Muslim Separatist Research Articles

The Sinhala‐Buddhicization of the state and the rise of authoritarianism in Sri Lanka

AbstractSri Lanka's postindependence history suggests that continuous efforts by the Sinhala‐Buddhist politicians to reject decentralization created anxiety and distrust among minorities. The state used both Sinhala language and Buddhism to accommodate Sinhala‐Buddhist interests and provide cultural security to Sinhala‐Buddhists who feared that the Sinhala race, Buddhism, and heritage would be threatened with destruction by the Tamil and Muslim separatists and extremists. The state forced the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which demanded a separate state for North and Eastern Tamils, to silence its guns in May 2009. The military defeat of the LTTE did not produce any democratization of the island. Sinhala‐Buddhist extremist forces turned their eyes on Sri Lankan Muslims, whose elites attached to major political parties supported the war against the LTTE. This study examines the politicization of the Sinhala language and Buddhism in Sri Lanka before and after the civil war between the LTTE and the state dominated by the Sinhala‐Buddhists. It argues that Sinhala political elites willingly took measures to centralize power. The major result of centralization is the birth of the state‐seeking, but authoritarian LTTE. It will also provide some useful analysis to examine post‐war tensions between the Muslims and the Sinhala‐Buddhist extremists. Finally, I discuss some solutions to fight the rising authoritarianism to help Sri Lanka enjoy the fruits of modernization and democracy.

A neoclassical realist explanation of Indonesia’s involvement in Muslim-related secessions in non-Muslim countries

This article attempts to test the ethnic ties theory and provides an alternative explanation for why Indonesia as the largest Muslim country in the world has been inconsistent in its support for Muslim separatists. In this article, I use a Mill’s method of most similar system design and examine variation in Indonesia’s foreign policy towards Muslim secessionism taking place in non-Muslim countries over time. Since Indonesia’s independence in 1945, it has frequently supported the non-Muslim host states, has supported the Muslim separatists on some occasions, and has either adopted an ambivalent foreign policy/supported both the host states and separatist groups or adopted a neutral stance/neither supported the host states nor the separatist groups on other occasions. I suggest a neoclassical realist explanation and argue that specific foreign policy outcomes in the context of Muslim separatists versus non-Muslim host states are shaped by the perception of leading policy makers on the extent to which support for the conflicting parties in the secessionist conflicts can hinder or facilitate the achievement of vital national interests and ultimately the state’s international as well as the level of domestic political constraints specifically the public demand to assist the separatist movements.

Kulintang: Gong Music from Mindanao in the Southern Philippines (2011, 23 minutes) and Maranao Culture at Home and in the Diaspora (2012, 33 minutes)

Reviewed by: Kulintang: Gong Music from Mindanao in the Southern Philippines (2011, 23 minutes) and Maranao Culture at Home and in the Diaspora (2012, 33 minutes) Mary Talusan (bio) Kulintang: Gong Music from Mindanao in the Southern Philippines (2011, 23 minutes) and Maranao Culture at Home and in the Diaspora (2012, 33 minutes). Usopay H. Cadar and Yoshitaka Terada. Two related, documentary videos by the National Museum of Ethnology, Japan. Narrated in English and translated into the Maranao language on separate DVDs. Borrow the DVDs free of charge from the museum for educational and research purposes. http://www.minpaku.ac.jp/. The films contextualize kulintang music of the Maranao, the Philippines’ largest Muslim minority group, with differing degrees of emphasis. Kulintang: Gong Music from Mindanao in the Southern Philippines focuses on music making by including six complete kulintang performances to demonstrate a variety of styles. Maranao Culture at Home and in the Diaspora presents kulintang music as one facet in a myriad of traditions slowly fading in the modernizing of lives of the Maranao. I review both films together since they utilize some of the same footage from a single research trip in March 2008 by Usopay H. Cadar, a native Maranao, and Yoshitaka Terada, a professor in the Department of Advanced Studies in Anthropology at the National Museum of Ethnology. Both men received their PhDs in ethnomusicology from the University of Washington. Kulintang: Gong Music from Mindanao in the Southern Philippines provides a rare glimpse into the context of kulintang music, an indigenous gong-drum ensemble of the Maranao people. Kulintang music was introduced to the world by the Bayanihan, the national folk-dance company of the Philippines, in their signature dance called the Singkil. However, Maranao culture and the people themselves are less familiar even to most Filipinos. Cadar, as both a cultural insider and an American-trained ethnomusicologist, has a unique voice and perspective in the dissemination of knowledge about Maranao culture in general and kulintang music in particular. In several articles, Cadar (1970, 1996) has voiced concerns over the cultural appropriation of Maranao traditions by the Philippine government and academe. Cadar narrates the film, which begins in his hometown of Taraka, a small village along the shores of beautiful Lake Lanao. As a kulintang ensemble sets up, he explains various contexts for kulintang music, such as celebrations, [End Page 135] life rituals, and courtship. As an elderly woman plays an energetic piece that moves up and down the kulintang’s range of eight gongs, Cadar accompanies her on a drum called daedebowan. Each musical performance in the film is interspersed with panoramic shots of serene Lake Lanao, underscoring to the viewer how intimately tied the music is to the Maranao homeland. Despite the lake’s serenity, Mindanao’s turbulent political history profoundly impacts Maranao music making. While the great battle between Muslim separatist forces and Marcos’s martial law government took place during the 1970s, the southern Philippines still experiences political instability because of poverty and territorial disputes. There is still much violence due to in-fighting between drug cartels, banditry, and unregulated firearms in the countryside. When people flee rural areas for relatively safer urban settlements on the lake, village communities disperse and with them distinctive styles of kulintang playing. This film will be valuable to any course that seeks to feature an indigenous music culture of the Philippines. It provides adequate historical background and contemporary contexts while documenting the distinctive playing styles of several kulintang performers. However, more information could have been provided about the types of pieces they are playing and the distinct styles they represent. For example, in the second performance of the film, a younger woman plays faster and more rhythmically than the first player, but it is not clear if this woman’s playing style is characteristic of a particular village or representative of the type of piece being played. Later, an informative scene provides the names of each instrument with an explanation of its role in the ensemble. The two large hanging gongs (agong) support the melody of the kulintang with interlocking rhythms while a medium-sized gong (babndir) provides a rhythmic reference for the ensemble. The goblet-shaped...

The problem with vision

Vision has been regarded as an essential component of effective leadership for more than 20 years. It is valuable because it provides the sense of purpose and direction required for educational organisations to thrive. All stakeholders expect principals, in particular, to develop and communicate vision clearly, as Dempster and Logan’s (1998) Australian research demonstrates. However, there are a number of problems with the vision-building process. As long ago as 1993, Bolam et al. showed that even leaders of highly effective British schools were unable to articulate a distinctive vision; the vision statements were very similar. This links to another problem: the extent to which ‘visions’ have to follow government imperatives rather than being grounded in the specific needs of schools and their students and communities (Bottery, 1998). Hoyle and Wallace (2005) go further and contrast what they call ‘visionary rhetoric’ with the ‘prosaic reality’ experienced by students, staff and parents. This brief introduction links to the opening paper in this issue, by Joseph Murphy and Daniela Torre, which provides an integrative review of vision. These authors note that vision ‘routinely surfaces’ in studies of effective organisations and that the principal is generally the essential figure in creating a school’s vision. Their paper provides ‘intellectual architecture’ or ‘essential scaffolding’ for this concept, drawing on an ‘exhaustive review’ of the literature from 1975 to 2011. They developed a framework from this review, comprising mission, goals and expectations. They conclude by stressing the importance of context, recognising that vision ‘does not take place in a vacuum’. Vision is expected to be underpinned by clear educational values and this informs the second paper, by Linda Hammersley-Fletcher. She explores the tensions facing English headteachers as they implement government initiatives which may be contrary to their values. Drawing on reflections from ten primary and secondary school heads, she shows that they felt it was imperative for them to meet the external targets set for them, a form of ‘compliance’, even when they conflicted with their values. The leadership field is replete with labels, of which ‘distributed’, ‘transformational’ and ‘instructional’ are perhaps the most frequently used in the 21st century. Trevor Male and Ioanna Palaiologou explore a different concept, that of pedagogical leadership. They define this notion as ‘forms of practice that shape and form teaching and learning’. Drawing on interviews with headteachers in secondary, primary and early years contexts, they connect pedagogical leadership to values, beliefs and culture, and conclude that leaders need to respond with fluidity to unpredictable events, within and beyond the classroom. School leadership in conflict zones is rarely researched, unsurprisingly, so Melanie C. Brooks’s paper on school principals in Southern Thailand is a welcome contribution to the literature. She reports on the work of school principals in areas targeted by Muslim separatist groups. The purpose of the research was to establish how school principals sustain trust with community leaders during times of conflict. She interviewed 20 such principals and notes that trust was compromised by the Educational Management Administration & Leadership 2015, Vol. 43(2) 175–176 a The Author(s) 2015 Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1741143214563452 emal.sagepub.com

School principals in Southern Thailand

This article reports findings from a case study of school principals in Southern Thailand who work in areas targeted by Muslim separatist groups. Data were gathered and analyzed using a conceptual framework that conceived of trust as five interrelated constructs: benevolence, honesty, openness, reliability, and competence. This study builds on prior trust research by examining trust in a specific non-Western cultural context that is moderated by two cultural phenomena: violence and ethno-religious difference. This study is a unique contribution to both the broader research on trust and to our understanding of how leadership is enacted in different cultural contexts. More narrowly, this study also helps us understand the way school leaders in southernmost Thailand build and sustain trust with community leaders. Findings suggested that school principals experienced each of these forms of trust, yet each individual principal interpreted them in a unique manner. In addition, in regards to principal work, fear and problems with communication were found to hinder leadership efforts.

Pakistan

Pakistan

Europe's Last Word

Europe's Last Word

People’s Patron or Patronizing the People? The Southern Border Provinces Administrative Centre in Perspective

In December 1997, during an increase in attacks by Malay Muslim separatists, Minister for Interior Sanan Kachornprasat announced that the Southern Border Provinces Administrative Centre (SBPAC) would be dissolved. The SBPAC was established in 1981 to improve and coordinate civilian administration in the far south, a region beset by communist and separatist insurgencies, ethnic and religious cleavages and economic underdevelopment. In cooperation with a joint security-operations agency, the Civilian-Police-Military Command-43 (CPM-43), the SBPAC developed a reputation for improving governance and helping to curb armed separatism. As attacks increased in late 1997, the SBPAC came under critical scrutiny following newspaper reports of high-level dissatisfaction with the Centre's performance. In late November, Deputy Interior Minister Chamni Sakdiset indicated that the SBPAC needed to be overhauled. (1) In mid-December, Chamni suggested dissolving the SBPAC and transferring its responsibilities to local authorities and the police. (2) At the end of the month, Sanan declared, It's now time to disband the agency. [...] The agency is of no use now. (3) With the SBPAC under threat, local Malay Muslim leaders rallied to its defence: some fifty Muslim religious leaders met with the chairman of the National Security Council (NSC) to register their objection to any planned dissolution. The chairman of the Pattani Provincial Islamic Committee noted that the SBPAC did not have a suppressive capability, and insisted that it played an important role in bridging the divide between the state and the local people. (4) Ultimately, senior defence and internal security officials decided to preserve the SBPAC. Sanan explained that the new SBPAC Director, Palakorn Suwanarrat, would have a chance to prove himself. (5) This episode prefigures several points about the SBPAC addressed in this article. First, it foreshadowed the dissolution of the SBPAC and CPM-43 by Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in May 2002, which has figured prominently in many analyses of the contemporary insurgency. Early efforts to understand the causes of the insurgency often correlated institutional changes such as the dissolution of the SBPAC and CPM-43 with the onset of heightened violence. The decision to normalize the administration of the southern border provinces appeared to flout the lessons of history, which taught that Bangkok's failures to accommodate the distinctiveness of the Malay Muslim border region through special administrative arrangements invited violence. This interpretation has been challenged in recent studies that offer a more ambiguous image of the SBPAC. (6) Second, the episode reminds us that disagreement about the Centre's proper authority, optimal structure, and even its utility, has a history that predates controversy surrounding its 2002 dissolution and the retrospective assessments of post-2004 accounts. Whereas some Thai officials considered the SBPAC to be ineffective and redundant, some Malay Muslim leaders saw it as an invaluable channel for airing grievances. The episode illustrates how contrasting perceptions of the SBPAC reflect a discrepancy between its mundane bureaucratic functions and its image, its formal authority and symbolic power. While it is easy to understand the enthusiasm of some Malay Muslim leaders for the SBPAC as a product of patronage and government largesse, it is worth emphasizing that improving the image of the Thai state in the eyes of local Muslims was an explicit rationale behind establishing the SBPAC. Finally, the fact that the SBPAC survived the 1997 debate about its future reflects the perceived validity of its hearts-and-minds approach. From 2004 to 2006, the re-establishment of the SBPAC regularly topped the list of prescriptions to control the insurgency. The reinstatement of the SBPAC in October 2006 by Thailand's military-installed government attests to the significance that some attach to the Centre as a symbol of good governance. …

Revisiting the Bangsamoro Struggle: Contested Identities and Elusive Peace

This article revisits the issue of the quest for the “Bangsamoro” since its first articulations in the 1960s. It examines the dynamics of identity in the history of this struggle and how these dynamics have shaped the Muslim separatist movements in the Philippines. Given the diverging trajectories of “Moro” groups that took up the “Bangsamoro” struggle and the contemporary developments that have since unfolded over the years, the paper argues that the issue of identity is a tenuous factor undergirding the fight for a “Bangsamoro” homeland. It is tenuous for many reasons: one of these is the construction of a “Moro” identity, which has come to mean different things to the many multi-ethnic and multi-lingual groups. The other is divisive history of the various ethnic groups who have wanted to be part of the envisioned separate state called the “Bangsamoro.”

Asian Conflicts and the Iraq War

This study examines the news coverage of the Iraq War and Asian conflicts by eight newspapers from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and the Philippines to compare the framing of two different levels of conflicts – international and local. Based on Galtung's war/peace journalism framework, a content analysis of 1558 stories on the Iraq War and the Asian conflicts involving Pakistan and India's tussle over Kashmir, the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, the Muslim separatist movement in the southern Philippine province of Mindanao and the Aceh and Maluku civil wars in Indonesia showed that the Asian newspapers used a war journalism frame in covering local conflicts but deployed a peace journalism frame in covering the Iraq War. Hard news stories were dominated by war journalism framing, while features and opinion pieces were dominated by peace journalism framing. Foreign-sourced stories from wire services contained more war journalism frames and fewer peace journalism frames than locally produced stories written by the newspapers' own correspondents.

The Philippines’ southern insurgency

An end may be in sight to the Moro insurgency in the southern Philippines, which has pitted Muslim separatist groups in Mindanao and Sulu against the central government in Manila. Since last year, a military stalemate and other factors have encouraged concessions on both sides that may facilitate a settlement. That would help slow or even reverse the Philippines’ slide towards ungovernability and reduce the danger of the South becoming a sanctuary for internationally-connected terrorist groups. But important obstacles remain, and even if a settlement proved possible its durability would not be assured.

Unrest in South Thailand: Contours, Causes, and Consequences Since 2001

Introduction Historically speaking, Kingdom of Thailand is no stranger to armed conflict with insurgent groups. Between 1960s and 1980s, government fought an armed communist insurgency. Muslim separatists were active in southern region of country from 1940s until late 1980s. By end of 1990s, however, it seemed that Thailand had solved its insurgency problem. The communist movement was dissolved and terrorism and political violence in southern provinces has waned. In past three years, however, southern Thailand has seen a recrudescence of long-dormant Malay-Muslim anger against central government. The internal security situation in country's southernmost provinces has rapidly worsened and there are fears that country will become another hot spot for Islamist terrorism in Southeast Asia. This raises some critical questions: What is conflict about? Why is violence rising? Who is behind violence? How can Thailand counter this new wave of insurgency? What are consequences for domestic politics? This article examines these questions. The first section describes historical roots and patterns of conflict in Thailand's south up to late 1990s; second section outlines current wave of insurgency; third section investigates causes for latest outburst of violence; section that follows discusses options for viable conflict solutions and possible consequences for democracy in Thailand. The final section gives some tentative conclusions. Historical Roots According to National Statistical Office (NSO) of Thailand, Muslims accounted for 4.1 per cent of kingdom's total population in mid-1990s (NSO 1997, p. 101). Notwithstanding its relatively small size, relationship between Buddhist majority as well as government in Bangkok and Malay-Muslim minority in southern region is of crucial importance for political stability and security in Thailand and whole of Southeast Asia. Though Muslim communities exist all over country, by far greatest number of Muslims living in Thailand is of Malay ethnic origin and live in South. They share a common identity and form a locally concentrated minority in Patani Raya region, (1) which had been an independent kingdom until 1786 when it was conquered by King of Siam. (2) The efforts of Siamese government to subjugate Muslim areas began immediately after their incorporation into kingdom and became more hostile after Anglo-Siamese treaties of 1904 and 1909, which recognized Siamese control over Pattani (cf. Forbes 1982). With King Chulalongkorn's administrative reforms in 1890s, kingdom developed a centralized bureaucracy and established control over most of its territory. The central government in Bangkok was strong enough not to have to make autonomy deals with local southern Muslim rulers. Rather, government eliminated local elites as politically relevant players, since governors and bureaucrats were sent from Bangkok to Pattani, which was divided into seven provinces (Islam 1998). Beginning in late nineteenth century, royal government developed a policy of nation-building from above, which forced transformation of multiethnic society of Siam into a unified Thai nation. In south, Bangkok managed dissidence mostly by leaving Muslims alone. This laissez faire policy changed when government accelerated efforts to assimilate southern population (Che Man 1990). When ultranationalist regime of Phibun came to power in 1938, it followed a policy of enforced assimilation of various minority cultures into mainstream Buddhist Thai-ness (Rahimmula 2003) in order to develop, in David Brown's version, the mono-ethnic character of state (Brown 1994). In 1940s, this provoked emergence of a separatist movement fighting for an independent Pattani. …

The Philippines in 2004: New Mandate, Daunting Problems

National elections in the Philippines took place on May 10, 2004, providing incumbent President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo with a six-year electoral mandate and control of both houses of Congress and most of the local governmental positions. However, the Arroyo administration faced a worsening budget deficit and debt crisis, increased incidence of hunger and poverty, pervasive corruption scandals in the military, inconclusive peace negotiations with communist guerrillas and Muslim separatists, and an unexpected twist in the country's relations with the United States, provoked by a crisis in the Philippines' involvement in Iraq.

Beyond the Abu Sayyaf: The Lessons of Failure in the Philippines

Washington has made the fight against radical Muslim separatists in the Philippines a critical front in its war on terrorism. But its one-size-fits-all approach reflects a dangerous misunderstanding of the problem -- and could make things worse

Saints, scholars and the idealized past in Philippine Muslim separatism

Philippine Muslim nationalism appeals to two distinct but related imagined pasts: the traditional territorial past of the precolonial southern Philippines and the newly-emphasized moral past of the Sunna; the sacred traditions of the Prophet Muhammad and his companions in the earliest days of Islam. Problems arise when the imagined moral past, embodied in the present by a sharp increase in the influence of Middle East-educated Islamic clerics and their calls for the purification of local Islamic practice, comes into direct conflict with the authority of the traditional aristocracy and locally-cherished cultural practices. The Muslim separatist movement that began in 1968 had dual goals. It was primarily an ethno-nationalist endeavour that had as its primary goal the creation of a Philippine Muslim nation - a nation-state governed by Philippine Muslims and modelled on the sultanates of the precolonial period. The second goal of the Muslim separatist movement was to reform local religious and cultural practices under the leadership of a new set of religious leaders. To understand the place of atavism and puritanism in the Philippine Muslim separatist movement I review the largely local tradition of saints and the more universal Muslim institution of religious scholars as they have interacted in the contemporary Muslim Philippines. I consider the contradictions between revanchist and reformatist goals of the movement by interpreting the narratives of Sultan Muhammad Adil, a prominent supporter of Muslim separatism in the Philippines.

Armed Muslim Separatist Rebellion in Southeast Asia: Persistence, Prospects, and Implications

The persistence of armed Muslim separatist rebellion in Southeast Asia is demonstrated by the ongoing rebellions in Aceh and Mindanao. A strong regional identity infused with Islam has been a binding factor in these separatist movements. Their persistence demonstrates the failure of Indonesia and the Philippines in achieving legitimacy for their post-independence political structures as well as continued internal weakness. The prospects for their quick and peaceful resolution are not good. The external dimension of Muslim separatism has heightened mistrust among states in the region and raised apprehensions over the broader issue of Islamic fundamentalism and the implications for the region should Aceh and Mindanao achieve secession.

Violence et ethnicité : les enlèvements de Chinois aux Philippines

Manila has been called "the Asian capital of kidnappings". An old phenomenon in the Philippines, kidnappings against ransom are very frequent throughout the country, but especially in the region of the capital city and in the Southern provinces (i.e. Mindanao and the neighboring islands). Kidnappers used to be from various origins (members of the triads, rebellious soldiers, roguish policemen, communist guerrillas, Muslim separatists) but "political" kidnappings are now less numerous. However, most of the victims are the rich Chinese businessmen who hold dominant positions in the economy of the Philippines. Since the fall of President Marcos, in 1986, all the governments have tried to solve the problem, and have failed. The Chinese have been reacting both individually and as a community to face the threat. The ultimate answer could be a better integration of that ethnic minority which should resist the temptation to strengthen the boundaries between the Chinese and the Filipinos and the temptation to move farther, overseas again.

Off the Endangered List: Philippine Democratization in Comparative Perspective

The Philippines has long been on the most endangered list of new democracies. There have been more coup attempts (eight) in the Philippines than in any other wave democratizer.' It is one of only few states to still face Communist insurgency. Moreover, many civilian, noncommunist politicians were openly disloyal to the government of Corazon C. Aquino, including her vice president, Salvador H. Laurel. These political problems are compounded by socioeconomic difficulties. The Philippines is plagued by extreme poverty and inequality, high debt, and low growth, as well as by ethnic conflict (not to mention the series of natural disasters that has aggravated many of these factors), leading it to be ranked as one of the four new democracies outside of Africa facing the worst structural woes.2 Former President Aquino made little progress in remedying these problems: the economy lagged ever further behind its fast growing neighbors in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and only very limited social, particularly land, reform was undertaken. Michael Burton, Richard Gunther, and John Higley in their comparative study of democratization described the Philippines as a graphic instance of democracy that remains unconsolidated.13 Yet something peculiar happened on the way to what appeared to be the inevitable breakdown of democracy in the Philippines. Since the failed December 1989 coup there have been no significant armed challenges to the democratic regime. Instead, dwindling New People's Army, largely inactive Muslim separatist movement, and few isolated military rebels were self-destructing through internal factional struggles while negotiating from position of weakness with the government. Fidel V. Ramos's election as president in May 1992 was also clear sign of growing political stability. Although he won with the tiniest of pluralities (23.6 percent), five of his six major opponents conceded defeat, which is quite unusual in country where cries of electoral fraud are long established ritual. Ramos, whose Lakas-National Union of Christian Democrats party won less than fourth of the seats in the house of representatives and placed only third in the number of senators elected, was nonetheless able to establish working relationship with both houses of congress. The recent successes of Philippine democracy can be understood only in the context of its previous difficulties. Relatively little has been written about the

Muslim Separatism in the Philippines, 1972-1981: The Making of a Stalemate

Research Article| November 01 1981 Muslim Separatism in the Philippines, 1972-1981: The Making of a Stalemate Lela G. Noble Lela G. Noble Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Far Eastern Survey (1952) 21 (11): 1097–1114. https://doi.org/10.2307/2643996 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Lela G. Noble; Muslim Separatism in the Philippines, 1972-1981: The Making of a Stalemate. Far Eastern Survey 2 July 1952; 21 (11): 1097–1114. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/2643996 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentAsian Survey Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1981 The Regents of the University of California Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Ethnicity and Philippine-Malaysian Relations

THE NORMALIZATION OF RELATIONS between the Philippines and Malaysia in December 1969 made possible the development of ASEAN-the Association of Southeast Asian Nations-into a regional organization characterized by increasing cooperation. Yet the normalization coincided with the development of growing insurgency in Muslim areas of the southern Philippines, an insurgency allegedly encouraged by Tun Mustapha, Chief Minister of the Malaysian state of Sabah. The purpose of this article is to discuss these two developments, the continuing cooperation of Malaysia and the Philippines in ASEAN and the emergence of a secessionist movement among the Philippine minority who share common religious bonds with the Malaysian majority. The argument is that these two developments are related in such a way as to reflect a bargain, implicit or explicit, between the policy-makers of the two states. The policy-makers act as if they have agreed that Malaysia will refrain from supporting Philippine Muslims but will not stop Tun Mustapha's assistance to them; the Philippines will continue to attack the Muslim separatist movement but will refrain from action against Sabah or from direct public criticism of Malaysia; the Philippines will not press its claim to Sabah but will assert its right to the waters around the Sulu archipelago. Succeeding sections of the paper explain how this bargain was arrived at, how it has worked, and what conclusions it suggests about the relationships between ethnicity and Philippine-Malaysian relations and, more generally, between ethnicity and international relations theory.