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Back in Malaya, Sukarno's mob action stirred up retaliatory rioting. "Sukarno is a Communist bastard," howled a mob of 1,000 youths who invaded the Indonesian embassy, hoisted Malaysia's flag up the flagpole, and ripped down a heavy crest of a Garuda—a mythical bird that is Indonesia's national emblem. Escorted by motorcycle cops, the mob dragged the Garuda through the streets and onto the lawn at Abdul Rahman's official residence. There, they lifted the Tunku onto their shoulders, then lowered him so that he could put his feet on the battered Garuda. "I admire your patriotism," said Abdul Rahman somewhat nervously. "But you must not take the law into your own hands." Then the Tunku's servants appeared with cold drinks and biscuits for all to enjoy.
Out to Singapore. Diplomatically, the Tunku got tough. He severed relations with Indonesia and with the Philippine government, which sponsored some anti-Malaysia demonstrations of its own—in support of tenuous Filipino claims to North Borneo. Then Abdul Rahman alerted the Malayan army reserve against the possibility that Sukarno might try to infiltrate Sarawak and North Borneo with guerrilla troops.
In Djakarta, Ambassador Gilchrist recommended that British dependents be flown to safety in Singapore, and in London, the Foreign Office threatened to break diplomatic ties with Indonesia unless it guaranteed to protect British lives and property. Both Britain and Australia pledged military aid to Malaysia if Indonesia stirred up any trouble—as it had threatened—along the jungle border separating Sarawak and North Borneo from Indonesian Borneo.
Indonesia's mob diplomacy served Sukarno well. In heating up a new crisis over Malaysia, he has created an issue to take the minds of his underfed, underemployed people off Indonesia's slide toward economic ruin and once again raised the specter of a bloody, interminable guerrilla war in the steaming thickets of Borneo. For the new nation of Malaysia, it was an ominous, inauspicious start.