Malaysia Prime Minister Najib Razak’s visit to China this week comes as the embattled leader’s relationship with the United States has been tested by the Department of Justice’s investigation into the scandal swirling around the 1MDB state investment fund he founded. But despite the tension and Najib’s move to align the country closer with Beijing, there is one area where the U.S.-Malaysia relationship remains strong, experts say.
“The 1MDB investigation is going ahead, but it hasn’t affected U.S.-Malaysia cooperation on the counterterrorism front,” Phuong Nguyen, an associate fellow with the Southeast Asia Program at CSIS, said.
Najib — who this week called China a “true friend and strategic partner”— has increasingly looked to China due to the strained ties with Washington over the 1MDB scandal and because China is Malaysia’s largest trading partner. On Tuesday, the two countries inked a deal to boost naval cooperation concerning the disputed South China Sea, and on Thursday Najib is set to meet President Xi Jinping.
As Beijing and Washington continue to make their plays for influence in the region, Malaysia’s turn to China throws another damper on President Barack Obama’s stated pivot to Asia. But in the counterterrorism realm, the United States and Malaysia are working to maintain their close ties and relationship, a number of observers recently told The Cipher Brief.
The U.S. values having a Muslim majority country like Malaysia as a key partner in the region and as a member of the U.S.-led counter-ISIS coalition. Meanwhile, in Malaysia, the threat of terrorism and the rise of radical Islam within the country is a very real concern, given its political climate, status as an Islamic financial center, and its porous borders in maritime Southeast Asia, where the problem of homegrown radicalization as well as returning ISIS foreign fighters in the region is cause for alarm.
“The U.S. still views Malaysia as an important partner in the region,” Asrul Hadi Abdullah Sani, a Malaysia analyst at Bower Group Asia, said. “The 1MDB scandal will unlikely affect bilateral ties between the two countries and business will remain usual.”
In its probe into the 1MDB scandal, the Justice Department called for seizing more than $1 billion in assets “associated with an international conspiracy to launder funds misappropriated" from the state investment fund. In July, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said the sovereign fund was used by officials as a “personal bank account.” Najib has denied any wrongdoing.
While Najib was not named in the lawsuits, his stepson and various personal friends and associates were listed in the complaint made earlier this year. However, some of the allegations were made against an individual dubbed “Malaysian Official 1,” who it noted received $681 million to the the person’s personal bank account.
That same amount was deposited into Najib’s personal bank account in what was a “personal donation” from Saudi Arabia’s royal family that was mostly returned, according to Malaysian investigators who closed their controversial investigation earlier this year.
But the counterterrorism ties have been largely insulated from the massive scandal, several experts noted. Malaysia figures as a key partner in the United States’ counterterrorism push.
“It’s important in particular for moderate Muslim nations to be working with us on this front because they have a legitimacy and they can speak in a credible way on these issues that Americans sometimes can’t. And they can really be some of our most important allies,” Lindsey Ford, director for security programs for the Asia Society Policy Institute, said.
Maintaining that counterterrorism relationship is especially crucial as Malaysia looks to launch a regional counter-messaging center to combat ISIS ideology and present alternatives to it and other extremist groups online. The United States is set to assist with various levels of training and operations for the Regional Digital Counter-Messaging Communication Center, known as RDC3. BenarNews recently reported that Malaysia’s police chief said Najib will officially open the center in November, following a “soft start” earlier this year.
“The relationship is far too important when it comes to counterterrorism work with the setting up” of the center, Asrul said.
Nguyen noted that “there is a good amount of intelligence sharing” between the two countries, but “U.S. diplomats are equally concerned about the growth of radical Islamism in everyday Malaysians.” But on the whole, Malaysia’s prominence as a Southeast Asian country in the global coalition to counter-ISIS marks them as a “very important partner in this effort,” she said.
Mackenzie Weinger is a national security reporter at The Cipher Brief. Follow her on Twitter @mweinger.
