Suharto was the army general who ruled Indonesia for more than three decades, building one of the most enduring and authoritarian regimes in Asia while presiding over both rapid economic growth and large-scale repression. Born in a village in central Java, he rose through the military, serving in the Dutch colonial army, then under the Japanese occupation, and finally in the forces that won Indonesian independence.
He seized the national stage in 1965, when a murky attempted coup, blamed on the Communists, threw the country into crisis. Suharto crushed the alleged plot and led a ferocious anti-communist purge in which hundreds of thousands of suspected leftists were killed. Over the next two years he eased aside the founding president, Sukarno, and took power himself.
Establishing what he called the "New Order," Suharto ran Indonesia as a tightly controlled state, suppressing dissent while opening the economy to foreign investment and development. For many years the country enjoyed strong growth and rising living standards, and Suharto won Western backing as a bulwark against communism, even as corruption enriched his family and cronies and his army brutally occupied East Timor.
His grip finally failed during the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, when economic collapse and mass protests swept the country. In 1998 Suharto was forced to resign, ending thirty-two years of rule. He spent his final years dogged by accusations of corruption and human-rights abuses, and died in 2008.