As ISIS loses territory in the Middle East the Philippines is quickly becoming a new launching ground for the organisation. At least that is the thesis from a recent New York Times article. Let's take a look at some highlights.
Across the islands of the southern Philippines, the black flag of the Islamic State is flying over what the group considers its East Asia province.
Men in the jungle, two oceans away from the arid birthplace of the Islamic State, are taking the terrorist brand name into new battles.
The Islamic State’s territory in Iraq and Syria, once the size of Britain, has shriveled after four years of American-backed bombing and ground combat by Kurdish and Shiite militia fighters. What is left is a tiny village in southeast Syria that could fall any day.
But far from defeated, the movement has sprouted elsewhere. And here in the Mindanao island group of the southern Philippines, long a haven for insurgents because of dense wilderness and weak policing, the Islamic State has attracted a range of militant jihadists.
“ISIS has a lot of power,” said Motondan Indama, a former child fighter on the island of Basilan and cousin of Furuji Indama, a militant leader who has pledged fealty to the group. “I don’t know why my cousin joined, but it’s happening all over.”
“ISIS has money coming into the Philippines, and they are recruiting fighters,” said Rommel Banlaoi, chairman of the Philippine Institute for Peace, Violence and Terrorism Research. “ISIS is the most complicated, evolving problem for the Philippines today, and we should not pretend that it doesn’t exist because we don’t want it to exist.”
American surveillance drones monitor the southern Philippine archipelago, where the nation’s Muslim minority is concentrated and local insurgencies have long battled the Christian-majority state.
But even as the military offensive intensifies, the government avoids conceding that the Philippines is in the global slipstream of Islamist extremism. Top officials have played down incidents in which the Islamic State has sent foreign fighters and financing to the Philippines for deadly attacks. The violence, they often say, is squabbling between Muslim clans, or common banditry.
Within a week of the Jolo cathedral bombing, the police declared the case solved, blaming a local militant group, Abu Sayyaf, with scant acknowledgment of how many of its insurgents have partnered with the Islamic State.
Visiting the Jolo cathedral, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Mr. Duterte and his entourage trampled over evidence, church officials said. Forensic investigators were kept from the crime scene for days. Dogs gnawed on body parts.
“We are asking for an independent investigation because it was too quick, too soon to say it’s a closed case,” said Jefferson Nadua, a parish priest. “This is a serious matter that needs to be looked at more deeply because the threat is not just local. It’s maybe coming from outside, from ISIS.”
In the 1990s, after Filipinos returned from the mujahedeen battlefields in Afghanistan and hard-line madrassas in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, local grievances fused with global calls for jihad. In a crescent-shaped swath of Southeast Asia, militants dreamed of a caliphate free of secular governance.
Jemaah Islamiyah, the Qaeda offshoot that killed more than 200 people in a Bali nightclub in 2002, trained recruits in Philippine jungles.
Later, as the Islamic State constructed its caliphate in the Middle East, it connected disparate militants in the Philippines under one ideological banner, said Sidney Jones, the director of the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict in Jakarta, Indonesia.
“The government didn’t recognize its strength in attracting everyone from university-educated students to Abu Sayyaf kids in the jungle,” Ms. Jones said. “Whatever happens to the pro-ISIS coalition in Mindanao, it has left behind the idea of an Islamic state as a desirable alternative to corrupt democracy.”
The idea that no overseas fighters have stolen onto Basilan was shattered last July when it was the site of the first suicide bombing in the Philippines.
The Islamic State claimed that the attack, which killed 11 people, had been the work of a Moroccan recruit. The Philippine authorities initially denied the attack had been by a suicide bomber, much less a foreigner. Weeks later, they admitted it had been carried out by a German-Moroccan suicide bomber.
Just like the article about Marawi published by the Washington Post last month there is a lot of information here to unpack. The government apparently does not understand the gravity of what is written in this article and treats the presence and workings of ISIS as a mere possibility rather than as an objective fact.
Malacañang on Tuesday assured the public that it will not allow the Philippines to become an emerging base for international terror group ISIS which is in danger of losing all the territory it once held in the Middle East.
"We should undertake measures to prevent that from happening," presidential spokesperson Salvador Panelo said at a news conference.
"You will have to fight the ISIS. They would create hell for us. We are not here talking to destroy the future and our family," Duterte said.
It is too late for the government to say they will not allow the Philippines to become an emerging base for ISIS and that they should take measures to prevent that from happening when ISIS has been here since 2014
as I have previously written. Another thing the government, Duterte, is fond of saying is, "We are not Arabs." He says this to distinguish between the supposed brutality of ISIS tactics with the peaceful Malay ways of terrorism. He said it in 2016.
“You are not a warrior if you do that. We are not Arabs. That is not our culture. We are all Malay.”
— Duterte in an August speech condemning how Philippine Islamic militants supposedly mutilated the bodies of slain soldiers.
https://globalnation.inquirer.net/144023/144023?utm_expid=.XqNwTug2W6nwDVUSgFJXed.1
And he said it as recently as March 4th, 2019.
"Do not kill each other here. My god. We are not Arabs. We are Malays. It may be caused by religion but do not adhere to their insanity. They detonate bombs in malls," he added.
https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2019/03/04/1898714/duterte-says-abu-sayyaf-threat-driving-away-investments
The problem with Duterte's statements is that decades ago Filipino Muslims studied with and fought alongside the Arabs and they returned to the Philippines with that knowledge and those tactics. The founder of Abu Sayyf is Abdurajak Abubakar Janjalani.
A former teacher, he studied theology and Arabic in Libya, Syria and Saudi Arabia during the 1980s.
When he returned to the Philippines in 1990 Janjalani was able to attract many Muslim youth to join his organization. Janjalani was also allegedly given $6 million by Osama Bin Ladento establish the organization as an offshoot of the Moro National Liberation Front(MNLF). Janjalani had allegedly met Bin Laden in Afghanistanin the late 1980s and allegedly fought alongside him against the Soviet Union during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdurajak_Abubakar_Janjalani
If the man studied theology in Saudi Arabia then he undoubtedly studied Wahhabism and brought that doctrine back to the Philippines. He was also not alone. According to the US military:
Abu Sayyaf was founded by Abdurajak Janjalani, an Islamic scholar and mujahedin in the Afghan-Soviet war, after he, like the contemporaries that formed his initial recruiting crop, returned from studies in Saudi Arabia and Libya determined to fulfill the Muslim ideal of an Islamic state.
In its inchoate stages and while under Janjalani's leadership, Abu Sayyaf was plugged into the international network of Islamic militants that received the support of Osama bin Laden. Abu Sayyaf-al Qaeda links are strong. Many of its fighters claim to have trained in Afghanistan, including as many as 20 who were in the graduating class of a Mazar-e Sharif camp in 2001; the titular group leader, Janjalani's brother, refined his terrorist skills in Libya.
https://web.archive.org/web/20030219091507/http://www.pacom.mil/piupdates/abusayyafhist.shtml
The idea of forming an independent Islamic state in Mindanao goes back further than the formation of Abu Sayyaf. Such was the goal of the MNLF from whom the MILF and
Abu Sayyf both split when the MNLF settled for limited autonomy via the ARMM rather then full independence. But the reason for this compromise was because of the OIC (
Organisation of Islamic Cooperation) which recognised the MNLF
as the sole and legitimate representative of the Bangsamoro people in Mindanao; and Misuari was officially granted by the OIC as observer status. This gave him special access to the organization.
Moreover, negotiations between the government and the MNLF were initiated. During the initial stage of negotiation, the MNLF firmly adhered to its original demand of complete independence. However, Misuari had to downgrade this to autonomy because OIC members seemed not to support any demand for complete independence. In 1974, the OIC made a historic resolution urging both parties to settle their problems within the premises of the national integrity of the Philippines. OIC Resolution No. 18 of the Political Committee at the fifth Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers, held at Kuala Lumpur on June 21-25, 1974, urged the Philippine Government to find a political and peaceful solution through negotiations with Muslim leaders, particularly with representatives of the MNLF in order to arrive at a just solution to the plight of the Muslims within the “framework of the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Philippines.” It further noticed that the Mindanao conflict is an internal problem of the Philippines.
This particular resolution was very painful and tragic on the side of the MNLF. Misuari himself admitted that:
The primary reason why we had to accept that resolution was because we were terrified at the prospect of being isolated from our brothers in the world. I told them (the OIC) that this is a very, very difficult choice you are giving us. It’s like putting a bar of hot iron down our throats but just the same, we had to accept it otherwise, the result would be bad – isolation – so we had to look for a solution within the parameters of an autonomous government.
https://www.academia.edu/4845226/THE_LIBERATION_MOVEMENTS_IN_MINDANAO_ROOT_CAUSES_AND_PROSPECTS_FOR_PEACE
Independence
was also the reason the BIFF broke away from the MILF when they too settled for a limited autonomy. Such is the reason why the BARMM has been allotted much more sovereignty than the ARMM and why the members of the Bagsamoro Transition Authority balked at inhabitants of the region being referred to as citizens of the Republic of the Philippines. Independence was the goal from the beginning with the establishment of the MNLF which is itself a splinter group of the Muslim Independence Movement in who's Constitution the stated objective was as follows:
In its preamble, it clearly states that the Moro inhabitants of Mindanao, Sulu and Palawan “…make manifestation to the whole world its desire to secede from the Republic of the Philippines, in order to establish an Islamic State that shall embody their ideals and aspirations…”
https://www.academia.edu/4845226/THE_LIBERATION_MOVEMENTS_IN_MINDANAO_ROOT_CAUSES_AND_PROSPECTS_FOR_PEACE
An independent Islamic State in Mindanao has always been and still is the goal.
Back to the NYT article, what do we learn? That ISIS has a lot of power and is steadily recruiting people from all walks of life, that funding for ISIS is flowing into the country, that foreign fighters have been training here since at least 2002, that at the Jolo church blast site "Mr. Duterte and his entourage trampled over evidence" and declared the bombing solved linking to to Abu Sayyaf without any consideration of their links to ISIS, and that the government downplays the whole situation.
Basically the NYT is reporting the same story that has been reported here since the beginning of martial law in May 2017 and that is the Philippine government is woefully incompetent in it's war against terrorism and dire consequences, in this case the rise of ISIS, are the direct result.
This week the titular head of ISIS Philippines was thought to have been killed during a battle with the AFP.
Top military officials are still validating whether one of the four suspected terrorists killed in a clash Thursday with government troops in Tubaran town in Lanao del Sur was Abu Dar, believed to be the successor of Isnilon Hapilon, reported emir of the Islamic State in Southeast Asia.
“Yung tama niya is sa mukha eh. Medyo deformed yung mukha niya ngayon kaya medyo there was doubt na si (He was hit in the face, so his face was deformed, so, there are doubts that it is) Abu Dar but there were signs,” Brawner said.
The military is now submitting DNA samples to the Scene of the Crime Operatives (SOCO) to validate the identity of the body. Brawner said it would take at least a month for them to ger the result.
Where did the military get the DNA from to definitively compare with this corpse? Did they swab his mouth at one time in the past? The
Americans will be assisting in the identification of the body. If it turns out to be Abu Dar then someone will take his place just as he took the place of Isnilon Hapilon. ISIS is not going anywhere at the moment. Aside from Abu Sayyaf the BIFF is also aligned with ISIS.
Security forces continue with their hunt for members of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters in the restive Muslim province of Maguindanao where clashes had reportedly killed over 2 dozen militants, including a Singaporean terrorist.
More troops were sent to different towns in an effort to destroy BIFF groups scattered in the province. The 6th Infantry Division said the campaign, which began March 11, was aimed containing the terror threats posed by the BIFF, whose leaders led by Abu Turaife, have pledged allegiance to ISIS.
It said as many as 20 militants under Turaife were slain in the assaults in Shariff Saydona town, and among those killed was Muhammad Ali Bin Abd Al Rahman or Muawiya, a notorious jihadist belonging to the Indonesian Jemaah Islamiya and had been a bomb trainer for the Abu Sayyaf group.
One of these militants turned out to be an
Arab who allegedly trained local militants in bomb making and belonged to Jemaah Islamiya. That Jemaah Islamiya has operatives in the Philippines should be alarming to officials but not surprising. This Indonesian terror group has been engaging in terrorist activities in the Philippines since their formation in 1993. They also have links to the MILF.
Further, JI has close links to the Philippine rebel group MILF (Moro Islamic Liberation Front). The militant wing is promoting Islamist laws and prepares for battle through training and weapon acquisition.
The MILF has denied these links but why would they affirm them? When dealing with Muslims one must always remember the principle of Taqiya which is lying.
According to sharia, in certain situations, deception – also known as 'taqiyya', based on Quranic terminology, – is not only permitted but sometimes obligatory.
According to the authoritative Arabic text, Al-Taqiyya Fi Al-Islam: "Taqiyya [deception] is of fundamental importance in Islam. Practically every Islamic sect agrees to it and practices it. We can go so far as to say that the practice of taqiyya is mainstream in Islam, and that those few sects not practicing it diverge from the mainstream...Taqiyya is very prevalent in Islamic politics, especially in the modern era."
This week MILF Vice Chairman Ghazali Jaafar died from kidney failure. He was the architect of the peace agreement between the MILF and the GPH. He led the Bangsamoro Transition Committee which drafted the BBL. Without him there certainly would not be a BARMM. He was a man heavily involved in politics. What did he have to say about the peace process?
Jaafar said it was important that government and the MILF are on the same page on the definition of peace “kasi the way we look at it, ang definition ng gobyerno sa peace is the absence of fighting. That is not the peace that we want. There can be no peace if the Bangsamoro agenda is not addressed to the satisfaction of the greater majority of the Bangsamoro people. This can be addressed if ma-realize yung demand ng Bangsamoro people na meron silang gobyerno and government they will run for everybody, Muslims and non-Muslims alike and a democratic government and still under the Republic of the Philippines.”
https://www.mindanews.com/peace-process/2019/03/milfs-ghazali-jaafar-passes-away-his-last-public-appeal-to-fellow-leaders-be-the-unifying-forces-for-our-people/
Peace is the absence of fighting according to the government but that is not the kind of peace the MILF wants. The peace the MILF wants is addressing the Bangsamoro agenda to the satisfaction of the Bangsamoro people which is a thinly veiled way of saying "independence." Read what else he has had to say over the years.
MILF leaders said they plan to press Manila for self-governance and recognition of their "ancestral domain" to end their insurgency.
MILF deputy chief Ghazali Jaafar, speaking at his heavily fortified home in Mindanao, said Manila should acknowledge that the Bangsamoro, or Muslim people, historically ruled the south of this mostly Roman Catholic country.
"Mindanao was ruled by our ancestors and should be recognized as such and returned to us," Jaafar told Agence France Presse in an interview as he sat under the insurgents’ flag and closely guarded by two guerrillas wielding M-16 assault rifles.
"We want self-governance, a system by which we Muslims can solve the problems of our own people. And not just an agreement favoring a few Muslims leaders," he said.
This will all depend on President Arroyo, the rebel leader said but added the MILF leadership "is willing to sign an agreement if there is a favorable solution to the problem of the Bangsamoro who remain colonized."
"We are not negotiating for surrender," Jaafar said. "But we have been fighting for three decades and it is time we find a solution."
However, joining the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) is "unacceptable," he said, because it has been a failure and does not reflect "the will of the Bangsamoro."
"The so-called ARMM is not a real autonomy. It did not have power and answers still to the Manila government. It also did not contribute to the improvement in the lives of Muslims," Jaafar said.
"Look around you, we are still a poor people."
Does Jaafar want "a democratic government still under the Republic of the Philippines" or does he want the whole of Mindanao to be returned to the Bangsamoro people? Does he want sovereignty or limited autonomy? At the moment the BARMM will continue to answer to Manila just as the ARMM did so why would the MILF agree to that if their real and stated goal is independence? The answer can be found in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, Vol. 2, page 539.
The duty of the djihad exists as long as the universal domination of Islam has not been attained. "Until the day of the resurrection", and "until the end of the world" say the maxims. Peace with non-Muslim nations is, therefore, a provisional state of affairs only; the chance of circumstances alone can justify it temporarily. Furthermore there can be no question of genuine peace treaties with these nations; only truces, whose duration ought not, in principle, to exceed ten years, are authorized. But even such truces are precarious, inasmuch as they can, before they expire, be repudiated unilaterally should it appear more profitable for Islam to resume the conflict. It is, however, recognized that such repu- diation should be brought to the notice of the infidel party, and that he should be afforded sufficient opportunity to be able to disseminate the news of it throughout the whole of his territory
How long will it be before the leaders of the BARMM throw off all pretensions to accepting limited autonomy and push for full independence via secession in order to fulfil their dream of an Islamic State based on ancestral domain claims over the whole of Mindanao? It should be noted that the
Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain signed between the MILF and the government back in 2008 was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme court. This memorandum would have set up an entity known as the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity. Here is what the Supreme Court had to say:
It is not merely an expanded version of the ARMM, the status of its relationship with the national government being fundamentally different from that of the ARMM. Indeed, BJE is a state in all but name as it meets the criteria of a state laid down in the Montevideo Convention, namely, a permanent population, a defined territory, a government, and a capacity to enter into relations with other states.
Even assuming arguendo that the MOA-AD would not necessarily sever any portion of Philippine territory, the spirit animating it which has betrayed itself by its use of the concept of association runs counter to the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Republic.
"No province, city, or municipality, not even the ARMM, is recognized under our laws as having an associative relationship with the national government. Indeed, the concept implies powers that go beyond anything ever granted by the Constitution to any local or regional government. It also implies the recognition of the associated entity as a state. The Constitution, however, does not contemplate any state in this jurisdiction other than the Philippine State, much less does it provide for a transitory status that aims to prepare any part of Philippine territory for independence."
http://sc.judiciary.gov.ph/jurisprudence/2008/october2008/183591.htm
How is the BARMM any different from the BJE? The spirit animating its founders, the MILF, is that it is to be an independent nation based on claims of ancestral domain. Groups have raised issues about the constitutionality of the BARMM but the Supreme Court has yet to have any hearings which means it's full-speed ahead in the establishment of this region with no regard as to its constitutionality. If there were to be a hearing now after the plebiscite has already ratified the BOL and the law were to be found illegal and void there would be outrage across the region and the anger would lead to bloodshed.
Whatever the fate of the region it is Ghazali Jaafar who can be thanked. It is no surprise many people are mourning his death.
“His sincerity, wisdom and experience are attributes needed to drive his and our dreams of a successful Mindanao… We all have to work as one now and continue what he has started,” Gordon said.
“We are a poorer nation for his passing, having lost not only an astute intellect but also a committed heart,” Zubiri said in a separate statement.
“But though his passing leaves an aching hollow, we will always remember him, as his life’s work has interminably changed the course of Mindanao’s history, and the nation at large,” he added.
“He lived knowing that peace is not only an outcome but also a process that needed the participation of as many stakeholders as possible, including not only of the warriors on both sides or the Bangsamoro people but also of regular folk and indigenous and settler communities,” Pangilinan said in a statement.
“May his death inspire enhanced peace efforts in the island of Mindanao that would mean better lives for all, especially Filipino children,” he added.
Senator Grace Poe called Jaafar a “warrior for Muslim rights and warrior for peace.”
“Amid the grueling challenges, he held on to hope and saw through the establishment of the Bangsamoro region for the Moro people’s self-rule,” Poe said in a statement.
“The people who are left behind will make sure all your initiatives for a peaceful society will not come to an end,” she added.
Senator Sonny Angara called Jaafar “a voice of reason and a voice for peace” and he will “surely be missed.”
One can only wonder if these Senators have any idea of the intentions of Jaafar and the MILF and what they consider peace to be. To quote Jaafar again:
Jaafar said it was important that government and the MILF are on the same page on the definition of peace “kasi the way we look at it, ang definition ng gobyerno sa peace is the absence of fighting. That is not the peace that we want. There can be no peace if the Bangsamoro agenda is not addressed to the satisfaction of the greater majority of the Bangsamoro people. This can be addressed if ma-realize yung demand ng Bangsamoro people na meron silang gobyerno and government they will run for everybody, Muslims and non-Muslims alike and a democratic government and still under the Republic of the Philippines.”
For Jaafar and the MILF peace does not mean the cessation of hostilities. Peace means independence. Why do none of these Senators know that?
