Agence France-Presse file photograph of Abu Sayyaf fighters
General Ricardo Visaya on Thursday conceded that his five-month stint as Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) is not enough time to overturn the more than two-and-a-half-decade existence of the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) in Mindanao, even as this was one of the topmost marching orders from the Commander-in-Chief, President Rodrigo Duterte.
Visaya, however, explained that there have been essential gains under his watch in the campaign to eliminate the ASG scourge.
"When I took over as Chief of Staff, my first instruction (to our troops) was, in order to defeat the Abu Sayyaf we have address first the speed of the enemy in the high seas, and that happened," he said.
To help accomplish this, Visaya said, the AFP consulted and sought authority from the maritime arm of the Department of Transportation to deputize the military in confiscating suspected boats, especially unregistered speedboats, being used by the terrorists in their kidnap-for-ransom activities.
"We are very happy that we were able to achieve our objectives of neutralizing the speed of the enemy in the high seas, that's one," he said.
But Visaya said the military needs to excel more in another aspect of battle: "Give us time, because our soldiers have to familiarize themselves with the terrain [in Sulu and Basilan]. The battalions deployed there originated from as far as Cagayan Valley, the Bicol region, Southern Tagalog, and the terrain are dissimilar in these places. It will really take time for our troops to get familiar with the terrain, and when the time comes I'm sure the fight against Abu Sayyaf will be much much easier," he explained.
In light of the atrocities committed by the ASG, President Duterte ordered Visaya to annihilate the terrorists, and this was followed through by the additional deployment of Army troops, reaching a strength level of eight to nine battalions dispatched to Sulu and Basilan.
Despite the firepower, the handful of terrorists still managed to elude military dragnets in land and in sea and, worse, even skipped over to Malaysia to abduct victims and bring them to Sulu for ransom negotiation.
On Wednesday, in an interview with reporters, Visaya disputed the perception that there is a rise in the incidence of kidnappings perpetrated by the ASG.
"There is no rise of kidnapping ... in fact, it was reduced. When we deployed our biggest ship, the BRP Tarlac, in the waters between Malaysia and Philippines, there were two attempted (of) kidnappings happened in Malaysia but they can't (escape into the country) because of the strategic location of our naval assets there," he explained.
"This is also only the first time in the history of our Armed Forces that we caused a large number of Abu Sayyaf fighters to surrender in a single occasion. It was en masse, 20 of them in all," he said.
http://interaksyon.com/article/134616/visaya-afp-needs-more-time-to-defeat-asg
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