The Philippines and Sabah in the 1970s

This is the first installment in a series on this subject. All columns in the series are based on US diplomatic cables declassified in 2005 and 2006 and  now available in WikLeaks’ Public Library of US Diplomacy at wikileaks.org/plusd.

Last week, we saw that in 1975 US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said that any attempt by the Philippines to invoke the provisions of the Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) over Sabah would “create difficulty” for the USA, but the Marcos government had come close to doing that just two years earlier.
As a result of the events earlier this year, the Philippine claim to Sabah is now widely-known, the argument being that the Sultan of Brunei ceded territory in North Borneo to the Sultan of Sulu in the mid-17th or early 18th century (depending on which version one reads), whose descendent in 1877 to 1878 leased (or, in the opposing view, ceded) that territory to the British North Borneo Company. In 1963, Sabah became part of the Federation of Malaysia.

It was claimed that in 1968 President Ferdinand Marcos had trained a Muslim force called Jabidah on Corregidor with the intention of using this to regain Sabah for the Philippines. According to some sources, this came to grief when the trainees rebelled and, in the most widely-circulated account, were massacred as a result. This latter has been disputed recently, but in any case the operation was aborted.

Nevertheless, there were two serious and inter-related consequences. It is widely accepted that the Jabidah massacre was a crucial factor leading to the formation of the Moro National Liberation Force (MNLF) led by Nur Misuari; secondly, Marcos would claim that from 1969 onwards Malaysia had trained MNLF rebels, including Misuari, at Pulao Panghor, an island twelve hours’ drive from Kuala Lumpur, with other training exercises being held at Lahad Datu and Banguey Island, Sabah, and that arms and ammunition were being provided by Tun Mustapha, Sabah’s Chief Minister.

Ferdinand Marcos would sometimes surprise the Americans by his nuanced view of the Muslim conflict. US Ambassador William Sullivan reported that in a meeting on Aug. 26, 1973 Marcos made a clear distinction between the situation in the Sulu archipelago and that on Mindanao itself. While he saw the former as arising from “outside agitation from Sabah,” with regard to the latter he “showed a surprising sympathy for the rebels and a caustic criticism of his fellow Christians. He placed the basic blame for the current situation on Christian greed for Moslem lands and the insensitivity of Christian governors, military leaders, and Constabulary. He felt the Mindanao situation was more “fundamentally significant than the Sulus…”

Earlier that same year, the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) appeared to be on the defensive in many areas of Mindanao and the Sulu archipelago, and on March 5 Marcos related his deepening concern to Sullivan’s predecessor as US Ambassador, Henry Byroade, stressing the need for military equipment and inferring  that the MNLF had the initiative. Rather more ominously, he stated that the Philippine government would probably discuss the “deteriorating situation” with the Mutual Defense Board (MDB), which administered the 1951 MDT. When Marcos asked him what he thought of that proposal, Byroade guardedly replied that the US members would be able to merely listen, as decisions would be made elsewhere.

Mention of the MDB, of course, raised the question of the treaty itself, under which either party could in certain circumstances call upon the support of the other in the event of attack by a third party in the Pacific area. Byroade was far from happy at this turn of events, advising Washington that in such “deteriorating circumstances” a Philippine attempt to “engage our bilateral mechanisms” would “pose some problems” for the US government. “It would therefore be in our interests,” he said, “to head off such moves while we deal with military supply matter in most appropriate fashion.”

Byroade therefore recommended a “series of demarches” (courses of action or maneuvers) “on Malacañang by Asean members Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore and also Australia as well as ourselves” in order to persuade the Malaysian government “to restrain role of Sabah and Tun Mustapha…” Direct approaches by the Philippines to Malaysia had been unsuccessful due to the “Sabah claim issue” and so “it is clear greater pressure needs to be exerted on Malaysians.” It would also be useful, he continued, for the UK and Australia (fellow-members with Malaysia in the British Commonwealth) to indicate to Malaysia “how unwise and unrealistic it is to seek abandonment of Philippine Sabah claim under pressure of these circumstances.”
It is clear from this that the Americans did not seriously doubt that the MNLF was receiving arms from Sabah, if not from Malaysia itself, and this would become clearer still over the next few years.

In March 1975, for example, French military attaché Col. Loussouarn, resident in Jakarta, made a brief visit to Manila during which he was shown some French 81-mm mortar rounds recently captured by Philippine troops in Cotabato, where in recent months over a hundred had been fired at the AFP’s regional headquarters. Loussouarn had the serial numbers checked and reported that they came from a batch recently sold to Malaysia. According to Ambassador Sullivan, the Filipinos had previously assumed that such weapons had been coming from Libya.

A few days later, the US Embassy in Kuala Lumpur reported that a non-resident American businessman, active in Malaysia and Asia for nearly a quarter of a century, had told Embassy officials than a former British civil servant, now a private businessman based in Singapore, was “involved in the arms trade with Sabah with ultimate objective of supplying weapons to Filipino Muslims.”
In succeeding weeks, we’ll examine the progress of those “demarches” recommended by Byroade.

source:  Tribune by  Ken Fuller

$3-B slush account for Sabah exposed

SECRET FUND: While Malaysia keeps offering 5,300 ringgits (P72,000) a year to continue renting Sabah from the Sulu sultanate, that disputed corner of North Borneo earns $200 billion annually.

This was disclosed yesterday by Pastor “Boy” Saycon, an adviser of the Sulu Sultanate which is pressing the full recovery of their patrimony taken over by the United Kingdom and lumped into the Malaysian federation in 1963.

The sultanate terminated the lease in 1989, after Malaysia unilaterally modified the mode of payment, shifting from Mexican dollars to Malaysian ringgits.

Saycon said a big slice of the revenues of Sabah goes into a secret fund, now estimated at $3 billion, devoted to quelling unrest in the territory and fending off the Philippine claim.

Are special operations financed and selected key individuals in the Philippines being paid from this slush fund? Saycon just smiled, declining to answer the question.

Does the sultanate continue to receive rentals after it had revoked the contract? The sultanate still accepts the Malaysian checks, he said, but does not encash them. The checks are kept as evidence, not as payment.

The Malaysian embassy issues the checks “pay to” the sultanate as represented by nine heirs recognized in 1939 by the High Court of North Borneo presided over by Justice Mackaskie.

*   *   *

‘PADJAK’ CONTRACT: Official documents on the subject continue to be unearthed. One such paper, uploaded in the Official Gazette, is a letter dated Feb. 27, 1947, sent by Francis B. Harrison to then Vice President and Foreign Affairs Secretary  Elpidio Quirino.

Harrison was a former Governor-General when the Philippines was still a United States colony. He served as special foreign affairs adviser to then President Manuel A. Roxas. Part of his letter said (edited for brevity):

“In a memorandum dated Sept. 26, 1946, I advised the Philippine government to protest to the government of Great Britain against the latter’s announcement of July 16, 1946, that the State of North Borneo had become a Crown Colony of the British Monarchy. This annexation took place just 12 days after the inauguration of the Republic of the Philippines, and was done in derogation of the rights of the Sultanate of Sulu.

“Further important evidence has come from the Philippine Embassy in Washington, where Mr. Eduardo Quintero, searching in the National Archives, found a photostatic copy of the document dated Jan. 22, 1878, upon which the British government bases their claim to all the lands tributary to the Sultanate of Sulu.

“This was obtained in 1940 by the US Department of State from the British government, and is hereto annexed. The second copy had been held by the Sultan of Sulu, and, as is alleged, was stolen from him during a visit he made to Singapore many years ago. This story is to be found in the article in the Chicago Daily Tribune of Oct. 14, 1945, written by Mr. Aleko Lilius.

“The copy, furnished by the British government, has been translated at my request by Mr. Harold Conklin, assistant to Prof. H. Otley Beyer in the University of the Philippines. Mr. Conklin is a qualified scholar in the Malay language and in the Arabic script in which language and writing this document was written. This translation follows:

“Grant by the Sultan of Sulu of a permanent lease covering his lands and territories on the Island of Borneo:
“We, Sri Paduka Maulana Al Sultan Mohammed Jamalul Alam, Son of Sri Paduka Marhum Al Sultan Muhammed Pulalun, Sultan of Sulu and all dependencies thereof, on behalf of ourselves and for our heirs and successors, and with the expressed desire of all Datus in common agreement, do hereby desire to lease (padjak), of our own free will and satisfaction, to Gustavus Baron de Overbeck of Hongkong, and to Alfred Dent, Esquire, of London, who act as representatives of a British Company, together with their heirs, associates, successors, and assigns, forever and until the end of time, all rights and powers which we possess over all territories and lands tributary to us on the mainland of the Island of Borneo, commencing from the Pandassan River on the west, and thence along the whole east coast as far as the Sibuku River on the south, and including all territories, on the Pandassan River and in the coastal area, known as Paitan, Sugut, Banggai, Labuk, Sandakan, China-batangan, Mumiang, and all other territories and coastal lands to the south, bordering on Darvel Bay, and as far as the Sibuku River, together with all the islands which lie within nine miles from the coast.

“In consideration of this (territorial) lease, the honorable Gustavus Baron de Overbeck and Alfred Dent, Esquire, promise to pay to His Highness Maulana Sultan Mohammed Jamalul Alam, and to his heirs and successors, the sum of five thousand dollars annually, to be paid each and every year.

“The above-mentioned territories are from today truly leased to Mr. Gustavus Baron de Overbeck and to Alfred Dent, Esquire, together with their heirs, their associates (company), and their successors or assigns, for as long as they choose or desire to use them; but the rights and powers hereby leased shall not be transferred to another nation, or a company of other nationality, without the consent of Their Majesties’ Government.

“Should there be any dispute, or reviving of old grievances of any kind, between us, and our heirs and successors, with Mr. Gustavus Baron de Overbeck or his Company, then the matter will be brought for consideration or judgment to their Majesties’ Consul-General in Brunei.

* * *

“This treaty is written in Sulu, at the Palace of the Sultan Mohammed Jamalul Alam, on the 19th day of the month of Muharam, A.H. 1295; that is on the 22nd day of the month of January, year 1878.”

“(Seal of the Sultan Jamalul Alam)

“Witness to seal and signature: (Sgd.) W.H. Treacher, H. B. M. Acting Consul General in Borneo”

source:  Philippine star Column of POSTSCRIPT By Federico D. Pascual Jr.