Who are the Abu Sayyaf?

From ABS-CBN (Oct 17): Who are the Abu Sayyaf?

Here are key facts about the Abu Sayyaf, a Philippines-based Islamic group, which released two German hostages on Friday after holding them for six months.

ORIGINS: Libya-trained Islamic preacher Abdurajak Janjalani formed the Abu Sayyaf (Bearer of the Sword) in the early 1990s.

OBJECTIVES: The group says it wants to turn the Philippines, a mainly Catholic nation with a large Muslim minority, into an Islamic state through violent means.

However experts say it is more focused on lucrative criminal activities rather than ideology.

TACTICS: The group bombs Christian, military, police, government or civilian targets, and kidnaps Christian missionaries and tourists. It has beheaded many Filipino victims and one American hostage.

SIZE: The group has no more than 400 or so armed members, according to the Philippine military. But personnel losses through deaths or captures from clashes with government forces are replenished by relatives in impoverished, clannish Muslim communities that also provide them sanctuaries from military offensives.

FUNDING: Group operations are now mostly funded through criminal activity, principally kidnappings-for-ransom. However the group is known to have received initial start-up funding from a local charity run by Mohammad Jamal Khalifa, a brother-in-law of slain Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.

ALLIANCES: The military and security analysts say the group harbours fugitive Southeast Asian Jemaah Islamiyah members who train its members in bomb-making. It also has links with smaller Islamic militant groups with similar objectives.

The Abu Sayyaf recently pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group, although the military and government officials say it is merely piggybacking on the jihadists' notoriety to drive up its ransom demands.

SCOPE: The military says the group operates mainly in pockets of the remote southern Philippine islands of Jolo and Basilan. It also raids resorts and other communities elsewhere in the southern and western Philippines, as well as neighboring Malaysia, in search of hostages.

RESPONSE: The Philippines and its main military ally, the United States, consider the group a "terrorist" organisation. In the past 12 years batches of up to 600 US Special Forces troops on rotating deployments have trained Filipino soldiers in how to fight the Abu Sayyaf.

The assistance has helped the Philippines kill or arrest most of the Abu Sayyaf's senior leaders.
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/nation/regions/10/17/14/who-are-abu-sayyaf