Dangerous Waters: Maritime Crime in the Sulu Sea

When an Asian maritime crime monitor recently announced that piracy in the Malacca Strait had increased in May, experts joked that the “economic sector” had fully reopened, in reference to the global shutdown in light of the coronavirus pandemic and present steps toward “reopening.”

In fact, during the pandemic piracy never ceased in the vital waterway. Neither did it stop in the Sulu Sea, a body of water northeast of Borneo, shared by Malaysia and the Philippines.

The Sulu Sea has always been a hotspot for kidnapping and ship hijacking. It is said that such acts and their many variants by different actors occurred as early as the 16th century, against the Spanish during their colonization of the Philippines. Because of the long-running war between the Moro people and Spain – and subsequent conflicts in the same space – piracy in the Sulu Sea and its surrounding areas went unsuppressed until the 20th century.

After World War II, piracy continued. The wide availability of military surplus hardware and firearms contributed to a worsening security situation. Piracy received an additional boost as the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), founded in the 1970s, resorted to maritime crime to finance their armed insurgencies. Transborder crimes have been occuring in the Sulu Sea ever since.

To Malaysians, and perhaps many other people as well, several modern major maritime crimes come quickly to mind: the 1985 attack by Filipino pirates on the town of Lahad Datu on the east coast of the Malaysian Borneo state of Sabah that killed 21 people; and also the 2000 kidnapping of Malaysians and Western holidaymakers by the Filipino criminal group known as the Abu Sayyaf, which drew huge international attention.

But the most infamous incident is arguably the 2013 incursion of Lahad Datu by hundreds of militants from the so-called Royal Sulu Force, who had travelled through the Sulu Sea undetected to lay their territorial claim over parts of Sabah. That resulted in a months-long bloody standoff with Malaysian security forces.

After the incident, the Malaysian government created a police-led multiagency command called the Eastern Sabah Security Command (ESSCOM) to beef up security in the Malaysian part of the Sulu Sea and the surrounding land areas, which were also designated as the Eastern Sabah Security Zone (ESSZONE).

The command has claimed that piracy incidents were reduced after its formation. Statistics show the scourge persists, despite smaller numbers.

The latest kidnapping occurred in January of this year when pirates snatched eight Indonesian fishermen from their boat in Lahad Datu waters but later released three of them, keeping the remaining five. They have been reported to be held by Abu Sayyaf in Sulu, southern Philippines. As of writing, there has not been an official update about their status.

Also in January, ESSCOM reported it had foiled 40 kidnap attempts in the Sulu Sea since 2018. ESSCOM said from January to mid-June, they had foiled 11 maritime kidnapping attempts. In a kidnap alert in late May, the Information Sharing Centre (ISC) – an Asian piracy monitor under the Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships in Asia (ReCAAP) – warned that around five armed Abu Sayyaf members had arrived in Tawi-Tawi, the Philippines’ farthest islets in the Sulu Sea, to kidnap wealthy businessmen or the crew of fishing boats and other slow-moving ships plying within the waters off Sabah.

“We will prevent more kidnap attempts if we remain vigilant. It’s like a cat-and-mouse chase,” ESSCOM commander, Deputy Commissioner of Police Hazani Ghazali told The Diplomat.

“The pirates are constantly on the lookout for opportunities to strike even during the pandemic but our vigilance stops them. If the cat remains in the area, the mouse stays away. If the cat is away, the mouse comes out.”

Ulta Levenia Nababan, a terrorism researcher at Jakarta-based think tank Galatea, said the novel coronavirus pandemic was not “scary enough” to force Abu Sayyaf, some of whose factions are also involved in terrorism, to postpone their terror and kidnapping acts.

“The Abu Sayyaf under Hatib Hajan Sawadjaan [pronounced acting chief of the Islamic State group in the Philippines] will continue their terror acts while the factions led by Apo Mike and Tuan Annuh will look to continue their banditry activities,” Ulta told The Diplomat.

“At this pandemic time, they may be planning something for the right moment to strike at their potential targets.”

“The security in the southern Philippines now has increased because of the pandemic, but as long as the criminal groups find a leeway to conduct kidnapping, they will certainly act again.”

Joseph Franco, a research fellow specializing in countering violent extremism and counterinsurgency at the Centre of Excellence for National Security of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, said the group’s mentality would keep them at their operational patterns.

“I do not see them suddenly not doing ops just because a public health lockdown is in place. They have no qualms about dying from clashes with the Philippine military; they probably don’t care about dying from COVID-19,” Franco told The Diplomat.

Meanwhile, Malaysia has beefed up its border security during the pandemic to prevent not just pirates and kidnappers but also illegal immigrants from entering and possibly bringing the virus into the nation.

Malaysian Senior Minister for Security Ismail Sabri Yaakob, in his daily briefings related to the pandemic, reported tens if not hundreds of foreigners caught trying to sneak into the country using so-called rat trails. There are also rat trails in the Sulu Sea, ESSCOM reported previously, which are shallow-water routes shunned by commercial vessels but easy to navigate for small illicit speed boats.

Dr. Ramli Dollah, a regional security analyst at Universiti Malaysia Sabah, said ESSCOM had increased land and maritime border security against kidnapping and trespassing during the nationwide lockdown to curb the virus.

“Despite the feared cascading effect of April’s clash between the Philippine military and Abu Sayyaf that took 11 soldiers’ lives amidst many nations’ struggle against the pandemic, ESSCOM managed to issue an updated list of people wanted for suspected transborder crime as an indicator that they’re always ready for any threats including kidnapping,” Ramli told The Diplomat.

Apart from piracy and kidnapping, the Sulu Sea is also well-known for its “backdoors” used by militants to travel from Sabah to the southern Philippines to join insurgencies there, including the 2017 Battle of Marawi. During that five-month conflict between the Philippine government and Islamic State-pledged groups Abu Sayyaf and the Maute group, more than 1,200 people, mostly militants, were killed.

In 2018, the chairman of the board of the Philippine Institute for Peace, Violence and Terrorism Research, Professor Rommel Banlaoi, identified several Sulu Sea routes foreign fighters had taken from Sabah’s district of Sandakan to the southern Philippines. Another security expert at Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Associate Professor Lai Yew Ming, believed there could be more routes that started from another Sabah district, Tawau. These sea routes were apart from the flights taken into the Philippines by violent extremists disguised as tourists.

An Indonesian counterterrorism chief said there were 37 Indonesian militants in the Philippines – 11 have died, three have returned, nine have been deported, and there are 14 still in the Philippines.

Of the 14, 10 are in prison and four have joined Sawadjaan’s Abu Sayyaf group. One of the four, said the chief, is Andi Baso, who helped an Indonesian couple get into the southern Philippines before the suicide duo detonated their improvised explosive devices at a Sulu church in January 2019, killing dozens of worshippers.

“But it is suspected that there are still other Indonesian citizens in the southern Philippines because the terror network in Indonesia already has a long history in there,” Dr. Didik Novi Rahmanto, chief of the task force dealing with foreign fighters at Densus 88, Indonesia's counterterrorism police unit, told The Diplomat.

“The majority used the sea route to reach the southern Philippines and the majority of these used the Tawau-Sandakan-Sulu route,” said Didik, apparently referring to a land-based starting point somewhere in Kalimantan, the Indonesian portion of Borneo.

“[But they also] used the Bitung-Talaud-Sulu route,” added Didik, referring to a route in the Celebes Sea, which is separated from the Sulu Sea by the Sulu archipelago.

To join the Indonesian terror network in the conflict in Marawi, Didik said, the militants used the air route through Jakarta-Manila-Cagayan De Oro with a cover as tourists to reach Marawi.

“They had been using this route since a long time ago during the terror group Jemaah Islamiyah’s (JI) era in the 90s, but then after Marawi, it was used again.”

Ramli said the Sulu Sea had been the main route used by JI and another Indonesian extremist group, Darul Islam, in the early 2000s. Therefore, it is no surprise that former JI leader Nasir Abas in his writing mentioned Sandakan and other areas like Tawau to show the areas’ importance to the group.

“Sabah is their transit point,” said Ramli. “The extremists and sympathizers may have come from Peninsular Malaysia, Sarawak [another Malaysian Borneo state], and Indonesia, particularly Pontianak, Tarakan and Nunukan [all also on Borneo].

“They would enter Sabah via air or sea before moving to the Philippines via the Sulu Sea from the eastern Sabah districts, particularly Sandakan and Semporna, which are near the southern Philippine maritime border.”

Last year, Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo announced that the nation’s capital will be relocated from Jakarta on the island of Java to East Kalimantan province, which overlooks the Celebes Sea and is just south of Tawau.

This new development may increase security issues in the surrounding and nearby areas, including the Sulu Sea, potentially including the transborder movement of militants.

In early June, a sword-wielding militant killed an Indonesian policeman and critically injured another in what authorities described as a suspected attack by the pro-Islamic State Jemaah Ansharud Dawlah (JAD) at a police post in South Daha district, South Kalimantan province.

Ulta said many JAD operatives fled to Kalimantan from Java after the 2016 Thamrin Street attacks in Jakarta. They were hiding from the police at first, as they tried to avoid any activities related to terrorism or radicalism, but after the situation settled enough for them to continue their jihadi mission, they spread radical ideology and organized a new movement.

“The South Kalimantan case where a 20-year-old, Abdurrahman, killed a police officer with a samurai sword was one of the examples,” said Ulta. “Kalimantan is one of the terror operation areas, since the church attack in Jolo, Sulu, by the Indonesian couple in 2019, and Densus 88 discovering Andi Baso, who was the leading actor behind that terror attack, is now with Hatib Hajan Sawadjaan. More [Islamic State] sympathizers now want to follow his steps.”

This means more Indonesians may be tempted to follow the Indonesian suicide bombing couple and Andi Baso by crossing the Sulu Sea from Kalimantan to the southern Philippines via Sabah for terror activities in the future, opportunities permitting.

The JAD threat in Kalimantan undoubtedly poses a threat somewhat to the security of the Sulu Sea, said Ramli, but he believed it is manageable as Malaysian authorities have tightened control at the land and sea borders.

The relocation of the Indonesian national capital to Kalimantan, Ramli said, would heighten the presence of the military and security forces along the borders.

“The main issue after the relocation will be smuggling and migration, mostly overland instead of at sea because of the upcoming improved road network,” he said. “However, we cannot deny that there will also be ideological migration to Sabah, which has been long connected to Indonesia.”

Following the kidnapping of the five Indonesian fishermen in January, Malaysia’s then-Defense Minister Mohamad Sabu met his Indonesian counterpart and the ministers “expressed their confidence in the implementation of the Trilateral Cooperative Arrangement (TCA) between Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines in addressing common maritime security threats along the borders of the three countries,” said a statement.

However, Franco expressed doubt about the effectiveness of the military cooperation, saying it is “great for showing the flag and for political theater.”

He said: “When you have hundreds of non-gazetted ports and more secluded areas where you can beach a boat, a few token joint patrols will not cut it. Analysts claiming otherwise do not understand the limited resources available to the navies bordering the Sulu Sea. Nor how a nautical and topographical map of the region looks like.”

Going forward, the southern Philippines is full of uncertainties, but one thing is certain: prolonged armed conflict in the region is prone to feed terrorism. The Islamic State is taking advantage of such circumstances and it will have repercussions in the Sulu Sea.

“Post-pandemic, it can be worse if the government does not take a collaborative action against the multifaceted threats in Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippines,” argued Ulta. “It is not only terrorism that needs to be prevented but also maritime kidnapping against mostly Indonesians and also the illicit travel of weapons from the southern Philippines.

“Especially at this moment, the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao is under a decommissioning process of about 30,000 weapons spread throughout Mindanao. The process needs to be monitored by neighboring countries, because of the possibility that there will be a surplus of the illegal weapons in Mindanao, which attract terror operatives,” Ulta told The Diplomat.

“For example,” she went on, “[the Islamic State] is trying to regain its control over the Southeast Asian country, which can worsen regional security. The Indonesian and Malaysian governments have agreed to form a new joint operation against regional terrorism. It will deploy Densus 88 personnel to work with Malaysian police to control the foreign militants trying to cross the border to Malaysia and southern Philippines and vice versa.

“However, the application of this plan has not been seen yet, and to prepare the new capital in Kalimantan, of course, this measure needs to be taken. The Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippines security interconnectedness has been proved by the case of Andi Baso and the Jolo church twin bombing; therefore, each country needs to take serious measures such as intelligence information-sharing regarding terrorism, border and maritime security.”

There are other issues beyond terrorism, too. For example, there are ongoing territorial claims by Manila and supposed descendants of the so-called royal Sulu family over parts of Sabah. The latest twist in this area involved Spain.

The purported Sulu heirs, called the Kiram family, began ad hoc arbitration proceedings in Spain against the Malaysian government and obtained an order from the Superior Court of Justice in Madrid to appoint a sole arbitrator to decide their claim.

The Malaysian government countered by suing the eight supposed descendants in a local High Court, which, among other things, decided that Malaysian courts, not Spanish courts, are the proper venue to resolve disputes arising from the 1878 deed that ceded Sabah and affirmed a 1939 court ruling the Sulu Sultan had ceded Sabah in full and in perpetuity.

Such territorial claims were what caused Jamalul Kiram III, another Filipino, now deceased, one of many people who had claimed the Sulu Sultanate throne, to dispatch armed intruders into Lahad Datu in 2013. Dozens of militants and 10 Malaysian policemen were killed in the standoff.

Could the 2013 Lahad Datu intrusion happen again?

“As claims from the Filipinos over Sabah persist and since many people claim to be the present Sulu Sultan with many supporters, such a possibility cannot be discounted,” said Ramli.

Despite the pandemic, the threats of kidnapping and cross-border militant movement in the Sulu Sea region seem likely to continue and even increase with future developments such as the relocation of the Indonesian capital. These challenges await the security forces of Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, whether they are ready or not.