The Philippines: Counter-Insurgency Vs. Counter-Terrorism in Mindanao

Other devices, including a second bomb in Makilala and a car bomb rigged with ten mortars and four kilos of nails near the Surallah public market, did not detonate.107 Bombs in Kidapawan on 5 October and 22 November 2007 and in General Santos on 30 January 2008, killed at least six more civilians. It is probably not coincidental that these target locations radiate out from the MILF’s SKP camp like the spokes of a wheel.

Marwan’s role has been underestimated. Between September 2005 and November 2006, he appears to have stayed on the Mindanao mainland with his MILF associates, while Patek’s group and Kadaffy Jajalani joined forces in Jolo. He kept in touch with his colleagues in Jakarta and also had contact with Zulkifli alias Danny Ofresio, the former head of the JI wakalah, detained in Manila, and with his colleagues in Jolo who were involved in other bombings, including the March 2006 explosion at the Notre Dame Cooperative Centre in Jolo. (Baehaqi claims to have witnessed the assembling of the mortar used, in which Kadaffy Janalani and Tariq, a Muslim “revert”, were involved.)108 In addition to staying in touch, Marwan and Patek appear to have relied on the same source of funding.

In November 2006, Patek ordered Baehaqi to leave Jolo. Baehaqi went to Davao, where he joined up with two Muslims, perhaps linked to the Rajah Solaiman Movement, whom he had first met in Jolo. In April 2007, he had a rendezvous with Marwan and Hari Kuncoro somewhere between the borders of Mamasapaao, Manguindanao and Shariff Aguak town. Baehaqi seems to have stayed in the area, working with the mainland branch of Patek’s group. Sometime shortly before he was arrested in February 2008, Marwan gave him three bomb trigger mechanisms, which were still in his possession when he was caught. Baehaqi claimed he was waiting for instructions from Patek on where and how to use them.

The division of labour between Patek on Jolo and Marwan in Maguindanao and Davao suggests this group may have been pursuing its own jihadi ends, independent of the MILF and Abu Sayyaf while working with both. Pursuing Abu Sayyaf alone will just push the air in the terrorist balloon to a new location, as occurred after Oplan Tornado in 2005.

VI. THE U.S. ROLE

Curtailing ties between jihadis and mainstream insurgents is at the heart of effective counter-terrorism in the Philippines – but is also the missing element of U.S. operations there. Washington’s doctrine is expressed in a triangular “counter-insurgency model” focusing on “three critical relationships” – between government and population, population and insurgents and insurgents and government.109 Relationships among dissident groups are absent from the model – yet breaking these links is critical. Just as counter-insurgency aims to divide guerrillas from populace, counter-terrorism should aim, where possible, to separate terrorists from the insurgents they rely on for sanctuary. But the terms “insurgent” and “terrorist” are used interchangeably, without analytical distinction, in official accounts of Operation Enduring Freedom-Philippines, the U.S. extension of the post-9/11 “war on terror” to Mindanao.110

A. Counter-terrorism or Counter-insurgency?

Collapsing terrorists and insurgents in the Philippines into a single category is as dangerous as conflating insurgents with their support base – the military tactics that often follow reinforce bonds rather than break them. U.S. operations resemble counter-insurgency more than counter-terrorism, which risks encouraging dissident alliances, instead of dissolving them.

The U.S. Defense Department’s 2006 “Quadrennial Defence Review” asserts: “increasingly, in many states of the developing world, terrorist networks pose a greater threat than external threats”. Failed states and ungoverned spaces in which extremists operate or shelter are viewed as a principal challenge in the “Long War” against terrorism – best met by an “indirect approach, building up and working with and through partners”.111 In a strategic climate dominated by Iraq, the Pentagon is rediscovering counter-insurgency, issuing its first new field manual on the subject in decades, and looking to the Basilan experience as a model.112 But its extension to Jolo highlights a crucial gap in this model.