The
military invasion of Pahang, better known as the
Pahang War, was a military conflict between the Islamic State of Malaya and the Sultanate of Pahang, lasting from 1 August to 2 september 2009 and ending in a complete Malayan victory and the annexation of Pahang into the Islamic State.
After the splitting of the Federated Malay States after the South Asian War (1964-1967), Japanese policies had been to discourage violently Malay unity, as Admiral Yasuhiro Nakasone estimated that “a united state controlling Singapore is the last thing Japanese trade would like”. As a result, the Malay peninsula was splitted between petty kingdoms and Thailand. With the crumbling of the Japanese Empire and the Thai Civil War, as the Malay kingdoms turned to China for protection, Pan-Malay islamists were able to gain their independence from Thailand, where decades of anti-Muslim persecution had only led independentists to radicalize, winning independence in 1992 and becoming an islamic republic in 1994.
The rhetoric of Malayan Head of State Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat was clear : Malay unity had to be achieved, under the double shield of Malay race and islam. Under a moderate (as compared to Egypt) yet firm interpretation of the sharia, Malaya began to build up its arsenal and rhetoric, with Japanese and Russian support, and saw the 2004 tsunami as a divine sign in favor of righteousness. Pahang, the biggest kingdom in the Malay peninsula and subject to civil strife due to a 40-years-long dictatorship, was seen as the first target of an unification process.
Malayan troops entered Pahangese early on 1 August 2009, pretending to have been provoked by rogue elements of the Pahangese Army, and quickly overwhelmed the country. The attack was immediately condemned by China and the whole Pan-Asian Union, along with the World Council itself : nevertheless, the Pahangese army, totally outmatched, undersupplied and corrupted, was forced to capitulate within a month, with the capital, Pekan, being conquered on 2 September 2009, with Prime Minister Najib Razak forced to flee into exile. The Islamic Republic of Malaya immediately proclaimed the annexation of Pahang.
The universally condemned invasion led to an international embargo over Malaya but no military action from China, Indochina and other major players in East Asia, not wishing to further destablize the region, although all independent Malay states entered protection treaties with China. If the Pahang royal family quickly went into exile, former Pahang Prime Minister Najib Razak set up a government-in-exile in Shanghai.
Imposition of charia over the relatively liberal Pahangese society wasn’t without difficulties, as early September 2015 saw unprecedented protests throughout the country, asking for a relaxation of the policies and a referendum of Pahangese status ; to the government-in-exile’s dismay, the protests weren’t so much about a restablishment of independence or the sultanate but just a thirst for democracy. Although thoroughly repressed, the protests led newly designated Head of State Mujahid Yusof Rawa to promise reforms, even if all pretenses were forgotten after the 2016 coup d’etat in Malaya, and Pahang continued to be forcefully united to Malaya.
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