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Southern Philippines: A recipe for
violence
By B Raman
Evidence
available so far does not enable a definitive assessment
of the significance and implications of the two
explosions that took place in the Mindanao area of the
southern Philippines on Tuesday. This area has been the
epicenter of an Islamic separatist movement for many
years. Of the two explosions, one at the Davao airport
was of a serious nature, causing the death of at least
21 civilians, one of them a US citizen, and injuries to
more than a hundred others. The Moro Islamic Liberation
Front (MILF), which is suspected by the government, has
denied any responsibility for the explosions, which seem
to have involved improvised explosive devices not
requiring much sophistication in handling.
The
explosions have taken place at a time when an intense
debate is on in the Philippines over the wisdom of
accepting a US offer of what has been described as
purely training assistance in dealing with terrorism,
largely inspired by the Abu Sayyaf, on Jolo island of
the Sulu archipelago. Similar US assistance last year on
nearby Basilan island, which has a mixed
Christian-Muslim population, proved controversial too,
but the controversy over any US role on Jolo, where the
population is almost entirely Muslim, has been more
intense. For the counter-terrorism experts of the
Philippines, the attraction of the US offer of
cooperation lies in the technical intelligence (techint)
capability the Americans have, the like of which is not
available to the Philippine security forces.
Making a presentation on the ground situation in
the Southeast Asian region at the Asian Security
Conference at New Delhi on January 29, I stated as
follows: "The Philippines has been since 1995 the hub of
pan-Islamic jihadi terrorism in Southeast Asia and it
will continue to be so. The action taken by the Filipino
security forces, with training and possibly material
assistance from the US, is yet to make a dent on the
problem. The situation for Manila is rendered difficult
by the active involvement of mercenaries from
pro-[Osama] bin Laden Pakistani organizations in the
jihad in [the] southern Philippines. This involvement
dates back to the war against the Soviet troops in
Afghanistan in the 1980s in which cadres of Abu Sayyaf
and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front participated.
After bin Laden formed the International Islamic Front
(IIF) in 1998, the Abu Sayyaf joined it. The Tablighi
Jamaat (TJ) and the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) of
Pakistan have been imparting training to Filipino
jihadis in Pakistani as well as Filipino territory and
supplying arms and ammunition. The HUM claims that many
of its cadres died in the jihad against the Filipino
security forces during the 1990s and are buried there.
"The IIF has four priorities in Southeast Asia:
1. To attack American and other Western targets
(including Australian) if and when an opportunity
presented itself due to the lax security of the local
authorities.
2. To assist Muslim minorities in
non-Muslim states (the Philippines, Thailand and
Myanmar) in their jihad for an independent state in the
Muslim-inhabited areas as a prelude to the establishment
of Islamic rule. Singapore, at present, does not fall
into this category because they look upon it as
rightfully belonging to Malaysia. Moreover, they want to
confine their operations in Singapore to possible
attacks on Western (including Australian) and Israeli
interests. The Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), the
coalition of six pro-bin Laden and pro-Taliban
organizations, which has come to power in the North-West
Frontier Province (NWFP) and Balochistan in Pakistan,
had, in its election manifesto, pledged to assist the
'independence movements' of the Muslims in [the]
southern Philippines, Myanmar, J&K [Jammu and
Kashmir] in India, Palestine and Chechnya. There was,
however, no reference to the Muslims of southern
Thailand.
3. To assist Muslims in the
Muslim-majority states (Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei)
[to] achieve an Islamic state ruled according to the
sharia.
4. An Islamic caliphate including all
these states.
"The Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), whose
activities are orchestrated from Indonesia, is being
developed as a regional replica of bin Laden's IIF, a
united front of like-minded Islamic organizations of the
region.The JI is at present functioning as a homogenous
organization taking trained recruits, preferably of
Afghan vintage, unattached to any other organization. In
the next stage, the JI wants to bring in the other
independent Islamic organizations of the region such as
the Kumpulan [Mujahideen] Malaysia, which has had links
to the JI, the Indonesian Mujahideen Council headed by
Abu Bakr Ba'asyir, etc, under a common umbrella in a
united front.
"The year 2002 saw the first
disturbing signs of the emergence or likely emergence of
suicide jihadi terrorism in Indonesia and Malaysia."
This assessment continues to be valid today. The
MMA has been reiterating its determination to help the
Muslims of the southern Philippines and the Araken area
of Myanmar achieve independence. During anti-US and
pro-Iraq demonstrations organized by these parties,
slogans have been shouted not only against the George W
Bush administration in Washington, DC, but also against
the Manila government of President Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo for allegedly suppressing the Muslims
of her country. During the religious congregations in
the mosques and madrassas and on occasions such
as public demonstrations in Pakistan, funds are being
collected for assisting the Muslims of the southern
Philippines.
The Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), the
HUM (International), the Lashkar-e-Toiba, the
Jaish-e-Mohammad, the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami and the
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi project Arroyo's government as a
surrogate "of the Crusaders". All these organizations
are members of bin Laden's IIF and have had a long
history of contacts with the jihadi elements in southern
Philippines. This is particularly true of the HUM and
the Tablighi Jamaat (TJ), an ostensibly humanitarian
organization. The TJ functions as a funnel for the flow
of funds to the jihadis in the southern Philippines from
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and as a cover for the
activities of the Pakistani mercenaries in the southern
Philippines. Since 1995, the HUM has periodically
honored its cadres who "martyred" themselves in the
jihad in the southern Philippines and lie buried there
and has provided financial support to their families in
Pakistan.
Irrespective of whether Muslim
separatists are found responsible for Tuesday's
explosions, it has to be underlined that the jihadi
organizations of the southern Philippines continue to
play an important role in the spread of pan-Islamic
jihadi terrorism in Southeast Asia. The availability of
local support and sanctuaries to them not only in the
south but even in Manila became evident in 1995 when
Khalid Shaikh Mohammad of the IIF and his nephew Ramzi
Yousef took shelter there to plan their abortive
terrorist strikes against US airlines.
What the
Philippine counter-terrorism agencies face is part urban
terrorism, part rural insurgency and part sheer
gangsterism. The mix is similar to what Moscow has been
facing in Chechnya. It has to be tackled by a mix of
better grievance-redressal machinery, better national
intelligence collection and assessment capability,
stricter immigration control and physical security, and
muted rhetoric. While US intelligence sharing should be
welcome, a reliance on American counter-terrorism
techniques with their emphasis on heavy-handed military
means and high rhetoric would make the problem
intractable.
Of all the countries in Southeast
Asia, Thailand emulates the Indian counter-terrorism
techniques, which emphasize taking the threat seriously
in private, but avoiding overplaying it in public. As
done by the Indian agencies, the Thai agencies avoid
creating an Islam phobia or an al-Qaeda paranoia and
refrain from over-projecting the role of al-Qaeda in the
problems faced in the region. The counter-terrorism
agencies of the other countries in the region have been
playing into the hands of the pan-Islamic jihadi
terrorists by letting their analyses and assessments be
influenced by the US perspective and by over-projecting
al-Qaeda as the source of all religious terrorism in the
region.
B Raman is additional
secretary (retired), Cabinet Secretariat, government of
India, and currently director, Institute for Topical
Studies, Chennai, and convenor, advisory committee,
Observer Research Foundation (ORF), Chennai Chapter.
E-mail:
corde@vsnl.com .
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