Small war in Sabah, Not Many Dead

A tragedy looks like it's unfolding in Sabah, the Malaysian province in the north of Borneo, about 900 kilometres from us here in Saratok.  If you don't live in the region you probably won't hear of it, unless the death toll gets large enough.  How many will that need to be?  The news agencies must use a formula - anything above ten in the so-called developed world seems to get a mention on CNN and the likes, but here in Borneo?  A hundred?  A thousand?

The story in brief is that a couple of hundred armed Filipinos arrived in a remote coastal area of Sabah a few weeks ago to pursue a claim to the province by the Sultan of Sulu, himself a Filipino citizen.  For a few days there was an uneasy stand-off between the "invaders" and the Malaysian police, then the police and army went in and to date there are sixty-odd people reported dead, about ten Malaysian soldiers and police, the rest Filipinos.  The latest information is that the remaining Filipinos are concentrated in a small coastal patch surrounded by Malaysian armed forces, but there are also rumours about people in fast boats moving to and fro between Sabah and the nearby islands, which are part of the Philippines, either retreating or reinforcing.

This is actually a very modern and a very ancient tale.  The Philippines and Malaysia are both post-colonial creations, which exist mainly by the historical accident of who happened to control what when colonialism evaporated in the aftermath of the second world war.  Sabah and the neighbouring Philippine islands are at the peripheries of the two nations and have strong cultural links with each other.  The Sultanate of Sulu is a pre-colonial creation, which covered Sabah and the neighbouring islands and there are rivals for the crown, including one who holds a very old and long-cherished sword - a gift from the Sultan of Brunei.  Coming back to the present, general elections are due in both Malaysia and the Philippines, so neither government wants to look weak and the rumour-mill is rife in the blog and twitter sphere.  There are accusations all over the place about government incompetence and the underhand involvement of opposition parties in both countries and dark stories about beheadings and eye-gougings by the Filipino "invaders" and support for them from Filipino immigrants - there have been about fifty arrests in Sabah so far.  There have also been panicky tweets about incursions by armed Filipinos in various parts of the province.

There is one other contemporary angle to all this - Sabah has significant oil and gas reserves and perhaps it is this more than anything else that is causing the various interested parties to blow the dust off a bunch of nineteenth century colonial treaties concerning who owns what.  The current reality is that there is a group of armed, desperate and possibly deluded men facing the forces of a government under political pressure to do something.  My feeling is that the governments on both sides are stamping on this like an incipient forest fire and that probably all that will be left are some ashes, smoke and dead bodies.  But who knows?