MANILA -
Along with the arrest of six suspected Abu Sayyaf
members last month, Philippine police netted 36
kilograms of explosives (TNT). According to Central
Luzon Police Chief Vidal Querol, that's enough to
flatten a two-story structure with a floor area of about
60 square meters. "It can also rip through an average
train coach, that's for sure," he adds.
According to one media report in the United
States, the arrest came days after the administration of
US President George W Bush chided the Philippine
government for not doing enough to crack down on local
terrorist groups. The reproach follows Washington's
reassessment of the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), a
self-styled Islamic insurgency that normally engages in
kidnapping-for-ransom, and comes amid heightened
anxieties over intercepted chatter suggesting possible
terrorist attacks. The Americans delivered a similar
warning to the Indonesian government weeks before the
attack in Bali in October 2002.
With the
arrests, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo suggested
that the terrorist threat had been averted. "We have
preempted a Madrid-level attack on the metropolis," she
declared, referring to the March 11 train bombing in the
Spanish capital. "The most dangerous terrorist cell of
the Abu Sayyaf has been dismantled."
News of the
arrests, however, has not been entirely reassuring. The
Philippines faces a presidential election in less than
three weeks, as Spain did just before the Madrid
bombing. Filipinos fear that terrorists may use the
proximity of the elections - a turbulent period in any
case - to sow even greater chaos. Or, it has been
suggested, losing factions in the electoral contest may
stage terrorist attacks to throw the process into
disarray. Either way it would seem that the worst is yet
to come.
The return of the Abu
Sayyaf Last month's arrests have proved to be
quite a catch, notwithstanding the explosives cache.
Among the suspects apprehended, one has been identified
as a Jemaah Islamiya-trained bomb maker, another as one
of the commandos involved in kidnapping US missionaries
Martin and Gracia Burnham, and another as the cell's
purported ringleader, Al-hamsed Manatad Limbong, alias
Kosovo, the person involved in the beheading of American
Guillermo Sobero and connected with the planting of a
bomb in a Zamboanga cafe that killed an American
soldier. Kosovo had a price on his head.
He also
had a list in his wallet allegedly detailing the cell's
intended targets in Manila. Its ambition is shocking.
The list includes the US and Israeli embassies, US
Senate and House of Representatives buildings, the
Philippine Stock Exchange, the Cultural Center of the
Philippines, public utilities (oil, gas,
telecommunications stations), public transport (train
stations, bus terminals, seaports) and public areas
(malls, restaurants, churches, hotels).
And to
think the Arroyo administration had called the Abu
Sayyaf "a spent force" after joint US-Philippine
military exercises on the island of Basilan, an ASG
stronghold, had seemed to quell their banditry.
The government had even dismissed out of hand
Abu Sayyaf claims of responsibility for the February
sinking of SuperFerry 14, a tragedy that claimed nearly
100 lives. ASG chieftain Khaddafy Janjalani asserted
that a suicide bomber - Passenger 51 on the ferry - had
caused the explosion. He cited "taxes", or the failure
of the ship's owners to pay extortion money, as the
reason behind the bombing. ASG spokesman Abu Soliman
broadcast a loftier motivation: revenge for violence
inflicted upon Muslim women by the Philippine military.
Although one survivor described the explosion as
sounding "like a bomb" and experts put the blast in the
area of where Passenger 51 would sit, the government has
rejected Janjalani's claims as "propaganda". According
to media reports, it even barred US bomb experts from
investigating. Authorities have insisted, rather, that a
fire in the boiler room or kitchen, and not foul play,
was the probable cause of the explosion gutting the
passenger ship.
Last month's arrests may herald
new evidence. One of the suspects claims to have been
Passenger 51 and to have brought aboard the ferry a
television set loaded with TNT. It may also warrant
re-examining threats written off as braggadocio. After
the sinking of SuperFerry 14, Abu Soliman phoned in to
taunt the government: "Still doubtful about our
capabilities? Good. Just wait and see. We will bring the
war that you impose on us to your lands and seas, homes
and streets. We will multiply the pain and suffering
that you have inflicted on our people."
These
developments suggest that the ASG may have grown beyond
its mercenary orientation. The group that, according to
Philippine intelligence reports, Osama bin Laden once
found too parochial to support fully, appears to have
refashioned itself along the lines of an Islamic
militancy akin with al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiya. The
explosives cache seized last month may have been
intended as the ASG's qualifying bid for "legitimate"
terrorism.
Abu Soliman speaks as if the ASG were
rivaling Jemaah Islamiya in seriousness. "The irony
about the Philippine government is that ... they are
belittling us but they are exaggerating the problem of
terrorism in the country and using, as an example, the
likes of the Jemaah Islamiya, which is based in
Indonesia. But what is in front of them they do not
see."
Certainly, with last month's arrests, the
government has made gains against the group. Those
arrests were quickly followed by the arrests of four
more suspected terrorists and the killing of Hamsiraji
Sali, an ASG commander with a US-set US$5 million bounty
on his head. These gains were offset, however, by the
escape of 53 prisoners from a Basilan jail this month.
ASG inmates reportedly led the breakout. The wife of one
Abu inmate smuggled a gun inside a papaya. This enabled
the inmate to shoot one guard and free his comrades.
Twenty-eight inmates have since been recaptured or
killed; of the 25 at large, 10 are Abu Sayyaf bandits.
A deadly season It would make sense
for the terrorists to strike during elections. To be
sure, a terrorist attack would fail to instigate a
Philippine defection from "the coalition of the
willing". The country's historical ties to the United
States run too deep, and it depends on the US for arms
and aid far too much to risk a falling out on the issue
of Iraq. It is unlikely, then, that the Philippines will
follow the example of Spain and Honduras and pull its 51
peacekeepers out of Iraq. Despite some recent public
clamor, Arroyo has committed to keeping Filipino troops
in Iraq for as long as the US wants them there.
It is also unlikely that a terrorist attack
timed to influence the outcome of the elections, by,
say, ushering into the presidency an anti-American
candidate, would have the intended effect. For one,
there is no particularly anti-American candidate for
president. Raul Roco, the only candidate who has come
out against the war in Iraq, is such a long shot,
especially now that he has taken sick leave three weeks
before the elections, that a dozen terrorist blasts
wouldn't get him elected.
A terrorist attack now
would succeed spectacularly in doing one thing: sowing
chaos. Election season in the Philippines is a deadly
season anyway. During the congressional elections in
2001, out of 238 election-related incidents such as
shooting, maiming and kidnapping, 100 people died. This
season's tally (since December 15) at more than 50
deaths and 100 injuries is looking to surpass the 2001
toll handily.
With bitter political rivalries
extending back for generations, private armies (about
125, mostly concentrated in Mindanao) at the disposal of
local warlords, an abundance of weapons (about 328,000
unlicensed fire arms, excluding those in the hands of
rebels), and quite active insurgencies (the
12,000-strong Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the
9,000-strong New People's Army, to name the two major
ones), the nation already has enough to worry about
without terrorism - which, of course, makes election
season an opportune time for terrorists to strike.
Worse, a terrorist attack now would be subject
to destabilizing ambiguity. Even if the Abu Sayyaf came
out and took credit for the attack, opposition factions
might use the opportunity to accuse the Arroyo
administration of engineering a crisis. This would be
their way of instigating an actual crisis.
It
has been done before. The 1971 bombing of Plaza Miranda
during a Liberal Party rally was squarely blamed on
president Ferdinand Marcos. It turned out, years later,
that the bombing had been part of a communist plot to
widen the split in the ruling class.
Even minus
the attack, President Arroyo has been getting flak for
last month's arrests. The military has been accused of
planting evidence to frame the suspected Abu terrorists.
Arroyo has been accused of staging the arrests to prop
up her campaign. The president has had to reassure
Muslim leaders that she intended no "witch-hunt" against
their community.
At least one thing is clear: if
the Abu Sayyaf is allowed to attack now on a scale
commensurate with their revived ambitions, the road to
elections will coincide with the road to chaos.
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