InterAksyon.com
The online news portal of TV5
The online news portal of TV5
They didn’t feel that the Philippine government could still be of help, but were advised that was to be expected.
Even though Kuala Lumpur continued to pay rent for Sabah based on a long-standing commitment from the British North Borneo Company, which had originally leased the resource-rich territory in 1878, the sultanate’s leaders decided to have a semblance of “occupancy” there.
Then, a stand-off ensued with Malaysian authorities after supporters of the sultan, calling themselves members of the Royal Security Army of the Sultanate of Sulu and North Borneo, arrived by boat in Lahad Datu, from the Tawi-tawi island town of Simunol on February 12, triggering a standoff.
And here, in the subsequent response of the Philippine government, began a tragic thread that would deepen the crisis. The Philippine government could only advise, nay, threaten them that the best option was for them to surrender, but they refused to leave the island until Malaysian authorities finally launched a bloody assault on the “intruders.”
The sultanate in Philippine history
Indeed, the sultanate may have already been abolished in the Philippine political system, even if the Sultanate of Sulu was considered the oldest and probably the most developed, having been founded in 1450. Yet that doesn’t mean the Philippine authorities could just merely ignore the historical realities on the Sabah issue, starting with the fact that the heirs to the Sultanate of Sulu had a long-standing claim to North Borneo.
Perhaps, once again our authorities have fallen prey to the old restrictive concept of a “Moro,” which to Mindanao scholar Salah Jubair isn’t a term just confined to his people or nationality, but “applied rather to a religious affiliation, transcending the barriers of geography, race and time.”
Local authorities have also apparently forgotten that as the sultanates fell one by one in tense and bloody fighting through various eras and climes, the account was more or less the same: “their warriors would retire to their interior -- to fight another day.”
Understanding the 'juramentado'
Jubair, in his book “Bangsamoro: A Nation Under Endless Tyranny,” wrote that the decline of the sultanate and its inability to provide a centralized and effective defense of state and religion had paved the way for another form of resistance. The task to defend these, he wrote, became a matter of individual obligation and the practice was called the “juramentado”---a term that non-Muslim Filipinos have since associated with someone who goes crazy with hatred, much like the gun-packing, psychotic persons who have mercilessly shot dead dozens in various US states.
But actually, juramentado was derived from the Spanish verb “juramentar”, literally meaning a person who has taken an oath. Jubair said the term it was “sarcastically used by the Spaniards and their hirelings to refer to anyone committing suicide or running amuck. Others presented the image of a rushing Moro warrior with shaven hair, fiery eyes and plucked eyebrows, brandishing a ‘kris’ or ‘kampilan’ to attack infidels under he was slain.”
But long before the world witnessed the phenomenon of the “jihadists,” Jubair said there was the juramentado: “a person who had chosen to fight in the Way of Allah in his individual capacity” since “the sultanate had ceased to put up an organized resistance against the Spaniards.”
The juramentado, after some initiation rituals and proper prayers and manifesting the resolve to die for the cause, acted out his part as a sacred duty and when he died in the course of his attack, he became shahid or ‘martyr’ with paradise as his ultimate reward. As with any real Muslim warrior, the juramentado loved martyrdom more than life.”
Obviously, this historical background was lost on some current government officials who kept presuming they could bully the followers of Sultan Jamalul Kiram III into submission by simply barking orders of “surrender” or else.
The Sultan’s proprietary right
What authorities also overlooked was the Muslim Filipinos’ traditional belief that they had always valued their right to Sabah, not only because of the sultanate’s historical claim and the irrefutable evidence of a continuing commercial transaction---the rental payments from Malaysia that continue to this day---but more because this defined what they are: a proud people who had acquired dominion over Northern Borneo territories of the Brunei sultan since the second half of the 17th century.
Even then, historian Dr. Cesar Adib Majul found there were two versions of how the Sultanate of Sulu got its proprietary rights, if only to emphasize that the Sabah claim has always been a controversial one.
In his book “Muslims in the Philippines,” Majul said that it was only in 1880 when British officials revealed to the English-speaking world that the “Sulus” were reported to have taken a major part in the civil war in Brunei.
When he was defending his claim over the Brunei royalty, Sultan Muaddin sent an envoy to the Sulu Sultan, asking for his help with the promise to grant him the Brunei territories in North Borneo as a grateful compensation or reward.
However, historian Majul provides an interesting side story to this episode between the sultans of Brunei and Sulu. Majul said that there was another version on the role of the Sultanate of Sulu which appeared only in 1957, this time giving additional details, but reducing the role of the Sulu sultan and his warriors in helping Sultan Muaddin unseat Sultan ‘Abdul Mubin.’
According to the second version, Muaddin’s offer greatly pleased the Sulu ruler who had always coveted the area. When he went to Sultan Abdul Mubin at Pulao Chermin and persuaded him that his mission was to bring peace among the warring parties, he got permission to pass into Brunei, for it will be recalled, Pulao Chermin guarded the entrance to Brunei.
Once in Brunei, Sultan Muaddin and the Sulu leader decided on a three-pronged attack on Pulao Charmin, and it was agreed that the Sulu warriors would form one of the prongs.
Majul said that per the second version, “the Bruneis did all the fighting with the Sulus merely watching.” That second account also reported that the Sulus “landed on the island only after the forces of Abdul Mubin had raised the flag of surrender.”
Majul, however, asserted that “clearly it is quite improbable that the Sulus did not do any fighting or did not contribute to the victory of the Rajah of Brunei, who, in the first place, had failed to win in the civil war with his own resources.”
He pointed out that the Sulu oral traditions also agreed, in general, that “it was the Rajah of Brunei who requested the Sulu Sultan for aid against his rival at Pulao Charmin, and that Sabah was the price paid to the Sulu Sultan for his part in the victory.”
According to Majul, the cession of North Borneo territories to Sulu was unquestioned at the time Sulu took over them, not only because it was the result of an understanding entered into by a Sultan who was in a desperate position in a civil war. It was also gathered that Brunei’s political and economic power was slowly deteriorating by the middle of the seventeenth century while that of Sulu appeared to have been relatively consolidated.
Wrote Majul, “It is understandable why the first of these Brunei versions would try to reduce the fighting role of Sulu warriors and why the second version should deny it entirely, and why contrary-wise, the Sulu traditions would assert that the Sulus (including Samals and Buranuns) did all, if not most, of the fighting. It was not only that parties would naturally try to get credit for the victory, but that Brunei pride and frustration were involved in reporting the incident.”
Scholars also considered that the cession of Sabah took place in 1704, but Majul said that this information was probably traced to Alexander Dalrymple, who wrote that the cession took place “about the year 1704.” That was clearly a calculation based on his interviews with Sulu datus when he was gathering data preparatory to writing a history of Sulu.
Majul noted that the civil war in Brunei ended in 1672, and if they made a careful calculation based on their own data, they would have stated 1674 as the date.
The decline of the sultanate
Manuel L. Quezon III, a historian and a Malacanang official, shared a timeline he compiled showing that key events and accompanying literature on the Sabah issue, with a note that this is not being published as an official statement nor does it represent the view of the Philippine government.
The annotated timeline indicated that it would really be difficult for the Philippines and Malaysia to ignore the historical developments on the role of the Sultanate of Sulu in Sabah.
Quezon pointed out that while there was no document stating the grant of North Borneo to the Sultan of Sulu, it was accepted by all sides. It was only on January 22, 1878 when British merchant Sir Alfred Dent obtained sovereign control over the northern part of Borneo for 5,300 ringgits with the agreement with the Sultan of Sulu.
The concessions were confirmed by Her Majesty’s Royal Charter in November 1881, and the British empire, though it did not own the territory, granted to the British North Borneo Co. the territory of the Sultan of Sulu. Quezon noted that the Sultan let this pass “under the threat of attack from British.”
Further complicating the problem were the dynastic dissensions that besieged the sultanates of Sulu and Maguindanao, the two most powerful fiefdoms in the so-called Moroland. The colonial powers seized upon these splits.
The death of Sultan Palalun in 1862 resulted in a toss-up between Jamalul Azam, son of Palalun and Datu Jamalul Kiram, a grandson of Sultan Shakirullah. Seeing the split, Spain issued a certificate of recognition to Kiram, denominating him the “feudal governor of Sulu and subject of Spain.”
Again in 1884, Spain interfered in the power struggle between Ali Ud-Din and Amirul Kiram who were contesting the throne.
In the twilight of Spanish rule, Sultan Jamalul Kiram II tried to honor the sultanate’s agreement with Spain, but kept on procuring arms from Borneo. The brothers, Datu Kalbi and Julkairmain, who prefigured prominently as the American era began, led a thousand supporters in attacking Jolo and after some bitter fighting the attack was contained.
According to Jubair, if Spain, despite its superior arms, still failed in putting down the Moros, it was not due to faulty planning or lack of genuine interest. “On the contrary, the entire firepower, resources and manpower, were all utilized to subjugate Mindanao and Sulu—and the Moros were still on their feet, not on their knees,” he said.
Indeed, if only for their feat, historians continue to refer to the Moros as the “unconquered.” Unfortunately, this fact seems lost on some contemporary leaders.
Political blunders?
The current response of the administration is but a part of a continuing thread of political blunders by various regimes.
Some camps credit the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos with having tried to “infiltrate and destabilize” Sabah, in a decisive bid to finally regain it for Filipinos, but that bold strategy would end in tragedy when the Moro recruits being trained to land on Sabah were killed by their superiors as they mutinied, on what came to be known as the Jabidah massacre of 1967 [or 1969?)
Marcos’s predecessor Diosdado Macapagal also refused to recognize the Federation of Malaysia when North Borneo became one of its component states.
The Philippines, along with Malaysia and Indonesia signed a policy statement agreeing to peacefully resolve the issue in 1963, and Macapagal reiterated that the government would withhold recognition of the federation until it gets formal assurances that Malaysia will uphold their agreement.
Malaysia’s leader Tungku Abdul Rahman later agreed to elevate the dispute to the World Court. After that, the Philippines under Macapagal established formal diplomatic relations with Malaysia in 1964.
Senate Majority Leader Ambrosio Padilla revealed on Feb. 1, 1968, a power of attorney executed by the heirs of the Sultan of Sulu in favor of Mr. Marcos, recognizing the authority of the President to represent them in the settlement of their proprietary rights over Sabah. But even if Mr. Marcos had projected his determination to reclaim Sabah, the late strongman was reported in recent accounts as having offered to drop the Philippine claim if Malaysia would deny Filipino Muslim secessionists access to Malaysia.
In the book “Under the Crescent Moon: Rebellion in Mindanao,” journalists Maritess Danguilan Vitug and Glenda Gloria also wrote that “Malaysia took revenge a year after the Jabidah killings” by providing “succor to rebels from the secessionist MNLF, aiding them with arms and military training in Sabah.”
For years, their account went, “Sabah was home to the MNLF. For Tun Mustapha, Sabah’s chief minister who claims his parental lineage from the Sultan of Sulu, the issue had religious dimensions as well. Committed to Islam, he was driven by a mission to convert all residents of Sabah to Islam and to propagate the faith among non-Muslim neighbors,” they said.
After Mr. Marcos’s downfall, the Philippines’ sovereign claim over Sabah was never really formally revived , if not totally ignored by government.
For the most part they tried to take advantage of the booming economic ties with Malaysia, and the neighboring countries took turns projecting how they have bonded as one under the
ASEAN.
Malaysia in later years would play the role of peace broker in Mindanao—especially after the breakaway Moro rebel group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), started to eclipse the MNLF---but some critics maintained that Kuala Lumpur was doing it to gain political mileage in the Philippines, and in the process strengthen its leverage over Sabah.
It appears now that the Malaysians played their cards right. Malacanang, on the other hand, was left to answer for its perceptibly obeisant stance towards its arrogant neighbor, choosing to threaten Filipinos under the sultanate, than to represent them---as it does in the case of even convicted Filipinos in countries like China and in the Middle East---before foreign governments.
To the loyal supporters of the sultanate of Sulu desperately trying to reclaim part of what they describe as “Moroland”--- indeed, their homeland, as they face an uncertain future in the shadow of the looming, Malaysia-brokered peace agreement with the MILF---making a clear stake in Sabah was not simply a choice; it was a duty foisted on them by history and their own origins as a people.
The Aquino administration, to be fair, was not the only regime that miserably failed to resolve the Sabah question. But its conduct during the crisis has put it front and center of a public cry for justice. That is a tragedy, as much as the tragedy of the historical neglect of Sabah.
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