Editor’s Note
by Siu Tzyy Wei, Lead Editor - Maritime Crescent Desk
This week, the ship that travels across the Maritime Crescent begins to adjust its sails.
In Indonesia, the people watch their coal industry as an indigenous tycoon rises and an old Chinese-Indonesian dynasty retreating knowing very well that the presidency, more than the market, now decides who rises and who gets squeezed. As Brunei advances on its maritime engagements with its Southeast Asian partners through multilateral cooperation and information sharing, Malaysia navigates new waves of opportunities and concerns with its recent rise in the global passport rankings.
Where the sails turn, the stories continue.
Indonesia 🇮🇩
Here Be Dragons
by Rayhan Prabu Kusumo, in Jakarta
In September, one of Indonesia’s largest coal producers began to change hands at a startling price. Haji Isam, a Kalimantan tycoon and President Prabowo’s most generous backer, agreed to buy into Bayan Resources after an opening offer roughly eighty per cent below market value. Bayan, a company owned by a Chinese-Indonesian tycoon Low Tuck Kwong, had just been hobbled by the government’s own coal quota, which capped how much it could sell. In the same weeks, the Hartono family, the country’s richest and long known for keeping its money at home, was moving more than a billion dollars abroad.
The obvious reading is a changing of the guard — an indigenous tycoon rising and an old Chinese-Indonesian dynasty retreating. Jakarta commentators call it the Nine Haji displacing the Nine Dragons. The evidence is clear. When Danantara, the state’s new investment fund, needed capital, much of it came from the Chinese-Indonesian conglomerates it was supposedly superseding, which lined up to buy its Patriot Bonds. The families at the top are the ones that have been there for decades. What has changed is what it costs them to stay.
The new cost is subordination. Haji Isam buys where the state permits and runs the projects it hands him, including its flagship food estate in Merauke. The Hartonos move money offshore as insurance and still buy the Patriot Bond to stay in favour. Both are responding to the same fact: the presidency, more than the market, now decides who rises and who gets squeezed. The instruments are discretionary, things like a coal quota granted or withheld, a tax inquiry that ends with someone stopped at the airport, a presidential speech denouncing robber barons. This is what explains the Bayan price. The state’s quota made the company cheap, and the state’s favourite was positioned to buy it.
Governments have done this before. A leader who distrusts a wealthy class seldom abolishes it; he brings it to heel. After Khodorkovsky was jailed in 2003, Russia’s remaining oligarchs understood that their fortunes existed at the Kremlin’s pleasure. Those who complied kept their money, and those who resisted lost it or took it to London. Indonesia’s version is gentler, applied through tax probes and travel bans as opposed to prison sentences, but the principle is the same. Private wealth is tolerated while it is useful to the centre.
There is a real case for what Prabowo is doing. The tycoons built their fortunes on political protection and cheap access to resources, wealth is extremely concentrated and skewed along ethnic lines, and making them pay more into the common account is a defensible aim. The problem is the method. Disciplining capital through discretion merely renegotiates wealth and power, with fewer names on the list and one office choosing them. The tycoons understand this, which is why some are buying and some are leaving. Everyone else gets an investment climate in which the most valuable asset is proximity to the president.
Rayhan has a background in government affairs and public policy, with experience across government institutions and advisory firms. His work focuses on the intersection of geopolitics, policy, and risk, with expertise in advocacy, regulatory analysis, and stakeholder engagement. He holds a degree in Government from Universitas Padjadjaran, and has completed an exchange at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Spain, focusing on global politics and sustainability.
Brunei Darussalam 🇧🇳
Multilateral Maritime Engagement: Brunei Hosts ReCAAP Cluster Meeting
by Wira Gregory Ejau, in Bandar Seri Begawan
From September 21 to 24, the Royal Brunei Police Force and the National Maritime Coordination Centre co-hosted the ReCAAP Information Sharing Centre Cluster Meeting 2026 in Bandar Seri Begawan, bringing together senior officials from Brunei, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam to exchange threat assessments and coordinate responses to maritime crime across the sub-region.
Alongside the Royal Brunei Police Force, Royal Brunei Armed Forces, and the Maritime and Port Authority, the meeting included representatives from Brunei Gas Carriers, Brunei Shell Petroleum, and Brunei LNG. The presence of these energy sector stakeholders at the maritime security forum highlights the growing importance of evolving maritime security threats for an LNG-exporting economy based in a largely peaceful country. Brunei’s hydrocarbon revenues depend on the uninterrupted movement of vessels, which the ReCAAP framework exists to secure, as maritime insecurity is a direct threat to the infrastructure underpinning national income.
The Assistant Commissioner of Police Haji Hamri Aslan, who also serves as ReCAAP ISC Governor for Brunei, framed the forum’s purpose beyond piracy in the following statement: “ReCAAP Focal Points in Southeast Asia face common security challenges such as armed robbery against ships, contraband smuggling, IUU fishing and irregular human migration.” While addressing piracy in the conventional sense has remained of utmost importance, the cluster meeting also reflects a threat environment that has broadened considerably into grey-zone issues that encompass fishing violations, smuggling networks, and migration pressures that engage coastguard, police, military, and civilian agencies simultaneously.
ReCAAP’s Half Year Report for January to June 2026 of this year recorded 35 incidents of armed robbery against ships in Asia, which was a 64% decrease from 96 incidents in the same period in 2025, and the lowest figure for any first half-year since 2019. The Straits of Malacca and Singapore (SOMS) have historically been one of the region’s most active hotspots, and accounted for 60% of total incidents, but did see a 74% year-on-year reduction. This was attributed explicitly to coordinated law enforcement action by the littoral states and visible countermeasures by the shipping industry, with Philippine ports and anchorages being the notable counter-trend, rising from zero to ten incidents in the same period.
The SOMS improvement is directly attributable to Indonesian enforcement arrests in 2025, which followed intelligence coordination through the information-sharing infrastructure that ReCAAP exists to provide. In part, the cluster meeting provided an opportunity to examine that model of cause and effect, along with what actionable information sharing was produced and how it could be replicated elsewhere in the network.
Brunei’s hosting role follows the SOCTPF co-chairmanship in June, PACIFIC ANGEL in August, and anticipates the 6th SOCTPF in 2027. The consistent thread is a state-building institutional presence across multiple security architectures simultaneously through convening capacity, information exchange, and multilateral hosting. In a regional security environment where the most persistent threats are transnational rather than interstate, that is a credible and sustainable form of contribution.
Gregory is an MSc candidate in Strategic Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University. He works as a freelance writer specializing in international history, conflict, and counterterrorism, with experience in academia, investigative journalism, and voluntary uniformed service. He currently provides research assistance with the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) under their Southeast Asian Security and Defence Internship Programme and conducts investigations on regional security and transnational crime for a confidential company.
Malaysia 🇲🇾
Power to Move
by Muhammad Aiman Bin Roszaimi, in Cyberjaya
Malaysia’s passport has climbed to second place in the 2026 Passport Index Global Ranking, sharing the position with Singapore and behind the United Arab Emirates. Malaysian passport holders now have access to 175 destinations, including 129 visa-free destinations and 46 offering visa-on-arrival access.
The achievement is certainly worth noting. The more interesting question is not how many countries Malaysians can visit without a visa, but why so many countries are willing to let Malaysians enter with relatively few barriers in the first place? Passport strength is, in part, a product of diplomacy.
Visa-free access does not emerge simply because a country has a strong economy. It is negotiated through bilateral relations, assessments of migration and security risks, reciprocity and perceptions of political stability. The passport can be understood as one small, everyday manifestation of that diplomatic network.
Yet there is an important caveat before celebrating the number too much. “Passport power” is not the same as national power.
The ranking measures mobility and access. It does not measure military capability, economic size, technological capacity, diplomatic influence or the ability to shape international institutions. Nevertheless, the passport ranking captures international openness; in an increasingly fragmented world where states are tightening borders, screening travellers more closely and introducing new immigration restrictions, the ability of Malaysian citizens to move relatively freely across borders represents a form of accumulated diplomatic capital.
For a trading country seeking foreign investment, tourism, international education, professional mobility and deeper economic integration, economic mobility also matters. Although Malaysia seeks to position itself as a middle power, the country still depends partly on connectivity by maintaining multilateral relationships and remaining sufficiently open to engage with diverse partners.
But there is also a lesson here for Malaysian diplomacy. Maintaining passport strength requires more than celebrating rankings. But it does suggest that Malaysian citizens inhabit a country whose diplomatic doors remain unusually open to the world. And in an era when more countries are building walls, that openness is itself a form of strategic capital.
Aiman is a PhD candidate in Security and Strategic Analysis at the National University of Malaysia. His research focuses on Malaysia’s space policy, ASEAN regional security, and the strategic implications of emerging technologies. His work explores how Malaysia’s defense policy and strategic culture shape its approach to outer space.
Editorial Deadline 26/09/2026 11:59 PM (UTC +8)
