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RI initiates joint land drill in first step to greater trilateral work

Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines have agreed to conduct a month-long joint land exercise next month in Tarakan, an island city in North Kalimantan, as part of ongoing efforts to enhance trilateral counterterrorism cooperation amid the threat of returning Islamic State (IS) group fighters and foreign terrorists in the region

Ko Lyn Cheang (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Mon, June 17, 2019

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RI initiates joint land drill in first step to greater trilateral work

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div>Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines have agreed to conduct a month-long joint land exercise next month in Tarakan, an island city in North Kalimantan, as part of ongoing efforts to enhance trilateral counterterrorism cooperation amid the threat of returning Islamic State (IS) group fighters and foreign terrorists in the region.

The exercise comes a year after Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines first agreed to hold a trilateral land training exercise to deal with Islamic militants.

Defense Minister Ryamizard Ryacudu announced the exercise at the 2019 Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore earlier this month, where each country’s defense minister agreed to participate in the land operation. Each country will send one company of ground forces drawn from the Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippines border area near the Sulu Sea, ministry spokesperson Brig. Gen. Totok Sugiharto told The Jakarta Post on Friday. The exercise will span from the end of July to the second week of August.

“The threats of terrorism and radicalism that we face today are the threats of the third generation of terrorists. The special character of the third generation is the return of IS foreign fighters from the Middle East,” Ryamizard said in his speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue.

Indonesian police arrested at least 18 suspected militants in May this year who were involved in a plot to launch an attack under the cover of rallies protesting the 2019 presidential election results, according to previous reports by The Straits Times. They included at least six former IS fighters who had returned to Indonesia after traveling to Syria to join IS.

Ryamizard emphasized the central role played by ASEAN in deterring terrorism and piracy in the region, citing the association’s consensus-based decision-making mechanism and inclusiveness as one of its strengths.

He expressed hopes that the joint land exercise could lead to increased trilateral cooperation to combat IS-linked terrorists in the southern Philippines.

However, a source from the Defense Ministry explained how issues of Philippine sovereignty and ASEAN’s principles of non-interference may pose challenges to deeper military cooperation on land with regard to the issue of Islamic militants in the southern Philippines.

“That is not a simple process, because one of the principles of ASEAN is not to interfere in the political business of others, and to respect the sovereignty and territory of another country. That is why, if the Philippines asks, the process will take a long time,” said a Defense Ministry official who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

While the three countries have conducted coordinated maritime and air patrols, a joint land patrol has not yet been established, in part because of a constitutional roadblock to conducting military land patrols in the Philippines.

The Philippines constitution explicitly prohibits the presence of foreign troops on Philippine soil, except with a treaty passed by the Senate or a national referendum. A joint land patrol would involve a higher degree of military cooperation than is involved in a coordinated exercise, as it means the three armies would be united under the command of a single commander.

But given the lack of a defense coalition or agreement on this matter between the three countries, the Defense Ministry official said a joint land patrol was not currently possible.

Other diplomatic scuffles might complicate trilateral cooperation moving forward. Even with Indonesia and the Philippines, which celebrate 70 years of diplomatic relations this year, Sidney Jones, Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict director, observes that there is a high degree of distrust that has accumulated over the years from both sides.

Distrust between Indonesia and the Philippines deepened in the aftermath of the 2019 Jolo bombings that killed 20 people when the Philippines Interior Secretary Eduardo Año claimed that the bombers were an Indonesian couple, without forensic evidence to confirm that fact.

“It was an example of some of the suspicions of the Indonesians being confirmed that the Philippines was not able to coordinate information to actually undertake investigations that produced hard data, and they were making accusations on what seemed to be hearsay evidence,” Jones said.

Furthermore, the lead agency for coordinating counterterrorism in the Philippines is the military, while in Indonesia and Malaysia it is the police. Trilateral counterterror efforts thus face the additional challenge of coordinating the sharing of information between the military and the police of different countries.

The Trilateral Cooperative Agreement was launched in 2017 in response to increasing maritime security threats in the Sulu Sea.

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— The writer is an intern at The Jakarta Post. Interns Baskara Firdausi and Valerie Halim contributed to this story.

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