A fracture line, bisecting the sea from northeast to southwest, is evidenced by the coral atolls surrounding Mapun (Cagayan Sulu) island, the Tubbataha Reefs, and the volcanic Mapun island group itself.
But the intruders slipped away.The intruders had occupied the village to stake a claim to Sabah by the man they recognise as the sultan of Sulu, Jamalul Kiram III, whose forebears once held sway over parts of Borneo and of what is now the Philippines, but who himself is a Filipino citizen living in Manila.
In 1878 the sultan of Sulu leased Sabah in perpetuity to the British North Borneo Company.
This does not refer to the port city's reputation for Colombian-style lawlessness, but to its Spanish-derived dialect.Locals claim Zamboanga has been unfairly tarred by its proximity to the Sulu archipelago, stronghold of Abu Sayyaf, the al-Qaeda-linked separatist group with a nasty sideline in abductions and banditry.
It targeted the Filipino consulate, presumably in protest at the current Filipino military campaign against Abu Sayyaf in the nearby Sulu archipelago, and did little damage.
AS AMPHIBIOUS assaults go, the invasion of the Malaysian state of Sabah by the self-styled Royal Army of the Sultanate of Sulu on February 11th is admittedly tame.
Scores of men, many heavily armed, came ashore from motorboats that had brought them from the Philippines, an hour away, where they and the sultan of Sulu are citizens.
The Philippines remains awash with Muslim armed groups: the MILF, the MNLF, Abu Sayyaf, myriad criminal gangs and now the Royal Army of the Sultanate of Sulu.
The sultan's claim is legally plausible: Malaysia pays the royal house of Sulu a token rent for Sabah.
Most of Abu Sayyaf's fighters simply decamped from Basilan, the focus of the operation, to other islands in the Sulu archipelago.
An earlier idea, to deploy American troops in similar exercises in the nearby Sulu islands, where Abu Sayyaf also operates, seems to have been scrapped.It is not hard to see why.
