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

On 10 July 2007, three weeks after the two sides failed to renew AHJAG’s mandate, a clash between Philippine marines and MILF fighters on Basilan was followed by the beheading of ten marines. The MILF claimed that government forces failed to coordinate with it, as the marines, searching for a kidnapped Italian priest, entered MILF territory in Al-Barka, Basilan. This was exactly the kind of confrontation AHJAG was designed to avoid. On a lesser scale, the killing of seven civilians and an off-duty soldier in Maimbung, Jolo, in January 2008 during a military hunt for ASG operatives also might have been avoided had there been a similar mechanism with the MNLF that could have provided the armed forces with information on the whereabouts on the wanted men, thus avoiding an unnecessary attack on a village where in fact no operatives were present .

The number of terrorists in the Philippines is small relative to the mass-based insurgencies in which they take cover. But the ASG and its allies remain dangerous because of their potential to drag the latter back into war. Denying terrorists sanctuary among insurgents should be a key counter-terrorism goal, and an effective AHJAG, working in the context of a broader peace process, could help achieve it.

This report takes a detailed look at the impact of security operations in Sulu that ended the careers of some of the Philippines’ most notorious terrorists, but also tipped the strategic island of Jolo back into war. It examines the role of AHJAG and other counter-terrorism measures and how they have been affected by U.S.-backed military operations. It is based on extensive interviews in Mindanao, Sulu, Basilan, and Manila in 2007 and 2008.

ISLANDS, FACTIONS AND ALLIANCES
There is not just one conflict in the southern Philippines, but several. Islamic identity, kinship, shared training and combat experience and a common enemy in the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) provide a basis for uncertain coalitions among geographically, ethnically and ideologically disparate groups.

Today’s tangled web of rebel factions grew out of the MNLF, which launched a campaign for the independence of the thirteen Bangsa Moro (Muslim) tribes after Ferdinand Marcos imposed martial law in 1972. Led by Nur Misuari, an ethnic Sama from Sulu, the MNLF drew adherents from the Tausug-dominated Sulu archipelago and the Mindanao mainland, where the Maguindanaon and Maranao are the largest Muslim ethnic groups.

A failed peace agreement signed in Tripoli, Libya in 1976 led Misuari’s head of foreign affairs, Salamat Hashim, to break away the next year to form his own faction – renamed the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in 1984. Salamat was Maguindanaon and took much of the MNLF’s central Mindanao following with him. Emphasising Islam over Misuari’s secular ethno-nationalism, Salamat’s MILF rode a rising tide of militancy through the 1990s. A “final” MNLF peace agreement in 1996, signed in Jakarta and brokered by the Indonesian government on behalf of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), co-opted most of Misuari’s remaining followers into accepting a territorial unit called the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).5 In Sulu, however, some MNLF members continued to fight under Ustadz Habier Malik, a Saudi-trained religious scholar, and other local commanders. Misuari himself remained under house arrest in Manila until 28 April 2008.

Except in Misuari’s base in Sulu, the MILF is now the dominant insurgent group in the Muslim south, fighting and negotiating through three major cycles of conflict (1997, 2000 and 2003) in an effort to win greater autonomy. Despite Salamat’s focus on Islam, it also is overwhelmingly an ethno-nationalist insurgency, fighting for self-government of the Bangsamoro people, not against unbelievers and persecutors of Muslims worldwide. But Salamat’s international Islamist ties opened the door to Jemaah Islamiyah, the regional jihadi organisation responsible for the 2002 Bali bombings, which began training in Mindanao in 1994, building on connections established in Afghanistan in the late 1980s.

Ex-MNLF militants opposed to Misuari, meanwhile, formed the nucleus of the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) from 1991, initially on Basilan island and nearby Zamboanga City but soon spreading to Sulu. The founder of the ASG, Abdurajak Janjalani, died in 1998 and was succeeded by his brother, Kadaffy Janjalani, who was killed in a battle on Jolo with Philippine marines in October 2006. The new overall amir (supreme leader) of ASG is now believed to be Ustadz Yasir Isagan, a religious scholar and like the MNLF’s Habier Malik, a University of Medina alumnus.