Sulu Sultan Jamalul Kiram III has started a fight he can never hope to win. For detailing too long in Tanduao village, Lahad Datu, Sabah, his ragtag band of Tausug loyalists, Malaysia had to eject them by force. Resisting with a few long arms, they slew two Malaysian policemen, but themselves suffered ten dead and ten captured. Elsewhere in Sabah in the next days they in turn killed five Malaysian soldiers and took hostage four. It only worsened their situation. Provoked, Malaysia naturally is using everything in its arsenal, including fighter-bombers and mortars, to contain them. They will be wiped out, by bullet if not by deprivation.
Violence, hatred, suspicion are now feeding themselves. A retired but armed Moro rebel reportedly rounded up Sabahan neighbors, but was mobbed. Malaysian forces mowed down Jamalul sympathizers, including two imams (Muslim prayer leaders) and sons. Hundreds of their fellow-Tausugs were deported from Sabah Sunday, with more to follow for illegal stays. Dozens of others, legally employed, have been fired by Malaysian employers. Many of the 800,000 Filipinos in Sabah, mostly Tausugs, reportedly are in fear of reprisals.
Jamalul had miscalculated. Taking for Malaysian weakness four deferments of any assault, he had his brother Raja Muda (Crown Prince) Agbi-muddin and the loyalists dig in at Tanduao. The ensuing massacre is akin to what happened to Tausugs in Jolo, Sulu, this week 107 years ago, in the (First) Battle of Bud Daho.
The Sulu Sultan was on the side of the American massacrers in 1906, though. The most diehard Tausug resisters of American rule had holed up in the forested crater of the dormant volcano. The colonial army balked at attacking. For, sustaining heavy casualties would point up the near impregnability of the mountain stronghold. The rebels, 800 to 1,000 including women and children, misjudged as softness the American hesitance. They raided lowland villages for food, angering the datus. Rejected was a last-ditch try by the Sultan to make them disband. American ground and naval artillery were called in, followed by mounted and foot soldiers. The rebels resisted with mere swords, spears, and improvised grenades. Only six of them came out alive.
Jamalul seems to not have learned from that lesson. This puts in question not only his generalship but also his royalty claim. Followers naturally desert a defeated leader. There are ten other claimants to the Sultan’s throne, largely symbolic as it may be.
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It takes two hands to clap. Jamalul rebukes Malacañang for vagueness about its stand on his Sabah claims. Yet he and Agbimuddin appear to not be upfront as well about their intents. That is Malacañang’s explanation for the crafting of its statements on the standoff and ensuing armed clashes.
Malacañang cites three instances of doubletalk by Jamalul and Agbimuddin: (1) in their bearing of arms in Sabah, (2) in their appeals for support, (3) in their denial of Palace efforts to help resolve their dilemma.
Of 180 to 235 loyalists who went to Sabah, 30 allegedly were armed with rifles and pistols only to secure Agbimuddin. They intended no aggression; thus the presence of 30 women. Reports are sketchy if they indeed had fired first in Tanduao, at a patrol car that was enforcing a distant perimeter. But the instant retaliations in Semporna, two-and-a-half hours’ drive away, shows that the arming was more than for just bodyguard, Malacañang says.
Jamalul and Agbimuddin also would not say if the help they seek is in pressing their proprietary claim, that is, higher annual rent. They lament that the Sultanate receives a mere 5,300 ringgit a year, which when divvied up redounds to at most P2.50 per adult heir. The President refuses to talk about the claim unless Jamalul and Agbimuddin stand down first. Yet three Cabinet men have assured that the government has not abandoned the sovereignty right. The Sultanate is saying that what it is doing in Sabah will benefit the Filipino nation.
From the start, Malacañang had sent Presidential Political Adviser Ronald Llamas and National Security Adviser Cesar Garcia to help save the lives of Jamalul’s men. They apparently disagreed, so Malacañang dispatched two Muslims by birth: Muslim Autonomous Region Gov. Mujiv Hataman, who is half-Tausug and speaks the language, and police general Cipriano Querol Jr. They acceded to Jamalul’s request for non-publicizing of their talks. That’s why, Malacañang says, it was surprised when the latter accused them of refusing to talk.
Even the hour-long sea crossing from Simunol, Tawi-Tawi, to Tanduao is suspect, Malacañang adds a fourth item. If Jamalul and Agbimuddin are bent on dramatizing their claim, why in March? Summer, in May-June, would have seen calmer seas, not treacherous habagat (southwest trade winds). Was it timed for the simultaneous election campaigns in the Philippines and Malaysia?
Indeed election contenders in both countries are now politicizing the issue. In the Philippines, the opposition is bashing the party in power for mishandling the standoff-turned-massacre. Former bitter foes are coming together in what Malacañang in turn calls provocateur-financiers of the Sulu Sultanate’s “royal guards.â€
In Malaysia, the ruling party is accusing the opposition of collusion with the Tausug intruders. A plot is in the offing to blackmail Agbimuddin’s remnants to implicate certain political figures.
The screeching from both sides — to invade Sabah or deport all 800,000 Filipinos, jail all political foes or muzzle the press — do not help to dissipate the conflict.
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E-mail: jariusbondoc@gmail.com