Second and third opinions are good to get if you have been diagnosed with cancer. There is a pressing need to be exactly sure about the diagnosis and the prognosis. The same goes for military affairs. It was Duterte who recently called ISIS an "
insanity that cannot be cured," an epidemic. This week we have an outside analysis of ISIS in SEA from Foreign Affairs magazine. Let's take this in little by little.
Southeast Asia, in particular, has assumed a greater role in the terrorist group’s global strategy, despite having been overshadowed by higher-profile wilayats, or provinces, of the self-proclaimed caliphate in the past. The number of ISIS fighters, suicide bombers, organized training programs, and propaganda videos originating from the region has grown steadily in recent years. Without a claim to physical territory anymore, the group’s information operations have become even more critical to its success. The nature and spread of ISIS as an organization have changed as a result.
Southeast Asia may be the newest breeding ground for militant Islam. Deeply interconnected but hard to rule, the island-studded region lends itself to unconventional warfare. And since at least 2018, when it became increasingly difficult to travel to Iraq and Syria, foreign fighters from the region and farther abroad have flocked to the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia because of these countries’ growing reputation as emerging fronts for global jihad. The violence perpetrated by pro-ISIS groups in this region has been episodic and uncoordinated, but the underlying trend is clear—ISIS has shifted away from its initial concern with sovereignty over land and people, moving, in the process, toward a decentralized, global insurgency model.
Southeast Asia is not exactly the newest breeding ground for militant Islam. In the Philippines Islamic militants have been active since the 70s with each decade since seeing new groups emerge in an ever increasing factionalising. First there was the MNLF which gave us Abu Sayyaf and the MILF which gave us the BIFF. Al-Qaeda even operated in the Philippines for a while in the 90's and it was in this country where the plans for the 9/11 attacks first germinated with the
Bojinka Plot.
ISIS first gained a foothold in Southeast Asia in 2014. As the group swept across Iraq and Syria that year, existing Southeast Asian jihadi organizations pledged their loyalty to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi at a dizzying rate. Among them were Abu Sayyaf, an Islamic terrorist group with longtime ties to al Qaeda; the Maute Group, an ISIS-linked terror group that played a pivotal role in a bloody 2017 siege of the Philippine city of Marawi; and the Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD), another affiliate based out of Indonesia.
Although it named a single emir for all of East Asia, ISIS doesn’t treat the region as a monolith. Instead, the organization tailors both its recruitment techniques and its military tactics to local sensibilities. In Indonesia, for instance, the group recruits mainly by cultivating personal relationships in a handful of mosques and madrasahs, whereas in Malaysia—where the state controls the mosques—it focuses on radicalizing people online. Malaysian recruits have come from across the socioeconomic spectrum. By contrast, in the Philippines, ISIS has mainly found willing recruits among the poor.
In many ways, the Philippines has emerged as ISIS’ greatest hope for a revival of its caliphate. In May 2017, ISIS militants seized control of Marawi, a city of 200,000 on the island of Mindanao, in the restive southern Philippines. For five months the fighters held off the U.S.-trained Philippine military, before being routed through a combination of airstrikes, artillery bombardment, and direct raids. Many of the top ISIS leaders and over 500 militants died in the operation. Even so, the organization retains a foothold in the region, largely because the Philippine security forces commit egregious human rights abuses that drive those with long-standing grievances into the militants’ arms. The siege of Marawi contributed to growing jihadi lore—it was featured in the sophisticated ISIS propaganda series Inside the Caliphate—and enhanced ISIS’ notoriety in the region. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s heavily militarized response—which included indiscriminate air and artillery strikes—also played to ISIS’ advantage, as did Duterte’s faltering attempts to rebuild the city, from which more than 50,000 people remain displaced.
It is true that in 2014 various groups began pledging loyalty to ISIS. At first these groups were not taken seriously by ISIS-Core or even the AFP and PNP. In 2015 the
Philippines and Australia vowed to work together against the Islamic State but the Philippines continued to deny the presence of ISIS in the Philippines until the Marawi siege and even afterwards they publicly downplayed the threat.
As of this moment debris clearing is still ongoing in Marawi and tens of thousands of refugees remain displaced living in makeshift homes and camps. The analysis that the destruction of the city of Marawi and the delayed attempts to rebuild the city play in to the hands of ISIS recruiters is not new at all. In fact it is rather obvious.
"The narratives (to join IS) used to be about the Middle East and the plight of Muslims around the world," said Mouhammad Sharief, who co-founded a support group for Marawi's youth.
"Now it's closer to our hearts because the narrative is Marawi," said 32-year-old Sharief, who was himself displaced by the fighting.
Marawi City will erupt in violence if reconstruction and the permanent resettlement of thousands of displaced residents continue to be hampered by delays. It will come with raging fire, putting the nascent Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) under threat. A younger and more extremist generation of Filipino Muslims who grew up in the decades of war and conflict will take leadership among desperate and radicalized young Muslims. Recruitment among the Muslim youth will be easier as jihad becomes romanticized among them.
To dismiss the capability of Filipinos to be suicide bombers is hubris and naiveté. Had the “juramentados” and “amoks” of the American occupation gained access to more lethal explosives than spears and kris, the Americans might have left Mindanao. The massacre at Bud Dajo was about a thousand people giving up their lives when pushed beyond the limits of despair.
The fact that both outsiders and locals have the same analysis of the situation only strengthens their opinions. But sadly it seems as if the growing chorus of voices is ignored or dismissed by both the AFP and the Palace. Remember how Duterte said he didn't think he should be spending to rebuild Marawi?
"I don't think that I should be spending for their building," Duterte said.
"Hindi ako maggagasta ng ano. Maraming pera ang mga tao diyan. Every Maranao there is a businessman. Kasali na 'yung shabu, may pera sila," the President added.
[Translation: I will not spend anything, the people there have the money. Every Maranao there is a businessman. Count the shabu trade, they have the money.]
https://cnnphilippines.com/news/2019/4/23/duterte-marawi-rehabilitation-businessmen.html
Such an attitude is not helpful at all.
Despite the organization’s rapid growth in Southeast Asia, ISIS does not yet have a single “recipe for success.” Aside from Marawi, the group hasn’t pursued territorial gains as it did in the Middle East. This could reflect a dearth of leadership: Hapilon was killed in Marawi, along with other leading militants from the Philippines. His mantle as de facto leader of ISIS in Southeast Asia has fallen to either Furuji Indama or Hatib Hajan Sawadjaan, leaders of the Abu Sayyaf.
What is more, ISIS’ central leadership has sent mixed signals about the establishment of a wilayat, or province, in Southeast Asia. The organization’s central media organs walked back initial statements suggesting one had been established. And in a video released in April, Baghdadi failed to mention ISIS in East Asia, an omission that may or may not have been an oversight.
Southeast Asia remains geographically remote and far from the ISIS core in the Levant. It is also culturally distant from the Islamic world’s traditional heartlands on the Arabian Peninsula. More important, Arab chauvinism toward Southeast Asian Muslims—an attitude codified in The Management of Savagery, by the jihadi strategist Abu Bakr Naji—could limit the scope of future cooperation.
In the end, local militants probably care more about ISIS than ISIS cares about them. ISIS’ network in Southeast Asia remains loose and undefined. It exists largely for propaganda purposes and does not reflect centralized command and control across Southeast Asia. What is more, ISIS is not the only game in town: the pro–al Qaeda group Jemaah Islamiyah has rebuilt its network over the past couple of years. Local groups will likely seek to align themselves with one of these two big players. After all, mapping parochial struggles onto global ones is important for messaging, recruitment, and fundraising.
As the ISIS core in Iraq and Syria attempts to rebuild itself, Baghdadi and his lieutenants will have to make difficult decisions about where to allocate resources, especially since the central leadership has different needs from its regional affiliates. Now that the caliphate is gone and ISIS must transform itself into an insurgency, however, the largely untested lands of Southeast Asia may yield rich rewards.
The article ends by noting that ISIS in SEA is largely unorganised. That territorial gains have not been pursued as they have in the Middle East. That SEA is both geographically and culturally distant from the Middle East. Reference is made to a document called "The Management of Savagery" to which I shall return. The small fish in SEA are likely being used more as propaganda than anything else.
There is absolutely nothing new in this analysis of ISIS in SEA and in particular the Philippines. As ISIS regroups in the Middle East many flock to SEA. But SEA is distant from the Middle East and the groups are mostly unorganised. However the violence is great propaganda. The future holds a lot of potential for ISIS in the region.
One of the authors of this article, Zachary Abuza, did an interview about the subject on World Politics Review.
You can listen to it here. It is a fascinating and wide-ranging interview well worth a listen. I will of course post here some relevant portions.
He starts off by saying that the threat of ISIS is persistent but manageable and the group poses no existential threat to any nation in the region which is a huge admission. Then later when asked about how the threat is being dealt he is asked the following question.
9: 22 You mentioned security forces repsonses to many of these groups and I know that a lot of countries we've been talking about have security forces that are particlualry known for brutality and being very heavy handed and in the Philippines and Indonesia I think that’s played a role in beating back a lot of these groups but how would you describe the repsponse and how effective has it been to contain the threat?
Zachary first talks about Indonesia and some of the tactics they use. He mentions that they have a good intelligence network and an encyclopeidc understanding of how the orgainsation recurits and indoctrinates. He admits government forces do not have a great human rights record yet they are able to counter terroism forces and understnd the importance of not being heavy handed. He mentions their creative approaches to counter terrorism such as establishing a school for terrroism suspect's children to help break the reliance on the social networks of terrorist groups. He has nothing but praise for Indonesia. But then he talks about the Philippines and his tone changes.
13:05 Now the Philippines is a very different situation. They have always approached counterterrorism through military operations. They’ve done a fairly poor job of it as well. They have committed egeregious humans rights abuses. They tend to go in and begin artillery shelling of villages leading to high causlty rates that always plays into the hand of the militants. The security forces absolutley left Marawi looking like Mosul due to untrained aerial bombardment, poor artillery strikes, and this happens all the time in the Philippines on a smaller scale. The security forces there are very corrupt. They have no incentive really to ever finish the job against the Abu Sayyaf simply becasue the Americans continue to subsidise thier military to such a high degree. We provide around $50 million per year in counterterroism assistance alone let alone subsidise thier military with 300 joint military operations a year. So we’ve kind of created this moral hazard in the Philippines. And on top of that the security forces through President Duterte’s war on drugs and his campaign of extra-judical killings has lead to the death of over 30,000 people. And you’re really seeing a break down in the rule of law, the power of the courts, turning police into hit squads. At the end of the day to be effective in counterterrorism you need robust state institutions and rule of law and that's been weaking in the Philippines.
That whole response could be highlighted. The end of this response about 30,000 being killed via EJK's and the break down of law would be denied by the administration. It is also beyond the scope of this martial law update and has been addressed in a previous article I wrote about the number of people killed in the drug war.
It is surprising that Abuza calls the security forces corrupt but does not have much to say about their utter incompetence. The reason Marawi was left looking like Mosul was because the DND stopped training soldiers in urban warfare.
"It's a skill we used to have but we lost along the way because we didn't use it. We keep training our people in what we call the military operations in urban terrain, MOUT. But we seldom use it, we never use it, so we stopped teaching our people at the Marawi camp. So now we have to reacquire that skill plus the necessary equipment that goes with it.
What else is interesting here is that Zachary appears to not be aware of the Philippines' Whole of Nation approach to ending terrorism. He praises Indonesia for their creative approaches to combating terrorism but he says the Philippines security forces routinely commit egregious human rights abuses and only use military operations to fight terrorism.
Abu Sayyaf and BIFF members as well as NPA fighters routinely surrender and take advantage of the many economic benefits offered by the government.
Brig. Gen. Juvymax Uy, Joint Task Force Basilan commander, said the military has earned the support of civilians victimized by the bandits.
“We are giving (the Abu Sayyaf) the option... Reconsider peace by surrendering while the door is still open,” Uy said.
It is rather surprising that Abuza seems to be unaware of these efforts. Maybe he is not optimistic about them? He is certainly not optimistic about the BARMM.
16:24 I am cautiously optimistic that this will have a very positive impact in combating the pro-Islamic State groups. The MILF had been fighting for their own homeland since the 1980s. They negotiated an agreement with the government that was finally implemented after several setbacks this past year and they are implemting an autnomous region. These have failed in the past so I’m not too optimistic but one of the arguments that the MILF made to the Philippine governemnt and the Congress that had to approve the agreement is that no one has a greater incentive in neutralising the threats posed by the Islamic State groups than we do. They’re against autonomy, they are challenging us for authority, they are trying to destory the Philippine state, we are in active negotiations and working with the Philippine state. So we’ll see. In 2015 the peace process had a real setback when ther was a, what was described as a tragic misencounter between Philippine police and MILF combtants that lead to the death of 44 police and even though the peace process got back on track one of the things that was taken away was the MILF’s ability to be responsible for internal policing. So we'll see how well it works. Right now those provisions of the peace proces are actually just being implemented now. The problem of course is the MILF have almost no control over parts of the Philippines in Basilan, Sulu, Tawi-Tawi where the Abu Sayyaf are most active and we still see a steady stream of foreign fighters coming into the Philippines.
Yeah about that internal policing:
Jaafar said MILF fighters have no liability in the deaths of 44 Special Action Force (SAF) troopers in Mamasapano town as they were only acting in self-defense.
I do not understand how Zachary Abuza, an expert in SEA terrorism affairs. can be unfamiliar with how the MILF operates. The MILF is and remains a terrorist organisation and they have no intention of policing themselves by turning over those involved in the SAF 44 massacre. The Philippine government has decided that President Aquino is wholly to blame for the SAF 44 massacre.
"Given that the President (Aquino) gave the policy direction to arrest [terror suspects] Marwan and Usman, and that he approved Oplan Exodus with full knowledge of its operational details, the Chief Executive is ultimately responsible for the success or failure of the mission," Calida said.
“[T]he acts of negligence of [Aquino, Purisima, Napeñas] clearly show that probable cause exists to indict them for reckless imprudence resulting in multiple homicide and there is grave abuse of discretion on the part of the [Ombudsman],” he added.
The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) on Tuesday reiterated that they will not surrender their members involved in the encounter with the Philippine National Police-Special Action Forces in Mamasapano, Maguindanao.
Iqbal further stressed that the MILF should not be blamed for the deaths of 44 police commandos during the armed encounter. The group also lost 18 of its members during the clash.
Iqbal also called on the public to look at the "big picture" regarding the passage of the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL).
It is tricky to call Abuza wrong when he is certainly an expert on SEA terrorism but as far as the MILF and the SAF 44 goes he is definitely wrong. The MILF are not capable of internal policing. They are capable of internal protection. They know how to protect their men.
This interview ends with the mention of a document known as "The Management of Savagery."
31:41 But the one thing that’s really important to note is that one of the founding documents of the Islamic State and it was a theoretical document first drafted by Al-Qaeda theoreticians called the Managment of Savagery was very racist in their depiction of Southeast Asians. It said look these people are really bad Muslims they don’t have good Sharia discipline but they’re really useful. They want to prove themselves. They want to be no longer considered the Islamic periphery they wnat people to understand thier struggle is as central to the persecution of Muslims everywhere and we can use them. And my feeling is you ignore that document and those sentiments at your peril. I think SEA will always be useful to the Islamic State or whatever happens next. We really dont know how any of this will play out if the Islmaic state will sucessfully shift to a global insurgency jsut simply bound by an online ideology or an ideolgy porpagated online or whether it will start to reconstitute a centralised command and contorl.
Here is the relevant passage from this document.
Just as the heat of a momentous event is the most favorable environment for education, it also prompts troops of youth to join the legions of jihad day after day. Truly, every day we see helpers for the jihad coming forth from countries in Asia, like Malaysia and Indonesia, and from the countries of the former Soviet Union, and from a few of the cities, such as Falluja and others. They do not know the class of the great ulama or those mores which cause the deviation of the committed youth in some of the countries of the Arab world. They are like a white page, their innate nature and their genuine emotion motivating them to assist the religion. Naturally, there might be a negative effect, such as the lack of sharia discipline. However, it is our role to fill in this gap. Thus, these youth will not abandon jihad, by the grace of God. Innate human nature is found in them and they will respond to direction from any model or living exemplar of jihad. Among the blessings of God to us is that the modern models of jihad found in the High Command and those leaders that are around them are disciplined intellectually. Around them are scientific and sharia committees of the highest level. We have only to communicate our directions to these youth, provided that a scientific and educational method is prepared for advancing them in action and in battle. Perhaps God will bring forth guiding leaders for us who will be victorious by His bounty and grace.
At least I think this is the relevant passage. The document it very large to read and a word search for Asia brings up only two results. This passage does not come off as racist in the slightest. Maybe there are racist passages elsewhere. Here we see Southeast Asians being portrayed as blank slates who are motivated to assist Islam. Their lack of Sharia discipline is admitted but the solution is that they need to be taught. The passage comes off as very hopeful in its assessment of Southeast Asians.
What does the future hold for SEA and ISIS and in particular the Philippines? It holds a lot of promise. After the Marawi siege the Philippines was declared
the New Land of Jihad. It was security analyst Rommel Banlaoi who made that pronouncement and it is he who said that suicide bombings will only increase. He has been proven right so far.
Abuza's assessment that the AFP has no incentive to defeat Abu Sayyaf because the Americans subsidise the military is interesting. If the defeat of Abu Sayyaf means no more training and weapons from the Americans then why end the war? Why cut off that supply? The Americans are very eager to supply the needs of the AFP. But the fact that he AFP is fighting a 50 year old insurgency that includes communists as well as Muslims belies that opinion. While the security forces are corrupt they are also alarmingly incompetent and continue to implement the same old polices. They continue to declare victory and then have bombs go off in their faces. It's a real mess in the Philippines and will surely be so for the foreseeable future.
