Is Malaysia ready for Ukraine war fallout?

 

Whatever the outcome of the Ukraine conflict, power dynamics will change in Europe and to a lesser degree in the rest of the world.

The invasion of Ukraine by Russia, and the prolonged fighting, is taking a toll on not just Ukraine but also the rest of the world. As it has exacerbated the disruption to the world economy caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdowns, we in Malaysia are also feeling the effects. The main impact is on the prices of food, goods and services.

We are in for a nasty time over the next year or so; perhaps longer. More Malaysians will find it hard to feed their families. I fear economic instability and social unrest.

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It is not unlikely that street crime will increase. It is also not unlikely that the number of homeless will increase. Are the authorities prepared for this? I hope they tackle the root cause and not just go on a “punish them” spree, which is the easiest – but not exactly clever – thing to do.

Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob announced on June 29 that the government would establish a special committee to wage “jihad” on inflation. We can only hope it succeeds.

That aside, the war in Ukraine will also have a bearing on the security situation in Asia and the Pacific. For one, just like other nations, Asian countries would want to increase their defence budgets, and arms suppliers – riding on fear that has been created – will use the opportunity to sell more weapons.

While that is of concern, I’m more worried about the unregulated flow of weapons to groups that could cause trouble in our backyard. After all, terrorism is still a concern in this region.

The US has already supplied Ukraine with more than US$6 billion in military equipment since Russia’s invasion, including Javelin missiles and anti-armor weapons. Washington has also, according to reports, authorised more than US$5.6 billion in “security assistance” to Ukraine.

In addition, European nations have been sending weapons to Ukraine, with the European Union saying in late February that it would allocate 450 million euros to supply weapons – including missiles and machine guns – to Ukraine.

Many of these weapons have been sent to the Azov battalion, a volunteer group that has been doing much of the frontline fighting, and many of whose members have far right and neo-Nazi leanings.

What will happen to these weapons after the war? There is a big possibility that some of these weapons will figure prominently in any unrest or instability that may likely occur not just in Ukraine but in Europe when the war ends.

I’m afraid that some of these arms will “disappear” in the Ukraine and turn up in the hands of some rebel units or terrorist group somewhere, perhaps even in Jolo in the Philippines, or with Boko Haram in Nigeria.

Afghanistan is a good example of how American and Russian weapons were and are being used by the Taliban. Pakistani militants too seem to get a steady supply of weapons, and the Al-Shabaab militant group, which has carried out a series of attacks in Somalia and neighbouring countries, gets most of its weapons through illicit traders and smugglers.

What is to stop some of the weapons being poured into the Ukraine ending up in Somalia or Nigeria or Yemen or the Philippines? Or even Malaysia? Some of it may end up with militants and some with criminal elements.

I’ve read reports that nation’s supplying weapons sometimes do not have proper end-user accounting, which means some of the weapons supplied to one group may end up elsewhere.

According to an article in The American Conservative, the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) noted that end-use monitoring of weapons sent to other countries had become problematic.

“The GAO notes that the commerce department only conducted two end-use checks in 2021… Failing to conduct end-use checks means that many of the 4,000 recently transferred firearms (to Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador) likely will end up in the wrong hands.”

It went on to say that Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador contained 47 of the 50 cities with the most murders in the world. The GAO noted that a study of the origin of recovered firearms in these three countries in 2019 found that the US had manufactured 43.7% of them in El Salvador, 34.8% in Guatemala, and 42.8% in Honduras.

In Southeast Asia, since 2002, the US has sold the Philippines nearly US$900 million in weapons and provided over US$1.3 billion in security assistance and, according to reports, some of the small weapons end up in the hands of groups such as local militias or powerful political clans. The Philippine’s Center for Investigative Journalism has uncovered some of these activities.

For instance, in 2010, it said, half a million rounds of 5.56-mm ammunition, the kind used for the M-16 rifle, which had been bought by the Philippine National Police ended up in the possession of a powerful clan in Maguindanao.

The same report said that in 2010, the police estimated that there were about 200,000 loose firearms in the whole of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao, where Moro rebels and various warlords operate.

The Islamic State is still active in Southeast Asia, with a base in the Philippines, and the Abu Sayyaf militants operating from Jolo continue to be a problem not just for the Philippines but also for neighbours such as Malaysia. They have in the past captured and held Malaysians for ransom and used that money to buy weapons. A few people have even been beheaded by these terrorist groups.

There are also a few extremist groups in the mould of Islamic State in neighbouring Indonesia. And our own police have uncovered a number of fighters and sympathisers of terror groups such as the Islamic State.

Last September, Normah Ishak, assistant director of the Special Branch’s counter-terrorism division, said police had arrested 558 people, including 51 women, involved with terrorist groups since 2013.

Let’s not forget that in 2013 more than 200 armed militants from Sulu in the southern Philippines landed in Lahad Datu, Sabah, to “reclaim” the land which they said still belonged to the Sulu sultanate. The invasion was repelled but not before the lives of 10 members of the Malaysian security forces and six civilians were killed, along with 56 Sulu gunmen.

Last December it was reported that about 200 people in the Philippines had gathered to discuss raising an army to invade Sabah but this was denied by the authorities both in the Philippines and Malaysia.

What I’m driving at is that our intelligence services need to be on high alert and our police and military, just as the customs department, must monitor our shores even more carefully to ensure none of these weapons enter our nation.

Our intelligence services should work even more closely with neighbours such as the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand to prevent the possibility of weapons being smuggled in from the war in Ukraine or from other conflict areas of the world.

Police should use their resources to attend to national security rather than, say, questioning lawyers who participate in demonstrations calling for judicial independence.

Whatever is happening will also exacerbate tensions between the US and China in the South China Sea, and pull Asean member-states into the vortex. Malaysia has to be prepared.

Already China, Japan, Taiwan and other nations in the region are considering various scenarios that could arise from the Ukraine war.

Our politicians may be too busy trying to stay in power or fighting among themselves but I do hope that Malaysia’s top security officials have started working out models for handling any situation that may arise – and contingency plans to keep us safe.

The war in Ukraine may seem far away but in today’s connected world, Ukraine is near enough to impact us, as the huge increase in food prices has demonstrated. - FMT

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.