The soldiers and police commandos are more at home in the humid jungles of Peninsular Malaysia but they form the bulk of the security forces looking for the remaining group of 200-odd Filipino gunmen who landed on February 9 to claim Sabah for their Sulu sultan.
“To say that it is like finding a needle in a haystack doesn’t even begin to cover it,” a General Operations Force (GOF) police officer from Kuala Lumpur told The Malaysian Insider in the course of the Ops Daulat operations to flush out the militants.
“They could look like anyone,” he added, describing the tanned Filipino gunmen who share the same bloodline as some of the locals in Sabah — a state unique for its racial and cultural diversity that is seen as a blessing and a curse, with 28 per cent of the population comprising mostly Filipinos and Indonesians.
The vast Felda Sahabat oil palm plantations here are four times the size of the federal capital of Kuala Lumpur but the stragglers of the Sulu sultanate are surrounded in the four square kilometres containing Kampung Tanduo and Kampung Tanjung Batu.
The Sulu gunmen may also be more familiar with the terrain here as it only takes 40 minutes to reach Sabah’s east coast by boat from the Sulu province in the southern Philippines, another policeman said on condition of anonymity.
A 35-year-old army sergeant from Tambunan, Sabah, similarly said it was difficult to capture the militants because of Felda Sahabat’s hilly terrain and dense oil palm plantations.
“The majority (of soldiers) are from the peninsula and Sibu, Sarawak, who are not familiar with Lahad Datu,” he said, requesting anonymity.
A 26-year-old policeman, who was manning a checkpoint at Kampung Tanjung Labian, said: “The Sulus here understand the hilly terrain.”
While the straight roads through the Felda Sahabat plantations, which are an hour and a half’s drive from Lahad Datu, remain exposed under the sun, the surrounding oil palm trees form thick clusters that cast a shadow on the ground.
The policeman at the checkpoint added that it was easy to get lost on the way to Kampung Tanduo, which is accessible through a plantation near the Embara Budi community hall — where 650 displaced villagers are taking refuge — and not through the main roads.
Despite the blazing afternoon sun, the makeshift station at the Tanjung Labian checkpoint was cool under its zinc roof that rattled whenever the wind blew.
The policeman had yet to come across a Sulu gunman since he started manning the checkpoint five days ago, which is guarded 24 hours a day by 10 policemen. They take turns during the day, but all 10 are on duty when night falls at 6.30pm.
His colleague, another 26-year-old who joined the force just three years ago, said: “They (the militants) dress like villagers. They also know how to speak the local dialect.”
The policemen added the squad did not have regular meals, but ate whenever they were hungry. Dinner would usually consist of instant noodles cooked in a kettle on the ground, reflecting the haste in coming over to secure the area.
The makeshift station at the checkpoint, which was bolstered with sandbags and had an M-16 rifle perched on a tree stump, was stocked with cola and isotonic drinks, coffee and beverage three-in-one packets, drinking water, plates, fire starters, torches, and even clove cigarettes.
“We hope that this will be resolved quickly so that we can return to normal,” said the policeman.
“Scared or not, we have a job to do. We can’t avoid it,” added the young cop, who looked visibly scared when asked if he feared confronting the Sulu militants.
The death toll in the incursion has risen to 61 since clashes began last Friday, comprising 53 Sulu gunmen and eight Malaysian policemen shot dead in battle.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak had said that the security forces would not rest until the Sulu militants surrendered or were eliminated.
But the followers of self-proclaimed Sulu Sultan Jamalul Kiram III — one of the nine claimants to the throne — have previously said that they were willing to die in their quest to reclaim Sabah, which they insist belongs to them based on historical records dating back to the 19th century.