I READ with keen interest and high encouragement the news about the Philippines and the United States conducting joint anti-piracy naval patrols in the Sulu Sea which borders my home state of Sabah. As I have mentioned many times before, the main scourge infesting the coastal areas of the Sulu Sea, at least those areas along the eastern sea coast of Sabah, is not terrorism in the modern or contemporary sense, but the essentially old-fashioned piracy and kidnapping for ransom. In the worst years, seldom a quarter or even a month passed without the news that someself-proclaimed “fundamentalists” of a certain religious strain had trespassed into Sabah waters, landed onshore or onto ships or other marine structures, abducted hostages either randomly or sometimes in a targeted manner, held them for months or even years on end, and releasing them only upon ransom money being paid, and otherwise executing them in gruesome fashion.