Months before Abu
Sayyaf militants beheaded retired Canadian mining executive John Ridsdel in the
tropical jungles of the southern Philippines , they showed him
pleading for life in a video with three other hostages that demanded a
record high ransom.
The scene was all too familiar in a Southeast Asian nation
that has struggled with ransom kidnappings by the Islamic militants for years,
except for two things. In the video that appeared in November, two black flags
with Islamic State group symbols were displayed by the heavily-armed Abu Sayyaf
fighters in the backdrop of lush foliage.
Then after a deadline for ransom lapsed on Monday, they
killed the 68-year-old Ridsdel — instead of waiting patiently for the money as
the mostly impoverished rural fighters have done in the past.
Shocked by the outcome, many in the largest Roman Catholic
nation in Asia are asking if this is same band
of militants the government has long dismissed as ransom-seeking bandits.
Or, has the Philippines
fallen into a growing list of countries that are now grappling with the spread
of the Islamic State group from Syria
and Iraq ?
The Philippine government has insisted the IS still has no presence in the
country’s south, homeland of minority Muslims who rose up to seek a separate
state in the early 1970s. In his first remarks following Ridsdel’s killing,
President Benigno Aquino III, who is left with two more months in office, ran a
history of the Abu Sayyaf’s brutal attacks, describing it as a group of outlaws
and vowing “to devote all my energies toward ensuring that, at the very least,
this will be a very seriously degraded problem.” “Even as it poses as a group
of Islamic freedom fighters, the Abu Sayyaf has behaved as criminals focused on
enriching themselves by taking hostages for ransom,” he said, describing them
as opportunists who want to “align themselves with ISIS to gain access to the
funds and resources of ISIS .”
Terrorism experts, however, believe that a key Abu Sayyaf
faction and at least two other small armed groups have gone beyond pledging
allegiance to the Middle East-based jihadis on video and have struck a new
alliance under the IS flag. Some foreign militants from Malaysia, Indonesia and
the Middle East helped forge the union under an overall leader, Isnilon
Hapilon, a veteran Filipino militant who was among those who founded the Abu
Sayyaf on southern Basilan Island in early 1990s, said Rodolfo Mendoza, a
retired police general who helped lead counterterrorism efforts.
Offensives
It’s not yet clear if the foreign militants, three of whom were killed in military offensives last year and this year, were IS fighters or sympathizers who wanted to recruit Filipinos into the IS fold, according to the Philippine military.
In November, Abu Sayyaf gunmen beheaded a Malaysian hostage
despite ongoing ransom negotiations. It happened while Manila was hosting an Asia-Pacific Economic
Cooperation summit attended by world leaders, including US President Barack
Obama and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak.
Another armed group, which has brandished the IS group’s
black flag in southern Butig town but is not yet known to have joined Hapilon’s
alliance, recently posted a picture online of two kidnapped villagers in orange
garb before they were beheaded as suspected military spies.
It’s the first known instance local militants dressed their
captives in orange, as IS extremists do. An unusual surge in kidnappings,
including daring attacks on three tugboats in and around the Sulu Sea that
captured 18 Indonesian and Malaysian crewmen starting last month, along with
recent beheadings, may be a way by the emerging bloc of militants to dramatize
their capability and brutality and convince the IS group to fully recognize
them as an affiliate entitled to funds and training support, Mendoza told The
Associated Press.
Earlier this month, an Abu Sayyaf ambush in Basilan killed
18 soldiers in the military’s largest single-day combat loss so far this year.
“They’re now able to project internationally that they deserve the serious
recognition of mother ISIS,” Mendoza
said. “The kidnappings that they do shouldn’t only be seen as plain banditry.”
After the Sept 11, 2001, attacks in the United States , the militants tried
to forge a formal alliance with al- Qaeda but those efforts failed.
The Abu Sayyaf tried for years to foster impressions that
it’s formally allied to al-Qaeda for survival, said Abu Muslim, a former Abu
Sayyaf ranking member who has been captured and now cooperates with the
government. “There was really no direct connection between the ASG and the
al-Qaeda then,” he said. “But the impression that there was gave the group
stature and a veil of notoriety that was important in raising funds.” Ahmed
Hashim, a counterterrorism and defense policy expert with the S. Rajaratnam
School of International Studies in Singapore, said European and Middle Eastern
countries have been more exposed to the dangers by IS militants, but a
vulnerable period awaits Southeast Asia.
A few hundred Malaysian and Indonesian militants were believed
to have traveled to Syria
and Iraq
in recent years. There are unconfirmed reports of a few Filipinos who have also
joined the fighting. “Not too many have come back yet,” Hashim said. “The
biggest danger is for Malaysia
and Indonesia .”
Under any label, the Abu Sayyaf is clearly a “terrorist group” that will face
offensives for its “gruesome attacks on innocent people,” the military said.
A day before he was abducted from a marina on Samal Island ,
where he and his friends berthed their yacht, Ridsdel wrote in his blog about
the thrill of his sea adventures and a hint of the unexpected that may suddenly
come with it. “With a little bit of wind, it feels like the craft is flying, as
it skims over the water rather than undulating with it,” he wrote. “All very
wonderful, until you have to go upwind in rough weather.”
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.