Tapping into the psyche of Tausugs

KOTA KINABALU: A news story is etched in the mind of academician Wan Shawaluddin Wan Hassan. 

Many years ago, he remembers reading a story of a man from the southern Philippine province of Sulu who came to Sabah and worked as a labourer.

After working for about three years, the man killed a fellow migrant worker from Sulu. Both were Tausugs - one of the southern Philippines ethnic groups.

The motive was said to be revenge. The man was avenging the death of a relative many years before that in Sulu.

For Shawaluddin, that incident illustrated the psyche of "vengeance". 

It is for this reason Wan Shawaluddin wonders about the unintended consequences of the Malaysian brokered peace framework in southern Philippines.

The framework was inked between the Philippines government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) last March. The MILF was a breakaway faction of another rebel group, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) that had been virtually marginalised under the deal.

As Shawaluddin observes, the MILF comprises largely the Magindanao community while its arch-rival, the MNLF, is made up of the Tausugs and headed by fugitive leader Nur Misuari who was arrested by Malaysian police in Sabah in 2001. 

(Misuari claimed that Malaysia lent a helping hand to the MNLF in its “struggle” against the Philippines government for an independent homeland in the 1970s.)

“Historically the Magindanao and the Tausugs have been the dominant forces in southern Philippines. Both have had their respective sultanates,” the Universiti Malaysia Sabah School of Social Sciences senior lecturer told The Star. 

As Shawaluddin points out that some in the MNLF, especially the Nur Misuari loyalists, are frustrated and though they may not have proclaimed it, they may have vented it against Malaysia. 

A case in point is the intrusion of the so-called Royal Sulu Army at Kampung Tanduo, a remote coastal village in the Lahad Datu district in early 2013. 

“I am not surprised if that the Sulu Army had been supported by Nur Misuari or those close to him in some way,” said Shawaluddin. 

Several ex-MNLF leaders told the lengthy Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) on Sabah’s illegal immigrant problem last year that they had settled in the state. 

“Again we cannot discount the possibility of some ex-MNLF members in Sabah acting as spotters or providing information to enable trans-border crimes to happen such as kidnappings. Or they could be involved in it directly,” he said.  

“After all, kidnappings have been a way of life in southern Philippines,” Shawaluddin said, adding that he would not be taken aback if cross-border crimes including intrusions persisted. 

He should know as his research had seen him talking to a cross-section of migrants in Sabah’s east coast and some of his interview subjects have been involved in the MNLF. 

Shawaluddin, however, noted that since the Lahad Datu intrusion, some of these former MNLF members he had interviewed had returned to southern Philippines. 

He said the setting up of the Eastern Sabah Security Command (Esscom) to coordinate the operations of the Malaysian security forces in the state's east coast since the intrusion has been a right move in tackling trans-border crimes in 10 districts designated as the Eastern Sabah Security Zone (Esszone).

And Esscom’s planned relocation of those living in water villages in the east coast was a good start. 

“From what I have seen, those involved in trans-border crimes such as smuggling (notably cigarettes from southern Philippines and subsidised petrol and cooking gas from Sabah) are operated from these settlements,” said Shawaluddin. 

“Those involved are small in number and so they can easily hide among the thousands in these kampung air,” he added. 

Reigning in trans-border crimes in Sabah’s east coast will take time and part of it is tapping into the psyche of the communities involved including the Tausugs.