Special to WorldTribune.com

By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com

MANILA — War planes strafe and bomb. Tanks shell enemy redoubts. The infantry move in under air and artillery support, spraying automatic weapons fire.

Sound like a fantasy of the fighting that might break out across the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas? Could this be the latest North Korean video of heroic forces wiping out the Americans and South Koreans? Or possibly one of those computer games that make war seem like a fun exercise for kids to whom the staccato sound of gunfire and the sight of bodies falling like bowling pins is an all-consuming passion?

Sorry, none of the above.

It’s what happened when the Sultan of Sulu, a title that sounds like something out of the Arabian Nights, figured it would be nice to make good on ancient claims to Sabah, which happens to be the easternmost part of Malaysia, and ordered his ragtag band to move in from their hideouts in the southern Philippines and take over a village or two. The Malaysians, whose air force and army generally have little to do, suddenly had a real-live war on their hands. In a few days, while most of the rest of the world was hardly paying attention, scores were killed and thousands fled their homes.

The scenario points to a couple of truths that may be overlooked while people understandably worry about whether the North Koreans would be dumb enough to make good on any of those wild threats they’ve been making.

The first is that the Korean peninsula is far from the only East Asian flashpoint. Many more people could get killed in war in Sabah, the northeastern portion of Borneo, a jungle island of rain forest and mountains that mostly belong to Indonesia, than would die in isolated North Korean attacks in the Yellow Sea. It’s not hard to think a war in your own region is all that matters but many more have died, and are likely to die, in another region most people don’t know or care about.

The second is these conflicts are weirdly inter-connected. It’s easy to see the Sultan of Sulu and his brothers and fervid followers as isolated characters capable of stirring up a lot of trouble but not really bothering anyone hundreds or thousands of miles away. The trouble, though, is that rebel Islamic forces do have the backing of Al Qaida, or fronts and splinter groups of Al Qaida, and Al Qaida poses a threat from northern Africa through Afghanistan and Pakistan— and on to points east.

The same fanatics who want to take over large portions of Mindanao, the big southern Philippine island, and the Sulu archipelago, which is also Philippine turf, and then Sabah, get arms and inspiration from Al Qaida. While they imagine extending their power from Mindanao to eastern Malaysia, some of their soul mates a few hundred or thousand miles away have more grandiose dreams.

Even so, why should Koreans, or anyone else in northeast Asia, really care about the fantasies of the Sultan of Sulu? One reason is the nuclear threat. These rebels in the Philippines and Sabah are far from going nuclear, but nuclear material and technology flow through Pakistan to North Korea. China also has close ties to Pakistan— so close that China is Pakistan’s main source of arms. China, moreover, made the reactors that produce the nuclear devices that make Pakistan a nuclear power.

You just can’t get away from the fact that all these conflicts, whether in a remote village in Sabah or in the middle east, Syria or Afghanistan and Pakistan, are interrelated in a world in which arms and funds flow mysteriously from one front to another.

China extends its shadow over all these countries, from Southwest and South Asia to Southeast and Northeast Asia. China’s claims to the South China Sea do not mean the Chinese are about to assist the Sultan of Sulu, but they do mean China might not be so sympathetic to Malaysia or the Philippines while both claims islands in the South China Sea that China either controls or claims.

The last thing either Malaysia or the Philippines want is to be at war with each other. Philippine President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino, a Catholic like 85 percent of his people, has upset some Philippine Muslims, about 5 percent of the population, by totally repudiating their claims to Sabah. A deal with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front for reconciliation in the southern Philippines hangs in the balance.

All of which sounds trivial and irrelevant when balanced against daily North Korean threats to nuke U.S. bases from Okinawa to Guam to the Pentagon, but the difference is, here’s a war that’s happening. Here’s where people are dying. With any luck, the North Koreans are just blowing smoke.

  An overlooked but bloody war on another Asian front, Mindanao, Moro Islamic Liberation Front, Sabah, Sultan of Sulu