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

In the meantime, MILF extremists continue to collude with JI, its freelance jihadi offshoots and ASG, despite attempts by the leadership to curtail such ties. Fighters from South East Asia and the Middle East had been welcome at the MILF’s sprawling Camp Abu Bakar in Maguindanao since the early 1990s. The biggest contingent was from Jemaah Islamiyah, which in 1994 began setting up a military academy, Camp Hudaibiyah, to replace its Afghanistan facilities.12 In 1998, the camp became the headquarters of JI’s territorial sub-division in the Philippines, Wakalah Hudaibiyah, part of the regional unit called Mantiqi III, which also covered Sulawesi and East Kalimantan in Indonesia and Sabah in Malaysia.

After the Philippine armed forces overran Camp Abu Bakar in 2000, JI moved its training site to Jabal Quba on Mt. Cararao, also in Maguindanao, where in early 2007 a small group of trainees was receiving regular monthly payments from the JI leadership in central Java. That funding was disrupted but probably not stopped by the arrest of JI leaders, including Abu Dujana, in Indonesia in March and June 2007.13 This group of “structural” JI members, obedient to the chain of command, is believed to be under the protection of the MILF, likely in exchange for a commitment to lie low as long as there is chance of progress in the peace talks.

Even as al-Haj Murad consolidates control over the MILF, there is ample evidence that some of his commanders are collaborating with the ASG and the group around Umar Patek. Istiada binti Haja Oemar Sovie, Dulmatin’s wife, who was arrested in October 2006, confirmed reports that her husband had found refuge with the MILF. After entering the Philippines in August 2003, she met him and his brother-in-law, Hari Kuncoro alias Bahar, in an MILF camp known as SKP,14 in the Liguasan Marsh region where four of the MILF’s thirteen base commands converge.15

The SKP camp commander — and perhaps the MILF’s most important link with foreign jihadis — is Mugasid Delna alias Abu Badrin, a classmate of Umar Patek in Afghanistan.16 Also known as H. Solaiman, he is described simultaneously as a member of the 108th Base Command and a “renegade”.17 In addition to Dulmatin, a host of other prominent jihadis have passed through SKP, including top Abu Sayyaf commanders and some of the most-wanted Indonesians and Malaysians.18

The accounts of Istiada and Mohamed Baehaqi, arrested in February 2008, implicate other MILF commanders, including Ameril Umbra, also known as Commander Kato, a powerful warlord whose terror ties are well documented; Ustadz Baguinda Alih of the 105th command in Mamasapano, Maguindanao; and Commander Satar of Pantukan, Compostela Valley province. They also both refer to a man named Zabidi Abdul alias Bedz, a senior MILF commander who is the alleged chief of a group calling itself “al-Khobar” and responsible for a series of bus bombings in 2007 and possibly a string of fourteen transmission tower bombings in Lanao in early 2008.19 Bedz is also said to be a member of the MILF’s Special Operations Group, which in the past has worked with JI on major bombing operations. It is now believed to have some twenty members; its relationship to the MILF leadership is unclear.

Despite the evidence, however, MILF leaders consistently deny terrorist ties, saying the movement has repeatedly denounced violence against non-combatants and has no contact with JI, and that the government uses accusations of sheltering terrorists as an excuse to attack it..20

B. The MNLF

The MNLF is an often forgotten element in the terror-insurgency relationship. A “final” peace agreement signed with the government of President Fidel Ramos in 1996 seemed to end its rebellion. But the so-called Jakarta agreement did not require the disarmament of its armed wing, the Bangsa Moro Army (BMA), and only 7,500 of an estimated 45,000 fighters were integrated into the armed forces and police.21 While most MNLF veterans on mainland Mindanao melted back into civil society, or realigned themselves with the MILF, those in the Sulu archipelago retained their separate identity as an armed force. On Jolo and Basilan, their ethno-linguistic and kinship ties with the ASG eventually drew them back into the conflict.