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What price national security?

A mystery ship is berthed 500 metres beyond the North Port in Klang, but within the pilotage area of Port Klang. It is there since July 2004. Port officials and pilots are concerned about what it does and why it is there. No one else is. Attempts to find out ends in a wild goose chase. Officials are tight lipped but intelligence officials and pilots, mostly former Royal Malaysian Navy officials, fear the worst. Weapons, including M-16 assault rifles, are found aboard. Helicopters – one had the markings "9M SSW" – regularly land on board. Gurkhas in camouflage uniforms, armed with M-16s, are seen on drill regularly. When this is reported to the authorities, no attempt is made to investigate.

Until on 09 April 2005 the "Utusan Malaysia" published a front page news story on this ship, "Glenn Braveheart". The authorities scrambled for cover, which raised more questions. Every one involved – the deputy prime minister and defence minister, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, the port authorities, the marine police, the ship's owners – rushed to explain and, as we have come to expect, confuse every one. To Dato' Seri Najib, it was a hydrographic survey ship; to the ship's owners, Glenn Defence Marine Sdn Bhd, one of whose shareholders is a former chief of the naval staff, a naval training ship with training imparted with fake M-16s or a naval marine security support ship for 11 navies, it was not sure which. To the marine police, it is there to produce a movie.

As often happens, in the end it was pure farce. With each unbelievable explanation, it became clear even to the most casual listener that the National Front (BN) government is caught out in another scam. Only this involved national security. Is it concerned about this breach? No. The director of military intelligence, in whose watch it took place, should have dismissed, or at least allowed to retire when his term expires in a few months; instead, he is due to have his term extended. Loyalty to Dato' Seri Najib counts more than competence in military intelligence these days. It is not only the DMI who failed: every intelligence agency – the National Security Council, the Special Branch, the Research wing of the Prime Minister's Department, the individual military intellgence agencies, amongst others – failed.

So why is Glenn Braveheart in Port Klang? It is a naval ship, pure and simple; it was bought from the Singapore Navy. It is used as a naval vessel. The automatic identification signals, which all commercial and private ships, though not military vessels, must at all times switch on, is often off on the Glenn Braveheart. Conspiracy theories abound why it is in Port Klang. Glenn Defence cannot explain why except in unbelievable public relations explanations. That its shareholders include a former CNS and other senior RMN officers, it clearly has a plan different from what it reveals. Is it a local link to the unstated US plan to involve Malaysia as a local node for its global war on terror. Has it to any role in the sharp rise in piracy in the Straits of Malacca? Is it linked to the Thai onslaught on the Thai Muslims in south Thailand? Is this why there is total confusion when news of the ship got frontpage play in the "Utusan Malaysia"?

Dato' Seri Najib's first reaction to the report is to investigate it, and that the ship's presence did not compromise national security. Why did he presume it would? "As far as I know," he said, "the ship had obtained permission from the authorities to berth in the waters 500 metres from the North Port since July." How is it then that military intelligence did not know about it, or if it did, it did not inform the defence minister about it, and more tellingly did not investigage its presence until now? He thought the ship was mapping the area. But "we must ensure the country's security is not compromised." The ship's crew has a Burmese captain, 10 Burmese, 10 Filipino, one Bruneian seamen and 25 Nepalese commandos. The general manager of Glenn Defence, Lieut-Commander Carmen Edmonds insists the weapons on board are fake weapons, certainly not M-16s, and, strange for a retired naval officer, does not know what imitation weapons were used. The ship in any case is a logistics ship readied for "possible eventualities". For which it carries imitation weapons? Especially when it claims it sails the high seas?

The confusion and mixed signals from the authorities suggest the Glenn Braveheart is more than what it insists it is. Its mission is carried out in secret to a plan those in authority know what it is or, more frightening, is involved in the thick of it, and caught flatfooted when news of the ship is in the newspapers. A naval ship, even in private hands of a company that provides defence security services to visiting navies, would have on board not fake weapons but M-16s and a complement of weapons that would include rocket propelled grenades (RPGs), anti-personnel bombs and C-4 explosives. Especially with its stated aim of providing security for visiting navies and, if you believe the spin, hydrographic surveys.

This leads to another frightening conclusion: Could this be a rogue operation by intelligence and other operatives in Malaysia, with links to foreign intelligence agencies, and senior officers on board who could obtain the necessary approvals without raising suspicions? And the government is caught flatfooted because it did not know of it until it appeared in the newspaper? Are these senior officials in the pay of foreign intelligence agencies, and prepared to sell their country to the highest bidder? That the government itself is shocked by the implications that it has ordered a shutdown to further reporting about it?

The intelligence services are not what they once were. It is clueless to what happens in south Thailand, south Mindanao, Aceh – the three Muslim regions where in the past they had important outposts. The counter-terrorism chief in one intelligence agency is a 27-year-old lady who has just obtained her Ph.D in an American university. She has no practical experience, and no doubt can spout theory and assumptions from published material. Her analysis, however good, must therefore be suspect. This insistence that all intelligence agents must, where possible, be Malays reduces their role even more. The infighting within the services adds to the misreporting and confusion. Meanwhile, the intelliegencies discuss such irrelevant issues as if the US would attack Iran and how.

This is reflected on the ground. Retired operatives are asked to survey the ground in dangerous areas – Mindanao, Aceh, south Thailand. The new spymasters act on instinct and current needs, ignoring policies and plans of the past. When the Mindanao rebel leader, Nur Misuari, whom when I met him in Libya in 1976 travelled on a Malaysian passport, escaped from Mindanano into an island off Sabah early this year, the Malaysian authorities peremptorily handed him back to Manila. He is now in jail, yet another frustrated rebel leader who the Malaysians built up over the years and then deserted. He has revealed the names of every Malaysian officer who had links to him to the Filipino authorities. With one fell stroke, he made all involved in the Mindanao caper useless, their lives in danger should they ever visit the Philippines. Blaming Nur Misuari is neither here nor there: If we thought him dispensible, why should he think we are not?

Is there more to it than meets the eye? When our national pastime is to sell ourselves to the highest bidder, which the BN government encourages as policy, national policy formulated on the run, our national product money, not what we produce and consume, this desire for money beyond greed seeps into every corner of Malaysian society. Every institution of national importance is afflicted. Justice is for sale. The civil service is for sale. The military is for sale. And now it seems out intelligence agencies are too. The government does not know how to react for it knows not how, and many of its top ranking officials are on the take. Which is why the frightening question must be asked: What price national security?

M.G.G. Pillai