with this process. Using his Special Operations (Opsus) unit, Ali sent out messages to the Malaysian Government to inform them about the Army's stance on Confrontation and to ask the Malaysian Government to consider a peaceful solution to Confrontation. Transition to New Order On the morning of 1 October 1965, Ali found himself hastily summoned to Kostrad headquarters to respond to a rapidly developing incident. The morning had seen six generals kidnapped and unidentified troops occupying the Presidential Palace, the National Monument, and the Radio Republik Indonesia building. Suharto arrived at the scene just in time to hear an announcement by a group calling themselves the 30 September Movement saying that they had just stopped a coup attempt by a Council of Generals. With army commander Ahmad Yani nowhere to be found, Suharto assumed leadership of the Army. The first thing to be done was to identify the unidentified troops occupying strategic locations in Jakarta. It was soon found out that the troops were Battalions 454 and 530 from Central and East Java. After getting this information, Suharto sent Ali on a negotiation mission to Battalion 454. Ali conveyed Suharto's warning that the Battalion had until 6 pm to surrender but ultimately failed to convince them. Battalion 454 chose instead to retreat to Halim Airbase, the command post of the 30 September Movement. Nevertheless, the victory that day belonged to Suharto who regained control of Jakarta by the morning of 2 October 1965. When Suharto was appointed Commander of the Army, Ali became part of Suharto's personal staff and together with Yoga who looked