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

Despite his prolonged incarceration, Misuari has urged supporters to cooperate with Balikatan and resist the tendency for ASG and MNLF fighters to close ranks in the face of the Philippine military’s pressure and strong kinship ties.29 MNLF forces, and most of the population, have completely abandoned interior villages of Patikul – the movement’s spiritual home – to avoid being identified as ASG in what has essentially become a free-fire zone. Misauri reassigned Tahil Sali – the MNLF vice-chairman on Sulu and son of legendary commander Usman Sali – from Patikul to Camp Marang in order to distance him from ASG leader Radullan Sahiron, his relative.30 Yet, informal ceasefire mechanisms in Sulu have proven too weak to withstand the drift towards MNLF-ASG coalescence,

C. The Abu Sayyaf Group

The ASG is not an insurgency in the same sense as the MILF or MNLF, or even a clearly delineated organisation. It is best understood as a network of networks, an alliance of smaller groups around individual charismatic leaders who compete and cooperate to maximise their reputation for violence. The greater the violence, the bigger the pay-off, in terms of higher ransom payments and foreign funding. Contrary to some assumptions, the ASG was not an Islamist insurgency that “degenerated” into criminality following the death of its founder, Aburajak Janjalani, in 1998. Kidnapping and extortion were part of its modus operandi from the outset and its religio-political motivations did not disappear with Janjalani’s death.

Janjalani founded ASG in 1991. He was then a charismatic young preacher in the mosques and madrasas of Zamboanga and Basilan. While training in Libya in the mid-1980s, he had opposed Nur Misuari’s entry into peace talks and insisted that the sole objective of the Muslim struggle was an Islamic state — not autonomy, not independence, not revolution.31 ASG’s original name, indeed, was Al-Harakat al-Islamiyah, Arabic for “Islamic movement”. In 1990 he had met Osama bin Laden’s brother-in-law, Muhammad Jamal Khalifa, then heading the Philippine office of the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO). Khalifa began directing funds his way and eventually drew him into an al-Qaeda cell in the Philippines that included Ramzi Yousef, the 1993 World Trade Center bomber, and Yousef’s uncle, 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad. This cell plotted spectacular acts of terrorism from Manila while providing training to Abdurajak’s Zamboanga and Basilan-based followers. Their numbers swelled while Misuari talked peace.

The outside world paid little note as the ASG made Basilan increasingly ungovernable. Its seizure of foreign hostages from Sipadan and Dos Palmas in 2000-2001 came as if from the blue. Joint bombing operations involving JI, ASG, and extremists within MILF began well before the first Bali bombing and could have provided early clues to the regional jihadi nexus but were not taken seriously as instances of international terrorism. From early 2002, the ASG extended its operational reach into the nation’s capital, using militant converts to Islam.32 Organised as the Rajah Solaiman Movement (RSM), and trained and commanded by ASG and JI, converts struck at Manila’s transport infrastructure in February 2004 and February 2005, taking more than 120 lives. These attacks anticipated parallel developments elsewhere (Madrid, London). Time and again since the early 1990s, terrorists in the Philippines have been ahead of the global curve but have been subjected to little informed analysis.

The ASG has been the principal target of U.S. intervention since Balikatan operations began in early 2002 . After those operations drove the group’s core leadership from Basilan into MILF territory on the Mindanao mainland, sympathetic MILF commanders protected the leaders and their foreign allies. AHJAG played a key role in getting them expelled in late 2005 to Jolo, with MILF help, where pursuit by the U.S.-backed Philippine armed forces then shifted in 2006. Top leaders like Kadaffy Janjalani have been killed there, but survivors have been driven into cooperation with the MNLF.

The dangers of this development could be compounded by the emergence of new ASG leadership with the capacity to exploit both local and international alliances. 33 In 2006, following six years’ absence in the Middle East, Ustadz Yasir Igasan, alias Tuan Ya, reportedly returned to Sulu to take up the mantle as ASG’s spiritual leader.34 While media speculation has centred on Igasan’s Libyan and Syrian training background, it is his education at the Islamic University of Medina in Saudi Arabia that makes him one of the most qualified religious authority figures in Sulu.35