The Malaysian Federation is a young country located in South-East Asia. It is led by Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman, a veteran statesman who has been crucial at keeping the nation together against all odds. Before the collapse of the British Empire, it was one of its most profitable colonies due to its large amounts of tin and great conditions for planting rubber. Independence was abrupt and violent, but the German Empire was quick to integrate Malaysia into its economic sphere, annexing the city of Singapore to protect its trade routes in the Pacific and Indian oceans. North Borneo, a former British colony, voted to join the Federation, greatly antagonising the Dutch colony of Indonesia. During World War II, Japanese troops occupied Malaysia, and were not really dislodged until the country's surrender in late 1945. As part of Kaiser Louis Ferdinand's Neuordnungprogramm, German trade and political restrictions upon Malaysia were greatly softened, and the country saw its first legitimate multiparty elections. These sparked a controversy as the Malayan Communist Party, which had amassed large numbers of (primarily Chinese) supporters, refused to participate. A number of assassinations of prominent rubber plantation owners followed, which were responded with mass arrests and state repression. So began the Malayan Emergency, a conflict which pit mostly ethnic Chinese communist guerillas against the Malay government, which received friendly troops and aid from Germany, Great Britain, the Low Countries and France. In 1955 peace with Chin Peng, the communists' leader, was agreed upon and in 1960 the Federation declared this Emergency as over. Malaysia has not picked a side in the Cold War; it is too tied up in its own internal ethnic tensions, as well as the increasingly worring clashes with Indonesian troops over North Borneo, what would later be name the Konfrontasi.